| Honorific Prefix: | Voivode | ||||||||
| Petar Chaulev | |||||||||
| Native Name: | Петър Чаулев | ||||||||
| Birth Date: | c. 1882 | ||||||||
| Birth Place: | Ohrid, Manastir Vilayet, Ottoman Empire (now Republic of North Macedonia) | ||||||||
| Death Date: | 23 December | ||||||||
| Death Place: | Milan, Kingdom of Italy | ||||||||
| Death Cause: | Assassination | ||||||||
| Nationality: | Ottoman/Bulgarian | ||||||||
| Module: |
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Petar Chaulev (bg|Петър Чаулев; sq|Petar Çaulev; 1882 – December 23, 1924) was a Bulgarian[1] [2] [3] revolutionary in Ottoman Macedonia.[4] [5] [6] He was a local leader of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO).
He was born into an Orthodox Albanian family in Ohrid. His father was a Tosk Albanian fisherman from southern Albania. Chaulev was fluent in Albanian, and spent several years living in Albania where he got the nickname 'Petrush'.[7] [8] Cultural closeness was expressed by such Orthodox Albanians from the mixed Albanian-Bulgarian area in western Macedonia and some gradually became Bulgarianized.[9] [10] He graduated from the Ohrid Bulgarian Class School and then from the Bulgarian High School in Bitola, moving in revolutionary circles. He participated in the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising and later became a Bulgarian teacher and secretary within the local revolutionary organization. After the Young Turks Revolution in 1908 he associated with the left wing of IMRO - People's Federative Party (Bulgarian Section).
During the Balkan Wars Chaulev supported the Bulgarian Army. After the Second Balkan War he led the Ohrid-Debar Uprising in 1913 against the Serbs. During the First World War he served as a sergeant in the 11th Macedonian Infantry Division of the Bulgarian army and later was appointed as governor of Ohrid. After the First World War Chaulev rejoined in Sofia to the re-established there IMRO. Petar Chaulev together with Aleksandar Protogerov and Todor Aleksandrov formed the new Central Committee of the IMRO. Since 1922, as the head of the Bitola Revolutionary District and in charge of maintaining contacts with the Albanian and Italian authorities, Chaulev often resided in Albania and in Italy.
In 1924 IMRO forged connections with the Comintern. As result Chaulev signed the so-called "May Manifesto" in Vienna along with Alexandar Protogerov concerning the formation of a Balkan Communist Federation and cooperation with the Soviet Union.[11] They did this after being authorized from the absent IMRO leader Todor Alexandrov, signing the document from his name too. The revelation that the patriotic IMRO officially sanctioned such a separatist document with the communists caused uproar in its ranks. Aleksandrov and Protogerov promptly denied that they have ever signed any agreements, claiming that the May Manifesto was a communist forgery. Shortly after, Alexandrov was assassinated by unclear circumstances. Chaulev who sticked to the Manifesto and was suspected as involved in Aleksandrov's murder, was assassinated in Milan in December 1924.[12]
Chaulev was also a writer, publishing the book Skipia (Albania) in 1924 in Istanbul.[13]
