THE PEOPLE’S FEDERAL PARTY AND OTHER POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS

THE PEOPLE’S FEDERAL PARTY AND OTHER POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS

The Macedonian Seres, Strumitsa and Solun Revolutionary Districts belonged to the Internal Macedonian - Odrin Revolutionary Organization. All these Organizations were attached to the left and led by Iane Sandanski. In addition to leading the above-mentioned District Organizations, the left also led separate groups in the Bitola and Skopje Districts. With the emergence of the Young Turk Revolution in July 1908, the left focused its efforts on building a broader Macedonian Liberation Movement, seeking to unite all individual organizations, groups and individuals around a common and wider platform. As a result the Macedonian leaders reached an agreement to create a new Macedonian political party, which they named the People’s Federal Party, with aims to replace the work carried out by the Internal Macedonian - Odrin Revolutionary Organization with a somewhat different content in its political program.

By August 1909 the Macedonian leaders worked out a new political program for their Party and were ready to hold their first Congress. The Congress was held in Solun during which a program, a statute and several resolutions were adopted and a Central Leadership was appointed with Dimitar Vlahov as its leader. Dimitar Vlahov was an already elected member of the Ottoman Parliament, elected in 1908. Unfortunately the Macedonians were unable to resolve everything about their Party and unity wasn’t achieved. Soon after that Iane Sandanski was expelled from the party because certain factors in the Party sought to get rid of the revolutionary elements from it. Sandanski’s supporters insisted that Sandanski’s expulsion was unfair and sought to convene an Extraordinary Party Congress to resolve this issue. The Extraordinary Congress was held in April 1910, during which the Bulgarian Exarchate, the Greek Patriarchate and the Young Turk regime were condemned because of the negative attitude they had taken towards the Macedonian church and school communities in Macedonia.

The Extraordinary Congress also looked at the general political situation in Macedonia and decided to adopt several resolutions, with special emphasis on the agrarian sector. The Party leadership also rejected the First Founding Congress and elected a new one. Included in the membership of the New Congress were Dr. Hristo Tenchev, President and representative of Macedonian progressive citizenship, and members Dimitar Miraschiev, Chudomir Kantardzhiev, Aleksandar Buinov and Taska Spaso. From the composition of the New Congress it can be seen that Sandanski’s supporters won this round.

Unfortunately the Young Turk regime didn’t last long. Not everyone in the Ottoman state was happy with what the Young Turks were doing, especially with regards to how they handled domestic political and economic issues. In retaliation, in August 1910, the Ottoman Young Turk Parliament passed a law to ban the People’s Federal Party, the Macedonian people’s first legal political party established during the Young Turk revolution.

The People’s Federal Party program was created to serve the Macedonian people’s needs in the Ottoman state’s newly created political conditions, as afforded by the introduction of the Constitution and the parliamentary regime. The Party’s main program was to focus on the Ottoman state’s reorganization, government decentralization, autonomy for the various nationalities in certain areas of the country and limited self-government in the districts and municipalities. With its Party program, the People’s Federal Party was prepared to create a federation of nationalities in the Ottoman state in which Macedonia was to become a legal separate self-governing state and then struggle for equality for all peoples and nationalities in the Ottoman state.

In terms of social and economic requirements, the People’s Federal Party program called for satisfying the basic economic needs of the Macedonian peasantry by eliminating all feudal remnants, transferring fiefdom lands to the peasants, protecting workers from over-exploitation, as well as eliminating all types of taxes and replacing them with income tax.

In its struggle to implement its Party program, the People’s Federal Party, through its press, rallies and other form of communication, sought to advertise its demands to the broader masses in order to encourage the Ottoman Parliament to review and modernize the

agrarian sector. One aspect of the program in which the People’s Federal Party achieved some results was the implementation of its education policy.

In the school year 1909/1910, the People’s Federal Party managed to take away about 70 schools from the Bulgarian Exarchate and give them to the local Macedonian municipalities to manage. Taking the schools away from the Bulgarian Exarchate caused great concern among all the foreign propaganda organizers in Macedonia. Taking away their educational institutions was disastrous for propagating their propaganda, financed to denationalize the Macedonian youth in Macedonia.

When the Young Turks took control of Macedonia, the Bulgarian government was forced to change its propaganda practices in Macedonia. While the Young Turk Revolution was taking place the Bulgarian government and the Bulgarian bourgeoisie exercised their influence and actions through the right wing of the Macedonian Internal Organization and through the Exarchate church and school institutions. In order to strengthen Bulgarian influence in Macedonia and fill the space Matov and his supporters had left open, a new political organization was created called the Union of Bulgarian Constitutional Clubs.

