Land to the Tiller: On the Neglected Agrarian Component of the Macedonian Revolutionary Movement

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 Organization‟s 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 region‟s Christian population, and the raison d‟état 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 Organization‟s upper echelons.

The voices and aspirations of the movement‟s rank and file (better known as komitadjis) are usually lost or neglected, the latter‟s orientations considered more or less an affair of elite decisions, not the result of interaction between the Organization‟s 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.

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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 IMRO‟s 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 movement‟s 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 Organization‟s 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 IMRO‟s project for protracted guerilla warfare as a vehicle for attaining the region‟s 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 peninsula‟s

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For an early acknowledgment of this relation, albeit openly hostile to both IMRO and its descendants: Stephen Fischer-Galaţi, «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 Νίθνο ΢ηγάιαο, «Ηζηνξηνγξαθία θαη ηζηνξία ησλ πξαθηηθώλ ηεο γξαθήο: έλα πξννίκην ζηελ ηζηνξία ηνπ ζρεκαηηζκνύ ηεο έλλνηαο Διιεληζκόο», in Π. Κηηξνκειίδεο - Σ. ΢θιαβελίηεο (eds), Θζηνξηνγξαθία ηεο λεόηεξεο θαη ζύγρξνλεο Ειιάδαο, Athens 2004, vol.I, p.103-48.

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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 Paşa 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 town‟s 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 city‟s 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 city‟s 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

Η.Κ. Βαζδξαβέιιεο, Οη Μαθεδόλεο θαηά ηελ επαλάζηαζηλ ηνπ 1821, Salonica 1967, p.131. In 1913, 69 out of Chalkidiki‟s 167 villages were dependencies (κεηόρηα) owned by Mount Athos monasteries (Γεώξγηνο Παιακηώηεο, Γεωξγηθή έξεπλα ηεο Μαθεδνλίαο, Athens 1914, p.191). For the genealogy of this ownership, going back to the late Byzantine and early Ottoman times: Ζιίαο Κνινβόο, «Καηάιεςε ηνπ ρώξνπ θαη κνλαζηεξηαθή ηδηνθηεζία ζηελ νζσκαληθή Υαιθηδηθή (15 νο-16νο αη.)», in Τν Άγηνλ Όξνο ζηνλ 15ν θαη 16ν αηώλα, Salonica 2012, p.107-26.

7 Απόζηνινο Βαθαιόπνπινο, Θζηνξία ηεο Μαθεδνλίαο, 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 Βαζδξαβέιιεο 1967, p.178; Δπζηάζνο ΢ηνπγηαλλάθεο, Θζηνξία ηεο πόιεωο Νανύζεο, Edessa 1924, p.135 & 147-8.

10 Finlay 1861, p.251-2 & 254; ΢ηνπγηαλλάθεο 1924, p.128-34; Βαζδξαβέιιεο 1967, p.122- & 177; Βαθαιόπνπινο 1988, p.5512; Ν.Γ. Φηιηππίδεο, Η επαλάζηαζηο θαη θαηαζηξνθή ηεο Νανύζεο, Athens 1881, p.41-3.

11 Βαζδξαβέιιεο 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 (Monastırlı, Uskuplı, “from Bitolja‟ etc): Николай Тодоров – Веселин Трайков, Българи участници в борбите за ослобождението на Гърция (1821-1828), Sofia 1971.

12 L.S. Stavrianos, The Balkans since 1453, Hinsdale 1958, p.364-80; Николай Генчев, Българското Възраждане, Sofia 1995; Зина Маркова, Българската Екзархия 1870-1879, Sofia 1989.

13 Αλδξέαο Λπκπεξάηνο, Οηθνλνκία, πνιηηηθή θαη εζληθή ηδενινγία. Η δηακόξθωζε ηωλ εζληθώλ θνκκάηωλ ζηε Φηιηππνύπνιε ηνπ 19νπ αηωλα, Herakleion 2009; Andreas Lyberatos, “Men of the Sultan: the beğlik sheep tax collection and the rise of a Bulgarian national bourgeoisie in nineteenth-century Plovdiv”, Turkish Historical Review, 1 (2010), p.55-85.

