User:DeliriousWolf/sandbox4

Gulabchev believed that for women to be emancipated, they must read. In 1902 only 66 women visited or borrowed from Plodiv's main public library; in 1907 1,552 did so.

In the late 1880’s Spiro Gulabchev, a teacher, formed the secret society Siromakkomilstvo (Pauperophilia), which copied the conspiratorial organization of the People’s Will. Advocating a form of primitive Christian communism, Siromakhomilsteo formed a number of study clubs, but never achieved a large following. Gulabchev was "indisputably the most prominent socialist figure in Bulgaria in the 1880s". His Siromakhomilstvo movement was the first training ground for many intelletuals. Gulabchev's theoretical credo was the outcome of various influences, conspiratorial revolutionary activity and popular enlightenment from the Russian Populists, the enlightenment ideal of the Liberals, the federative ideas of the Ukrainian nationalist revolutionary Dragomanov. He advocated the amelioration of the fortunes of the people through enlightnment and education. He espoused the, at-times, popular idea in Russia of labouring for "little things" as opposed to the "big tasks". The emphasis was laid o the dissemination of science and the benevolence of charity, with the aim of affecting the material, intellectual, and moral development of the peopl. In the 1880s a whole network of siromakhomilski druzhini operated in several Bulgarian cities organized as a conspirative, sectarian organization. Particulary popular was Chernyshevsky's What is to be Done printed in Gulabchev's printing house. Siromahomilstov functioned as an enlightnment movement of the intelligentsia.