The rise of national awakening of Bulgaria led to the Bulgarian revival movement. Unlike Greece and Serbia, the nationalist movement in Bulgaria did not concentrate initially on armed resistance against the Ottoman Empire. After the establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate on 28 February 1870 a large-scale armed struggle started to develop as late as the beginning of the 1870s with the establishment of the Internal Revolutionary Organisation and the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee, as well as the active involvement of Vasil Levski in both organisations. The struggle reached its peak with the April Uprising of 1876 in several Bulgarian districts in Moesia, Thrace, and Macedonia. The suppression of the uprising and the atrocities committed by Ottoman soldiers against the civilian population increased the Bulgarian desire for independence.