В служба на султана, в служба на революцията: местните български първенци през 70-те години на XIX век
In the Service of the Sultan, in the Service of the Revolution: Local Bulgarian Notables in the 1870s

Summary/Abstract: The article analyzes one of the most striking paradoxes in the history of the Bulgarian movement for political independence in the 1870s. A number of examples are given in order to demonstrate that a surprisingly large proportion of the revolutionary committee members at the same time occupied different posts in the local Ottoman administration. They were not necessarily officials, but rather members of various administrative councils and mixed courts established during the Tanzimat period. Nowadays, studies rarely focus on this phenomenon, because such information does not suit the image of the revolutionary who rejects any compromise with the Ottoman authorities and leads a vigorous battle against them. At first glance, there should not be anything in common between the Bulgarians appointed in the Ottoman administration and the “committee members” — these people served radically different causes. There is hardly any doubt that these were two different causes, but often the same people served them. In fact each attempt at forming a broader network (imperial or national) necessarily relied on the existing power structures at local level. The Ottoman authorities relied on influential local notables and even when attempting to develop a centralized administration, they tried to involve them in the system of governance. The leaders of the national revolution were even more in need of such tactics, due to the limited time at their disposal. For them there was not any other possibility except attracting the local notables and influential people into the revolutionary organization and rousing them to revolt. We see in the example of Levski (and later his followers) that they turned to the same people whom the Ottoman authorities had appointed to the mixed administrative councils and courts. And in many cases these were not only people from one and the same “social milieu”, but literally the same individuals were members of the local councils and at the same time participated in the preparations for the uprising

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