Paper cleared for publication in the Turkish Historical Review [London], 7 (2016), pp.

134-166

Land to the Tiller. On the Neglected Agrarian

Component of the Macedonian Revolutionary Movement,
1893-1912
Tasos Kostopoulos

One of the most controversial issues in the history of modern Balkan nationalism, the
emergence and activity of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO)1 during the
last two decades of Ottoman rule, has been up to now unevenly studied. As a result of the conflicting
narratives forwarded by the Macedonian and Bulgarian national historiographies, both of them
claiming IMRO as part of their own national past, most of the scholarly works dealing with this topic
focus on the question of the Organizations national identity. Was the latter anything more than an
agent of Bulgarian irredentism, sponsored by a deep state built up around the Court of Prince
Ferdinand? To what extent did the obvious clash of interest between its emancipating project, aspiring
to any feasible form of liberation from Ottoman domination for the regions Christian population, and
the raison dtat of the Bulgarian nation-state lead to the emergence of an authentic Macedonian
nationalism that definitely cut off the umbilical cord with the previous ideal of a mother nation across
the border? And if so, which were the ingredients that were actually blended to make up the new
imagined community of a Macedonian nation waiting to be liberated by armed insurrection and
European intervention? How did the initial project for a Switzerland of the Balkan, i.e. a multi-ethnic
national formation, finally lead to the creation of a nation-state based on a single ethnic group, that of
Macedonian Slavs?
Most of the scholarly debate evolving around those issues has been centered on the official
literature produced by IMRO and the internal correspondence of the Organizations upper echelons.
The voices and aspirations of the movements rank and file (better known as komitadjis) are usually
lost or neglected, the latters orientations considered more or less an affair of elite decisions, not the
result of interaction between the Organizations leadership and its mass base. Moreover, in the case of
the Balkan national historiographies the dominant essentialist approach usually takes the national selfidentification of the affected population and its subsequent irredentist desires as granted, leaving aside
the question of an articulation between nationalist mobilization and the individual or collective social
agendas put forward by the local actors implicated in it. The only attempts up to now to touch this issue
1

In fact the organization changed its name at least four times, reflecting an equal number of changes in its national orientation
and internal structure. From 1893 till mid-1896 it was called Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (MRO); in 1896 it was
officially renamed to Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committees (BMORK), while in 1902 it became the
Secret Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (TMORO); it was once more renamed to Internal MacedonianAdrianople Revolutionary Organization (VMORO) in 1905, dropping the Adrinople component of its title in 1919 to become
VMRO/IMRO. For reasons of uniformity I use here the conventionally accepted acronym IMRO for the whole period.

have been formulated during the last stages of the Cold War, strongly influenced by the
counterinsurgency doctrines of that era and, as I argue bellow, ended up in seriously misleading
conclusions about IMROs following and impact on contemporary rural Macedonian society.
This article aims to clarify the reasons and modalities behind the mass mobilization of the
Macedonian Slav peasantry that transformed an initial nucleus of urban-based conspirators into the
archetype of the national liberation guerillas that left their mark on the twentieth century global
politics2. Based on the available IMRO literature as well as on the contemporary diplomatic
correspondence and relevant primary sources emanating from both the movements friends and foes,
my main point of argument is that active mobilization of the komitadji rank and file, although often
part of a pattern of collective action that left little margins to individual choice or maneuvering, was at
the same time intrinsically linked to the Organizations programmatic declarations about a radical land
reform and to the practical measures in this direction that were taken as an integral part of the
revolutionary struggle.

Peasants and National Parties

IMRO was not the first agent of nationalist ideas and patriotic mobilization in Ottoman
Macedonia but, on the contrary, a late newcomer in the field: Greek, Bulgarian and Serb nationalism
had preceded it by at least one century (in the first case), half a century (in the second) and two decades
(in the last one). Its novelty, however, was IMROs project for protracted guerilla warfare as a vehicle
for attaining the regions autonomy (in fact, its de facto secession from the Ottoman empire). Localized
peasant revolts or collective acts of violence against the established order were also not unknown
throughout the Ottoman rule over the region, usually provoked as a reaction to new taxes and/or
unbearable abuses by tax collectors3.
The emergence of Greek nationalism and its spreading in the Balkan hinterland had been mostly
an urban phenomenon, linked to the formation of an Hellenized Orthodox merchant class of diverse
ethnic origin during the 18th century4 and the subsequent creation of an enlarged community of Greek
readers, who imagined themselves as descendants of Ancient Greece while remaining dispersed
throughout the Peninsula and/or beyond it5. Peasant participation in the two short-lived armed
insurrections that erupted in Southern Macedonia during the Greek Revolution of the 1820s was no
doubt considerable, but the available sources do not allow us to draw safe conclusions about the
existence of a specifically agrarian agenda behind this mobilization. The 1821 uprising in Chalkidiki
was led by the monks of Mount Athos, i.e the collective owners of a substantial part of the peninsulas

For an early acknowledgment of this relation, albeit openly hostile to both IMRO and its descendants: Stephen Fischer-Galai,
The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization: its significance in Wars of National Liberation, East European
Quarterly, VI/4 (1973), p.454-72.
3
Elias Kolovos, Riot in the Village: Some Cases of Peasant Protest around Ottoman Salonica, in A. Anastasopoulos (ed.),
Political Initiatives From the Bottom Up in the Ottoman Empire, Rethymno 2012, p.47-56.
4
Traian Stoianovich, The Conquering Balkan Orthodox Merchant, Journal of Economic History, 2 (1960), p.234-313.
5
, :
, in . - . (eds), , Athens
2004, vol.I, p.103-48.

arable land6, and confined to two clusters of villages that were primarily engaged in mining and silk
weaving7. The rest of Greek-speaking Christian peasants inhabiting the region are said to have stayed
rather indifferent, an attitude attributed to the moderation shown even in matters of taxation by the
Paa of Salonica then in charge8. The 1822 insurrection of Niausta was joined by around two thousand
nearby villagers, both Greek- and Slavic-speaking, under the leadership of traditional warlords and a
faction of the towns Christian notables9. In both cases, the revolts erupted more as a reaction to
preventive repression by the local Ottoman authorities, alarmed by revolutionary upheaval elsewhere,
than as an elaborate political or military plan10. Equally absent is any proclamation by the insurgents
about their social goals, beyond a universal thirst for liberty and their rejection of infidel rule. Last
but not least, neither of those uprising lasted for long, nor left any traces of a more durable engagement
by those among its participants who survived its suppression the only exception being a few hundred
fighters who ended up as professional soldiers in the revolutionary troops of Southern Greece11.
Somehow different had been the relation of peasantry as a class with the Bulgarian
Renaissance of the following decades. The latter was not a revolutionary process but a political
movement focusing on identity affirmation and institutional emancipation of the Slavic-speaking
Southern Balkan provinces from the dominance of a Greek-speaking ecclesiastical hierarchy subjected
to the Constantinople Patriarchate; its culmination led to the splitting of the Orthodox millet-i Rum and
the creation of a separate institutional framework under the name of millet-i Bulgar, ruled by an
independent Bulgarian Exarchate residing in the Ottoman capital12. As shown by the recent research of
Andreas Lyberatos on the region of Philippopolis (now Plovdiv) in central Bulgaria, this movement
emerged as the political crystallization of a social alliance between a new class of local entrepreneurs
and the peasant or petit-bourgeois population of the citys hinterland. Focusing on linguistic
emancipation of the Slavic-speaking masses from the Greek cultural yoke, Bulgarian ethnic
nationalism provided the standard-bearers of the movement with a victorious vehicle of social
rearrangement, allowing them to win over the allegiance of a peasantry despised for long by the citys
Hellenized traditional upper class13.
In the Macedonian provinces, where the Slav-Bulgarian national revival had been relatively
late in comparison with Bulgaria proper and developed rather unevenly from one diocese to the other,
most of its victories were also due to similar alliances between the local Bulgarian parties
6

.. , 1821, Salonica 1967, p.131. In 1913, 69 out of Chalkidikis 167

villages were dependencies () owned by Mount Athos monasteries ( ,
, Athens 1914, p.191). For the genealogy of this ownership, going back to the late Byzantine and early Ottoman
times: , (15 -16 .), in
15 16 , Salonica 2012, p.107-26.
7
, , 354-1833, Salonica 1988, p.505-13 & 551-6.
8
George Finlay, History of the Greek Revolution, Edinburgh-London 1861, vol.I, p.252-3.
9
1967, p.178; , , Edessa 1924, p.135 & 147-8.
10
Finlay 1861, p.251-2 & 254; 1924, p.128-34; 1967, p.122- & 177; 1988, p.5512; .. , , Athens 1881, p.41-3.
11
1967, p.208-40. A number of them were Macedonian Slavs, usually referred to by the contemporary sources as
Bulgarians or just by the name of their birthpace (Monastrl, Uskupl, from Bitolja etc):
, (1821-1828), Sofia 1971.
12
L.S. Stavrianos, The Balkans since 1453, Hinsdale 1958, p.364-80; , , Sofia
1995; , 1870-1879, Sofia 1989.
13
, , .
19 , Herakleion 2009; Andreas Lyberatos, Men of the Sultan: the belik sheep tax collection and the rise of a Bulgarian
national bourgeoisie in nineteenth-century Plovdiv, Turkish Historical Review, 1 (2010), p.55-85.