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(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 movement‟s 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 party‟s ideology was composed by its responses to a common set of questions about the area‟s (and the respective ethnic group‟s) 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 center‟s) 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

Васил Кънчов, Избрани Произведения, vol.II, Sofia 1970, p.155-7. Цариградски Вестник (Istanbul), 7.5.1860, p.2-3, letter from Ohrid, 15.4.1860; Евтим Спространов, «По възражденьето в град Охрид», Сборник на Народни Умотворения, Наука и Книжнина, 13 (1896), p.631-2.

16 Кирил Патриарх Български, Българското население в Македония в борбата за създаване на Екзархията, Sofia 1971, p.47-8.

17 Туше Влахов, Кукуш и неговото минало, Sofia 1969, p.88-91; ΗΑΤΔ 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 Васил Кънчов, Македония. Пътеписи, Sofia 2000, p.339-40 & 363; Съветник (Istanbul), 21.10.1863, p.3, and 2.12.1863, p.4, letters from Nevrokop dated 26.9.1863 and 4.11.1863; Αλαηνιηθόο Αζηήξ (Istanbul), 24.3.1965, p.3-4, letter from Nevrokop, 25.2.1865.

19 Стефан Салгънджиев, Лични дела и спомени по възраждането на солунските и серски Българи, Plovdiv 1906, p.29; Μαλνπήι Γεδεώλ, Έγγξαθα παηξηαξρηθά θαη ζπλνδηθά πεξί ηνπ Βνπιγαξηθνύ Ζεηήκαηνο, Constantinople 1908, p.472-3; Арсени Костенцев, Спомени, Sofia 1983, p.32; Αζαλάζηνο Αγγειόπνπινο, Βόξεηνο Μαθεδνλία. Ο Ειιεληζκόο ηεο Σηξωκλίηζεο, 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.

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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 Gogol‟s 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 rest”23. 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 (çiftlik) 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 çiftliks, cultivated not only by ardent supporters of the Bulgarian party, as a reward for their 21

«Книжина», Свобода (Sofia), 12.2.1892, p.3; Вардарски [Петър Поп-Арсов], Стамболовщината в Македония и нейните представители, Wien [=Sofia] 1894, p.35; Христо Коцев «Страници из спомените ми», Македония, 11.1922 , p.51-2; А.В. Амфитеатров, Земjа на раздорот, Skopje 1990 (ˡ Moscow 1903), p.46; Коста Църнушанов, Македонизмът и съпротивата на Македония срещу него, Sofia 1992, p.34; A΢ηΓ/116/109, Bisop Parthenios of Polyani, «Δπαξρία Πνιπαλήο», Salonica 20.8.1900; ΗΑΤΔ/1900/68, Α. Papapavlou to MFA A. Romanos, Serres 31.8.1900, No.272; ΗΑΤΔ 1901/65, Α. Arvanitis to the President of the Committee for the Reinforcement of Greek Church and Education, Bitola 4.1.1899; ΗΑΤΔ 1904/76, Α.

Naltsas to Consul K. Kypraios, Monastir 6.6.1903; Λεσλίδαο Παξαζθεπόπνπινο, Βαιθαληθνί πόιεκνη (1912-1913). Επηζηνιέο πξνο ηε ζύδπγό ηνπ Κνύια, Athens 1998, p.242.

22 Vladimir Karić to Prime Minister Sava Gruić, Skoplje 11.1.1891, Νν.13, in Клемент Џамбазовски, Грађа за историjу македонског народа из Архива Србиjе. 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 Γηώξγνο Πεηζίβαο (ed.), Τα ηεηξάδηα ηνπ Ίιηληελ, Athens 2000, p.629.

25 For a comprehensive survey of these projects: ΢πύξνο Καξάβαο, “Μαθάξηνη νη θαηέρνληεο ηελ γελ”. Γαηνθηεηηθνί ζρεδηαζκνί πξνο απαιινηξίωζηλ ζπλεηδήζεωλ ζηε Μαθεδνλία, Athens 2010. See also: Tassos Kostopoulos, «How the North was won. Épuration ethnique, échange des populations et politique de colonisation dans la Macédoine grecque», European Journal of Turkish Studies 12 (2011), http://ejts.revues.org/4437, § 9-12; Γηάλλεο Παπαδόπνπινο, «΢ρέδηα επνηθηζκνύ πξηλ από ηελ ειιελνηνπξθηθή αληαιιαγή πιεζπζκώλ», Μλήκωλ, 32 (2012), p.149-74.

