The Poisonous Seed of the Comintern

There is no Macedonia without the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (IMRO). IMRO symbolises both the strength and identity of Macedonia . In the past and today, Macedonia and IMRO are one united, indivisible and indestructible entity. Thus today’s key question is not about Macedonia , but rather which IMRO it characterises. More importantly do we understand IMRO as the ideology of Dr Hristo Tatarchev’s Salonika group, the freedom fighters of Dame Gruev, the apolitical global organisation of Todor Alexandrov or the IMRO subsequently led by the ruthless and unforgiving Ivan Mihailov during a time of massive turmoil.

To all these IMROs we unreservedly answer yes, but somehow forget that there was also another IMRO - communist, manipulative and treacherous – IMRO (United). An entity originally conceived and spawned through union of the Comintern and traitors of the Bulgarian national cause, it however was still-born. But the poisonous seed this union initially sowed survives to this very day. On the territory of Bulgaria and Macedonia the physical form of IMRO-U was finally dealt with. Nevertheless this subversive plot of the Comintern and national betrayers was maintained as a strategy against the Macedono-Bulgarian identity. IMRO-U, under direct orders of the Comintern, proclaimed that a Macedonian nation existed. In time this event led to something far worse – it broke the unity of the Bulgarian nation-state and enabled the forced annexation of the Macedonian Bulgarians to the Serbian state. Today, 70 years after IMRO-U ceased to exist, organisations are being formed within Bulgaria , which agitate about the “rights of the Macedonian nationals in Bulgaria ”, about the “Macedonian national language in Bulgarian schools”, etc. Their agenda is to turn the wheel of history back to the internationalist era of Georgi Dimitrov’s Bulgaria . However, whenever the enslaved Bulgarians of the Western Outlands (both in Serbia and in present day Macedonia) raise their voices to demand respect for their national and ethnic rights within the Serbian and Macedonian states, the organisations of the Pirin region respond as a distant echo, talking about the rights of Macedonians in the Pirin region of Bulgaria. The story is simple: if you seek basic rights for Bulgarians in Serbia and Macedonia , we will demand rights for Macedonians in Bulgaria , and we’ll see who is stronger. For now, Serbia is stronger – more money, a larger agent network and a dedicated propaganda department. Unfortunately, most Bulgarians appear to care little about their fellow brethren in Macedonia and the Western Outlands. Most Bulgarian politicians are consumed by a defeatist mentality which resulted from the national failures in two successive World wars. This prevailing Bulgarian mindset created the opportunity for a foreign nationalistic Macedonist organisation such as OMO Ilinden – Pirin to be revived within Bulgaria , and then to be nurtured by Skopian ( Macedonia ) money from abroad and the disgraceful indifference of the Bulgarian state.

The fate of OMO Ilinden – Pirin and its treasonous activities should not merely depend on the statements of the chief prosecutor, members of parliament or some leaders of forgotten organisations as led by Karakachanov. The Bulgarian community as a whole, and especially the media, should raise an united and unmistakable protest against this assault on the Bulgarian ethos before the consequences become irreparable.

Even today nobody in Macedonia can form, let alone join, a Bulgarian organisation. In Macedonia there are no Bulgarian newspapers and magazines, there is not one TV program - there is absolutely nothing. Bulgarian – Macedonian diplomacy on all these issues has been essentially put on hold. Within Macedonian the situation resembles the 1948 era, when we all pretended that there were no Bulgarian nationals. Even attempts to form a naive and innocent society such as “Radko” ended with violence and bombs. To this day, all officials claim they do not know what happened, even though the situation was personally witnessed by the Bulgarian ambassador, several deputies of the Bulgarian parliament and an editor of a well-known Bulgarian weekly. Not one of the latter people sought to protest or report the violence directed against Macedonian Bulgarians which was instigated by the Macedonian authorities of the time.  Do the ghosts of the Comintern still haunt us and invoke so much fear? And is it possible the fatalistic attitude on this issue is so deeply entrenched within the Bulgarian psyche that not one person has the courage to stop this gross injustice against our own Bulgarian people? IMRO-U is part of the past. The Comintern ideas however, are somehow still among us, and we have yet to see how successful the OMO Ilinden – Pirin plan will be in destroying the existing Bulgarian national identity among the Macedonians in Pirin Macedonia and Macedonia as a whole.

Vladimir Perev, Macedonia Taken from Pro and Anti 16-30 june 2006 Sofia Bulgaria.