(sometimes already dominating the town, but often representing only a minority of the urban polity or
at least of its upper strata) and their rural surroundings. The crucial role of those alliances, often
sanctioned by secret deliberations between the urban party core and representative bodies of village
notables, is amply documented in the existing sources about the movements development in eparchies
such as Skopje14, Ohrid15, Pelagonia (Monastir)16, Polyani (Kilkis/Doiran)17 and Nevrokop18. On the
other hand, the existence of a reliable urban counterpart was considered as a conditio sine qua non for
the effective representation of village interests to the authorities; the lack of such a nucleus thus dashed
any prospects of the Bulgarian cause in Strumica for some decades, driving its provincial supporters to
transfer their loyalties from the capital of their own diocese to the nearby city of Veles19.
National antagonism in late Ottoman Macedonia took the form of rival national parties (Greek,
Bulgarian and Serbian), as the informal political embodiments of conflicting social strategies and
opposing programs for the future of the respective local, regional or ethic communities20. Increasingly
funded and led not by their millet leaderships but by the Balkan governments who were perceived as
their national center, the parties in question reproduced themselves mainly through an educational
system that had been organized along millet lines and carried out the dual functions of ideological
formation and mechanism of social advancement for the more ambitious parts of the younger
generations among its clientele. As it always happens with politics, each one of these parties can be
described as a set of concentric circles, with a hard core of devoted believers, a number of sub-groups
with varying levels of loyalty and an outer crust comprised by people who were easily shifting their
allegiances according to circumstances or their short-term personal interests. Each partys ideology was
composed by its responses to a common set of questions about the areas (and the respective ethnic
groups) historical past, the relation of the national entity to religion, the codification and official use of
non-Greek languages and their local dialects, the elevation of specific aspects of the local folklore or
social organization to the status of national identity indicators; last but not least, its (and the respective
national centers) reliability as an agent of liberation from Ottoman domination, as well as its function
as a vehicle of specific class interests and alliances, both under the Ottoman regime and during the
envisaged incorporation in a neighboring Christian Balkan state. Equally crucial was the role of
financial and other material rewards, spread through a set of educational or charity channels that linked
this clientele to the respective nation-state, creating a vigorous and competitive market for services and
14

, , vol.II, Sofia 1970, p.155-7.

(Istanbul), 7.5.1860, p.2-3, letter from Ohrid, 15.4.1860; ,
, , , 13 (1896), p.631-2.
16
, , Sofia 1971,
p.47-8.
17
, , Sofia 1969, p.88-91; 1860/39.26, I. Agonakis to the MFA, Saonica
5.9.1859, No.585, and S.V. Syrmakesis to the MFA, Salonica 7.10.1859, No.666.
18
, . , Sofia 2000, p.339-40 & 363; (Istanbul), 21.10.1863, p.3, and 2.12.1863,
p.4, letters from Nevrokop dated 26.9.1863 and 4.11.1863; (Istanbul), 24.3.1965, p.3-4, letter from Nevrokop,
25.2.1865.
19
, , Plovdiv 1906, p.29;
, , Constantinople 1908, p.472-3;
, , Sofia 1983, p.32; , . ,
Salonica 1980, p.79, 89-90 & 100.
20
The formation, ideology, institutional development and forms of action of these national parties is the subject of my PhD, to
be supported at the University of Aegean. On the competition between the Greek and Albanian parties among Albanian-speaking
Christians during the same period: Nathalie Clayer, Aux origins du nationalisme albanais, Paris 2007, p.657-63.
15

loyalties among the targeted population. The recuperation of this rivalry by the latter, first and foremost
by a peasantry traditionally subjected to exploitation by both the cities and church hierarchies, was
often dismissed by upper echelons and/or organic intellectuals of the nationalist camps as a proof of the
Macedonians venality, with popular ironic sayings denouncing their readiness to accept any possible
nationality in return for money or other material favors21; a Serb consul in Skopje compared his
mission to the soul-buying described in a Gogols novel22, while a French colleague of his used to joke
that with a fund of a million francs we would undertake to make all Macedonia French: he would
preach that the Macedonians are the descendants of the French Crusaders who conquered Salonica in
the twelfth century, and the francs would do the rest23. In fact, this despised corruption and lack of
(national) conscience was nothing but the natural outcome of a parallel and antagonistic nationbuilding that also capitalized on the transformation of material needs and social cleavages into political
loyalties.
The agrarian question proved to be a factor of fundamental importance for the outcome of this
zero-sum game between rival national parties and propagandas. The fact that most of the Macedonian
arable lowlands were big or medium estates (iftlik) belonging to Moslem, Jew or Greek owners but
cultivated by landless Slavic-speaking Christian sharecroppers, was frequently considered by the
internal correspondence of the Greek nationalist apparatus as a major threat to Greek cultural and
political hegemony over those same regions. Any gradual or sudden emancipation of this subjugated
peasantry, it was argued, would radically transform not only the relations of production prevalent there
but also the national landscape in question: Of course those Bulgarian-speakers are beasts, wrote
for example diplomat Ion Dragoumis in 1903, referring to the plain of Serres, but they are beasts who
speak Bulgarian, beasts who may one day with external help buy the land and elevate themselves from
social pariahs to its legitimate rulers24. To effectively counter this menace, successive abortive projects
were elaborated by imaginative functionaries and/or interested local figures for the expropriation of the
endangered real estate by Greek entrepreneurs counting on the financial assistance of the Greek
kingdom, on the prospect that influence of the new landowners and social pressure should finally
define the nationality of the tillers; in their most radical and utopian form, these plans envisaged even
the colonization of certain locations of strategic importance by pure Greeks from Eastern Rumelia or
the Black Sea littoral25. For similar reasons, the Bulgarian state supported financially the purchase of
some iftliks, cultivated not only by ardent supporters of the Bulgarian party, as a reward for their
21

, (Sofia), 12.2.1892, p.3; [ -],

, Wien [=Sofia] 1894, p.35; , , 11.1922 ,
p.51-2; .. , j , Skopje 1990 ( Moscow 1903), p.46; ,
, Sofia 1992, p.34; A/116/109, Bisop Parthenios of Polyani, ,
Salonica 20.8.1900; /1900/68, . Papapavlou to MFA A. Romanos, Serres 31.8.1900, No.272; 1901/65, . Arvanitis
to the President of the Committee for the Reinforcement of Greek Church and Education, Bitola 4.1.1899; 1904/76, .
Naltsas to Consul K. Kypraios, Monastir 6.6.1903; , (1912-1913).
, Athens 1998, p.242.
22
Vladimir Kari to Prime Minister Sava Grui, Skoplje 11.1.1891, .13, in , j
j. V/2 (1891), Belgrade 1991, p.57.
23
H.N. Brailsford, Macedonia. Its races and future, London 1906, p.103.
24
I. Dragoumis to MFA, Serres 4.12.1903, No.326, in (ed.), , Athens 2000, p.629.
25
For a comprehensive survey of these projects: , .
, Athens 2010. See also: Tassos Kostopoulos, How the North was won.
puration ethnique, change des populations et politique de colonisation dans la Macdoine grecque, European Journal of
Turkish Studies 12 (2011), http://ejts.revues.org/4437, 9-12; ,
, , 32 (2012), p.149-74.

loyalty26, but also by sharecroppers who up to then had remained faithful to the Patriarchate, in order
to safeguard their switchover to the millet-i Bulgar27. In spite of the measures popularity among the
landless peasants, its impact was however reduced by two factors. One was the shortage of money
available for such purchases, at least compared to the extent of the problem and the volume of
subsequent demands, whose rejection created unwanted tensions and misunderstandings between the
national centre and its local clientele28; further complications were produced by the rapacity of the
Bulgarian bishops, who diverted funds earmarked for the purchase of Moslem iftliks in order to buy
luxurious mansions in Monastir and Strumica 29. Even more decisive proved to be the role played by the
conservative worldview that prevailed at the upper echelons of the millet-i Bulgar and among the
policy makers of Sofia, most of whom were envious of the aristocratic composition of the rival
Greek party and deeply suspicious of any project of social emancipation.

A Revolution from above?

