The Ilinden Uprising did not mark either the beginning or the completion of the long process in the formation of the Macedonian national identity. However, the events of 1903 played a significant role in the shaping of that identity from then on. In this short commentary, I will touch briefly first on the Macedonian national movement before [linden; second, on the agonizing impact that Ilinden had on the major camps and orientation in the Macedonian national movement; and I will conclude with some brief remarks on the short-term and long-term consequences of Ilinden on the Macedonian movement and the shaping of the Macedonian identity.

The Macedonian awakening began in the second quarter of the nineteenth century as an unorganized Slav reaction against the Patriarchist church and the total domination of the Greek language in the local churches and schools. In the 1860s, the substantial inroads made by the Bulgarian national movement in Macedonia provoked a similar Macedonian reaction. Some educated Macedonians, called derisively Makedonisti by the Bulgarian press, embraced the name - Macedonian - and voiced and defended Macedonian interests. This clash between Bulgarianism and Macedonianism, which began in the decade preceding the establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate (1870), produced a clear distinction between the interests of the well established Bulgarian movement and the Macedonians, and contributed to the shaping of the national identity of the latter.

The establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate (1870) and the well orchestrated three-way struggle for Macedonia that followed and involved the more advanced Greek, Serbian and Bulgarian nationalisms, made the growth and development of the Macedonian national movement virtually impossible. In the radically altered post - 1870 circumstances, the Macedonian population found itself artificially divided into different "faiths," depending on whether they attended a Patriarchist (Greek), Exarchist (Bulgarian), or Serbian church. And, since in the theocratic Ottoman state "faith" denoted national affiliation, the Macedonians in their homes, villages, and towns were also being artificially split between Bulgarian, Greek and Serbian "nations" or rather parties. This, of course, did not represent a successful national assimilation. It only reflected the existence of a particular political reality in Macedonia.

Squeezed from every side - by the authority of the Ottoman state as well as by the force of three Balkan nationalisms - the young and weak Macedonian intelligentsia and the movement they led lacked room and a tolerant atmosphere in which to function. In the absence of a Macedonian church, they did not have and legally could not have any institutional foundations on which to base their activities. In these difficult post -1870 conditions the members of the intelligentsia coalesced into two major national orientations: Macedono-Bulgarianism and Macedonianism.

Macedono-Bulgarianism initially represented an endeavor on the part of a section of the Macedonian intelligentsia to reach a compromise with the Bulgarians. Their efforts, however, came to nothing: the victorious Bulgarian movement was in no mood to compromise with them. This rebuke, their own relative weakness, as well as the intensified three-way struggle for Macedonia, which threatened the unity of the land and its people, forced them to make concessions. They abandoned the demand for an autonomous church and accepted the jurisdiction of the Exarchate, and the demand for a compromise Macedonian Bulgarian literary language, and acquiesced in the use of the Bulgarian language in the schools. At the same time, however, they intensified their efforts in defense of the political, cultural and socioeconomic interests of Macedonia and its people, which they clearly defended as being distinct from those of Bulgaria and the Bulgarians.

Although the Macedono-Bulgarians, who were educated in Bulgarian institutions, expected sympathy and support from the Bulgarians, the latter consistently condemned the movement as "political separatism." In fact, it was more than that: it represented authentic Macedonian patriotism and nationalism. By the 1890s the various expressions of Macedonian patriotism coalesced into a popular revolutionary organization, which is best known as the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (VMRO, IMRO). The IMRO raised and successfully propagated among the masses the slogan "Macedonia for the Macedonians" in the struggle for the liberation of Macedonia from Turkish rule. From the outset the IMRO stressed over and over again that the struggle for Macedonia was the exclusive task of the Macedonians.

Macedonianism, the other major trend in the Macedonian national movement, represented a clear and an unambiguous expression of Macedonian national identity and consciousness. This section of the intelligentsia, the Makedonisti, or "national separatists" as the Bulgarians called them, proclaimed the Macedonians a distinct, separate Slav nation. According to them, the Macedonians were neither Bulgarians, nor Serbs, nor Greeks, while the Macedonian speech constituted a separate Slav language somewhere between Bulgarian and Serbian. They condemned all three outside claimants operating in Macedonia and their efforts to divide the Slav Macedonian population into antagonistic groups. Toward the end of the 1880s, numerous secret circles and societies became the focal point of Macedonianism.