Immediately after its formation, the Macedonians who served in the Exarchate up to now including some of the Macedonian intelligentsia joined the Union of Bulgarian Constitutional Clubs. In its program documents the Union of Bulgarian Clubs revealed its pro-Bulgarian goals exercised by part of the Macedonian intelligentsia and part of the Macedonians who served the Exarchate through the Bulgarian schools and institutions in Macedonia, which were supported by the Bulgarian state. However, the Union of Bulgarian Constitutional Clubs didn’t last long. In November 1909, the Union of Constitutional Clubs was banned in accordance with the Law on Political Associations.

In April 1909, Panche Dorev, member of the Ottoman Parliament from the Bitola province, tried to form a new political party called the Ottoman Progressive Party. Contrary to what the Union of Constitutional Clubs was doing, the Ottoman Progressive Party

wanted to settle Macedonian and Ottoman issues in the Ottoman Constitutional state by smooth and peaceful means. Unfortunately Panche Dorev’s initiative failed.

Another organization that was banned in accordance with the Law on Political Associations was a Serbian organization. This organization worked for Greater Serbian interests in Macedonia. After the Serbian armed detachments, organized by the Serbian government, were shut down the Serbians sought to establish a legal political organization in Macedonia, which would continue to serve Serbian interests and the Serbian propaganda in Macedonia but through new forms and methods. To accomplish this, the Serbian government, in February 1909, created the political Organization of the Ottoman Serbs in Macedonia. According to its program principles this was a nationalist political organization working for Greater Serbian interests. This organization was banned in January 1910.

After the Greek Andart detachments were legalized by the Young Turks in July 1908, the Greeks tried to modify the way of propagating their propaganda activities in Macedonia. The Greek initiatives to create clubs in Macedonia during the Young Turk Revolution originated in the Greek colony in Tsari Grad (Istanbul) where a Greek political centre was established. Clubs and other types of associations were created and served as disseminators of Greek propaganda.

The Greek Club political program especially emphasized the need for observing Greek Patriarchal privileges in relation to churches and schools in Macedonia. However, that wasn’t how the Macedonian people saw the Greek propaganda machine in Macedonia. A large number of Macedonians left the Patriarchate and moved to the Exarchate. The Exarchate churches and schools, being Slavic institutions, were more attractive to Macedonians than the Greek institutions, especially since the Macedonians weren’t allowed to have their own independent Macedonian Church. The Greek Clubs were banned in November 1909.

But just because the legal foreign propaganda political organizations were banned in Macedonia didn’t mean that the propaganda

machines were removed. They were just reformed to operate by different means.

Albanian clubs were initially opened in Albania and then, during the Young Turk Revolution, replicated in Skopje, Bitola, Solun and Debar. Albanian national and political aspirations were then promoted through the various activities conducted in these clubs. The Albanian clubs, it seemed, had no general political programs attached to them. Their single drive was to gain Albanian national autonomy in the Ottoman state which would allow for the opening of Albanian language schools using the Latin alphabet as the Albanian national alphabet.

The Young Turks opposed the ongoing Albanian clubs, which confirmed that they didn’t want to enable the national emancipation of Albanians from the Ottomans. With regards to Macedonian Albanian relations, the Macedonian People’s Federal Party cooperated with the Albanian Clubs during this period, especially in 1909 when volunteers and detachments from both sides took part in the suppression of the counter-revolution to dethrone Sultan Abdul Hamid and appoint Sultan Mehmed Reshat V.

The political conditions in Macedonia during this period also allowed growth to take place in the labour and socialist movement in Macedonia.

Unfortunately, as was shown in the last years of Young Turk rule in Macedonia, the Young Turks were inconsistent in how they implemented their proclaimed principles. There were both internal and external factors which created obstacles for them. The Young Turk regime, by nature, was a bourgeoisie democratic organization which struggled for the interests of the Ottoman and non-Ottoman people in the Ottoman state.

In their quest to solve the problem of where and how to settle the Muslim colonists in Macedonia, the Young Turks used force and terror tactics which overshadowed their positive contribution in the development of social, political and economic relations in the Empire. Not to mention the terror actions the Young Turks took in collecting weapons from the Macedonian population and

implementing laws against political associations. Unfortunately some of these actions the Young Turks took were a precondition to satisfy insurgent demands. The right IMRO wing, led by Todor Alexandrov, for example resumed its armed activities serving Bulgarian bourgeoisie aspirations. The Bulgarians were soon joined by the Greeks and Serbians. In 1911 both Serbian and Greek armed gangs resumed their terrorist activities in Macedonia, worsening the situation for the Macedonian people. All these activities were a prelude to the preparation for a Balkan war to drive the Ottomans out of the Balkan Peninsula and to seize foreign territories.

Despite all efforts that the Macedonian people made to liberate themselves, they still remained enslaved until 1944 when only one part of divided Macedonia was liberated.