[3] He was educated at a primary and secondary level in Constantinople, Edirne, and Plovdiv, throughout which his peers included Dimitar Blagoev, whom Gulabchev would later oppose.

Eventually, Gulabchev wrote a letter to Joseph I of Bulgaria in which he asked for financial assistance for his father, so that he may afford to complete his education.

[3] The first of these fellowships, which Gulabchev personally coordinated with students returning to Bulgaria to see family, appeared in Ruse, Silistra, Veliko Tarnovo, Varna, and Anhialo.

In practice, these fellowships were generally composed of 5 – 10 members who distributed literature, maintained book collections, wrote magazine/newspaper articles, and translated foreign publications into Bulgarian.

Their creation was funded by Gulabchev, after which they were maintained by membership fees (a portion of which went to the central fellowship in Kiev) and donations from wealthy patrons.

In 1882 Gulabchev designed a constitution for the network and began to carefully select the members of future fellowships, acting as a secret society similar to Narodnaya Volya.

[3] By 1884 Gulabchev had become known to the Special Corps of Gendarmes and was, according to state documents, interrogated as a witness "due to a close acquaintance with a person who is extremely unreliable in political terms".

The siromakhomilstvo condemned social inequalities and actively advocated for revolutionary action among the poor through events organised in clubs and libraries.

[1] Like many similar movements throughout the period, Gulabchev decried luxury, fashion, and other aesthetic focuses on the grounds that they were an affront to the poor.

He employed populist techniques to demonstrate this solidarity, such as forbidding his immediate followers from wearing ties, which he felt were a symbol of alienation between the intellectual class and the common people.