Briefly stated, their principal aims were: recognition of the Macedonians as a distinct Slav nation; acceptance of the Macedonian speech as a literary language and its introduction in the schools and administration in Macedonia; reestablishment of the Ohrid Archbishopric as a Macedonian autocephalous church and termination of all foreign propaganda in the land; achievement of autonomy within the Ottoman Empire which would guarantee the unity of the land and the free national development of the Macedonians.

The three-way struggle for Macedonia obviously affected the Macedonian masses as well. But its imprint there was not as deep or lasting as on sections of the intelligentsia. The few years of elementary schooling that some of them received in the schools operated by the relevant propaganda institutions did not turn them into Bulgarian, Greek or Serbian speakers, let alone into conscious Bulgarians, Greeks or Serbians. The consciousness they were developing was shaped by local Macedonian factors: speech, folklore, customs, traditions, local patriotism, social and economic interests, the IMRO, and so forth - all of which distinguished them from their neighbors and outsiders in general. They had a sense of belonging, which colored their perception of themselves and others, and they normally expressed with the dichotomy naš (ours, Macedonian) - čuzd (outsider, foreigner). This prevalent attitude of what we may call

Macedonianism or našism of the masses served as a barrier against the establishment of the foreign national ideologies among the Macedonians.

On the eve of Ilinden, the Macedono-Bulgareonism and Macedonianism of the intelligentsia constituted a duality, a parallel, but at times interlinked, development of Macedonian national consciousness in a political and a territorial sense, on the one hand; and, on the other, of Macedonian national consciousness in an ethnic and cultural sense as well. The Macedonianism (našism) of the masses was an inarticulate, nativist, Macedonian consciousness and identity which survived in all parts of Macedonia well into the 1930s.

And this leads me to the second topic that I wish to examine: Ilinden and the reappraisal of the Macedonian national movement and question.

The impact of Ilinden and its bloody end on the Macedonian identity has not been sufficiently investigated. However, even on the basis of the existing evidence we can draw a realistic appraisal of its short and long-term influence on the shaping of the Macedonian national identity.

There is no doubt that Ilinden was a Macedonian affair. Of course, there were some individuals, even in leading positions, who were Bulgarophiles or even Bulgarian, and who thought and acted in terms of Bulgarian national or state interests. It is also true that with some minor exception, the participants were Exarchist educated members of the intelligentsia or peasants affiliated with Exarchist churches. Hence, they belonged to the Bulgarian party in Macedonia. There was hardly any involvement by members of the Greek (Patriarchist) party or the smaller Serbian party. However, and this needs to be stressed, the Exarchist participants, supporters, and sympathizers were motivated and inspired by Macedonian patriotism and not by their Bulgarian schooling or Exarchist affiliation. They fought against the Turks for the liberation of Macedonia, for a free (slobodna) Macedonia, and not for its annexation to Bulgaria.

The uprising and its tragic end, the failure of Bulgaria to intervene to help the rebels, and finally, the secret Bulgarian-Serbian negotiations in the following year, which also touched on the possible division of Macedonia into spheres of influence, effected the outlook of all segments of the Macedonian national movement. Taken together these events represent a major turning point in the complex Macedonian-Bulgarian relationship. They impacted on the perception of Bulgaria and the Bulgarians among the Macedonians, but particularly among the educated Macedonians, and influenced the shaping of the Macedonian national identity in the following decades.

For the Makedonisti the tragedy of Ilinden confirmed all their worst fears and forebodings. In their view, the revolution, glorious though it was, was a tragic mistake. It was doomed to fail because it involved only one part of the Macedonian people, the Exarchist party. Further, it was totally unrealistic to expect armed support from the Bulgarians, because, according to them, Macedonian and Bulgarian interests were divergent and the latter would not risk its own interests for the sake of the Macedonians. They became even more convinced that the real enemy of Macedonia and the Macedonians at the time were not the Turks, but rather the neighboring Balkan Orthodox nationalisms, including the Bulgarian, who claimed Macedonia and divided the Macedonians against each other. They saw the only salvation for Macedonia and the Macedonians in the termination, with the help of the Ottoman state, of all their divisive activities, and, indeed, their expulsion from Macedonia. This would make possible, they believed, what would have occurred normally and naturally without the constant interference from the outside, namely: the unification of all Slav Macedonians on the basis of a common standardized language, common culture, a common church, and common political and economic interests, which in turn would safeguard the territorial integrity of their land. In short, what they wanted, and Krste Misirkov and the other leading Makedonisti stressed repeatedly at the time, was the unification of all the Slav Macedonians on a strictly Macedonian basis, on the basis of Macedonian patriotism, and within the context and with the help of the Ottoman state. Otherwise, they warned, Macedonia and the Macedonians would be conquered and partitioned by their ambitions and greedy neighbors.

