"Two hundred and forty five bands were in the mountains. Serbian and
Bulgarian comitadjis, Greek andartes, Albanians and Vlachs... all
waging a terrorist war"
Leon Sciaky in "Farewell to Salonica: Portrait of an Era"
"(Goce Delcev died) cloak flung over his left shoulder, his white
fez, wrapped in a bluish scarf, pulled down and his gun slung across
his left elbow"
Mihail Chakov, who was nearby Delcev at the moment of his death,
quoted in "Balkan Ghosts" by Robert D. Kaplan
"I will try and tell this story coldly, calmly, dispassionately ...
one must tone the horrors down, for in their nakedness, they are
unprintable..."
A.G. Hales reporting about the Illinden Uprising in the London
"Daily News" of October 21, 1903
"The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization directs its eyes
neither to the West, nor to the East,nor to anywhere else; it relies
primarily on its own powers, does not turn into anybody's weapon,
and will not allow anybody to use its name and prestige for personal
and other purposes. It has demonstrated till now and will prove in
the future that it establishes its activities on the interests and
works for the ideals of struggling Macedonia and the Bulgarian
race."
TODOR ALEXANDROV, The Leader of the IMRO from 1911 to 1924
The Treaty of Berlin killed Peter Lazov. A Turkish soldier first
gouged his eyes out, some say with a spoon, others insist it was a
knife. As the scream-imbued blood trickled down his face, the Turk
cut both his ears and the entirety of his nose with his sword. Thus
maimed and in debilitating agony, he was left to die for a few days.
When he failed to do so, the Turks disembowelled him to death and
decapitated the writhing rump.
The Ottomans granted independence to Bulgaria in the 1878 Treaty of
San Stefano unwillingly, following a terminal defeat at the hands of
a wrathful Russian army. The newly re-invented nation incorporated a
huge swathe of Macedonia, not including Thessaloniki and the
Chalcidice Peninsula. Another treaty followed, in Berlin, restoring
the "balance" by returning Macedonia to Turkish rule. Turkey
obligingly accepted a "one country, two systems" approach by
agreeing to a Christian administration of the region and by
permitting education in foreign languages, by foreign powers in
foreign-run and owned schools. Then they set about a typical
infandous Ottoman orgy of shredded entrails, gang raped corpses of
young girls and maiming and decapitation. The horrors this time
transcended anything before. In Ohrid, they buried people in pigsty
mud for "not paying taxes". Joined by Turks who escaped the
advancing Russian armies in North Bulgaria and by Bosnian Moslems,
who fled the pincer movement of the forces of Austro-Hungary, they
embarked on the faithful recreation of a Bosch-like hell. Feeble
attempts at resistance (really, self defence) - such as the one
organized by Natanail, the Bishop of Ohrid - ended in the ever
escalating ferocity of the occupiers. A collaboration emerged
between the Church and the less than holy members of society.
Natanail himself provided "Chetis" (guerilla bands) with weapons and
supplies. In October 1878, an uprising took place in Kresna. It was
duly suppressed by the Turks, though with some difficulty. It was
not the first one, having been preceded by the Razlovci uprising in
1876. But it was more well organized and explicit in its goals.
But no one - with the exception of the Turks - was content with the
situation and even they were paranoid and anxious. The flip-flop
policies of the Great Powers turned Macedonia into the focus of
shattered national aspirations grounded in some historical precedent
of at least three nations: the Greeks, the Bulgarians, and the
Serbs. Each invoked ethnicity and history and all conjured up the
apparition of the defunct Treaty of San Stefano. Serbia colluded
with the Habsburgs: Bosnia to the latter in return for a free hand
in Macedonia to the former. The wily Austro-Hungarians regarded the
Serbs as cannon fodder in the attrition war against the Russians and
the Turks. In 1885, Bulgaria was at last united - north and formerly
Turk-occupied south - under the Kremlin's pressure. The Turks
switched sides and allied with the Serbs against the spectre of a
Great Bulgaria. Again, the battleground was Macedonia and its
Bulgarian-leaning (and to many, pure Bulgarian) inhabitants. Further
confusion awaited. In 1897, following the Crete uprising against the
Ottoman rule and in favour of Greek enosis (unification), Turkey (to
prevent Bulgaria from joining its Greek enemy) encouraged King
Ferdinand to help the Serbs fight the Greeks. Thus, the Balkanian
kaleidoscope of loyalties, alliances and everlasting friendship was
tilted more savagely than ever before by the paranoia and the whims
of nationalism gone berserk.
