BULGARIA. 



Agriculture and Commerce, and M. Bontsheff took 

 charge of the Department of Finance. The 

 Ivantehoff C'abinet had promised economies, but 

 was unable to effect them. The war budget, which 

 absorbs more than a fourth of the revenue, could 

 not be cut down in a country where the army has 

 as much political influence as it has in Bulgaria, 

 nor could savings be effected in the civil service, 

 where all the functionaries down to the pages and 

 doorkeepers are turned out with each change of 

 ministry, to be replaced by creatures of the party 

 in power. The elections for the Sobranje took 

 place on Feb. 11. The following of the late power- 

 ful ministers dwindled to almost nothing, while 

 the strong chiefs of other days who had long been 

 excluded from public life turned up at the head 

 of considerable factions. The Macedonian agita- 

 tion was aggravated by the distressful economical 

 situation of the country, and one of its conse- 

 quences was the aggravation of that situation for 

 Bulgarians and still more for Macedonians, many 

 of whom migrate annually into Bulgaria and Rou- 

 mania for work, but were unable to do so this year 

 owing to the difficulty of passing the Turkish 

 frontier and to the quarrel between Bulgaria and 

 Roumania. Sarafoff, the president of the Mace- 

 donian Committee, had been sentenced to death by 

 the Roumanian court for procuring the murder of 

 a Bucharest professor, but the Bulgarian Govern- 

 ment refused to deliver him up, and no Bulgarian 

 minister dared to deal harshly with the Mace- 

 donian Committee, although its methods were 

 criminal and the subject of warnings and com- 

 plaints from several European governments. The 

 Turkish Government treated Macedonians with 

 the utmost severity, with the full approval of the 

 powers. Often the innocent suffered for the 

 guilty. Turkey had 150,000 soldiers massed on 

 the frontier to put down the threatened rising. 

 Macedonian refugees in Bulgaria petitioned the 

 Sultan to let them return if they could find means 

 of gaining a livelihood in Macedonia. The agita- 

 tion for the emancipation of Macedonia from Turk- 

 ish rule and its annexation to Bulgaria, an aim 

 which ran counter to similar Servian, Greek, Rou- 

 manian, and Albanian national ambitions and de- 

 fied not only the military power of the Turkish 

 Empire, but the concert of Europe, was .so popu- 

 lar in Bulgaria that no government dared to sup- 

 press the Macedonian Committee or even punish 

 crimes committed by its members. The agitators 

 were discharged officials, retired officers, politi- 

 cians fallen from power, and idle adventurers of 

 every type. They obtained money by blackmail 

 and intimidation, and did not shrink from murder- 

 ing men who threatened to show them up. Bul- 

 garians were not required to contribute to the 

 fund from which they lived, but foreign mer- 

 chants, Roumanians, and others, especially Turk- 

 ish subjects and Spanish and Polish Jews. They 

 assessed sometimes the entire Jewish colony in a 

 town, sometimes individual Jews. The commit- 

 tee, which has been in existence since the Russo- 

 Tiirkish War of 1877, had Macedonian bonds 

 printed, which were offered to some of the victims 

 of its extortions at 50 per cent, of their face value. 

 lifle clubs were organized throughout Bulgaria. 

 The part of Macedonia bordering on Eastern Rou- 

 melia was to be redeemed first, and the ostensible 

 purpose was to make it an autonomous Christian 

 province of Turkey, to be ultimately absorbed in 

 Bulgaria, as Eastern Roumelia was, if not occu- 

 pied at once by Bulgarian patriots and annexed 

 without passing through the intermediate stage. 

 Col. Petroff took more vigorous measures to curb 

 the agitation than any of his predecessors, and 

 thus provoked the enmity of the agitators and the 



attacks of Karaveloff, the leader of the Liberal 

 party, as well as of the Russophile Zankoffists,who 

 have" always abetted the agitation. The Mace- 

 donian Committee pretended that it still enjoyed 

 Russian support, as it did at times in the earlier 

 part of its career, although the Russian Govern- 

 ment, as well as other European governments, had 

 unmistakably intimated at Sofia and at Constan- 

 tinople a desire that the Bulgarian Government 

 should suppress the present agitation and fulfil 

 its international obligations by proceeding against 

 the lawless Macedonian Committee. Gen. Petroff 

 showed a determination to put a stop to black- 

 mailing and personal violence on the part of agents 

 of the Macedonian Committee by warning the pre- 

 fects against countenancing any infractions of the 

 law. He also ordered the suppression of the rifle 

 clubs, but he did not see that his order was car- 

 ried out, nor did he proceed to the arrest of Boris 

 Saravoff and his associates, who since they took 

 charge of the agitation in May, 1899, had degraded 

 it by their methods until proceedings of the Mace- 

 donian Committee had become an international 

 scandal. The course that the new Government 

 would pursue toward the Macedonian Committee 

 was problematical, notwithstanding the encour- 

 agement the members of the ministry had given to 

 it for electioneering purposes. Karaveloff and the 

 Zankoffists were not men to condone methods that 

 brought the Macedonian movement into disrepute, 

 the new Minister of the Interior, who was an old 

 leader of that movement, least of all, nor could the 

 demands of Roumania, the warnings of the powers, 

 or the complaints of Turkey, accentuated by vigor- 

 ous repression in Macedonia, be continually disre- 

 garded. Unless the dangers of the situation were 

 removed the necessary financial aid from Euro- 

 pean money markets would not be forthcoming. 

 The agitators took heart, however, when their 

 professed friends came into power. The rifle clubs 

 again began openly to train volunteers. Whatever 

 important move the new Cabinet in political mat- 

 ters made was believed to have the previous ap- 

 proval of the Russian Government. 



The Sobranje met in extraordinary session on 

 March 7. The new ministry stated that its task 

 would be to bring about an equilibrium in the 

 budget and end the financial crisis and to 

 strengthen the bonds that unite Bulgaria to her 

 deliverer, Russia, and develop good relations with 

 neighboring states. This announcement gave no- 

 encouragement to the Macedonian Committee. 

 The Porte took more energetic measures than ever 

 to suppress the conspiracy that honeycombed 

 Macedonia. The evidence of an intended insurrec- 

 tion was apparent. Agents of the Sofia body w r ere 

 found guilty of blackmail and assassination in 

 various parts of Turkey and were executed. The 

 Turkish Bulgarians were organized in revolution- 

 ary bands pledged to obey secretly all orders com- 

 ing through local committees from the Mace- 

 donian Committee, which provided them with 

 weapons. Murder and other political crimes were* 

 authorized, and the perpetrators were reported to 

 Sofia for reward; but acts of personal vengeance 

 and of pillage were prohibited, and those who 

 committed them must suffer death. Every politi- 

 cal murder must, however, have the sanction of 

 the president of the Macedonian Committee. The 

 chief of every band of 5 or 6 members received his 

 appointment from Sofia. The members of dif- 

 ferent bands should not communicate with each, 

 other. The death penalty was threatened for de- 

 sertion in action or for any disposition to betray 

 the secrets of the organization for gain. The Porte 

 demanded in energetic language that the Bul- 

 garian Government dissolve the Macedonian Com- 