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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 measure‟s 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 çiftliks 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 Organization‟s 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 taxation”30. 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

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ЦДА, ф.246к, оп.1, а.е.313, л.125, K. Gerov to MFA D. Stančov, Serres 29.8.1907, Νν.565. ЦДА, ф.246к, оп.1, а.е.462, л.55-6, Archimandrite Cyril to Exarch Joseph, Drama 14.7.1912, Νν 1310.

28 ЦДА, ф.246к, оп.1, а.е.313, л.18, MFA St. Paprikov to Exarch Joseph, Sofia 23.2.1908, No.1308; ЦДА, ф.246к, оп.1, а.е.311, л.100, MFA St. Paprikov to Exarch Joseph, Sofia 21.6.1908, No.4861.

29 Стефан Лафчиев, Спомени за Българската Екзархия, Sofia 1994, p.104-5 & 111.

30 On the earlier IMRO development, up to the 1903 Ilinden uprising, see my forthcoming book: Σάζνο Κσζηόπνπινο, Κνκηηαηδήδεο. Η άγλωζηε καθεδνληθή επαλάζηαζε, 1893-1903, Athens 2015. For two classic semi-official narratives, originating from the Organization‟s rival wings (pro-Bulgarian Right and Macedonian nationalist Left, respectively): Христо Силянов, Освободителните борби на Македония, 2 vols, Sofia 1933 & 1943; Ангел Динев, Илинденската епопеjа, 2 vols, Bitola 1987 (¹Sofia 1945 - Skopje 1949). For more recent treatises, representative of the respective national historiographies: Национално-освободителното движение на македонските българи, vol.II (1893-1903), Sofia 1995; Димитар Димески, Македонското националноослободително движение во битолскиот вилает (1893-1903), Skopje 1982; Ванчо Ѓоргиев, Слобода или смрт. Македонското револуционерно националноослободително движение во солунскиот вилает 18931903 година, Skopje 2003.

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“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 Organization‟s 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 Organization‟s 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 organization‟s 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 organization‟s 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 Organization‟s 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

П.К. Яворов, Гоце Делчев, Sofia1972, p.73-4; Дино Кьосев (ed.), Гоце Делчев. Писма и други материали, Sofia 1967, p.273-7; Ива Бурилкова – Цочо Билярски (eds), Из архива на Гоце Делчев, Sofia 2003, p.506-8. See also: Philip Shashko, «Gotse Delchev and G‟orche Petrov on permanent internal war and general uprising», in Илинденско-Преображенското въстание от 1903 година, 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: Πεηζίβαο 2000, ζ.499-501; Васил Чекаларов, Дневник, Sofia 2001, p. 48, 51, 55, 61-3, 65-9, 89, 99-101, 105, 109-10, 117-9, 122, 128-9 & 171; Славейко Арсов, Въстаническото движение в Югозападна Македония (до 1904 г.), Sofia 1925, p.19-26; Пандо Кляшев, Освободителната борба в Костурско (до 1904 г.), Sofia 1925, p.60-1; Любомир Милетич, Борбата в Костурско и Охридско, Sofia 1926, p.74-8; Иван Попов, «Борбата в Костурско», in Л. Милетич (ed.), Борбата в Костурско и Охридско, Sofia 1926, p.14-5 & 24; Яне Сандански, «Спомени», in Л. Милетич (ed.), Движението отсам Вардара и борбата с върховистите, Sofia 1927, p.34; Алексо Стефанов, Революционната дейност в Демирхисар (Битолско), Sofia 1931, p.7-8; Стойче Кузманов, «Гоче Делчев в с. Загоричани», Илюстрация Илинден, 9-10/49-50 (910.1933), p.21-2; Никола Петров Русински, Спомени, Skopje 1997, p. 137-41 & 241-59; Васил Драгомиров, «Спомени за Македония», in Б. Николов (ed.), Борбите в Македония, Sofia 2005, p.164-7; ЦДА, ф.1932к, оп.2, а.е.185, л.5-6, Георги Радев, «Биографични данни», ρ.η., 10.1.1926; ЦДА, ф.1932к, оп.4, а.е.80, л.1, «Спомени на Георги Костов Пулков»; ЦДА, ф.1932к, оп.2, а.е.170, л.1, «Автобиография на Ламбри Петков Топузов»; Α΢ηΓ/207/85, Παπαθσλζηαληίλνο ηεξεύο Νεξεηίνπ, «Έθζεζηο ησλ ΢πκκνξηώλ ηεο Μαθεδνλίαο», n.d.; Α΢ηΓ/206/234, «Υξνληθόλ Παπαξγπξίνπ εθ Ενππαλίζηεο», n.d.; ΗΑΤΔ 1902/64, Pope Stavros Tsiamou to „His Beatitude‟, [Pisoder] 26.2.1902; ΗΑΤΔ 1902/65, Η. Iossif to Prime Minister Al. Zaimis, Salonica 16.9.1902, no.345 confidential.