In this world of self reflecting looking glasses, in this bedlam of
geopolitics, in this seamless and fluid universe, devoid of any
certainty but the certainty of void, an anomie inside an abnormality
- a Macedonian self identity, tentative and merely cultural at
first, began to emerge. Voivode Gorgija Pulevski published a poem
"Macedonian Fairy" in 1878. The Young Macedonian Literary Society
was established in 1891 and started publishing "Loza", its journal a
year thereafter. Krste Misirkov, Dimitrija Cupovski, the Vardar
Society and the Macedonian Club in Belgrade founded the Macedonian
Scholarly-Literary Society in 1902 (in Russia). Their "Macedonian
National Program" demanded a recognition of a Macedonian nation with
its own language and culture. They stopped short of insisting on an
independent state, settling instead for an autonomy and an
independent church. Misirkov went on to publish his seminal work,
"On Macedonian Matters" in 1903 in Sofia. It was a scathing critique
of the numbing and off-handed mind games Macedonia was subjected to
by the Big Powers. Misirkov believed in culture as an identity
preserving force. And the purveyors and conveyors of culture were
the teachers.
"So the teacher in Yugoslavia is often a hero and fanatic as well as
a servant of the mind; but as they walked along the Belgrade streets
it could easily be seen that none of them had quite enough to eat or
warm enough clothing or handsome lodgings or all the books they
needed" - wrote Dame Rebecca West in her eternal "Black Lamb and
Grey Falcon" in 1940.
Goce Delcev (Gotse Deltchev) was a teacher. He was born in 1872 in
Kukush (the Bulgarian name of the town), north of Thessaloniki
(Salonica, Solun, Saloniki). There is no doubt about his cultural
background (as opposed to his convictions later in life) - it was
Bulgarian to the core. He studied at a Bulgarian gymnasium in
Saloniki. He furthered his education at a military academy in Sofia.
He was a schoolteacher and a guerilla fighter and in both capacities
he operated in the areas that are today North-Central Greece,
Southwestern Bulgaria and the Republic of Macedonia. He felt equally
comfortable in all three regions. He was shot to death by the Turks
in Banitsa, then a Bulgarian village, today, a Greek one. It was in
a spring day in May 1903.
The death of this sad but steely eyed, heavily moustached youth was
sufficient to ignite the Illinden uprising three months later. It
erupted on the feast of Saint Illiya (Sveti Ilija). Peasants sold
their sacrificial bulls - the fruits of months of labour - and
bought guns with the proceeds. It started rather innocuously in the
hotbed of ethnic unrest, Western Macedonia - telegraph wires were
cut, some tax registers incinerated. The IMRO collaborated in this
with the pro-Bulgarian organization Vzhovits. In Krusevo (Krushevo)
a republic was proclaimed, replete with "Rules of the Macedonian
Uprising Committee" (aka the "Constitution of the Uprising").
This document dealt with the liberation of Macedonia and the
establishment of a Macedonian State. A special chapter was dedicated
to foreign affairs and neighbourly relationships. It was all heart-
achingly naive and it lasted 10 bloody days. Crushed by 2000 trained
soldiers and horse bound artillery, the outnumbered 1200 rebels
surrendered. Forty of them kissed each other goodbye and blew their
brains out. The usual raping and blood thick massacres ensued.
According to Turkish records, these ill-planned and irresponsible
moments of glory and freedom cost the lives of 4,694 civilians, 994
"terrorists". The rape of 3,000 women was not documented. In
Northwestern Macedonia, an adolescent girl was raped by 50 soldiers
and murdered afterwards. In another village, they cut a girl's arm
to secure her bracelets. The more one is exposed to these
atrocities, the more one is prone to subscribe to the view that the
Ottoman Empire - its halting and half hearted efforts at reform
notwithstanding - was the single most important agent of retardation
and putrid stagnation in its colonies, a stifling influence of
traumatic proportions, the cause of mass mental sickness amongst its
subjects.
