On 20 September a conference under the heading “Ilinden and the Awakening of Macedonian National Consciousness” took place at Columbia University in New York, organized by the Harriman Institute for the study of Russia and East Central Europe. The speakers invited were Nadine Akhund from Columbia University, Duncan Perry from the University of Scranton, Pennsylvania, Blazhe Ristovski from the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences and Andrew Rossos from the University of Toronto. The keynote speech at the conference was given by the former president of the Republic of Macedonia, Kiro Gligorov, who was introduced by Ambassador Herbert Okun from the State Department (retired).
Professor Akhund gave a talk entitled “1903 Seen Through the Eyes of Europe”. Nothing in it suggested any connection between the Ilinden uprising and the awakening of Macedonian national consciousness. In the end of her speech, professor Akhund suggested that Ilinden had not been successful in the awakening of such a national feeling.
Professor Rossos’s paper, entitled “Macedonian National Consciousness in 1903” outlined his views on the various groups in the Macedonian movements. He distinguished between the so-called Macedonianists and Macedono-Bulgarians, or Bulgarophiles. His central claim was that the Ilinden uprising and the failure of Bulgaria to intervene on behalf of the Macedonians weakened the positions of the second group and caused the split between left and right in VMORO. His thesis was that rightists (Bulgarophiles) lost popularity, whereas the leftists drifted towards the Macedonianists and gradually their positions coalesced in the second Ilinden of ASNOM in 1944.
Professor Duncan Perry’s talk’s title was “1903-The Ilinden Uprising and its Legacy”. It went over the history of the formation of VMORO and the uprising and repeated professor Perry’s theses from his book “The Politics of Terror” (1988) albeit with a reinforced anti-Supremist slant. The assumptions underlying his account were that the Internal Organisation had not been a pro-Bulgarian force and that it had been a genuinely separatist Macedonian movement. He concluded that the uprising of 1903 had given an important impetus to the formation of a Macedonian national consciousness.
The fourth participant in the conference gave a paper on “Macedonia in 1903”. Despite its stated topic, the paper dwelled mostly on the events of the 19th century and specifically the Kresna-Razlog uprising. Quotes from Slavko Dimevski’s “Rules of the Uprising’s Committee”, presented as a primary source, abounded in the paper, with numerous references to ancient Macedonian civilisation and Alexander the Great. The underlying claim was that Macedonian national consciousness was prevalent in Macedonia well in the 19th century and Macedonians of the time were aware of the historical significance of Alexander of Macedon.
Finally, the speech of Mr. Gligorov touched upon political aspects of the Ilinden uprising and made parallels between the first (1903), second (1944) and third (1991) Ilindens. Mr. Gligorov highlighted the internationalist spirit of the Krushevo Republic of 1903 and claimed it was a first attempt at forming a civil state as opposed to a national one. He offered some favourable views of Communist Yugoslavia as a country within which Macedonia was able to achieve statehood under its constitutional name and which built all the national political and economic institutions of the Republic of Macedonia. He then proceeded to comment on the politics of the first decade of Macedonian independence, and mainly the referendum of 1991, the withdrawal of the Yugoslav army and the adoption of the constitution. Mr. Gligorov gave an overview of the dispute with Greece and expressed belief that the growing Greek desire to be a major player in the region politically and economically will gradually change Greece’s stance. His bigger concern was with the current state of affairs in Macedonia, as a result of the Ohrid Agreement of 2001. He ended on a cautiously optimistic note saying he believed a future for Macedonia as a multiethnic state was possible in his view.