IMRO emerged as a revolutionary response to the internal crisis of the national party system. It
was born out of the disappointment of the youngest generation of Macedonian secondary school
graduates, whose anticipation of upward social mobility had been dashed by the jamming of the rival
Christian educational structures and by the arbitrary handling of all aspects of communal life by the
millet ecclesiastical authorities and their secular, well-off associates; imbued with the teachings of
Bulgarian irredentism, the Organizations founding fathers and first generation of leaders were also
strongly influenced by populist and socialist ideas emanating from both Russia and Western Europe.
After its creation in late 1893, IMRO remained for a few years mostly an affair of teachers and old
classmates engaged in other urban professions, occasionally co-opting a few new members among
villagers appreciated for their personal courage and conspiratorial capabilities. Recruitment was carried
out on an individual base and rank and file among villagers was usually restricted to a handful of
persons in each village, the rare exceptions being some mountain villages who had openly defied the
Ottoman authorities for a long time. From the late 1890s onwards, however, it grew rather fast,
building an underground parallel state structure with its own judiciary, army, police and
revolutionary taxation30. Its ideologues juxtaposed their plan for protracted guerilla warfare, deeply
rooted in a network of organized villages, to the recent practice of short-lived invasions of irredentist
bands, formed in neighboring Balkan countries and enjoying little or no support among the local

26

, .246, .1, ..313, .125, K. Gerov to MFA D. Stanov, Serres 29.8.1907, .565.
, .246, .1, ..462, .55-6, Archimandrite Cyril to Exarch Joseph, Drama 14.7.1912, 1310.
28
, .246, .1, ..313, .18, MFA St. Paprikov to Exarch Joseph, Sofia 23.2.1908, No.1308; , .246, .1,
..311, .100, MFA St. Paprikov to Exarch Joseph, Sofia 21.6.1908, No.4861.
29
, , Sofia 1994, p.104-5 & 111.
30
On the earlier IMRO development, up to the 1903 Ilinden uprising, see my forthcoming book: ,
. , 1893-1903, Athens 2015. For two classic semi-official narratives, originating
from the Organizations rival wings (pro-Bulgarian Right and Macedonian nationalist Left, respectively): ,
, 2 vols, Sofia 1933 & 1943; , j, 2 vols, Bitola
1987 (Sofia 1945 - Skopje 1949). For more recent treatises, representative of the respective national historiographies:
- , vol.II (1893-1903), Sofia 1995; ,
(1893-1903), Skopje 1982; ,
. 18931903 , Skopje 2003.
27

unredeemed population31. The main agents of revolutionary propaganda, during this second phase,
were not the earlier individual recruiters but armed bands composed by a mixture of persecuted
intellectuals, traditional brigands and radicalized ordinary peasants. The pattern of village organization
also changed dramatically: instead of a confidential affair between personal acquaintances, it took the
form of collective oaths given by whole rural communities (or parts of them) in public, in the presence
of a band and after being lectured by its leader (and/or its secretary) about the Organizations goals and
tactics32. Such a procedure did not, of course, make much allowance for individual deviations, even
less for open dissociation from the common cause. Repression of the revolutionary movement by the
authorities also followed a collective pattern, with all male villagers (or, at least, all village elders)
being subjected to torture and imprisonment in order to disclose information about the local IMRO
cells, hand in their hidden guns and cooperate with the Ottoman gendarmerie or army detachments in
the pursuit of komitadji guerillas33.
The number of IMRO rank and file remains an open question, although it is clear that the
organization enjoyed an undisputable mass following. Revolutionary literature, addressed to the
Organizations internal audience, claimed that tens and hundreds of members (urban and rural)
participated in the struggle to various degrees34. The detailed Memorandum compiled in 1904 by
journalist Nicola Naumov, having European readers as its main target group, provided on the other
hand no data for the organizations strength all over Macedonia, restricting itself to a minutious count
of how many komitadjis participated in each skirmish with government forces; the total of these
participations is often erroneously interpreted by modern historians as representing IMRO
combatants before and during the 1903 Ilinden uprising (4.262 and 26.408 participations in 132 and
239 battles, respectively) a perception that clearly overestimates the organizations fighting force,
while underestimating the extent of its political infrastructure35. The only available internal data on
IMRO membership on a large scale come from a later phase, after the Organizations decline, and are
limited to only one of its six revolutionary regions (Skopje, which included the homonymous sandjak
plus the kazas of Tetovo and Gostivar): according to the reports submitted by district leaders to the 2 nd
regional congress (July 1906), there were 36.502 IMRO members in this area, i.e. about one sixth of
31

.. , , Sofia1972, p.73-4; (ed.), . , Sofia 1967,

p.273-7; (eds), , Sofia 2003, p.506-8. See also: Philip Shashko,
Gotse Delchev and Gorche Petrov on permanent internal war and general uprising, in -
1903 , Sofia 1983, p.42-57.
32
For a number of first-hand descriptions of such procedures by IMRO chieftains, ordinary komitadjis or those recruited but
them: 2000, .499-501; , , Sofia 2001, p. 48, 51, 55, 61-3, 65-9, 89, 99-101, 105, 109-10,
117-9, 122, 128-9 & 171; , ( 1904 .), Sofia 1925,
p.19-26; , ( 1904 .), Sofia 1925, p.60-1; ,
, Sofia 1926, p.74-8; , , in . (ed.),
, Sofia 1926, p.14-5 & 24; , , in . (ed.),
, Sofia 1927, p.34; ,
(), Sofia 1931, p.7-8; , . , , 9-10/49-50 (910.1933), p.21-2; , , Skopje 1997, p. 137-41 & 241-59; ,
, in . (ed.), , Sofia 2005, p.164-7; , .1932, .2, ..185, .5-6,
, , .., 10.1.1926; , .1932, .4, ..80, .1, ; ,
.1932, .2, ..170, .1, ; /207/85,
, , n.d.; /206/234, , n.d.;
1902/64, Pope Stavros Tsiamou to His Beatitude, [Pisoder] 26.2.1902; 1902/65, . Iossif to Prime Minister Al.
Zaimis, Salonica 16.9.1902, no.345 confidential.
33
La Macdoine et le vilayet d Andrinople (1893-1903). Mmoire de l Organisation Intrieure, [Sofia] 1904, in passim.
34
, . , Sofia 2001, p.78 & 72. The document was first published
in 1905.
35
La Macdoine et le vilayet d Andrinople, op.cit., p.68-81, 104 & 109-72.

the local Christian population and one fifth of the members of the millet-i Bulgar36. Although a lot
more moderate, the estimates of the General Inspector of the three vilayets, Husein Hilmi Paa, also
deserve to be mentioned: interviewed in November 1904 by the correspondent of a Paris newspaper, he
declared that the revolutionary troublemakers of IMRO were no more than 10%, or 15% at most, of
Bulgarian Macedonians37 that is, 60-90.000 individuals according to his own ethnographic statistics,
handed over by him to another French publicist 38.
To what extend did this massive adherence to an underground movement reflect a personal
choice of conscious revolutionary engagement, based on ideology or rational choice calculations? For
the official national historiographies of Bulgaria and (Former Yugoslav) Republic of Macedonia this
question does not even exist, both of them praising IMRO as an authentic representative of the
respective nationality on Macedonian soil during the last two decades of Ottoman domination. The
same reasons of national self-justification have led their Greek and Serbian homologues to project a
variety of uneasy elaborations, the common denominator of which is the negation of any mass base to
what had always been for them the Bulgarian Committee, i.e. a foreign intruder in Macedonian
territory. Far more interesting had been the narratives worked out by the official Communist
historiographies in Bulgaria and Yugoslav Macedonia, as they tried to combine the imperatives of an
essentially nationalist approach with an examination of the social dynamics which nurtured the
revolutionary movement; the agrarian component of the struggle was therefore stressed by them,
although less and less as time lapsed and the national form of both regimes gained the upper hand
over their socialist content39.
Cold War imperatives left however their mark not only on Balkan historians, but also on
Western scholarship dealing with IMRO. At the heart of the matter lays the question of conscious
peasant commitment in komitadji revolutionary activity, a question with obvious ramifications for the
scholarly treatment of the Third World national liberation guerillas then in surge. This is already true
for the first article that acknowledged the relation between the two subjects40, but the book that set the
paradigm on that direction is Duncan Perrys Politics of Terror41, itself a remake of his PhD
dissertation on The Macedonian Cause 42. According to his theory, peasants were an insignificant and
reluctant component of the Macedonian revolution, their participation in IMRO being enforced by the
systematic terror applied to them by the intellectual leadership of the organization 43. This approach is
nevertheless based not on primary materials dealing with IMRO but on a general (and more or less

36

(eds), - (1893-1919 .).

