Lazar Poptraykov

Lazar Poptraykov (Bulgarian: Лазар Поптрайков; Macedonian: Лазар Поп-Трајков; 10 April 1878–October 1903) was a Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary (komitadji). He was also a Bulgarian Exarchate teacher and poet from Ottoman Macedonia. He was one of the leaders of the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (IMARO) in the region of Kastoria (Kostur) during the Ilinden Uprising. Despite his Bulgarian identification,  per the post-WWII Macedonian historiography he is considered as an ethnic Macedonian.

Life
Lazar Poptraykov was born in Dambeni, Ottoman Empire (now Dendrohori, Greece) on 10 April 1878. He studied at the local village school before moving to the Bulgarian junior high school in Kostur. Later he continued to study at the Bitola Bulgarian Classical High School and afterwards at Thessaloniki's Bulgarian Men High School. In Thessaloniki, one of his teachers was Pere Toshev. Poptraykov joined IMARO as early as 1895, inspired by Dame Gruev. He finished the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki in 1898, though he had started touring the Kastoria region to promote the work of IMARO two years earlier, in 1896.

Poptraykov was one of the founders of the Kastoria branch of IMARO. On 21 June 1903 he wrote a poem titled Lokvata and Vinyari (Локвата и Виняри) to commemorate the battle of Lokvata between Bulgarian revolutionaries and Ottoman troops in Dendrohori during the Ilinden Uprising. His poem had large impact on the national identification of the villagers of Dendrohori whose allegiance to Bulgaria increased during the following years. Poptraykov was arrested by Ottoman authorities and imprisoned in Korçë along with fellow revolutionaries Manol Rozov, Maslina Grancharova, and Pavel Christov.

Death
Poptraykov died at the end of the Ilinden Uprising when he was assassinated by Konstantinos Christou, a fighter for Greek interests and was acting under orders by Germanos Karavangelis, bishop of Kastoria. Per Karavangelis, Poptraykov was the worst enemy of Hellenism, who fanatized the peasants in favor of the Bulgarian national idea. Christou who switched the side from Bulgarians to Greeks and vice versa, was received back by the IMRO at the insistence of Poptraykov. However, after Poptraykov had been wounded and taken a refuge with Kottas, he used the opportunity to kill him and present his head to Karavangelis who took a picture of the head on his desk. When narrating his memoirs to author Penelope Delta in the 1930s, Karavangelis requested the concealment of the information that Poptraykov's head had been buried in the garden of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Kastoria, lest "the Bulgarians cause mayhem to find it and lay it to rest with great honors, if they find out".

Literature

 * Лазар Поптрайков - "Възстанието в Костурско; от 20 юлий до 30 август вкл.", публикувано в "Бюлетин на в. Автономия; Задграничен лист на Вътрешната македоно-одринска организация", брой 44-47, София, 1903 година Report about the Ilinden uprising written by Lazar Poptraykov, Vasil Chakalarov, Manol Rozov, Pando Klyashev and Mihail Nikolov