As is usually the case in the bloodied geopolitical sandbox known as
the Balkans, an international peacekeeping force intervened. Yet it
was - again, habitually - too late, too little.
What made Delcev, rather his death, the trigger of such an
outpouring of emotions was the IMRO (VMRO in Macedonian and in
Bulgarian). The Illinden uprising was the funeral of a man who was a
hope. It was the ululating grieving of a collective deprived of
vengeance or recourse. It was a spasmodic breath taken in the most
suffocating of environments. This is not to say that IMRO was
monolithic or that Delcev was an Apostle (as some of his
hagiographers would have him). It was not and he was far from it.
But he and his two comrades, Jane (Yane) Sandanski and Damyan (Dame)
Gruev had a vision. They had a dream. The IMRO is the story of a
dream turned nightmare, of the absolute corruption of absolute power
and of the dangers of inviting the fox to fight the wolf.
The original "Macedonian Revolutionary Organization" (MRO) was
established in Sofia. The distinction between being a Macedonian and
being a Macedonian-Bulgarian was not sharp, to use a polite
understatement. The Bulgarians "proper" regarded the Macedonians as
second class, primitive and uncultured Bulgarian relatives who
inhabit a part of Bulgaria to the east. The Macedonians themselves
were divided. Some wished to be incorporated in Bulgaria, the
civilized and advanced society and culture. Others wanted an
independent state - though they, too, believed that the salvation of
such an entity - both demographic and financial - lies abroad, with
the diaspora and benevolent foreign powers. A third group (and
Delcev was, for a time, among them) wanted a federation of all
states Balkan with an equal standing for a Macedonian polity
(autonomy).
The original MRO opted for the Bulgarian option and restricted its
aims to the liberation and immediate annexation of what they
solemnly considered to be a Turkish-occupied Bulgarian territory. To
distinguish themselves from this MRO, the 6 founders of the
Macedonian version - all members of the intelligentsia - added the
word "Internal" to their name. Thus, they became, in November 1893,
IMRO.
A measure of the disputatiousness of all matters Balkanian can be
found in the widely and wildly differing versions about the
circumstances of the establishment of IMRO. Some say it was
established in Thessaloniki (this is the official version, thus
supporting its "Macedonian"-ness). Others - like Robert Kaplan - say
it was in Stip (Shtip) and the Encyclopaedia Britannica claims it
was in ... Resen (Resana).
Let it be clear: this author harbours no sympathy towards the
Ottoman Empire. The IMRO was fighting for lofty ideals (Balkanian
federation) and worthy goals (liberation from asphyxiating Turkish
rule). But to many outside observers (with the exception of
journalists like John Sonixen or John smith), the IMRO was
indistinguishable in its methods of operation from the general
landscape of mayhem, crime, disintegration of the social fabric,
collapse of authority, social anomie, terror and banditry.
From Steven Sowards' "Twenty Five Lectures on Modern Balkan History,
The Balkans in an Age of Nationalism", 1996 available HERE:
http://www.lib.msu.edu/sowards/balkan/lect11.htm
"Meanwhile, the Tanzimat reforms remained unfulfilled under Abdul
Hamid's reactionary regime. How effective had all these reforms been
by the turn of the century? How bad was life for Christian peasants
in the Balkans? In a 1904 book called 'Macedonia: Its Races and
Their Future', H. N. Brailsford, an English relief worker, describes
lawless conditions in Macedonia, the central Balkan district
between Greece, Serbia, Albania and Bulgaria. In the areas
Brailsford knew, the authorities had little power. He writes:
'An Albanian went by night into a Bulgarian village and fired into
the house of a man whom he regarded as an enemy. ... The
prefect...endeavored to arrest the murderer, but [his Albanian]
village took up his cause, and the gendarmes returned empty-handed.