, Sofia 2007, vol.I, p.599-600.
37
Ce que dit Hilmi Pacha. Interview du Vice-Roi de Macdoine, Le Matin (Paris), 27.11.1904, p.2.
38
Rn Pinon, LEurope et lEmpire Ottoman, Paris 1908, p.143-4.
39
For an excellent survey of the evolution of these official historiographies under actually existing socialism: Tchavdar
Marinov, Limpasse du Pass. La Construction de lidentit nationale macdonienne et le conflit politico-historiographique
entre la Bulgarie et la Macdoine, PhD Thesis, EHESS, Paris 2006, p.318-641.
40
Fischer-Galai 1973, especially p.454-5, 457-8 & 471-2.
41
Duncan Perry, The politics of terror. The Macedonian revolutionary movement, 1893-1903, Durham-London 1988.
42
Duncan McVicar Perry, The Macedonian Cause: a critical history of the Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, PhD
Thesis, University of Michigan, [Ann Arbor] 1981.
43
Perry 1981, p.289-95, especially p.291-2; Perry 1988, p.149-50.

irrelevant) bibliography on peasant politics44, as well as on the works of counterinsurgency specialists,

either military professionals or/and academic45, resulting in axiomatic, unsubstantiated deductions: In
Macedonia during the nineteenth century, the lot of the peasant was poor, but not intolerable from the
peasant perspective. [] Philosophical concepts like justice, equality and freedom were not principles
which engaged a peasants mind46; Macedonian Slav peasants are perceived as a conservative and
frightened society, which lacked a collective identity and the means and will to fight back, realizing
that conformity rendered the individual unobtrusive 47. As noticed by social anthropologist Keith
Brown, Perrys analysis is based mostly on conservative sources that date from the 1960s, passing over
the fierce debates around peasant studies in the 1970s, where principles of methodological
individualism were already being challenged by examinations of collective sentiments 48. Moreover,
all evidence from the primary sources used by Perry that point to the contrary is suppressed by the
author in his account of IMRO development49.
Even more problematic is the documentation provided by Perry in order to substantiate his
theory of marginal participation of peasants in the komitadji movement. He compares three lists of
IMRO members, activists and cheta leaders (a partial list compiled by Goe Delev in 1902, as
well as the indexes of both IMROs first semi-official history and 26 komitadji memoirs published by
the Sofia-based Macedonian Scientific Institute between 1925 and 1931) and, as none of the 142 and
221 names included in the first two sources and only 25 of the 793 names of the latter are said to be
peasants, he draws the clear conclusion that peasants were a distinct minority within the
movement50. In fact, a clear majority of the manes included in those lists (91%, 60,6% and 53,6%,
respectively) are not associated with any profession at all; most of them may thus have been ordinary
peasants, a qualification that was simply considered not worthy to be especially mentioned by the

44

The only work with a broader angle referred to by Perry, Barrington Moores masterpiece on the Social Origins of
Dictatorship and Democracy (1966), is used by the author in a obviously misleading way. Although Perry acknowledges
Moores analysis that an equilibrium exists between peasant and landlord so long as the lord performs his part of the
[unwritten] social contract between them (1981, p.290), he misses the point that, for various reasons, such an ostensibly
reciprocal feudal relation didnt exist between Moslem iftlik owners and their Macedonian Christian sharecroppers. Moores
book is therefore invoked as a proof of the peasantrys inherent passiveness and counterrevolutionary attitude, while the latter in
fact looks for the preconditions of peasant revolutions (Moore 1966, p.453-83).
45
Stephen Goode, J. Bowyer-Bell, Richard Clutterbuck, but also professor R.V. Burks, who wrote the forward in Perrys book.
The latters research on imprisoned Greek Communists, carried-out in the early 1950s, had in fact been a counterinsurgency
project carried out under the auspices of the US Embassy, in order -by his own words- to see whether the rate of desertion and
deviation [among the Communists] could not be increased by the methods of psychological warfare; he also cooked up a
propaganda experiment for some village which has always voted 60 or percent communist and proposed to the Policy and
Planning Staff of the US State Department that methods learned by work in the Greek prisons might well be applicable to other
communist parties (Hagen Fleischer, 1950: ;, in
. , Athens 2000, p.211-3 & 223-4).
46
Perry 1981, p.290-1.
47
Perry 1988, p.150-1. Perry also ascertains that IMRO could not perceive the shortcomings of its plan for a peasant-based
movement, its inability perhaps accounted for by the fact that most [of its] leaders were themselves from peasant society and
the closeness with which they were bound to their backgrounds, coupled with the lack of distance and perspective resulting
therefrom, made them unable to objectively view peasant behavior and values (1981, p.291 & 309).
48
Keith Brown, Loyal unto Death. Trust and Terror in Revolutionary Macedonia, Bloomington - Indianapolis 2013, p.44. The
dispute of the rational choice theories forwarded by conservative political scientists prone to deny any conscious commitment
in the peasant revolutionary movements has not been confined in the 1970s. For a recent study focusing on the roots of such an
engagement: Elisabeth Wood, Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador, Cambridge 2003.
49
In his description of early IMRO recruitment in the Kastoria area (1981, p.168-9), based on the memoirs of Pando Kljaev,
Perry skips for example completely the crucial information that the organizations initial success resulted from a victorious
peasant struggle against the local tax farmer (see below).
50
Perry 1988, p.180-2.

initial authors, something that is easily understood when one reads the respective passages 51. Equally
misleading is the attempt of Perry to deduce a minimal local support for the rebellion from the
uneven comparison between the number of participants in the 1903 Illinden uprising (that is, a local
revolt that took place in only one of the organizations five Macedonian revolutionary districts) and an
unquestionably inflated estimate of the adherents of the Bulgarian Exarchate all over Macedonia52.
On a different level, objections to the role of peasantry as a class in the Macedonian revolution
have been raised by Turkish historian Fikret Adanr. He argues that the agrarian question did not play
a prominent role in the policies of the Macedonian liberation movement, given that, according to his
estimates, the socio-economic condition of the Macedonian peasantry was not so deplorable as to
become a major political issue; the revolutionary upheaval of the late 19th and early 20 th century is
therefore portrayed by him as a byproduct of religious hatred and foreign interference, those peasants
who collaborated with IMRO having done so under the false promises of Great Power interference 53.
The core of Adanrs analysis is based on the limited weight of the iftliks on the Macedonian economy
and on the fact that their inhabitants constituted only a minority of the regions Christian rural
population. While the later is an established fact, it is also true that the percentage of landless Christian
peasants living in neighboring villages and working as part-time laborers in Moslem estates had been
considerable. As many as 42% of the total Christian rural population in what would be Greek
Macedonia belonged to this category54, while in its Yugoslav equivalent 36,5% of arable land belonged
to iftliks compared to 37,47% belonging to the free Christian villages (inhabited by 64,27% of all
rural families) and a mere 0,28% that belonged to Christian sharecroppers (13,5% of the rural
population)55. In his PhD, Adanr thus conceded that the shortage of arable land felt by self-employed
Christian villagers, especially in mountainous regions, while iftlik land was transformed to pastures,

51

Yane Sandanski, for example, gives the names of only 6 among his 15 comrades those distinguished from the rest for their
urban profession or their higher level of education ( 1927, p.24). The same applies to the memoirs of Boris Sarafov,
when he mentions the names and professions of only 6 members of his band, explaining that these were the most educated
among his 40 men ( , , in . , ,
, Sofia 1927, p.77). Similarly, when Ivan Anastasov narrates that a certain chieftain came with 3 comrades and 32
volunteers from various villages of the regions of Serres, Melnik, Demir Hissar and Nevrokop ( -,
, in . , , op.cit., p.145), we may safely conclude that most of those anonymous fighters
were ordinary peasants, too, although their names have not been preserved for posterity and therefore are not included in the
appropriate index.
52
Perry 1988, p.153-4. The number provided for the Bulgarian exarchate adherents (1.110.312 individuals or 60% of the total
Macedonian population!) is incredibly bigger than anything the official Bulgarian propaganda ever dared to project: even the
inflated statistics published by the Exarchates secretary in order to influence European audiences claimed only 897.160
adherents of the Exarchate all over Macedonia (D.M. Brancoff [ ], La Macdoine et sa population chrtienne,
Paris 1905, p.240-6). In secret, they were estimated by the same author between 692.000 and 728.000 (, .1546, .1,
..390, .1-8, 1912 . ,
1912 .; , .1546, .1, ..382, .1-3, , 1910 .; ,
.1546, .1, ..380, .1-4, , 1909/10 ).
Perry does not mention any source for his numbers; he just describes them as demographic information produced in 1900
(p.153). One may notice that the semi-official Bulgarian propaganda statistics for 1900 put the number of Exarchates followers
at just 823.676 in Macedonia and 1.051.016 all over the Turkey in Europe, i.e. including Thrace (Richard Von Mach, The
Bulgarian Exarchate, London-Neuchatel 1907, p.44-81).
53
Fikret Adanr, The Macedonian Question: its socio-economic reality and problems of its historiographic interpretation,
International Journal of Turkish Studies, vol.3/1 (1984-85), p.43-64. Also: Fikret Adanr, Tradition and Rural Change in
Southeastern Europe during Ottoman Rule, in D. Chirot (ed.), The Origins of Backwardness in Eastern Europe, BerkeleyOxford, p.131-76, especially p.151-6; Fikret Adanr, Die Makedonische Frage, Wiesbaden 1979, p.37-41.
54
Socrates Petmezas, Bridging the Gap: Rural Macedonia from Ottoman to Greek Rule (1900-1920), in L.T. Baruh V.
Kechriotis (eds), Economy and Society on Both Shores of the Aegean, Athens 2010, p.376-8.
55
, XIX . XX ., Sofia 1964, p.99.

