Ivan Garvanov

Who was Ivan Garvanov?

Ivan Garvanov was a Bulgarian revolutionary and leader of the revolutionary movement in Ottoman Macedonia and Southern Thrace.

He was born in Stara Zagora, then in the Ottoman Empire. His father was a merchant who had been killed during the Russo-Turkish War in 1878, and his uncle and grandfather had also been killed by the Turks. Garvanov had been in Plovdiv at the time of the Unification of the Principality of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia and supported it. He learned mathematics in Sofia, and Vienna, where the Austrian Academy of Sciences published a work of his. From 1894 onwards, Garvanov worked as a Bulgarian teacher in Thessaloniki. In 1897 he founded the Bulgarian Secret Revolutionary Brotherhood and later entered the Internal Macedonian Adrianople Revolutionary Organization.

In fact, initially the real aim of Garvanov was to take over the IMRO, and thus prevent the early outbreak of an uprising which he believed would bring disaster upon the population. However, later he changed his opinion and the reason was the death of his colleague Christo Ganev. Ganev was a chemistry teacher and was killed in June 1898 in Thessaloniki by a renegade Bulgarian, who became a Serboman. Garvanov himself was wounded while trying to save his colleague. He was introduced into the organization in 1899 by Dame Gruev. In 1900 Garvanov was chosen as a leader of the Regional Committee in Salonica and in 1901 he became a member of Central Committee and later a leader of the IMARO.