33 La Macédoine et le vilayet d‟ Andrinople (1893-1903). Mémoire de l‟ Organisation Intérieure, [Sofia] 1904, in passim.

34 Христо Матов, Македонска революционна система. Съчинения, Sofia 2001, p.78 & 72. The document was first published in 1905.

35 La Macédoine et le vilayet d‟ Andrinople, op.cit., p.68-81, 104 & 109-72.

7

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 Paşa, 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 Macedonians”37 –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 content”39.

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 Perry‟s “Politics of Terror”41, 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

Цочо Билярски – Ива Бурилкова (eds), Вътрешната Македоно-Одринска Революционна Организация (1893-1919 г.). Документи на централните ръководни органи, Sofia 2007, vol.I, p.599-600.

37 «Ce que dit Hilmi Pacha. Interview du „Vice-Roi‟ de Macédoine», Le Matin (Paris), 27.11.1904, p.2.

38 Réné Pinon, L‟Europe et l‟Empire Ottoman, Paris 1908, p.143-4.

39 For an excellent survey of the evolution of these official historiographies under “actually existing socialism”: Tchavdar Marinov, «L‟impasse du Passé. La Construction de l‟identité nationale macédonienne et le conflit politico-historiographique entre la Bulgarie et la Macédoine», PhD Thesis, EHESS, Paris 2006, p.318-641.

40 Fischer-Galaţi 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.

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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 peasant‟s mind”46; 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, Perry‟s 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 Goće Delčev in 1902, as well as the indexes of both IMRO‟s 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 Moore‟s masterpiece on the Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1966), is used by the author in a obviously misleading way. Although Perry acknowledges Moore‟s 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 didn‟t exist between Moslem çiftlik owners and their Macedonian Christian sharecroppers. Moore‟s book is therefore invoked as a proof of the peasantry‟s 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 Perry‟s book.

The latter‟s 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, «Μαθξόλεζνο 1950: πξόηππν γηα ηε Γεξκαλία ηνπ Φπρξνύ Πνιέκνπ;», in Θζηνξηθό ηνπίν θαη ζπιινγηθή κλήκε. Τν παξάδεηγκα ηεο Μαθξνλήζνπ, 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 Kljašev, Perry skips for example completely the crucial information that the organization‟s initial success resulted from a victorious peasant struggle against the local tax farmer (see below).