10

constituted the main dilemma of Ottoman agrarian structure a dilemma, whose dynamics of social
crisis would be set in motion in the early 20th century, through the Macedonian liberation movement 56.
We must also bear in mind that these data correspond to the last years of Ottoman rule, when
iftlik ownership was clearly on the decline for reasons that, as we shall see below, were linked to the
revolutionary activities of IMRO. In the early 1870s, for example, British diplomats estimated that the
proportion of all persons engaged in the cultivation of iftliks to small proprietors was five to one57.
Last but not least, land rent was only one among various forms of exploitation suffered by Macedonian
peasants. Heavy taxation and the subsequent arbitrariness of the tithe farmers, a social category
intimately interwoven (or identical) with the landowning class and higher Ottoman administration, was
equally painful and even more widely felt, as it affected not only sharecroppers and landless laborers
but also the big mass of small landholders58. Another aspect of the agrarian question had been the
peasants financial dependence upon usury networks, a fact that generated not only deep feelings of
distrust but also open enmity of the countryside towards the urban centers59.

Silence of the IMRO Memoirs?

Most of the komitadji memoirs published during the interwar years by the Macedonian
Scientific Institute of Sofia either bypass the agrarian policies of the organization or at least do not put
them at the forefront of their narrative. This negligence must be attributed to the specific conditions
that dictated both their compilation and publication. Most of these reminiscences had been narrated to a
prominent but conservative academic (professor Ljubomir Mileti) just after the bloody defeat of the
1903 revolt, by people who were then refugees in Bulgaria, physically dependent on the allowances
provided by a Charitable Committee set up by him, and obviously tried to downplay their earlier
socialist engagements or beliefs60; moreover, they were published by a reactionary institution closely
linked to the right-wing interwar IMRO, a semi-fascist organization that had just exterminated by fire
and axe not only its left-wing former comrades but also Bulgarias agrarian movement and
government61. The contrast with the first semi-official history of the Organization, published during
WWI (i.e. before its repression of the Agrarians), is more than clear: the solution of the agrarian

56

Adanr 1979, p.41.

Basil Gounaris, Steam over Macedonia, 1870-1912, Boulder 1993, p.19.
58
Brailsford 1906, p.45-6; .. , , Athens 1914, p.268-71; IAYE 1876/99.1, G.
Evangelidis to MFA A. Kontostavlos, Serres 3.1.1876, No.8; IAYE 1900/65, A. Papapavlou to MFA A. Romanos, Serres
18.9.1900, No.310.
59
, , Sofia 1994, p.46-7; /4//352,
1908, n.d. [early 1909], p.13.
60
See for example the memoirs of IMROs co-founder, Dame Gruev, in comparison with an early comrades reminiscences of
him: , , in . , , , Sofia 1927, p.10;
, , Sofia 2000, p.169-71. For Miletis leading role in the creation of the Charitable
Committee: , - (1903-1906
.), in - , vol.III, (1903-1919), Sofia 1997, p.114.
61
Stavrianos 1958, p.650-1; Marinov 2006, p.194; J. Swire, Bulgarian Conspiracy, London 1939, p.142-92; Elisabeth Barker,
Macedonia. Its Place in Balkan Power Politics, London - N. York 1950, p.36-45. On the financial and political links between
MSI and IMRO, see - ,
, in - , vol.IV (1919-1934), Sofia
2003, p.225-6.
57

11

question during the revolutionary struggle itself is advertised there as one of the biggest achievements
of the IMROs state within a state62.
Even so, some of these memoirs provide us with interesting information about the solution of
the agrarian problem undertaken by the Macedonian revolutionaries. Pando Kljaev, for example,
stressed that IMROs early roots in the hinterland of Kastoria were to a large extent due to the prestige
gained by its local leader, Lazo Poptraikov, after the victorious organization of peasant resistance to the
tax farmer in 1896-97 and a 50% cut of their real tithe burden63. Much more eloquent is another
chieftain, Slavejko Arsov from Resna, who described not only how IMRO prohibited in 1901 forced
labour and work on Christian holidays imposed by landlords 64, but also its function as an armed hand
of informal peasant trade unionism: in the fall of 1902, we read, peasants from his revolutionary district
began appealing to the guerilla band, asking for its help against certain urban exploiters, usurers etc, in
order to be saved from economic slavery. The band guided them not to give more than 20% (instead of
60% or even 100%) and, if the money lenders addressed themselves to the authorities, the band would
deal with them. Creditors thus softened and began to treat their debtors gently; similar interventions
were also undertaken in favor of the families of seasonal migrants, to relieve them from usurious
exploitation by money lenders and/or urban merchants65. The level of tension prevailing between the
town and its rural hinterland is also verified by an incidential remark of the same chieftain: when the
revolutionaries planned an attack on Resna during the 1903 Ilinden uprising, villagers from the
surroundings enthusiastically offered petrol and even their own shirts as fuse, all of them cheerful that
we shall burn down not only the Turks but also the Resna orbacis [Christian notables], because they
were enslaved economically by them66.
Another version of armed trade unionism is described by voivoda Anton Kioseto: together
with his comrade Argir Manasiev, a former teacher, they forbade the production of charcoal in the
Kouh Mountain by anybody except the local villagers, to whom they distributed the mountain,
imposing a minimum price of their products under threat of a death sentence. Two Moslem beys who
enjoyed the legal monopoly over the forests exploitation tried to import foreign woodcutters from
nearby Prilep but were violently repelled by the guerillas; when another bey from Istanbul tried to bribe
the organization into allowing his workers to cut down trees, Kioseto replied that his demand would be
accepted only if he also came and work in person as an ordinary worker. Similar rules were imposed on
the commerce of cocoons. In both cases, IMRO funded itself by taxing the local producers who
benefited from these regulations67.
Even more delicate was the attempt by IMRO to regulate class tensions inside the village
communities through a set of modernizing and/or equalizing measures such as the prohibition of
traditional female handicraft that diverted young girls from education, the enforced simplification of
traditional female attire by suppressing its expensive golden or silver attachments, the obligatory
62

A. Thomoff- G. Bajdaroff, Le mouvement rvolutionnaire en Macdoine, Skopje 1917, p.87-91.

1925, p.13-14.
64
1925, p.55.
65
Ib.id., p.51-2.
66
Ib.id., p.99. Similar feelings are reported by voivoda Michael Gerdjikov, about the Slavic-speaking hinterland of Thrace:
, , Sofia 1928, p.39.
67
, , in . . (eds), , Sofia 2003, p.31-33.
63

12

reduction (or even abolition) of the sums of money provided by the groom to the father of the bride, the
ban on enforced marriages and the restrictions imposed on the duration and costs of marriage or family
saint (slava) celebrations. Contemporary revolutionary literature attributed those measures to the need
to eliminate useless luxury that undermined the well-being of ordinary peasants68 or even celebrated
them as anti-plutocratic proofs of Communism in practice69, while at the same time acknowledging
that such economies allowed in fact more funds to be allocated to the purchase of weapons70. Although
the prohibition of handicraft had undoubtedly a positive effect on the education of young girls71, it was
however usually resented by the village womenfolk, who also resisted the attempts for its later
restoration by Greek guerillas; as the memoirs of a Greek chieftain inform us, the liberation of girls
from such traditional duties of theirs had often been diverted by male family members not to their
schooling but to an increase of their manual work in the fields, provoking thus a proto-feminist
collective reaction at the community level72.

