Varban Kilifarski

Who was Varban Kilifarski?

Varban Kilifarski was born in Harsovo, Bulgaria in 1879. He studied at the gymnazium in Razgrad. Of bourgeois origin, he discovered very young the anarchistic ideas. In 1893 he started his revolutionary activities as a member of a Macedonian Secret Revolutionary Committee. Later Kilifarski became a member of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization and a friend with Gotse Delchev. In 1907, together with Michail Gerdjikov, he founded the first periodic anarchistic newspaper in Bulgaria. In 1912 he moved to France and influenced by the experiments of Francisco Ferrer's Modern School, Kilifarski went back to Bulgaria and began constructing his own school, which had to be aborted when the Balkan war broke out in 1912. Antimilitarist, he marched to Switzerland, later to Paris, where he exerted like professor in “The Ruche”, of Sébastien Faure. With the declaration of the First World war in 1914, Kilifarski moved to Italy, returning to Bulgaria after the conflict ended. Kilifarski died in 1923 after a brief illnes.