THE SECRET MACEDONIAN-ODRIN REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATION’S CONSTITUTION

THE SECRET MACEDONIAN-ODRIN REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATION’S CONSTITUTION

Chapter I - Aims

Article 1. - The Secret Macedonian-Odrin Revolutionary Organization aims to unite all dissatisfied elements in Macedonia and Odrin Region regardless of their nationality. It aims to gain, through a revolution, full political autonomy for Macedonia and Odrin.

Article 2. - To achieve this aim, the Organization will struggle to drive out the chauvinistic propaganda and national quarrels, which divide and defeat the Macedonian and Odrin population in its struggle against its common enemy. The Organization will work to instill a revolutionary spirit and awareness among the population and use all means and efforts to, faster and more timely, arm the population with everything that is necessary for a general people’s uprising.

(The above were excerpts from the new Constitution)

As can be seen from Article 1, the main goal of the Organization was to gain full political autonomy for Macedonia through a revolution.

The term “Autonomy”, as part of the Macedonian National Liberation Movement’s platform, was interpreted differently by different people. Some believed (and still do) that gaining autonomy meant struggling to implement some form of Macedonian self-government within the Ottoman State. But this interpretation doesn’t correspond to the socio-economic desires of the liberation movement which, due to the political and economic situation of the time, could neither spread nor take root among the Macedonian people. The Macedonian people wanted to destroy the Sultan’s ruling system and all that was rotten in it as well as what hindered their progress and entry into the modern world. In the above-mentioned context, an autonomous Macedonia within the Ottoman Empire didn’t mean getting rid of the feudal system. It didn’t mean giving the land to those who cultivated it. In other words it didn’t mean complete freedom. Therefore we can safely conclude that the Organization and the people behind it didn’t struggle for that kind of autonomy. They wanted full political autonomy, in which the Sultan’s totalitarianism couldn’t prevent them from destroying the hated and corrupt state apparatus. In which the Sultan couldn’t stop them from building a new system where the peasants were free from the Beys.

In addition to struggling for full political autonomy, the Internal Organization also struggled against the aspirations of Macedonia’s neighbours who wanted to seize, dismember and annex Macedonian territories for themselves. By that time the Bulgarian bourgeoisie had turned its eyes on the whole of Macedonia. The Serbian bourgeoisie was looking at the Vardar Valley down to Solun. The Greek bourgeoisie wanted most Macedonia.

In order to realize their aspirations, the Bulgarian, Greek and Serbian governments developed intense nationalist and chauvinist propaganda which they spread among the Macedonian Christian population. In this way, they not only hindered the Macedonian people’s historical process of forming a Macedonian nation but also destroyed the unity of the Macedonian people, without which a successful revolutionary struggle could hardly be imagined. Therefore, the Organization’s struggle against foreign propaganda and foreign influences was a necessary precondition for the Macedonian people’s liberation and the creation of a free Macedonian republic. As a result, the need for such a struggle found a place in the Organization’s Constitution.

The 1896 Constitution also clearly defined the Organization’s structure which was led by a Central Committee, elected according to Article 9 by the District Committees through a Congress. Accordingly, the Congress emerged as the highest body of the Revolutionary Organization. The Central Committee managed the Organization’s activities through the District governing bodies (Committees).

A special body, consisting of two or three members, was created to represent the Organization abroad.

The District governing bodies (Committees) managed their work in accordance with directives issued by the Central Committee. The local city and village Committees managed their work in accordance with directives issued by the District Committees. Later some of the larger districts were broken up into smaller districts, by neighborhood especially in the larger cities.

The village governing bodies (Committees), or lowest governing bodies in the Organization, were responsible for managing the village groups.

The entire Internal Organization membership was organized into groups of ten, each group led by a corporal.

CREATING THE ORGANIZATION’S ARMED FORCES

A very important place in the Macedonian people’s national liberation movement’s organizational structure was occupied by the armed detachments. The first detachments were formed by members of the Organization who had to go underground because they were being persecuted by the Ottoman authorities. These detachments weren’t permanent. They were, however, connected to various different areas which allowed them to move and avoid being discovered or engaging in battles with the Ottoman army or police. Later, however, after the 1897 Vinitsa affair, the situation changed. After that both the detachments and the insurgents joining them began to rapidly increase. When the organizational network in this part of Macedonia was severely shaken up by the Vinitsa affair, causing almost all revolutionary activities to stop, local detachments began to form in response to Ottoman atrocities committed against the people. They began to not only organize in the local villages to protect them but also elsewhere and became the sole bearers of the Organization. Their appearance in the villages not only encouraged the population to organize but helped to gather the Organization’s scattered forces. In other words they helped to revive and reactivate the activities managed by the local committees.

The 1896 Constitution provided for each revolutionary district to organize its own detachments but it wasn’t until late 1898, after the detachments had been formed, that the Central Committee in Solun issued a 14-point directive legalizing the creation of detachments and ordering the districts to form detachments everywhere and to appoint a detachment leader and secretary. However, it wasn’t until the end of 1900 that Gotse Delchev and Giorche Petrov developed a rulebook for the detachments to follow. At the same time, detachment schools were opened to train detachment leaders to lead the new detachments being created in the surrounding areas. Included among the detachments formed under these conditions were the detachments led by Mihail Popeto, Hristo Chernopeev and Marko Lerinski (Georgi Ivanov).