The prefect ... marched upon the offending village at the head of
three hundred regular troops. ... The village did not resist, but it
still refused to give evidence against the guilty man. The prefect
returned to Ochrida with forty or fifty prisoners, kept them in gaol
for three or four days, and then released them all. ... To punish a
simple outbreak of private passion in which no political element was
involved [the prefect] had to mobilize the whole armed force of his
district, and even then he failed.'
Robbers and brigands operated with impunity: 'Riding one day upon
the high-road ..., I came upon a brigand seated on a boulder ... in
the middle of the road, smoking his cigarette, with his rifle across
his knees, and calmly levying tribute from all the passers-by."
Extortionists, not police, were in control: "A wise village ...
[has] its own resident brigands. ... They are known as rural guards.
They are necessary because the Christian population is absolutely
unarmed and defenceless. To a certain extent they guarantee the
village against robbers from outside, and in return they carry on a
licensed and modified robbery of their own.'
Self-defense by Orthodox peasants was dangerous: 'The Government
makes its presence felt ... when a 'flying column' saunters out to
hunt an elusive rebel band, or ... to punish some flagrant act of
defiance ... The village may have ... resented the violence of the
tax-collector ... [or] harboured an armed band of insurgents ... or
... killed a neighbouring civilian Turk who had assaulted some girl
of the place ... At the very least all the men who can be caught
will be mercilessly beaten, at the worst the village will be burned
and some of its inhabitants massacred.'
It was not surprising that peasants hated their rulers. 'One enters
some hovel ... something ... stirs or groans in the gloomiest corner
on the floor beneath a filthy blanket. Is it fever, one asks, or
smallpox? ... the answer comes ..., 'He is ill with fear.' ...
Looking back ... , a procession of ruined minds comes before the
memory--an old priest lying beside a burning house speechless with
terror ... a woman who had barked like a dog since the day her
village was burned; a maiden who became an imbecile because her
mother buried her in a hole under the floor to save her from the
soldiers ... children who flee in terror at the sight of a stranger,
crying 'Turks! Turks!' These are the human wreckage of the hurricane
which usurps the functions of a Government.'
Four things are worth noting in Brailsford's account as we consider
the prospects for a reform solution to Balkan problems. First,
revolutionary politics was not the foremost issue for the Christian
population: nationalism addressed the immediate problems in their
daily lives only indirectly, by promising a potential better state.
Second, loyalties were still local and based on the family and the
village, not on abstract national allegiances. If criminal abuses
ended, the Ottoman state might yet have invented an Ottoman
"nationalism" to compete with Serbian, Greek, Romanian, or Bulgarian
nationalism.
Third, villagers did not cry out for new government departments or
services, but only for relief from corruption and crime. The
creation of new national institutions was not necessary, only the
reform of existing institutions.
Fourth, and on the other hand, mistrust and violence between the two
sides was habitual. So many decades of reform had failed by this
time. The situation was so hopeless and extreme that few people on
either side can have thought of reform as a realistic option."
During the 1890s, IMRO's main sources of income were voluntary (and
later, less voluntary) taxation of the rural population, bank
robberies, train robberies (which won handsome world media coverage)
and kidnapping for ransom (like the kidnapping of the American
Protestant Missionary Ellen Stone - quite a mysterious affair). The
IMRO developed along predictable lines into an authoritarian and
secretive organization - a necessity if it were to fight the Turks
effectively. It had its own tribunals which exercised - often fatal
- authority over civilians who were deemed collaborators with the
Turkish enemy. It must be emphasized that this was NOT unusual or
unique at that time. This was the modus operandi of all military-
organized ideological and political groups. And, taking everything
into account, the IMRO was fighting a just war against an abhorrent
enemy.
Moreover, to some extent, its war was effective and resulted in
reforms imposed on the Sublime Port (the Turkish authorities) by the
Great Powers of the day. We mentioned the peacekeeping force which
replaced the local gendarmerie. But reforms were also enacted in
education, religious rights and tolerance, construction, farm policy
and other areas. The intractable and resource-consuming Macedonian
question led directly to the reform of Turkey itself by the
Macedonia-born officer Ataturk. And it facilitated the
disintegration of the Ottoman empire - thus, ironically, leading to
the independence of almost everyone except its originators.
