Petar Chaulev

He was born into an Orthodox Albanian family in Ohrid. His father was a Tosk Albanian fisherman from southern Albania. Chaulev was fluent in Albanian, and spent several years living in Albania where he was nicknamed 'Petrush'.^[7][8] He graduated from the Bulgarian High School in Bitola. He taught in Ohrid and the village of Popolzhani in the Lerin (Florina) region.^[9] Chaulev was an organizer of the revolutionary committees in the Ohrid, Prespa and Lerin regions in the 1890s.^[10] In the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising, he was a voivode and head of the Ohrid revolutionary committee.^[10]

After the uprising, he was the district commander and a member of the Bitola District Committee. He participated as a delegate in IMRO's Kyustendil Congress in 1908. He declared himself against the disarmament of IMRO after the Young Turk Revolution in 1908. Chaulev was elected as a member of IMRO's Central Committee in 1911.^[9] He participated in the Balkan Wars, Tikveš uprising and Ohrid–Debar uprising in 1913.^[10] During the First Balkan War, as the commander of a volunteer detachment, he supported the offensive of the allied Serbian troops in Vardar Macedonia.^[9] During the Bulgarian occupation in World War I, he was the district chief of Ohrid.^[10] Chaulev was included in the administrative section of the 11th Macedonian Infantry Division.^[9] After the war, he participated with Todor Aleksandrov and Aleksandar Protogerov in the re-creation of IMRO.^[10] He became part of IMRO's new central committee in 1919.^[11] As a member of the Central Committee, he was responsible for organizing armed actions from Italy and Albania, but was unable to cope with this task.^[9]

Chaulev published the book Skipia (Albania) in 1924 in Istanbul.^[12] He established contacts with representatives of the Soviet embassy in Rome and with Communist International figures.^[9] In 1924, IMRO forged connections with the Comintern. As a result, Chaulev signed the so-called "May Manifesto" in Vienna along with Protogerov and Aleksandrov concerning the formation of a Balkan Communist Federation and cooperation with the Soviet Union.^[13] Under pressure by the Bulgarian government, Aleksandrov and Protogerov denied that they had ever signed any agreement, claiming that the May Manifesto was a communist forgery.^[11] Shortly after, Aleksandrov was assassinated by IMRO voivodes. IMRO sentenced Chaulev to death.^[14] Chaulev, who did not abandon the Manifesto and was suspected as involved in Aleksandrov's murder, was assassinated in Milan on December 23, 1924, by IMRO revolutionary Dimitar Stefanov [bg],^[10][14][15] on the orders of Ivan Mihaylov.^[9]