Pavel Potsev Shatev 1882 Kratovo 1951 Bitola

Born in Kratovo, then in the Ottoman Empire, Shatev graduated from the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki. In late April 1903, together with a group of young anarchists from the Gemidzhii Circle, he launched a campaign of terror bombing known as the Thessaloniki bombings of 1903. He used dynamite to blow up the French ship "Guadalquivir" which was leaving Thessaloniki harbour. He was captured and sentenced to death, but later his sentence was changed to life imprisonment in Fezzan in modern day Libya. In 1908, after the Young Turks revolution, Shatev was amnested, went to Bulgaria and graduated in law at Sofia University. In the next few years he worked as a teacher and journalist. In 1925, Shatev was one of the founders of Comintern IMRO (United) in Vienna. In the 1930s, he went back to Bulgaria and worked as a lawyer and publicist. In 1934, the Balkan Secretariat of the Comintern issued a resolution for the recognition of Macedonian ethnicity.

After the beginning of World War II, Shatev was engaged in Communist conspiracy. As this was considered a political offence, he was arrested and sentenced to 15 years of prison. After the end of the war, Shatev, who had developed a Slav Macedonian consciousness while in prison, took part in the creation of the new People's Republic of Macedonia as a member of ASNOM. He was elected Minister of Justice in the first communist government and later became vice-chairman of the Presidium of ASNOM. After the first elections for parliament, Shatev became a deputy. From the start of the new Yugoslavia, the authorities organised frequent purges and trials of Macedonian communists and non-party people charged with autonomist deviation. Many of the former left-wing IMRO government officials were purged from their positions, then isolated, arrested, imprisoned or executed on various (in many cases fabricated) charges including pro-Bulgarian leanings, demands for greater or complete independence of Yugoslav Macedonia, collaboration with the Cominform after the Tito-Stalin split in 1948, demands for greater democracy and the like. In 1948, disappointed with the policy of the new Yugoslav Macedonian authorities, Shatev, together with Panko Brashnarov, complained in letters to Joseph Stalin and to Georgi Dimitrov. As a result, he was arrested and imprisoned for a year. After that, Shatev was taken into home custody in Bitola.

On January 30, 1951, his dead body was found on Bitola's dung-hill.