50 Perry 1988, p.180-2.

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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 organization‟s 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 Adanır. 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 Adanır‟s analysis is based on the limited weight of the çiftliks on the Macedonian economy and on the fact that their inhabitants constituted only a minority of the region‟s 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 çiftliks 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, Adanır thus conceded that the shortage of arable land felt by “self-employed Christian villagers, especially in mountainous regions”, while çiftlik 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 (Сандански 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 (Борис Сарафов, «Спомени», in Л. Милетич, Спомени на Дамян Груев, Борис Сарафов и Иван Гарванов, 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” (Иван Анастасов-Гърчето, «Спомени», in Л. Милетич, Движението…, 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 Exarchate‟s secretary in order to influence European audiences claimed only 897.160 adherents of the Exarchate all over Macedonia (D.M. Brancoff [Димитър Мишев], La Macédoine et sa population chrétienne, Paris 1905, p.240-6). In secret, they were estimated by the same author between 692.000 and 728.000 (ЦДА, ф.1546к, оп.1, а.е.390, л.1-8, «Статистика на населението в Македония според сведения от 1912 год. Предварителни резултати, август 1912 г.»; ЦДА, ф.1546к, оп.1, а.е.382, л.1-3, «Брой на българите в Европейска Турция по вилаети и кази, 1910 г.»; ЦДА, ф.1546к, оп.1, а.е.380, л.1-4, «Брой на Българите в Европейска Турция по епархии и кази, за 1909/10 учебна година»).

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 Exarchate‟s 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 Adanır, «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 Adanır, «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 Adanır, 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 Христо Христов, Аграрните отношения в Македония през XIX в. и началото на XX в., Sofia 1964, p.99.

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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 çiftlik 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 çiftliks to small proprietors was five to one”57.

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 Miletić) 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 Bulgaria‟s 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

Adanır 1979, p.41.

Basil Gounaris, Steam over Macedonia, 1870-1912, Boulder 1993, p.19.

58 Brailsford 1906, p.45-6; Γ.Ν. Κνθηλάο, Τα νηθνλνκηθά ηεο Μαθεδνλίαο, 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 Симеон Радев, Ранни спомени, Sofia 1994, p.46-7; Α΢Ν/4/ΗΗΗ/352, «Έθζεζηο ησλ γεγνλόησλ θαη ηεο θαηαζηάζεσο ελ ηε πεξηθεξεία Θεζζαινλίθεο θαηά ην έηνο 1908», n.d. [early 1909], p.13.

60 See for example the memoirs of IMRO‟s co-founder, Dame Gruev, in comparison with an early comrade‟s reminiscences of him: Даме Груев, «Спомени», in Л. Милетич, Спомени на Дамян Груев, Борис Сарафов и Иван Гарванов, Sofia 1927, p.10; Рафаел Камхи, Аз войводата Скендер Бей, Sofia 2000, p.169-71. For Miletić‟s leading role in the creation of the Charitable Committee: Светлозар Елдъров, «Македоно-одринските благотворителни братства в Княжество България (1903-1906 г.)», in Национално-освободителното движение на македонските българи, 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 Александър Гребенаров - Веседин Трайков, «Легални националноосвободителни организации на македонските българи», in Национално-освободителното движение на македонските българи, vol.IV (1919-1934), Sofia 2003, p.225-6.

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question during the revolutionary struggle itself” is advertised there as one of the biggest achievements of the IMRO‟s “state within a state”62.

Even so, some of these memoirs provide us with interesting information about the “solution of the agrarian problem” undertaken by the Macedonian revolutionaries. Pando Kljačev, for example, stressed that IMRO‟s 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 çorbacis [Christian notables], because they were enslaved economically by them”66.

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 Kožuh 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 forest‟s 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 révolutionnaire en Macédoine, Skopje 1917, p.87-91. Кляшев 1925, p.13-14.

64 Арсов 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: Михаил Герджиков, В Македония и Одринско, Sofia 1928, p.39.

67 Андон Кьосето, «Спомени», in И. Бурилкова – Ц. Билярски (eds), Македония в пламъци, Sofia 2003, p.31-33.

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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 practice”69, 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 Organization‟s promises to the peasants about a favorable solution of the agrarian question as the main motive of the latter‟s successes. The most emphatic description of this trend is found in a report by the chargé d‟affaires 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 çiftliks 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. Everybody‟s 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 peasant‟s 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 Брут [Христо Матов], Що бяхме – що сме, Sofia 1905, p.25-6.

70 Брут 1905, p.25; Арсов 1925, p.29-30.