The Phantom of Rural Jacobinism

Confronted with the sprawling of IMRO structures within their own Slav-speaking constituency
(which had up to then remained loyal to the Constantinople Patriarchate), Greek consuls had no
difficulty to point out the Organizations promises to the peasants about a favorable solution of the
agrarian question as the main motive of the latters successes. The most emphatic description of this
trend is found in a report by the charg daffaires of the Monastir Consulate, Ion Dragoumis, compiled
four months before the Ilinden uprising and addressed to the Greek Foreign Minister. The bands of
IMRO, Dragoumis wrote, are persuading them [the peasants] that the end of Turkey is near, that there
is no need for them to work for the landowners, who are mostly Ottomans [=Moslems] and before long
they will be thrown out of their estates and event out of this land. Before long they will not be forced to
pay neither tithe nor other taxes, there will be no tithe farmer nor tax collector and they will pay only
some very light and very fair taxes to collectors who will treat them in an angelical way; under the new
system, there will be no grievances nor burdens. The iftliks of the beys who will be removed belong to
the peasants, land belongs to its inhabitants. Each peasant will have his own plot, he will enjoy full
ownership of a piece of land. Everybodys work will be free, relieved from labour for a foreign master
and all villages will own their land. Equality, happiness and liberty will prevail. [] The adepts of the
Committee and of its bands do not content themselves with platonic promises. They have already
divided the estates of big landowners into small parts and have fixed each peasants share. The peasant
knows that this plot of land belongs exclusively to him and that there is only one thing to be done in
order to become the unobstructed owner and tiller of the plot allotted to him by the sovereign
Committee: to through out the bey and his representative, to forbid to the tax collector to set his foot on
68

Circular of the Melnik Revolutionary District (25.6.1905), in Mercia MacDermott, For Freedom and Perfection. The Life of
Yane Sandanski, London 1988, p.189-91.
69
[ ], , Sofia 1905, p.25-6.
70
1905, p.25; 1925, p.29-30.
71
2000, p.145; [= ], , , 1 (1908), p.246; Kalmidis to
E. Kaoudis, [Monastir] n.d., in , . (1903-1907), Salonica 1996, p.176-7.
72
, . , Athens 1994, p.577-80 & 583.

13

the allotted plot73. Looking down on the peasants thirst of land was more or less natural for the heir of
an aristocratic Athenian family like Dragoumis, whose father would be soon the conservative Greek
Prime Minister who suppressed the 1910 peasant revolt in Thessaly74. The diplomats ironic mood did
not on the other hand inhibit him from acknowledging its importance for the incoming Slavic
revolution: For the peasant, freedom of Macedonia has just the meaning of his own liberation from
the yoke of Ottoman landowners, as well as from the tithe and other Ottoman taxes. If this peasant
revolts and takes part in the revolution, he will fight for his own family but also for his own house and
his own land75. An even more eloquent remake of this analysis was incorporated in Dragoumis first
book, published in 1907 under pseudonym and dealing with the early stages of the Greek states
mobilization against IMRO76.
From a different point of view, an even closer look on this fermentation is provided by a report
of the Bulgarian Consul (Trade Agent) in Monastir, Andrej Toev, compiled in early 1904 and
dealing with the agrarian question in the Consulates domain. Having described the poverty and
virtual slavery suffered by the landless sharecroppers and rural workers in the kazas of Kastoria and
Florina, Toev went on to sketch the picture of a fierce class struggle, in which the IMRO bands
functioned as a catalyst rather than as a driving force, the main subject being the rebellious peasants
themselves: During the last two years, an end has been put to these arbitrary practices. The peasants
who worked in the Turkish iftliks begun to react to the aas wishes, feebly at first but later more
stiffly, in most places finally succeeding to be completely relieved from their domination and shattering
their privileges. But this cost them many victims. During 1900, 1901 and 1902 there was not even one
day without a killing. The exited aas hit those among their slaves who dared to complain and stand up
to their master. In the Agencys archives you distinguish the names of many among those killed.
However, instead of been frightened, the peasants became bolder in their animosity towards the aas.
Many of them, thirsty for revenge, left their homes and joined the bands which had already appeared.
Fearful aas did not even dare to visit their iftliks 77.
Similar appreciations of the agrarian radicalism embedded in the IMRO project are also found
in the reminiscences not only of Greek officers and diplomats who were later engaged in armed
struggle against it78, but also in the writings and dispatches of Western observers, no matter where their
sympathies lied. The British General Consul in Salonica explained mass participation in the 1903 revolt
by the appeal to the greed of peasants of IMROs promise that they will be made owners of the soil

73

/IV/17.1.4, I. Dragoumis to MFA A. Skouzes, Monastir 5.4.1903, No.267.

For a documentation of the fathers superintendence of the suppression of the 1910 peasant movement: , .
, , 6.3.1996, p.24-5.
75
/IV/17.1.4, I. Dragoumis, op.cit. Slavic Revolution was Ion Dragoumis initial description of the Ilinden Uprising, in a
personal message sent to his father, four days after its eruption: Dear Dad, we have a Slavic Revolution in Macedonia. All the
Slavic-speaking population followed the Committee [=IMRO], most of them in their own will. [] I am not at all sure if it is
anymore to our interest to react to this movement (photocopy of the original in 2000, p.199).
76
, , Athens 1914, p.18-9.
77
Bulgarian Trade Agency (A. Toev) to the Prime Minister and MFA, General Rao Petrov, Monastir 24.4.1904, No.319, in
, , , 1 (2002), p.134.
78
-, 1903-1908, Salonica [1937], p.9; -,
, Athens 1948, p.60; , , Athens 1970, p.44.
74

14

and their debts to the money-lenders wiped off79, while H.N. Brailsford stressed that these miserable
peasants [were] taking guns under any leader who will promise them deliverance from the tax-collector
and the bey80.
Last but not least, such a radical agrarian agenda left also its imprint on the organizations
supreme act, the 1903 Ilinden uprising. Mass participation of peasants and the lack of sufficient
weapons transformed the rebellion into a reenactment of a post-medieval Jacquerie, as thousands of
villagers armed with axes, scythes, sticks and similar other tools81 unleashed themselves on the
landowners manors and towers, burning them down and looting their warehouses 82, sometimes killing
their inhabitants in an atrocious manner 83. Not only Moslem landowners but also Christian ones were
targeted by this outburst of class hatred 84. Such was the wanton destruction of landlord property that,
three days after the start of the uprising, the revolutionary General Staff was compelled to issue special
orders prohibiting under sentence of death the burning of crops stored up in the iftliks85.

Class Struggle within the Organization, 1904-1908

The suppression of the 1903 revolt led to an internal crisis of IMRO and a bloody civil war
between its forces and the nationalist guerilla bands dispatched by Greece and Serbia, which operated
with the connivance (or even tacit support) of Ottoman authorities86. As the European intervention
provoked by the uprising brought about a provisional stabilization of the Ottoman regime instead of the
liberation expected for by the organization, the latters insurrectionary strategy gave way to initiatives
that aimed at satisfying more immediate needs of its constituencies. This pragmatic turn was followed
by IMROs gradual degeneration into a number of warring factions, formed either on the basis of a
political dichotomy between Right and Left or as local alliances representing rival configurations of
hegemonic interests on a provincial level 87. The contradictions that were inherent in this process are
clearly reflected on the organizations agrarian policies from 1905 until 1908, when the Young Turk
79

Robert Graves to Ambassador N. OConor, Salonica 31.7.1903, .231, in 1903

, Salonica 1993, p.73.
80
Brailsford 1906, p.210.
81
, 1926, p.95 & 142; 1927, p.95; 1931, p.16-7; - 1937, p.16;
1903, op.cit., p.183; -, . , Sofia 1953, p.62;
, , Sofia 2003, p.86; ,
.
, , 1 (1981), p.140-1; /1904/75, . Evgeniadis to Prime Minister
D. Rallis, Salonica 31.8.1903, No.337 conf.; /2/6, G. Perros et al. to G. Tsontos, Volos 25.8.1903. For the relevant orders
by local IMRO organs: 2007, p.302-3; , , Sofia 2001, p.234.
82
Blue Book, 1(1904), p.262; 2000, p.194-206; Brailsford 1906, p.149; 1926, p.102-3, 106 & 127;
1933, p.294-5 & 309; , 1903-1904 j,
Skopje 1955, p.73; j, , Skopje 1993, p.73, 79, 96 &
115-25; 1903/50, L. Enyalis to MFA, Elassona 15.8.1903, No.330.
83
1926, p.105.
84
Blue Book, 1(1904), p.262; j 1993, p.73, 118 & 138; . , ,
(Athens), 13.8.1903, p.4.
85
2000, p.198.
86
1943; , , 1878-1908, Athens 1935, p.294-527;
Douglas Dakin, The Greek Struggle in Macedonia, 1897-1912, Salonica 1966, p.146-374; ,
(1901-1912), Sofia 1993; , j
, j , 53 (2006), p.359-74; ,
j j j, , 12/1 (1968), p.181-204.
87
For the main narratives of this split forwarded by IMROs right and left wing, see 1943 and MacDermott 1988,
respectively.

