Mencha Karnicheva

Melpomena Dimitrova Karnicheva (; ; 16 March 1900 – 1964), commonly known as Mencha Karnicheva, was a revolutionary of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). The wife of IMRO leader Ivan Mihaylov, she is known for assassinating IMRO left-wing activist Todor Panitsa.

Life Karnicheva was born on 16 March 1900 in Kruševo in Ottoman-ruled Macedonia (today in North Macedonia) to a mixed Aromanian family. Her grandmother was of Bulgarian and Aromanian ancestry, while her great-grandfather was a Bulgarian priest, who got killed by the Turks. During the Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising in 1903, Ottoman troops sacked her birthplace, she and her family moved to Sofia, Bulgaria, after the uprising. There she became involved with the Macedonian revolutionary movement.

Karnicheva was briefly part of IMRO's federalist leader Todor Panitsa's circle, Per Mihaylov, the assassination was widely publicized in the international press. In Bulgaria, she was welcomed as a hero upon her return. On 25 December 1926, she married Mihaylov, who was then a leader of IMRO. Along with Mara Buneva, she was also celebrated as a hero by IMRO's circles in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and the Macedonian emigration. After the disbandment of IMRO in 1934, she lived with Mihaylov in exile in Turkey, Poland, Hungary, Croatia etc, until her death in Rome, Italy, in 1964.

She was not part of Bulgarian national martyrology until the end of the Bulgarian communist regime. Bulgarian nationalists and the Bulgarian public celebrate her as a patriot. A female association of VMRO-BND was named after her, along with a street in Blagoevgrad.