Draft:Krsto Aleksic (Teacher)

Krsta Aleksić (Serbian Cyrillic: Крста Алексић; 1840-1915) was a Serbian teacher from Macedonia who was persecuted by Bulgarian Exarchaists during the Ottoman Empire and after the liberation of the Balkan Wars. He was brutally killed in World War I in 1915 when the Bulgarians entered the war on the side of Austria-Hungary and the German Empire.

Biography

Krsto Aleksić was a native of Poreče region, born in a village near an old monastery in what is now North Macedonia which includes Makedonski Brod Municipality, and the western part of the Prilep Municipality. With little prospects for the future in the village, Krsto decided to visit Serbia and there to go to teacher's college and find work at the same time with the intention of returning home to his old roots. During that period, the Saint Sava Evening Teacher's College was established in Belgrade to meet the demand of young people coming to the capital from Serbian provinces in the north under the occupation of Austria and south under the Ottoman. Upon graduation, these men returned to their respective birthplaces as professional teachers. Krsto also attended this school, and when he graduated, he returned to Kumanovo in 1890 and opened a Serbian school in the village of Staro Nagoričane. At the time, the Bulgarian Exarchate had their schools and teachers fanning their propaganda and spreading their schismatic gospel to the majority of the people, mostly Serbs from time immemorial. When they found out that a Serbian school was about to open, they petitioned and complained to the Turkish administrative bodies citing that their Bulgarian Exarchate had exclusive rights and approval from the Sultan to open schools to the people of Slavic nationality. On such formal complaints, the Turkish local civic government met them and sent a closure motion (zaptija) to the gendermarie to arrest Serbian teachers and expel them from the village where the school opened. That very school would then automatically fall into the lap of the accusing party, the Bulgarian Exarchate propagandists.

When Krsto opened his school in Staro Nagoričane things were made even more difficult for him since the Exarchists were already expecting him from the time he left for Serbia. His intensions were already well known to them. Krsto was summarily arrested and imprisoned elsewhere, but after the Serbian village committee made a formal complaint of their own, he was immediately released. Krsto returned to his village and opened the school. The Exarchists continued to make life difficult as much as they could, but he persevered through the years and in the end they stopped harassing. In the meantime, Krsto got married and decide to buy land in neighbouring Staro Nagoričane when the Vatan ve Hürriyet in 1908 was declared, bringing an end to skirmishes and battles in the region. He bought his land and built a house from the money he had saved all the years as a teacher. There he lived in relative seclusion as a retired teacher. By then, the villagers of Mlado Nagoričane were almost all converts to the schismatic Bulgarian Exarchate for the exception of a few strong and close-knit Serbian families who steadfastly refused to fall prey to the Greater Bulgaria scheme. As he got older, Krsto would often go to the city of Kumanovo, meet with friends often in the market place or a café on Main Street. The Balkan Wars turned favourably for the Serbs but at a great cost. In 1912 the Turks were ousted from Macedonia by the combined forces of Serbia, Montenegro, Greece and Bulgaria. Turkey relinquished all of its European territory, except Constantinople and Gallipoli. Macedonia where all the Slavs lived became a part of the Kingdom of Serbia which irritated Bulgarian politicians to the point that another war sprung in 1913 for that reason and many others. Again, Serbia was victorious, thanks to Greece and Montenegro. It was time for Krsto to enjoy his golden years in peace and tranquility that never came. An assassination in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip unfortunately triggered another war -- the Great War supposedly to end all wars. Following the 1914 Serbian successes against the Austro-Hungarians, agitated Germany and Bulgaria in particular and soon the entire Central Powers entered the fray. With the Bulgarian Army's invasion of southern Serbia 75-year-old Krsto Aleksić days became numbered. Instead of leaving the old man be, the Bulgarians thirsting for revenge took the old man to an undisclosed location, never to be found again.

References

• Translated and adopted Krsta Aleksić biography from page 176 from Michael Milan Petrovich Memoirs of the Macedonian Struggle: https://imus.org.rs/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Srbi-u-kumanovskom-srezu-Du%C5%A1ica-Boji%C4%87.pdf