15

revolution imposed a temporary halt to all guerilla activity within Ottoman Macedonia. The initial
choice of IMRO to primarily support the interests of lower strata, explicitly stated in statutory
documents, such as the 1904 Directive for the future activity of the Internal Organization88 or the
decisions of the 1905 general congress89, as well as in articles published in its official organ 90, was to
be later reversed by the ascending right-wing that enjoyed the full support of both the Bulgarian state
and local Macedonian well-off notables.
A general trend, immediately after Ilinden, was IMROs support for (and even instigation of)
the demands for a considerable hike in the wages of rural workers. In January 1905, the first regional
Congress of the Skopje revolutionary district imposed specific minimum wages for harvesters and a
minimum annual payment for permanent workers employed in the iftliks 91; the next regional congress,
convened in July 1906 and dominated by the organizations right wing, revised however these
decisions in the name of local peculiarities, entrusting to the local Committees the task of defining
the appropriate levels of maximum workday, minimum pay and wage 92. In July 1906, a similar
decision was taken by the second regional congress of Serres, a left-wing stronghold93, after a
grassroots mobilization of landless rural workers for a 25% increase had already taken place on the
initiative of these same Committees94. The biggest show of force was a two-month victorious strike of
rural workers in the region of tip during harvest time (May-June 1904), openly supported by IMRO,
with considerable gains for the harvesters, whose wages increased from 2-3 to 8-12 kurus per day95.
A little bit more complicated were the Organizations policies towards those aspects of the
agrarian question that involved Christian entrepreneurs or prospective landowners. Its attitude towards
Christian tithe farmers, for example, varied according to the political proclivities of the faction in
charge. The first regional congresses of Skopje and Serres forbade completely the leasing of tithe by
Christian tax farmers, as such a practice was considered more fruitful for the Ottoman state (i.e. the
enemys) finances than the work of conventional tax collectors96. Dominated by IMROs left-wing, the
next two congresses of the Serres revolutionary district in 1906-1907 repeated the prohibition, allowing
only the purchase of tithe by the communities themselves, in order to be relieved from the pressure of
tax collectors; the attempt of a local congress in Drama revolutionary sub-district to overturn the earlier
decisions was also categorically castigated97. In the case of Skopje, on the contrary, the Organizations
right-wing managed in 1906 to repeal the prohibition in part, in case that the interested villages
cannot purchase the tithe by themselves; a vocal minority asked even for the wholesale abandonment

88

, in 2007, p.344.
.2, ib.id, p.581-2.
90
. , , , 19 (25.8.1905), p.4-7.
91
, in 2007, p.439.
92
, ib.id., p.621-3.
93
, ib.id., p.643.
94
IAYE 1906/72, M. Tsamados to the MFA, Serres 19.6.1906, No.162.
95
1943, p.410-1 , , in . . (eds), ,
Sofia 2003, p.179 , .176, .1, ..1876, .294, . opov to Prime Minister R. Petrov, Salonica 3.6.1904, .473.
96
2007, p.439 & 489; 1905, p.6.
97
..., op.cit., p.642-3;
, ib.id., p.728.
89

16

of such interference in the economic life of Christian communities, on the basis that such purely
social questions were no business of a national liberation movement98.
Similar frictions were also provoked by IMROs prohibition of iftlik purchase by Christian
landowners or entrepreneurs, coupled with a declaration by its 1905 general congress in favor of the
struggles of the iftlik tillers against their landlords of whatever religion or nationality, ordering its
troops to provide those struggles with armed support when necessary99. In order to compel Moslem
landowners to sell off their estates to the villagers at a low price, a whole array of measures were taken
by the Organization: prohibition of seasonal work in the iftliks when the owners had no access to
alternative manpower100, destruction of the iftlik warehouses, mansions and towers by guerilla
units101, imposition of heavy revolutionary taxes to the landowners102, intimidation and murder of
them and/or their close relatives103. The magnitude of this mobilization, in contrast to the relative
decrease of actions against Ottoman state symbols observed during the same time, clearly points to a
recuperation of the revolutionary structures and capabilities of IMRO by its peasant rank and file in
order to promote their own social agenda. This evolution coincided with an equally clear shift in the
Organizations centre of gravity after 1904, from the free mountainous communities that served as its
initial power base to the lowland iftlik regions (Yenice Vardar, Niauta, plain of Serres etc); although
recently organized, the latter were thus transformed into the main IMRO strongholds, in Southern
Macedonia at least104 a kind of iron curtain, as a local fighter of the rival Greek organization would
later acknowledge in his memoirs105. On the other hand, the emergence of this peasant radicalism was
not very well received neither by IMRO conservative wing nor by the latters allies within the
leadership of the millet-i Bulgar and the Bulgarian party, always envious of the social preponderance of
their Greek rivals106. Class struggle within the Organization is therefore reflected in its contradictory
handling of iftlik acquisition by Christian landlords, the Skopje regional congresses of 1905 and 1906
serving once more as a crucial indicator of the respective tendencies and change of mood: the first
prohibited such purchases completely, while the second, after a fierce debate, allowed them if the
sharecroppers and landless Christian peasants could not buy up their plots107.
98

..., op.cit., p.621-3.

.2, op.cit, p.582.
100
2007, p.466 & 468.
101
Blue Book, 4 (1904), p.81-2 & 96; Blue Book, 3 (1908), p.232 & 237; 1964, p.170; ,
j, Skopje 1954, p.100-1; , j
j j 1904-1905 , , 7/2 (1963), p.256;
, j j . j (1894-1913),
vol.IV, Kumanovo 1998, p.413; , .176, .1, ..1876, .307, A. opov to G. Naovi, Salonica 17.6.1904, .535;
IAYE 1904/41, L. Koromilas to MFA, Salonica 17.6.1904, No.304 conf[idential], and 19.6.1904, No. 309 conf.; IAYE 1904/74,
L. Koromilas to MFA, Salonica 15.11.1904, No.22 sp[ecial correspondence] and 18.11.1904, No.27 sp.; 1906/82, Salonica
Consulate to MFA, Salonica 18[-21].8.1906, No.436 conf.; 1907/89, F. Kondogouris to MFA, Salonica 6.2.1907, No. 57
conf., and 11.4.1907, No. 191.
102
1963, p.256; - , , Sofia 1995,
p.335-6; IAYE/1904/74, L. Koromilas to MFA., Salonica 15.11.1904, No. 22 sp. and 18.11.1904, No. 29 sp.
103
1964, p.170; 1906/82, Salonica Consulate to MFA, Salonica 31.8 [-6.9].1906, No.496 conf.; 1907/68,
notes by the Salonica Special Bureau (3.9.1907).
104
/4/352, [Salonica Special Bureau]
1908, p.12-16 & 26-9; IAYE 1907/53, Annual report of Consul A. Sahtouris to the MFA, Serres [1908];
1909/4/, A. Sahtouris to MFA, Serres 1.2.1909, No.76.
105
, , Salonica 1961, p.9.
106
For this envy, publicly expressed a little earlier: [Atanas opov],
, , Philippopolis 1885, p.8-9 & 28-9.
107
2007, p.439 & 621-3.
99

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The evolution of the pioneer agrarian policies of IMRO in the district of tip, a subdivision of
Skopje revolutionary region, is characteristic of this gradual shift in the Organizations social alliances.
After the victorious strike of rural workers in 1904, the local leadership set up a village fund, fed by a
special revolutionary tax on agricultural production, in order to provide the peasants with interest-free
loans for the purchase of iftliks from their Moslem landlords. At a later stage, the IMRO District
Committee imposed a consensual haircut on the villagers debts towards the urban Jew moneylenders,
abolishing all interest, settling promptly the rest with money from the village fund and transforming
the peasants debts into an interest-free obligation towards it. These measures were extremely popular
among the local sharecroppers and elevated the District Committee to the status of a determining factor
over the local economic life; it functioned not only as an arbiter between Moslem landlords and the
urban bourgeoisie in charge of the local Bulgarian party, but also engaged into unspecified commercial
ventures as a partner of certain provincial entrepreneurs. The subsequent increase in the Organizations
financial turnover naturally led to a gradual abandonment of its initial goals, the loyalties of its
leadership transferred within two and a half years from the support of landless peasants to an intimate
cooperation with the urban strata that exploited them: at the end of the day, Christian tithe farmers were
engaged as partners of the District Committee, to which they paid a part of their earnings, while the
villagers were ordered not to hide anymore their production from the tax collectors. Such a retraction of
earlier policies and promises could not however but provoke a sharp internal crisis within the local
IMRO and finally led to the denunciation and death of its leader, voivoda Mie Razvigorov, during one
of its visits in the provincial capital108.
The Dividends of Peasant Irredentism

