Macedonian Patriotic Organization

[Liberator of Makedonija]

Anyone have any information of the current links between the MPO and UMD?

[Liberator of Makedonija]

Finally got around to reading your book Vic. My main question coming from it is why do you believe some members of the MPO possessed this view that we are simply Bulgarians? It is clear from the evidence you provided that this pattern of thought was not present from the organisation's founding and only began to take shape after Mihajlov came to power.

[vicsinad]

LoM, Thanks for reading the book.

Early on in the book I state that it shouldn't be surprising that a certain number MPO's founders believed that Macedonians were a separate race/nationality. However, I think the evidence is also clear that some MPO members (by all means, not all) held the train of thought that Macedonians were Bulgarians since its inception, such as Jordan Chkatroff and Srebren Poppetrov, who were sent to the US by Aleksandrov to organize the Macedonians. Many of those who were pro-Macedonian had very little involvement in MPO affairs and were out within 6-7 years (at least those involved with MPO on the political side of things; there were many who were only marginally involved who showed no pro-Bulgarian tendencies). Poppetrov referred to the Macedonians as "Bulgarians from Macedonia" in the early 1920s. He pointed out how they were not organized and split between faith and identity, and he helped organize these Macedonians under the Bulgarian name. That was his job. Also, Nizamoff was involved from the beginning and he was constantly referring to the Macedonians as Bulgarians until his death 50 years later.

There's also the Steelton faction of MPO that existed before MPO formation. There were two groups of Steelton Macedonians, one pro-Bulgarian and one pro-Macedonian. The pro-Bulgarian group helped found the MPO and referred to Macedonians as "Bulgarians, Roumanians and Turks from Macedonia," while the other group simply referred to Macedonians as Macedonians.

Thus, I don't think the Bulgarian identity was strong (as a whole for MPO in the beginning), but it was indeed nevertheless present in the beginning and evolved as the years went on. Instead of shaking off Bulgarian propaganda, they embraced it and moulded it into their Macedono-Bulgarian identity.

[Liberator of Makedonija]

Yeah they did seem to form their own little identity not quite Macedonian but not fully Bulgarian either. Odd lot that's for sure. Gotta wonder how conscious the rank-and-file were of the biases up top.