task" in the Bulgarian interior and were about to cross the Greek border illicitly. The authorities elevated Vaklinov into a short-lived cult figure. By the early 1950s, the Goryani had a propaganda radio station, Radio Goryanin, which broadcast into Bulgaria from Greece. In mid-1951 the radio broadcast an appeal for an insurgent army to form in the centrally located Sliven area, where the movement was at its strongest. Some 13000 police and troops invaded the Balkan mountains near Sliven. Bulgarian leader Valko Chervenkov monitored events from an armoured personnel carrier in the mountain. The largest Cheta, led by Georgi Stoyanov-Tarpana, also known as Benkovski after a 19th Century Bulgarian popular hero, was encircled by 6000 troops. It fought them on 1 and 2 June, managing to break the encirclement and rescue their wounded. Few fell prisoner to the authorities. Some 40 Goryani were killed, but the Cheta commander fled along with his men. Stoyanov was captured by the DS secret police in late 1951 and was later tried and executed. The following year his Cheta continued resisting the authorities and capturing villages. Thus, it captured and held the village of Rakovo near Sliven for three days in 1952. During the same period, some 15 Goryani parachuted into the Kazanlak and Ihtiman areas from training camps in Yugoslavia and France. Despite the Bulgarian popular tradition of highland, mountain and woodland-based resistance, the movement was active in lowland and farming areas. The Dobrudzha area in the northeast of Bulgaria saw strong resistance activity, many villages being captured for short periods. The lowland Ruse area also saw Goryani activity led by Tsanko Ivanov Tsankov-Mecheto and Tsvetana Popkoeva-Tsena. The Ruse Goryani took an oath formulated by Todor Tsanev. Their commander Tsankov was shot in combat, while Popkoeva was tried in absentia, to be captured and killed without trial in time to celebrate May Day 1952. Todor Tsanev was captured, imprisoned and sent to punishment camps for 11 years, to die peacefully in 1989. The end of resistance Though the Bulgarian authorities brought the Goryani movement under control by the mid-Fifties, there were isolated incidents of violence into the late Fifties and early Sixties. Goryani were last encountered in the Sofia sewerage system in the early/mid-Sixties. References Sources Горяни Габриела Цанева, “Миналото в мен”-повест, В. Търново, 1994, изд.”Сеяч” към Словото - Българската виртуална библиотека (повестта я има и в библиотеките) Николай Илиев, “Въоръжената антикомунистическа съпротива”,