71 Πεηζίβαο 2000, p.145; Ίδαο [=Ίσλ Γξαγνύκεο], «Εσή ρσξηάηηθε», Μαθεδνληθόλ Ηκεξνιόγηνλ, 1 (1908), p.246; „Kalmidis‟ to E. Kaoudis, [Monastir] n.d., in Άγγεινο Υνηδίδεο, Επζύκηνο Κανύδεο. Απνκλεκνλεύκαηα (1903-1907), Salonica 1996, p.176-7.

72 Ησάλλεο Καξαβίηεο, Ο Μαθεδνληθόο Αγώλ. Απνκλεκνλεύκαηα, Athens 1994, p.577-80 & 583.

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the allotted plot”73. 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 diplomat‟s 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 land”75. 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 state‟s 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 Tošev, compiled in early 1904 and dealing with the agrarian question in the Consulate‟s domain. Having described the poverty and “virtual slavery” suffered by the landless sharecroppers and rural workers in the kazas of Kastoria and Florina, Tošev 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 çiftliks begun to react to the ağa‟s 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 ağas hit those among their slaves who dared to complain and stand up to their master. In the Agency‟s archives you distinguish the names of many among those killed.

However, instead of been frightened, the peasants became bolder in their animosity towards the ağas.

Many of them, thirsty for revenge, left their homes and joined the bands which had already appeared.

Fearful ağas did not even dare to visit their çiftliks” 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 IMRO‟s “promise that they will be made owners of the soil

73

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

For a documentation of the father‟s superintendence of the suppression of the 1910 peasant movement: Ηόο, «Κηιειέξ. Σα ληνθνπκέληα ηεο εμέγεξζεο», Ειεπζεξνηππία, 6.3.1996, p.24-5.

75 ΑΗΓ/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 Πεηζίβαο 2000, p.199).

76 Ίδαο, Μαξηύξωλ θαη εξώωλ αίκα, Athens ²1914, p.18-9.

77 Bulgarian Trade Agency (A. Tošev) to the Prime Minister and MFA, General Račo Petrov, Monastir 24.4.1904, No.319, in Тодор Добриянов, «Документ за икономическото и политическото състояние на битолския вилает след илинденскопреображенското въстание», Македонски Преглед, 1 (2002), p.134.

78 Κσλζηαληίλνο Μαδαξάθεο-Αηληάλ, Μαθεδνληθόο Αγώλ 1903-1908, Salonica [1937], p.9; Αιέμαλδξνο Μαδαξάθεο-Αηληάλ, Απνκλεκνλεύκαηα, Athens 1948, p.60; Πεξηθιήο Αξγπξόπνπινο, Απνκλεκνλεύκαηα, Athens 1970, p.44.

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and their debts to the money-lenders wiped off”79, 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 bey”80.

Last but not least, such a radical agrarian agenda left also its imprint on the organization‟s 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 çiftliks85.

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 latter‟s insurrectionary strategy gave way to initiatives that aimed at satisfying more immediate needs of its constituencies. This pragmatic turn was followed

by IMRO‟s 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 organization‟s agrarian policies from 1905 until 1908, when the Young Turk 79

Robert Graves to Ambassador N. O‟Conor, Salonica 31.7.1903, Νν.231, in Τα γεγνλόηα ηνπ 1903 ζηε Μαθεδνλία κέζα από ηελ επξωπαϊθή δηπιωκαηηθή αιιεινγξαθία, Salonica 1993, p.73.

80 Brailsford 1906, p.210.

81 Милетич, 1926, p.95 & 142; Сарафов 1927, p.95; Стефанов 1931, p.16-7; Μαδαξάθεο-Αηληάλ 1937, p.16; Τα γεγνλόηα ηνπ 1903, op.cit., p.183; Георги Поп-Христов, Революционната борба в Битолския окръг. Спомени, Sofia 1953, p.62; Христофор Тзавелла, Дневник на костурския войвода Лазар Киселинчев, Sofia 2003, p.86; Κσλζηαληίλνο Βαθαιόπνπινο, «Ο ειιεληζκόο ηεο πεξηνρήο Μνξηρόβνπ Μνλαζηεξίνπ θαηά ηνλ Μαθεδνληθό αγώλα. Ζ πεξίπησζε ηνπ άγλσζηνπ καθεδνλνκάρνπ Πέηξνπ ΢νπγαξάθε», Βαιθαληθά Σύκκεηθηα, 1 (1981), p.140-1; ΗΑΤΔ/1904/75, Δ. Evgeniadis to Prime Minister D. Rallis, Salonica 31.8.1903, No.337 conf.; ΑΓΣΒ/2/6, G. Perros et al. to G. Tsontos, Volos 25.8.1903. For the relevant orders by local IMRO organs: Билярски – Бурилкова 2007, p.302-3; Васил Чекаларов, Дневник, Sofia 2001, p.234.