IMRO as an organized armed revolutionary force ceased to exist a few months after the Young
Revolution, when its overstretched guerilla units and underground activists took the opportunity to
come out of the bush and legalize themselves in a new political environment. Although some of its
troops were reactivated in 1910-11 as a nationalist force created and maintained by the Bulgarian deep
state, there were little more than a shadow of their former self.
For the peasants, who had formed the backbone of the Organization, participation in the armed
struggle was not fruitless. Landlord absenteeism, a direct by-product of the anarchy that prevailed in
the countryside as a result of IMRO terrorism, allowed a unilateral decrease in what sharecroppers
paid to their masters109 and led to a considerable fall in land prices and the subsequent gradual purchase
of plots by their tillers a trend pointed out during the congress of IMRO right-wing at Kiustendil
(1908)110 and corroborated by later local surveys on land ownership 111. In order to extract at least a part
of their traditional revenues, Moslem landlords were thus often compelled, either to strike a deal with

108

2003, p.179-87. For the radicalism of Razvigorovs initial policies, see also 1954, p.129-30. For
his death (21.3.1907): - (Sofia), 8.4.1907, p.517, and 18.4.1907, p.533-4.
109
1902/65, St. Kiouz-Pezas to MFA, Monastir 22.7.1902, No.366; /IV/17.1.4, . Dragoumis to MFA Al. Skouzes,
Monastir 5.4.1903, No.267; Allan Upward, The East End of Europe, London 1908, p.217; , ,
Athens 1931, p.212; , , Salonica 1950, p.34.
110
, , 1908 ., Sofia 2001, p.38, 41 & 45.
111
1931, p.221 & 223; Michael Palairet, The Balkan economies, c.1800-1914, Cambridge 1997, p.343.

18

local IMRO Committees, providing them with some forms of technical support in return for a relative
restoration of their rights112, or to appeal to a Greek or Serbian underground chieftain; when for
example a Greek undercover officer working as a copy clerk in the Salonica Consulate visited
Monastir in 1906, he was implored by no other than the Ottoman Val himself to intervene in his favor
to his sharecroppers in a village near Gevgelija, who had stopped paying him their dues on the basis (or
the pretext) that in earlier times they had been the legal owners of their plots 113.
Similar problems were also faced by Christian landlords, even by urban small and medium
landholders: in Melnik, for example, the labor boycott imposed in 1904 by IMRO on the vineyards
owned by the towns Greek inhabitants as a measure to enforce a heavy revolutionary tax (itself a
fine for the communitys function as a tax farmer) was in fact an action promoted by the Organizations
peasant rank and file, in order to compel the owners to sell out their plots at an advantageous price114;
attempts by the local Greek Diocese and the Serres Consulate to break the boycott by resort to imported
Moslem and Gupsy labour led to bloody incidents that culminated in the destruction of the coveted
fields by industrious peasants on the May Day eve of 1907 115. Such experiences constrained affluent
urban dwellers from new land purchases in spite of low prices: as noticed by a Greek diplomat who
tried in vain to persuade Greek magnates from Egypt to buy the available iftliks, it was not easy for
entrepreneurs to come and settle in a revolted country116. A milder form of peasant relieve had been a
relative substitution of sharecropping by the more advantageous to the tiller form of iftlik cultivation
in return for a lump sum paid in advance 117. Next to landlord revenues, taxes to the Ottoman state and
its tax farmers also suffered sharp haircuts118; as a 1907 rough survey by the Greek Consulate of
Cavalla indicated, tithe profitability in the kaza of Drama had diminished by 60% in the schismatic
villages organized by IMRO, while in the Greek ones, which were not protected by its bands, it was
on the contrary steadily going up119.
Although the four-year civil war that ravaged the Slavic-speaking Macedonian Christian
communities between 1904 and 1908 led to a gradual retreat of IMRO, the dismantling of a
considerable part of its infrastructure and an obvious reluctance of most peasants to retake the arms
after the Organizations initial honeymoon with the Young Turk regime, the correlation of forces at the
village level never returned to the status quo ante. In 1909 the former left wing of IMRO, now openly
organized as the Popular Federative Party, carried out a series of mass peasant demonstrations in the

112

Albert Sonnichsen, Confessions of a Macedonian Bandit, N. York 1909, p.81.

- 1948, p.79. He was trying to persuade me that his ownership titles were authentic, the officer recalled
in his memoirs, and I was seriously giving his my assurance that I shall do whatever possible in favor of him me, an
undercover Greek lieutenant to a powerful Val!
114
, ( - ), Salonica 1992, p.32. For the original IMRO order of the
boycott (22.6.1904): (eds), . , Sofia 2007, p.172. For the tax farming
practiced by the Greek Community, against the prohibition declared by IMRO: ,
. , , 8 (1979), p.95-6.
115
1979, p.116-7; 1905/68, M. Tsamados to MFA, Serres 15.10.1905, No.247, and 21.10.1905, No.258;
1906/72, M. Tsamados to MFA, Serres 19.6.1906, No.162; IAYE 1907/53, A. Sahtouris to MFA, Serres 4.6.1907, No.216.
116
1970, p.57.
117
. , , Salonica 1913, p.43. For this special form of iftlik
exploitation (kesim), see also 1964, p.98; Gounaris 1993, p.18; 1914, p.37 & 94-5.
118
See for example Bulletin dOrient (Athens), 13.5.1905, for the demand by the beys of Gumendja to be relieved of their
annual land taxes, as they had been unable even to visit their estates during the previous year, let alone extract any surplus from
their tillers.
119
IAYE 1907/69, N. Souidas to the Salonica Consulate, Cavalla 5.8.1907, No.315.
113

19

urban centers of the Serres Sandjak asking for a comprehensive land reform that should deliver the land
to its tillers120. Even more decisive on the long term was another collateral effect of the intra-Christian
fighting: mass emigration to America, initially perceived as an individual way out of the dangers posed
by civil war, finally developed into an alternative strategy, less painful and more promising than
revolution, for acquisition of the desired plots by Macedonian peasants thanks to emigrant
remittances121; not by coincidence, the West Macedonian regions that were traditionally more prone to
emigration proved also to be the ones least afflicted by the PFP peasant radicalism 122.
Last but not least, the experience of those struggles provided a considerable part of this
generation of Slavic-speaking Macedonian peasants with a stock of radical ideas combined with a
fighters essential know-how, the reactivation of which (sometimes through its transmission to the next
generation) was to play an important role in the regions later development during World War II,
Macedonian nation-building or the Greek Civil War, but also in social agitation between the World
Wars123. As a leading figure in the Greek mobilization against IMRO was later to admit in his memoirs,
the Organizations emergence in the Macedonian hinterland should be seen as the beginnings of
Communism in Macedonia124.

120

1909/4/, A. Sahtouris to MFA, 5.2.1909, No.77, and 22.2.1909, No.117. The Partys program forwarded the rather
modest demand of providing landless peasants with enough land for the maintenance of each family, taken from landowners
that will be compensated in its market price and paid off interest-free in no less than 20 years ( 2007,
p.956). The Organizations right-wing, now under the name of Bulgarian Constitutional Clubs, was on the contrary very reluctant
to adopt similar goals, its constituent congress adopting after bitter quarrel only a vague declaration in favour of providing
peasants with land in a mild way that would be fair to both the [Ottoman] state and the peasants (
, , Salonica 1910, p.57-9, 83 & 85). When the Clubs
organized in May 1909 their own peasant demonstration in the kaza of Zihna, they demanded various tax reductions but not a
land reform, a fact indicating a different class base among the two organizations. According to the Greek Consulate the
demonstrators came from five big villages; none of them had been a iftlik since at least two decades ( 1909/5/, A.
Sahtouris to MFA, Serres 25.5.1909, No.361; , . , Sofia 2000, p.234).
121
1914, p.36-7; 2001, p.41; , , Sofia 1923, p.31; Ren Pinon, La question de
Macdoine et des Balkans, in Les questions actuelles de politique trangre en Europe, Paris 1911, p.224-31;
, j . vol. I (1905-1906), Skopje 1977, p.158-61;
, . , Athens 1990, p.26-7; , .246, .1, ..438, .170,
1910/11 , Monastir 31.10.1911; , .246, .1,
..459, .125, . , . 1911-912 ,
Lerin 5.7.1912; .246, .1, ..462, .64, . , -
1911-1912 , Bayrakl Cumaya 8.2.1912, No.181.
122
, , Skopje 1970, p.81, for an explicit acknowledgment of this fact by one of PFPs historic leaders.
123
, :
(1933), , 11 (2009), p.6-36; ,
40, in (ed.), 20 , vol.IV/1, Athens 2009, p.363-415.
124
1970, p.44.

20