Boatmen of Thessaloníki

The Boatmen of Thessaloniki (Bulgarian: Гемиджиите, Macedonian: Гемиџиите) or the Assassins of Salonica, was an anarchistic group, active in the Ottoman Empire in the years between 1900 and 1903. The members of the Group were predominantly from Veles, Macedonia, and most of them − young graduates from the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki. From 28 April until 1 May 1903 the group launched a campaign of terror bombing in Thessaloniki, the so-called "Thessaloniki bombings of 1903". Their aim was to attract the attention of the Great Powers to Ottoman oppression in Macedonia and Thrace.

The Group draws its roots from the Bulgarian anarchist movement which grew in the 1890s, and the territory of Principality of Bulgaria became a staging-point for anarchist activities against the Ottomans, particularly in support of Macedonian and Thracian liberation movements. The Boatmen of Thessaloniki were a descendant of a group founded in 1895 in Plovdiv "Macedonian Secret Revolutionary Committee", which was developed later in Geneve in a secret, anarchistic, brotherhood called "Geneve group". Its activists were the students Michail Gerdjikov, Petar Mandjukov and Slavi Merdjanov. They were influenced from the anarcho-nationalism, which emerged in Europe, following the French Revolution, going back at least to Mikhail Bakunin and his involvement with the Pan-Slavic movement. The anarchists in the so-called "Geneva group" of students played key roles in the anti-Ottoman struggles. Nearly all the members who founded the Committee in Geneva were natives from Bulgaria and not from Macedonia.

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