Bulgarian Officers' Brotherhoods

[2] A second company appeared in Ruse, and then in Sliven, Razgrad, Vratsa, Dobrich, Varna and other places.The organization distributed a manifesto in which it invited all Bulgarian officers from Macedonia and Adrianople Thrace to join its ranks.

Among the more famous figures of the brotherhoods were Boris Sarafov, Aleksandar Protogerov, Kliment Boyadzhiev, Stamat Ikonomov, Toma Davidov, Anastas Yankov and others.

[3] The main role in the creation in 1900 of the so-called rifle companies, associated with the Yunak Gymnastic Society, was played by the brotherhoods, which led to the formation of a set of a clandestine armed paramilitary groups as in Bulgaria, as well as on Ottoman territory.

With a secret letter to the officers on actual service in Bulgarian army from December 1903, the new SMAC leadership restored the activity of the fraternities.

Thus, for a few months, the organization was activated, provoking the Bulgarian government to accept the idea about a war with the Ottoman Empire.

Stamp of the first Bulgarian liberation brotherhood in Tarnovo
Commemorative postcard on the occasion of the death of the officers Stoyanov, Sugarev and Milev. They perished in a battle with Ottoman troops on April 28, 1903, near Gabrovo .