BIRTH OF THE MACEDONIAN REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATION

BIRTH OF THE MACEDONIAN REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATION

The organized force responsible for laying down the foundations to channel, unite and lead the Macedonian people’s struggle for freedom was created in Solun in 1893. Its first members and founders, who created the Organization “Secret Macedonian-Odrin Revolutionary Organization”, were Damian Gruev from the village Smilevo, Bitola Region, Dr. Hristo Tatarchev from Resen, Petar Poparsov from the village Bogomila, Andon Dimitrov from the village Aivatovo, Solun Region, Ivan H. Nikolov, a Solun based bookseller from Kukush and Hristo Batandzhiev from Gumendzhe. A select number of the same people were appointed to the Organization’s Central Committee. Dr. Tatarchev was elected President and Damian Gruev Secretary-Treasurer.

After the most important organizational problems were solved, the Organization began to expand requiring more members and a broader council. This was to include other revolutionaries outside of the Organization’s founders. To do that the group took advantage of a gathering which had assembled to consecrate a church in Resen in the summer of 1894. Present in the midst of all the people who had gathered were Damian Gruev, Hristo Tatarchev, Pere Toshev, Anastas Lozanchev, Aleksandar Chakarov and some others. The Resen gathering, which Hristo Tatarchev called the “First Revolutionary Congress”, was in fact a continuation of the meetings held in Solun, whose main task was to build and expand the Revolutionary Organization and determine its goals.

The Secret Macedonian-Odrin Revolutionary Organization, herein later referred to as the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) or the Internal Organization, which, according to its political views, belonged to the progressive intelligentsia and expressed the aspirations of the petty-bourgeois strata in Macedonia. At first the Organization’s creators had no clear idea of either the character or the goals of the Organization they were creating. This was demonstrated in the Organization’s first Constitution, probably adopted in the beginning of 1894, and from the statements made by Gruev, Tatarchev and others. Nevertheless the Organization gradually expanded.

Damian Gruev wasn’t only an initiator of IMRO but also the first to start expanding the Organization’s network in Macedonia. Revolutionary committees began to emerge in Solun, Shtip, Kavadartsi, Prilep, Bitola and other cities. Included in the committees were narrow circles of people, exclusively from the middle merchant class and teachers. Based on its activities, initially the Organization was characterized as a purely city Organization, led mainly by the sons of trading families and by teachers.

THE INTERNAL ORGANIZATION’S SECOND CONSTITUTION

The Macedonian people’s liberation movement reached another milestone in 1896 when the Organization began to expand outwards towards the rural areas. With Gotse Delchev’s arrival in Novo Selo, Shtip Region, in the fall of 1894, where Dame Gruev was serving as a teacher, the character of the organization’s activities and its membership’s social composition began to change. People from all levels of Macedonian society began to join its ranks. More organizational cells were created in Novo Selo, especially from the poor population, and agitation for the people to join the revolutionary movement was intensified and so on. Gotse Delchev, together with Tushe Deliivanov, expanded the organizational network in Doiran, Gevgelia, Kukush and other places. In the meantime, on the other side of Macedonia, in the Bitola vilayet, Giorce Petrov and Pere Toshev began to spread the Organization outside of the city and into villages.

In order to further expand the Internal Organization, its membership felt it needed to clarify its political program and for that it needed to convene a wider congress. That wider congress took place in Solun in the summer of 1896. It was attended by its most prominent leaders, including Gotse Delchev, Giorche Petrov, Damian Gruev, Pere Toshev, Petar Pop Arsov and others. After a long discussion, among other things, the congress decided to relegate the job of drafting the Organization’s new constitution to Gotse Delchev and Giorche Petrov. The decision to do that was of great importance. Namely, the Congress recognized that these two revolutionaries knew the situation in Macedonia better than anyone and could most accurately express the desire of the Macedonian people to be free from the grips of the Ottoman Empire and their other enemies.

The new Constitution, drafted by Gotse Delchev and Giorche Petrov, otherwise known as the Internal Organization’s Second Constitution, put together the Organization’s goals and objectives in a clear form. After the new Constitution was put in place the Organization again began to operate but more precisely. Some began to call this more robust Organization, Gotse Delchev’s Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization. Following, in part, is the content of the new Constitution under whose guidance the Macedonian people’s best sons fought and died.