The radicalization of IMRO and its transformation into the infamous
organization it has come to be known as, started after the Second
Balkan war (1913) and, more so, after the First World War (1918). It
was then that disillusionment with Big Power politics replaced the
naive trust in the inevitable triumph of a just claim. The
Macedonians were never worse off politically, having contributed no
less - if not more - than any other nation to the re-distribution of
the Ottoman Empire. The cynicism, the hypocrisy, the off-handedness,
the ignorance, the vile interests, the ulterior motives - all
conspired to transform the IMRO from a goal-orientated association
to a power hungry mostrosity.
In 1912 Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece - former bitter foes - formed
the Balkan League to confront an even more bitter foe, the Ottoman
Empire on the thin pretext of an Albanian uprising. The brotherhood
strained in the Treaty of London (May 1913) promptly deteriorated
into internecine warfare over the spoils of a successful campaign -
namely, over Macedonia. Serbs, Greeks, Montenegrins and Romanians
subdued Bulgaria sufficiently to force it to sign a treaty in August
1913 in Bucharest. "Aegean Macedonia" went to Greece and "Vardar
Macedonia" (today's Republic of Macedonia) went to Serbia. The
smaller "Pirin Macedonia" remained Bulgarian. The Bulgarian gamble
in World War I went well for a while, as it occupied all three parts
of Macedonia. But the ensuing defeat and dismemberment of its
allies, led to a re-definition of even "Pirin Macedonia" so as to
minimize Bulgaria's share. Vardar Macedonia became part of a new
Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later renamed
Yugoslavia).
These political Lego games led to enormous population shifts - the
politically correct term for refugees brutally deprived of their
land and livelihood. All of them were enshrined in solemn treaties.
The Treaty of Lausanne (1923) led to the expulsion of 375,000 Turks
from Aegean Macedonia. 640,000 Greek refugees from Turkey replaced
them. Each of the actual occupiers and each of the potential ones
opened its own schools to indoctrinate the future generations of the
populace. Conflicts erupted over ecclesiastical matters, the
construction of railways and railway stations. Guerilla fighters
soon realized that being pawns on this mad hatter's chessboard could
be a profitable vocation. The transformation from freedom fighters
to mercenaries with no agenda was swift. And pecuniary
considerations bred even more terror and terrorists where there were
none before.
In the meantime, Greece enacted a land reform legislation in "Aegean
Macedonia" - in effect, the confiscation of arable land by thousands
of Greek settlers, refugees from Turkey. Much of the land thus "re-
distributed" was owned by Turkish absentees, now refugees
themselves. But a lot of land was simply impounded from its
rightful, very much present and very Macedonian owners. The Serb
authorities coerced the population to speak the Serb language,
changed Macedonian names to Serb ones in brutally carried campaigns
and imposed a corrupt and incompetent bureaucracy upon the suffering
multitudes.
IMRO never gave up its proclaimed goal to liberate both occupied
parts of Macedonia - the Aegean and the Vardar ones. But, as time
passed and as the nature of its organization and operation evolved,
the perfunctoriness of its proclamations became more and more
evident. The old idealists - the intellectuals and ideologues, the
Goce Delcev types - were removed, died in battle, or left this
mutation of their dream. The IMRO insignia - skull and crossbones -
linked it firmly to the Italian Balckshirts and the Nazi brown ones.
The IMRO has developed into a fascist organization. It traded opium.
It hired out the services of its skilled assassins (for 20 dollars a
contract). It recruited members among the Macedonian population in
the slums of Sofia. Finally, they openly collaborated with the
Fascists of Mussolini (who also supported them financially), with
the Ustashe (similarly supported by Italy) and with the Nazis (under
Ivan Mihailov, who became the nominal quisling ruler of Vardar
Macedonia). It was an IMRO man ("Vlado the Chauffeur") who murdered
King Alexander of Yugoslavia in 1934.
All this period, the IMRO continued to pursue its original agenda.
