Georgi Stoikov Rakovski

Born April 1821 in Kotel; died Oct. 9, 1867, in Bucharest. Bulgarian revolutionary.

Rakovski studied in a Greek school in Istanbul. In 1841 he founded a secret society in Athens for the organization of an anti-Turkish liberation uprising in Bulgaria and Greece. The same year he led an anti-Turkish uprising in Bráila, Rumania. Rakovski attempted to organize an anti-Turkish uprising in Bulgaria in 1853 and led a rebel detachment in the Stara Pla-nina (Balkan Mountains) in 1854. In Belgrade in 1861–62 he founded the first Bulgarian Legion, and in Bucharest in late 1866 he united the chetnik voevody (military commanders) for planned actions to liberate Bulgaria from the Ottoman yoke. The Provisional Law of the People’s Forest Detachments of 1867, which was compiled by Rakovski, formulated the idea of transforming the chet into units of a centralized military organization. Rakovski advocated the fraternal solidarity of the Balkan peoples in the struggle for liberation.