Marko Lerinski

Marko Lerinski (Bulgarian: Марко Лерински, "Marko of Florina"; 20 June 1862 – 13 June 1902) was the nickname of Georgi Ivanov Gyurov (Георги Иванов Гюров), also known as Georgi Geroyski or Marko Voyvoda, a Bulgarian military man and revolutionary. A prominent member of the Internal Macedonian–Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (IMARO), Lerinski was the first person to propose a common anti-Ottoman uprising in Macedonia and Eastern Thrace.

Gyurov was born in Kotel in Ottoman Rumelia, today a town in central eastern Bulgaria. In 1883, he joined the Principality of Bulgaria's armed forces. He took part in the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885. For his bravery, he was awarded a medal and promoted; his comrades even nicknamed him Geroyski (Геройски), "heroic". In 1895, he left the Bulgarian Army to join the Supreme Macedonian–Adrianople Committee and take part in its 1895 organized anti-Ottoman action, which involved the burning of Dospat. After the action's failure, he returned to the army as a non-commissioned officer.

In 1900, he got in contact with revolutionaries Gotse Delchev and Gyorche Petrov, who recruited him in IMARO. They dispatched him as a regional leader (voivode) in the Lerin region (today Florina, Greece), where his nickname comes from. Other IMARO voivodes from the Principality of Bulgaria, such as Hristo Chernopeev, were also recruited at the time. Thanks to Lerinski's military training and his organizational abilities, his armed detachment became what was essentially a school for voivodes and members for the entire IMARO. According to fellow IMARO member and writer Hristo Silyanov, Marko Lerinski turned Lerin into "... a region of model in every respect. Enthustiastic activists, strict organization, a disciplined and, in the full sense of the words, propagandist and organizational detachment. That was all the work of Marko from Kotel."

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