They proved to be true prophets in both respects. Macedonia and the Macedonians were partitioned and divided by force of arm in the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, but a Macedonian nation was also formed on a Macedonian ethnic basis. And their work, in no small measure, established the basis for it.

The events of 1903 and its aftermath had an even greater impact on the Macedono-Bulgarians, the political separatists, particularly those on the Right who tended to be extreme Bulgarophiles and expected Bulgaria to come to their aid. The defeat of the uprising was in fact their own defeat, and it plunged Macedono-Bulgarianism, as a Macedonian national orientation, into a crisis from which it never recovered fully. Their situation was not helped the following year, when Bulgaria appeared to consider, at least in principle, a Serbian proposal for the division of Macedonia into spheres of influence. This came as a shock to the Bulgarophiles among the Macedono-Bulgarians, who looked up to and expected Bulgaria to protect Macedonian interests.

The crisis within the Macedono-Bulgarian camp, which was reflected in the fratricidal infighting and assassinations within the IMRO, was deep and there was no easy way out. Those on the Macedonian left had to acknowledge that the Makedonisti were right. The interests of Bulgarianism and Macedonianism were divergent, Macedonian patriots could not rely on Bulgaria, and victory would be virtually impossible unless all Slav Macedonians united on a strictly Macedonian basis. It was becoming obvious that in the future the Macedono-Bulgarians would have to choose between Macedonianism and Bulgarianism. The interests of the two had become irreconcilably contradictory. They could not be Macedonians and Bulgarians at the same time. This predicament was clearly reflected in the post-Ilinden split of the IMRO between its Macedonian Left and pro-Bulgarian Right; a split which in one form or another had existed from the very inception of the revolutionary organization in 1893. The post-Ilinden crisis, in fact, marked the beginning of the prolonged and agonizing end of Macedono-Bulgarianism as a major trend in the formation of the Macedonian national identity.

The organizational network of the IMRO throughout Macedonia and the ill-fated Ilinden uprising obviously affected the outlook of the Macedonian masses as well. It enhanced their awareness of their land, Macedonia, and of themselves as Macedonians. As I already indicated, the concepts Macedonia and Macedonian had acquired national connotation and coloring before Ilinden among the intelligentsia, the better educated; but not necessarily among the masses of the peasantry, especially in the rural areas. The latter tended to identify most often with a particular region -Kosturčani, Prilepžani, etc., -and the term naš for them embraced the inhabitants of the few neighboring regions. The recent turbulent events, which placed Macedonia on the map of Europe, made them also more conscious of the territorial concept of Macedonia, to which they belonged, and which was larger and more abstract then their region. And their understanding of the concept naš broadened and widened to include larger numbers of inhabitants, Macedonians, speaking Macedonian dialects akin to their own. This was true of Slav Macedonian villagers belonging to the Exarchist or Bulgarian party, but also of those belonging to the Greek and Serbian parties. This was a critical factor, even though not the only one, in the transformation of the peasant, the naš, into a Macedonian, which took place in all parts of Macedonia in the four decades between the turn of the century and the national liberation struggle in the Second World War and its revolutionary aftermath in Macedonia.

And finally, some brief concluding remarks on the consequences of the far-reaching reappraisal of the Macedonian national question which was forced on all segments of the Macedonian movement by Ilinden.

The enormous impact of Ilinden on the shaping of the Macedonian national identity was not evident in the short term, in the immediate aftermath of the uprising. Indeed, during the following two decades organized Macedonian national action came to a virtual standstill. The period was dominated by the international aspects of the Macedonian question - the repeated interventions by the Great Powers, the partition of Macedonia by its neighbors in 1912 -1913, its repartition during the First World War, and the confirmation of the original partition by the peace ending the Great War.

