Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committee

In the earliest dated samples of statutes and regulations of the clandestine Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) discovered so far, it is called Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianopolitan Revolutionary Committees (BMARC)., These documents refer to the then Bulgarian population in the Ottoman Empire, which was to be prepared for a general uprising in Macedonia and Adrianople regions, aiming to achieve political autonomy for them. In thе statute of BMARC, that itself is most probably the first one, the membership was reserved exclusively for Bulgarians. This ethnic restriction matches with the memoirs of some founding and ordinary members, where is mentioned such a requirement, set only in the Organization's first statute.This formulation was understood then primarily as referring to the Bulgarian Exarchists, who in those conditions were synonymous with the name "Bulgarians". Apart from them, the Bulgarian Uniates from the Kukush region and the Bulgarian Protestants from the Razlog region were among the first to be drawn into the IMRO. Both, the former and the latter were distinguished by their Bulgarian national self-awareness. For more see: Дмитрий Олегович Лабаури (2008) Болгарское национальное движение в Македонии и Фракии в 1894-1908 гг. Идеология, программа, практика политическои борьбы. БАН, , стр. 137. In fact, the founders of IMRO were sympathetic to Bulgarian, but hostile to the Serbian nationalism, which led them to establish in 1897 a Society against Serbs. The organization's ethnic character is confirmed by the lack of any mention of Macedonian ethnicity. The name of BMARC, as well as information about its statute, was mentioned in the foreign press of that time, in Bulgarian diplomatic correspondence, and exists in the memories of some revolutionaries and contemporaries.Цочо Билярски, Още един път за първите устави и правилници и за името на ВМОРО преди Илинденско-Преображенското Въстание от 1903 г. В сборник Дойно Дойнов. 75 години наука, мъдрост и достойнство, събрани в един живот. ВСУ "Черноризец Храбър"; 2004, .

Due to the lack of original protocol documentation, and the fact its early organic statutes were not dated, the first statute of the Organisation is uncertain and is a subject to dispute among researchers. The dispute also includes its first name and ethnic character, as well as the authenticity, dating, validity, and authorship of its supposed first statute. Moreover, in North Macedonia, any Bulgarian influence on the country's history is a source of ongoing disputes and sharp tensions, thus such historical influences are often rejected by Macedonian researchers in principle. Certain contradictions and even mutually exclusive statements, along with inconsistencies exist in the testimonies of the founding and other early members of the Organization, which further complicates the solution of the problem. It is not yet clear whether the earliest statutory documents of the Organization have been discovered. Its earliest basic documents discovered for now, became known to the historical community during the early 1960s.

The revolutionary organization set up in November 1893 in Ottoman Thessaloniki changed its name several times before adopting in 1919 in Sofia, Bulgaria its last and most common name i.e. Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). The repeated changes of name of the IMRO has led to an ongoing debate between Bulgarian and Macedonian historians, as well as within the Macedonian historiographical community.Alexis Heraclides, The Macedonian Question and the Macedonians: A History. Routledge, 2020, , pp. 40-41. The crucial question is to which degree the Organization had a Bulgarian ethnic character and when it tried to open itself to the other Balkan nationalities. As a whole, its founders were inspired by the earlier Bulgarian revolutionary traditions. Such activists believed that Slavic Macedonian society was reproducing the Bulgarian National Revival with a time lag. All its basic documents were written in the pre-1945 Bulgarian orthography. The first statute of the IMRO was modelled after the statute of the earlier Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee (BRCC). IMRO adopted from BRCC also its symbol: the lion, and its motto: Svoboda ili smart. All its six founders were closely related to the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki. They were native to the region of Macedonia, and some of them were influenced from anarcho-socialist ideas, which gave to organisation's basic documents slightly leftist leaning.

The first statute was drawn up in the winter of 1894. In the summer of the same year, the first congress of the organization took place in Resen. At this meeting, Ivan Tatarchev was elected as its first head. The draft of the first statute was approved there, while the drafting of its first regulations was commissioned. The occasion for convening this meeting was the celebration on the consecration of the newly built Bulgarian Exarchate church in the town in August 1894. It was decided at the meeting to preferably recruit teachers from the Bulgarian schools as committee members. Of the sixteen members who attended the group’s first congress, fourteen were Bulgarian schoolteachers. Schoolteachers were en masse involved in the committee's activity, and the Ottoman authorities considered the Bulgarian schools then "nests of bandits". On the eve of the 20th century IMRO was often called by the Ottoman authorities "the Bulgarian Committee", hence the Ottomans considered it to be Bulgarian in its
national orientation, while its members were designated as '' Comitadjis'', i.e. "committee men".

Memoirs' controversy

Contradictions, inconsistencies and even mutually exclusive statements exist in the testimonies of the founding and other early members of the Organization on the issue. According to the founding member Hristo Tatarchev's пemoirs, there were created two structures with the first statute from 1894: an organization and its central committee. He mentions as their names "Macedonian Revolutionary Organization" (MRO) and a "Central Macedonian Revolutionary Committee" (CMRC) and clarifies that the word "Bulgarian" was subsequently dropped from their names. It is not clear, if its first name was simply MRO, how the definition "Bulgarian" was dropped from it subsequently. However, Tatarchev notes that he doesn't remember the first name very clearly.In his memoirs from 1928 Tatarchev, when mentioning Organization's first name and structure, noted that he does not remember them very clearly, making the remark: "as far as I can remember." So far, no statutes or other basic documents with a similar name have been discovered from this period. According to Macedonian specialist Ivan Katardziev, the Organization never bore an official name MRO. In Tatarchev's own recollections from 1936 he maintains that in the first statute, the membership was allowed for every Bulgarian, and that the possibility for membership of other nationalities was open in 1896 in a new statute. Tatarchev also clarified that the word "Bulgarian" was subsequently dropped from the name of the Organization, because the autonomous principle, required the founders to avoid everything that aroused suspicion of nationalism among the other nationalities. It seems he had mix up in his different memoires the circumstances from the first and from the second congresses of IMRO, hold in 1894 and 1896 respectively, when a different statutes were adopted. On the other hand, according to the founding member Gyorche Petrov, the Organization was designated initially a "Committee", and its first name was "Committee for acquiring the political rights of Macedonia, given to it by the Treaty of Berlin".ВМОРО през погледа на нейните основатели. Спомени на Дамян Груев, д-р Христо Татарчев, Иван Хаджиниколов, Антон Димитров, Петър Попарсов. Съст. Т. Петров, Ц. Билярски. Св. Георги Победоносец; София, 2002, ; с. 203-207. Per Tatarchev, the founders of the IMRO had Zahari Stoyanov's memoir about the April Uprising of 1876, in which the statute of the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee (BRCC) was published, which they took as a model for the organization's first statute. According to Tatarchev, the Adrianople region was included in the organization's program in 1895, while this decision was implemented practically in 1896. However, per (1869-1933) Dame Gruev commissioned him to start the construction of the committee network in Adrianople region in 1895. Thus, in September 1895, the first revolutionary committee was founded in Bulgarian Men's High School of Adrianople

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