Gyorche Petrov Nikolov, born Georgi Petrov Nikolov (April 2, 1865 – June 28, 1921), was a Macedonian Bulgarian teacher, revolutionary, and one of the leaders of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). In his youth, Petrov was involved in the Unification of Bulgaria and the subsequent Serbo-Bulgarian War. After the foundation of IMRO, he was its representative in Sofia, the capital of the Principality of Bulgaria. As such, he was also a member of the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee (SMAC), participating in the work of its governing body. During the Balkan Wars, Petrov was a Bulgarian army volunteer, and during the First World War, he was involved in the activity of the Bulgarian occupation authorities in Serbia and Greece. Subsequently, he participated in Bulgarian politics, but was killed by the rivaling IMRO right-wing faction.
Biography
Born on April 2, 1865, in Varoš, Ottoman Empire (today North Macedonia), he studied at the Bulgarian Exarchate's school in Prilep and the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki. Later, he attended the gymnasium in Plovdiv, capital of the recently created Eastern Rumelia. Here he joined the Bulgarian Secret Central Revolutionary Committee founded in 1885. The original purpose of the committee was to gain autonomy for the region of Macedonia (then called Western Rumelia), but it played an important role in the organization of the Unification of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia. In the same year, he was a volunteer in the Bulgarian army during the Serbo-Bulgarian War. Petrov worked as a Bulgarian Exarchate teacher in geography, Bulgarian and French languages in the Bulgarian schools of Štip, Skopje, Bitola, and Thessaloniki in the period from 1885 to 1897.
left|thumb|250px|Teachers and pupils from Bulgarian boys' school in [[Bitola. Petrov is the fourth person on the first row from left to right.]]
In 1893, Petrov joined the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). which envisioned a common anti-Ottoman alliance of all ethnicities in Macedonia and Adrianople. The organization then was largely dependent on the Bulgarian state and army assistance that was mediated by him and Delchev. He was named by his adversaries as "the Macedonian Beelzebub," referencing his experience in political maneuvering.
In the article "The Macedonian Liberation Cause on Bulgarian Soil", published in 1902 in Sofia, Petrov revealed the differences in the revolutionary tactics of the IMRO and SMAC and the reasons for their bad relations. He criticized the provocative activities of the SMAC leaders Ivan Tsonchev and Stoyan Mihaylovski, who took the path of starting an unprepared uprising in Macedonia. Despite Petrov's warnings, in 1902, SMAC organized the Gorna Dzhumaya Uprising, which was a failure. Petrov did not approve of the untimely outbreak of the Uprising on Ilinden, August 2, 1903.
thumb|right|280px|Petrov and his [[Cheta (armed group)|cheta in 1903.]]
After the uprising was suppressed, he retained his position as an IMRO leader.
During the Balkan Wars, Petrov was a volunteer in the fifth company of Macedonian-Adrianopolitan Volunteer Corps. Petrov served as the leader of the cultural department of the local Bulgarian administration in Serres. At the end of the war, he was one of the initiators of the formation of a new leftist organization called Provisional representation of the former United Internal Revolutionary Organization, and this government set a task of defending the positions of the Macedonian Bulgarians by agitating for a creation of independent Macedonia at the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920). In 1919, Todor Aleksandrov wrote a letter in which he accused Petrov of being a traitor to Bulgarian people.
He kept close ties with the new government of Bulgarian Agrarian National Union (BANU), especially with war minister Aleksandar Dimitrov and some other prominent Agrarian leaders with whom he founded the leftist Macedonian Federative Organization. BANU rejected territorial expansion and aimed at forming a Balkan federation of agrarian states, a policy which began with a détente with Yugoslavia. As a result, Petrov became a chief of the Bureau for the Settlement of the Refugees by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. As a result of differences over whether a possible autonomous Macedonia should be guided towards Greater Yugoslavia together with Bulgaria, or as the right-wing IMRO leaders insisted, towards Greater Bulgaria, he was killed by an IMRO assassin on June 28, 1921, in Sofia, The assassination of Petrov complicated relations between IMRO and the Bulgarian government, and produced significant dissensions in the Macedonian movement.
Views
Petrov self-identified as a Macedonian Bulgarian. Petrov promoted the independence of IMRO, away from the "nationalistic propagandas" of the Balkan states.
Streets in Sofia and Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, bear the name of Petrov. According to the Macedonian historiography, he was an ethnic Macedonian. The story about his assassination is the basis of Kole Čašule's play Crnila (Darkness), written in 1960 and adapted into a film in 1965 (Days of Temptation, directed by Branko Gapo).