Συμβολή στην κατανόηση της εθνικής ταυτότητας της εσωτερικής μακεδονικής επαναστατικής οργάνωσης (1893-1912) ; Contribution to the understanding of the ethnic identity of the internal Macedonian revolutionary organisation (1893-1912)

The identity of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (IMRO, est. 1893) has been a contested historiographical issue. Its leading members, such as Gotse Delchev, Damyan (Dame) Gruev and Jane Sandanski, are claimed by the Bulgarian and the Slav-Macedonian historiography as Bulgarian and Macedonian nationals respectively. I have argued that these claims serve a nationalist agenda: the historical substantiation of Bulgaria’s irredentist claims on Ottoman Macedonia, and the consolidation of a modern Macedonian nation-state respectively. For that matter, the Ilinden uprising (20 July/2 August 1903) is illustrated by Bulgarian historical studies as the epit­ ome of the Bulgaro-Macedonian population’s struggle for liberation of Mace­ donia from Ottoman yoke, whereas the historiographical output released at Skopje considers it as a blueprint for the establishment of a Macedonian People’s Republic forty years later, on 2nd August 1944. In the event, Greek historians, along with Serbian and Coat émigrés, have by and large sided with the Bulgarians, and denied the existence of a Macedonian nation as such. For its part, Western historiography, even though inclined towards the Bulgarians in the inter-war period, after the Second World War has mainly supported the Slav-Macedonian claims. I have maintained that the Western historiographical perspective is preposterous, lacks an adequate reading of primary sources, and is marred by inconsistency, contradictions and sim­ plification. In certain cases, for instance the pertinent monographs by Duncan Perry (1988) and Nadine Lange-Akhund (1998), the attribute “Bulgarian”, found in IMRO’s statutes and documents, are ignored, and arbitrarily substi­ tuted by “Macedonian” in the national sense. Political and anthropological studies published after the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s are more openly pro-Macedonian. In my opinion, most helpful is the work of Fikret Adanir (1979): he arguably points out that IMRO’s ethnic identity is a rather ...