However, the long-term impact of Ilinden and the agonizing reappraisal of the Macedonian national question that followed was far-reaching. It laid the groundwork for the growth and spread of Macedonianism in all parts of Macedonia during the inter-war years. This was accomplished under the direction of movements on the Left and with the support of international communism.

An alliance between the Macedonian Left and the Comintern formed in the very early 1920s. It was more of a marriage of convenience than anything else. The Comintern and the Balkan Communist parties became champions of Macedonia and the Macedonians, because they wanted to exploit the Macedonian problem to create instability in the peninsula and for the cause of Balkan, and, indeed, European revolution. Many Macedonian leftists for their part, looked to the Balkan Communist parties, the only parties to recognize their existence, and the Comintern, because they hoped to use them to further the Macedonian cause: national liberation and unification.

In 1923 - 924 the Comintern made a serious attempt to unite the Macedonian Left and Right and to bring the united movement under Communist influence. The attempt failed and the Macedonian movement finally fractured into two organizations. The Right, which retained the name IMRO and was taken over by Ivan (Vančo) Mihailov, soon degenerated into a self-serving terrorist organization. Although it continued to exploit the patriotic sentiments of the Macedonians, as time went on it was perceived and in fact became, an instrument of Bulgarian and Italian revisionism. For all practical purposes its end, in fact, the end of Macedono-Bulgareonism as an organized force in Macedonia, came after the military coup in Sofia, in May 1934, when the new regime decided that it was more trouble than it was worth. The organization was liquidated and those leaders who did not succeed in escaping were arrested and expelled.

The Left formed its own organization under the name IMRO(Un) in the following year (1925), and until its dissolution in 1936 it attempted to play the part of a Communist-led Macedonian national or popular front. It was recognized at once by the Comintern and accepted as a partner in the Balkan Communist Federation. Furthermore, by the late 1920s the Balkan Communist parties embraced Macedonianism and officially recognized the Macedonians as a distinct Slav nation with its own language, history, culture, territory, and interests. The Comintern's official recognition came in 1934.

As I have already indicated, the alliance between international communism and Macedonian nationalism was a marriage of convenience, which served the interests of both sides at the time. However, there were always sharp differences on the Macedonian question among the Balkan Communist parties, and between their respective national interests and those of Macedonian nationalism. These differences were to prove highly detrimental for the cause of Macedonian liberation and unification later.

In the meantime, however, the line on the Macedonian question, dictated by the Comintern and preached by the Communist parties in the Balkans, was of the utmost importance for the maturing and consolidation of Macedonianism. Their acceptance of the existence of a separate Macedonian ethnic nation represented its first official recognition by an international movement led by a great power, the Soviet Union. More importantly, however, during the late 1920s and particularly the 1930s, the Communist parties and the IMRO (Un) and their numerous legal, semi legal and illegal organs and front organizations in divided Macedonia encouraged and supported not only the growth of class - but also of national consciousness. The party cells and the numerous Macedonian political, cultural, literary and sports groups, clubs, societies, and associations which the IMRO (Un) and the Communist parties sponsored and supported, especially in Skopje, Sofia, Belgrade and Zagreb, became the training ground, the schools, of the nationally conscious Macedonian intelligentsia on the Left. They provided Macedonian nationalism with its first systematic legal or semi legal institutional infrastructure; with a home and with organized bases, which, in the absence of a Macedonian national church, the earlier generations of the Macedonian intelligentsia had not been able to establish in the theocratic Ottoman Empire. And it was under the auspices of such organizations and through the work of their members, of this new generation of the Macedonian intelligentsia, that the different trends and orientations in the Macedonian movement - the Macedonianism (našism) of the masses, the Macedonianism and Macedono-Bulgarianism of the intelligentsia - gradually coalesced into Macedonianism and Macedonian nationalism on the Left.

All in all, these endeavors represented a remarkable affirmation of Macedonian national life, consciousness and thought. As the Makedonisti of the Ilinden period hoped, they prepared the ground for the development of a Macedonian literary language and facilitated the growth of a Macedonian national culture and political thought; that is, they prepared the ground for the completion of the process of the formation of the Macedonian nation.

Andrew Rossos University of Toronto


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