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дата: 03.10.2015
file size: 1036 KB
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author: Александър Михайлов
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American missionary Ellen Maria Stone and her pregnant fellow missionary friend Katerina Stefanova–Tsilka were kidnapped in the late afternoon of August 21 (September 3), 1901. They were ambushed by a detachment of the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (VMRO) in the "Predela" mountain pass while traveling from Bansko to Yukarı (Gorna - Upper) Cuma (then towns in the Ottoman Empire, currently town of Bansko and city of Blagoevgrad in southwestern Bulgaria). Miss Stone and Tsilka were separated from the other dozen or so Protestants. The kidnapping did not go quite according to plan. The detachment was hunted by Turkish possy and by members of the contending organization Supreme Macedonian Committee (those who wanted the unification of Macedonia and Bulgaria, opposing those fighting for an independent Macedonian nation) and encountered great difficulties in finding a hideout. Voevodes Yane Sandanski, Hristo Chernopeev and Krustio Asenov did not expect the kidnapping to become so complicated and its six-month duration surprised them. After lengthy negotiations in the capital Sofia and the town of Samokov, the ransom of 14,000 gold Turkish liras was received on January 18, 1902 in Bansko. The kidnapped women were released on February 2 near the town of Strumica. They spend a total of 173 days in captivity.
******************************************************************** Miss Ellen Stone was the first US citizen kidnapped outside the American continent and the “affair” is often referred to as the first hostage crisis in modern history. Her story, both when in captivity and after her release came in the spotlight of world press. The Protestant preacher returned to America as an ardent defender of the cause of liberation of Macedonia. She is probably the first woman in the world to become victim of the Stockholm syndrome, described by psychologists in the second half of the twentieth century as an attachment of hostages to their abductors. Miss Stone did not give authorities information that would have facilitated the capture of the kidnappers. She is the most famous and influential hostage in Bulgarian, and perhaps in American history. "McLure's Magazine" paid her USD 44,000 to publish her memoirs and for 50 lectures around the United States in 1903-1904. She used them to promote the idea of independent Macedonia, and promised to spend the money from her fees to open a trade school for Bulgarians in Macedonia. Tsilka's memoirs were published in the same magazine under the title "Born among Bandits".
******************************************************************** The word "affair", which today refers to a dirty deal, had quite a different meaning for Macedonian Bulgarians. They called affair each event in the life of the revolutionary organization - failed conspiracies, large-scale operations and so on. The “Miss Stone Affair”, keeping for months the focus of public attention on the VMRO activity and making its cause widely known both in Europe and the U.S., is the best known of all affairs in Macedonia’s struggles for liberation from Ottoman rule. The fate of the two women remained for months a central topic for the press on both sides of the Atlantic.