Kote Hristov, known simply as Kote, Κότε or Kottas, was a Slavophone insurgent leader in Western Macedonia. Kottas was born in the village of Rulja, in 1863, and was president of Roulia from 1893 to 1896. He began anti-Ottoman rebel activity in 1898, killing four local Ottoman officers. He was first associated with the pro-BulgarianInternal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization. After discovering the real purposes of IMRO against the Greek Macedonians and feeling deceived, he became associated with the pro-Greek irregular fighters during the Greek struggle for Macedonia. He was captured by the Ottomans, convicted of robbery and hanged in Monastir in 1905. The village he was born, now in the Florina regional unit, has been renamed Kottas in his honour.
Kottas was sentenced to death by IMRO twice for murders of their members. The IMRO also accused him under the pretense of theft. Kottas developed ties with the Greek bishop of Kastoria, Germanos Karavangelis, in order to organize his struggle against the IMRO. His mission was to kill IMRO leader Lazar Poptraykov and other leaders in order to protect Greek civilians. Karavangelis funded his troops. Gotse Delchev had repeatedly pardoned and vainly tried to reform Kottas before he was finally outlawed by the IMRO, after entering the service of the Greek bishop. At the time of the Ilinden Uprising, when all old wrongs were forgiven in the name of the common struggle, Kottas was received back by the IMRO at the insistence of Lazar Poptraykov, the same voivode he set out to kill. During the uprising, Poptraykov had been wounded and taken refuge with Kottas, who used the opportunity to kill him and present his head to the Greeks. The Greek bishop was wary of him because of his native Slavic tongue and hatred of Turks. His behavior toward the Ottomans was an obstruction to the Greek tactic, as it was often necessary to cooperate with the Ottoman officers against the Bulgarian enemy. Kottas, a veteran klepht, kidnapped Petko Yanev, a Bulgarian seasonal worker recently returned from America, and tortured him and his family until he had extracted all the savings Yanev had brought. However, Yanev complained vigorously to the valiHilmi Pasha himself, and to foreign consuls. The British consul pressed Hilmi Pasha to act, and eventually, Kottas was arrested by the Ottomans. He was executed by hanging in 1905 in Bitola. His last words before hanging, in his native Lower Prespa dialect, were "Long live the nation!". The loss of Kottas was detrimental to the Greek movement. After his death, many volunteers from freeGreece came to Macedonia to participate in the struggle, besides the locals.
Legacy
Today Kottas has surviving descendants in Greece and he is memorialized in the Captain Kottas Museum, which was built at the site of his birth. Kottas is known for saying, "The difficult part is to kill the bear first, and then, it is easy to share the skin." He is revered as a national hero by Greeks, while ethnic Macedonians consider him a predatory warlord. Kottas's objectives are not easily identifiable by contemporary historians. It seems that his chief goal was the rejection of Ottoman rule.