IMRO terrorists murdered staff and pupils in Yugoslav schools in
Vardar Macedonia. In between 1924-34, it killed 1,000 people.
Tourists of the period describe the Yugoslav-Bulgarian frontier as
the most fortified in Europe with "entanglements, block houses,
redoubts and searchlight posts". Throughout the twenties and the
thirties, the IMRO maintained a presence in Europe, publishing
propaganda incessantly and explaining its position eloquently
(though not very convincingly).
It was not very well liked by both Bulgarians and Macedonians who
got increasingly agitated and exhausted by the extortion of ever
increasing taxes and by the seemingly endless violence. But the IMRO
was now a force to reckon with: organized, disciplined, lethal. Its
influence grew by the day and more than one contemporary describes
it as a "state within a state". In Bulgaria it collaborated with
Todor Alexandrov in the overthrow and murder of the Prime Minister,
Alexandur Stamboliyski (June 1923) and in the appointment of a right
wing government headed by Alexandur Tsankov.
Stamboliyski tried to appease Yugoslavia and, in the process,
sacrifice inconvenient elements, such as the IMRO, as expediently as
he could. He made too many powerful enemies too fast: the army (by
cutting their inflated budget), the nationalists (by officially
abandoning the goal of military expansion), the professional
officers (by making them redundant), the Great Powers (by making
THEM redundant as well) and the opposition (by winning the elections
handsomely despite all the above). By signing the Treaty of Nis
(allowing Serb forces the right of hot pursuit within Bulgarian
territory), he in effect sealed his own death warrant. The IMRO
teamed up with the Military League (an organization of disgruntled
officers, both active duty and reserve) and with the tacit blessing
of Tsar Boris and the forming National Alliance (later renamed the
Democratic Alliance), they did away with the hated man.
Following the murder, the IMRO was given full control of the region
of Petric (Petrich). It used it as a launching pad of its hit and
run attacks against Yugoslavia with the full - though clandestine -
support of the Bulgarian Ministry of War and Fascist Italy. From
Pirin, they attacked Greece as well. These were exactly the kind of
international tensions the murdered Prime Minister was keen to
terminate and the IMRO no less keen to foster. In the meanwhile,
Alexandrov came to an end typical of many a Bulgarian politician and
was assassinated only a year after the coup d'etat.
The decade that followed did not smile upon the IMRO. It fragmented
and its shreds fought each other in the streets of Sofia, Chicago-
style. By 1934, the IMRO was a full-fledged extortionist mafia
organization. They ran protection rackets ("protecting" small shop-
owners against other gangs and "insuring" them against their own
violence). Hotels in Sofia always had free rooms for the IMRO. The
tobacco industry paid the IMRO more than a million British pounds of
that time in six years of "taxation". Robberies and assassinations
were daily occurrences. So were street shoot-outs and outright
confiscation of goods. The IMRO had no support left anywhere.
In 1934, it was disbanded (together with other parties) by Colonel
Kimron Georgiev, the new Prime Minister of Bulgaria and a senior
figure in the Zveno association of disgruntled citizenry. His rule
was brief (ended the next year) but the IMRO never recovered. It
brought its own demise upon itself. Colonel Velcev (Velchev), the
perpetrator of the coup, was swept to power on the promise to end
all terrorist activities - a promise which he kept.
The modern Republic of Macedonia is today ruled by a party called
VMRO-DPMNE. It is one of a few political parties to carry this name
and the biggest and weightiest amongst them by far. It is founded on
the vision and ideals of Goce Delcev and has distanced itself from
the "Terrorist-IMRO". The picture of Delcev adorns every office in
both Macedonia and Bulgaria and he is the closest to a saint a
secular regime can have. In 1923, the Greeks transferred his bones
to Bulgaria. Stalin, in a last effort to placate Tito, ordered
Bulgaria to transfer them to Macedonia. Even in his death he knew no
peace. Now he is buried in his final resting place, in the tranquil
inner yard of the Church of Sveti Spas (Saint Saviour). A marble
slab bearing a simple inscription with his name under a tree, in a
Macedonia which now belongs to the Macedonians.