82 Blue Book, 1(1904), p.262; Πεηζίβαο 2000, p.194-206; Brailsford 1906, p.149; Милетич 1926, p.102-3, 106 & 127; Силянов 1933, p.294-5 & 309; Данчо Зографски, Извештаи од 1903-1904 година на австриските претставници во Македониjа, Skopje 1955, p.73;Александар Стоjановски, Турски документи за Илинденското востание, Skopje 1993, p.73, 79, 96 & 115-25; ΗΑΤΔ 1903/50, L. Enyalis to MFA, Elassona 15.8.1903, No.330.

83 Милетич 1926, p.105.

84 Blue Book, 1(1904), p.262; Стоjановски 1993, p.73, 118 & 138; Γ. Φηιηππίδεο, «Σξαπκαηηζκόο ηνπ νκνγελνύο Υξεζηάθε», Αθξόπνιηο (Athens), 13.8.1903, p.4.

85 Πεηζίβαο 2000, p.198.

86 Силянов 1943; Νηθόιανο Βιάρνο, Τν Μαθεδνληθόλ ωο θάζηο ηνπ Αλαηνιηθνύ Ζεηήκαηνο, 1878-1908, Athens 1935, p.294-527; Douglas Dakin, The Greek Struggle in Macedonia, 1897-1912, Salonica 1966, p.146-374; Светлозар Елдъров, Сръбската въоръжена пропаганда в Македония (1901-1912), Sofia 1993; Биљана Вучетић, «Српска револуционарна организациjа у османском царству на почетку ΥΥ века», Историjски Часопис, 53 (2006), p.359-74; Глигор Тодоровски, «Српската четничка организациjа и неjзината активност во Македониjа», Гласник, 12/1 (1968), p.181-204.

87 For the main narratives of this split forwarded by IMRO‟s right and left wing, see Силянов 1943 and MacDermott 1988, respectively.

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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 Organization”88 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 IMRO‟s 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 çiftliks 91; the next regional congress, convened in July 1906 and dominated by the organization‟s 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 Štip 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 Organization‟s 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 enemy‟s) finances than the work of conventional tax collectors96. Dominated by IMRO‟s 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 Organization‟s 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

«Директива за бъдешата дейност на Вьтрешната организация», in Билярски – Бурилкова 2007, p.344. «Циркулар Νν.2», ib.id, p.581-2.

90 П. Пенчев, «Економичката политика на Организацията», Революционен Лист, 19 (25.8.1905), p.4-7.

91 «Протокол от Първия редовен Скопски окръжен революционен конгрес», in Билярски – Бурилкова 2007, p.439.

92 «Протоколи от заседанията на Втория редовен конгрес на Скопски революционнен окръг», ib.id., p.621-3.

93 «Резолюция на Втория редовен конгрес на Серския революционнен окръг», ib.id., p.643.

94 IAYE 1906/72, M. Tsamados to the MFA, Serres 19.6.1906, No.162.

95 Силянов 1943, p.410-1˙ Мите Хаджимишев, «Спомени», in И. Бурилкова – Ц. Билярски (eds), Македония в пламъци, Sofia 2003, p.179˙ ЦДА, ф.176к, оп.1, а.е.1876, л.294, Α. Šopov to Prime Minister R. Petrov, Salonica 3.6.1904, Νν.473.

96 Билярски – Бурилкова 2007, p.439 & 489; Пенчев 1905, p.6.

97 «Резолюция на Втория редовен конгрес...», op.cit., p.642-3; «Протоколи от заседанията на Третия редовен окръжен конгрес на Серския революционен окръг», ib.id., p.728.

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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 IMRO‟s prohibition of çiftlik purchase by Christian landowners or entrepreneurs, coupled with a declaration by its 1905 general congress in favor of “the struggles of the çiftlik 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 çiftliks when the owners had no access to alternative manpower100, destruction of the çiftlik 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 Organization‟s centre of gravity after 1904, from the “free” mountainous communities that served as its initial power base to the lowland çiftlik regions (Yenice Vardar, Niaušta, 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 latter‟s 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 çiftlik 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

«Протоколи от заседанията...», op.cit., p.621-3. «Циркулар Νν.2», op.cit, p.582.

100 Билярски – Бурилкова 2007, p.466 & 468.

101 Blue Book, 4 (1904), p.81-2 & 96; Blue Book, 3 (1908), p.232 & 237; Христов 1964, p.170; Алексо Мартулков, Моето учество во револуционерните борби на Македониjа, Skopje 1954, p.100-1; Иван Катарџиев, «Документи за деjноста и положбата на револуционерната организациjа во велешка околиjа во 1904-1905 година», Гласник, 7/2 (1963), p.256; Симон Дракул, Македониjа меѓу автономиjата и дележот. Зборник руска дипломатическа документациjа (1894-1913), vol.IV, Kumanovo 1998, p.413; ЦДА, ф.176к, оп.1, а.е.1876, л.307, A. Šopov to G. Načović, Salonica 17.6.1904, Νν.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.; ΗΑΤΔ 1906/82, Salonica Consulate to MFA, Salonica 18[-21].8.1906, No.436 conf.; ΗΑΤΔ 1907/89, F. Kondogouris to MFA, Salonica 6.2.1907, No. 57 conf., and 11.4.1907, No. 191.

102 Катарџиев 1963, p.256; Величко Георгиев - Стайко Трифонов, Македония и Тракия в борба за свобода, 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 Христов 1964, p.170; ΗΑΤΔ 1906/82, Salonica Consulate to MFA, Salonica 31.8 [-6.9].1906, No.496 conf.; ΗΑΤΔ 1907/68, notes by the Salonica Special Bureau (3.9.1907).

104 ΑΑ΢Ν/4ΗΗΗ/352, [Salonica Special Bureau] «Έθζεζηο ησλ γεγνλόησλ θαη ηεο θαηαζηάζεσο ελ ηε πεξηθεξεία Θεζζαινλίθεο θαηά ην έηνο 1908», p.12-16 & 26-9; IAYE 1907/53, Annual report of Consul A. Sahtouris to the MFA, Serres [1908]; ΗΑΤΔ 1909/Γ4/Β, A. Sahtouris to MFA, Serres 1.2.1909, No.76.

105 Ησάλλεο Τςειάληεο, Ο Μαθεδνληθόο Αγώλ, Salonica 1961, p.9.

106 For this envy, publicly expressed a little earlier: Οθέηθσθ [Atanas Šopov], Η Μαθεδνλία θαηά ηελ ρηιηεηεξίδα ηνπ Αγίνπ Μεζνδίνπ, ήηνη έθζεζηο πεξί ηεο ελεζηώζεο θαηαζηάζεωο ηνπ βνπιγαξηζκνύ ελ Μαθεδνλία, Philippopolis 1885, p.8-9 & 28-9.

107 Билярски – Бурилкова 2007, p.439 & 621-3.

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The evolution of the pioneer agrarian policies of IMRO in the district of Štip, a subdivision of Skopje revolutionary region, is characteristic of this gradual shift in the Organization‟s 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 çiftliks 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 Organization‟s 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 Miše 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

Хаджимишев 2003, p.179-87. For the radicalism of Razvigorov‟s initial policies, see also Мартулков 1954, p.129-30. For his death (21.3.1907): Македоно-Одрински Преглед (Sofia), 8.4.1907, p.517, and 18.4.1907, p.533-4.

109 ΗΑΤΔ 1902/65, St. Kiouzé-Pezas to MFA, Monastir 22.7.1902, No.366; ΑΗΓ/IV/17.1.4, Η. Dragoumis to MFA Al. Skouzes, Monastir 5.4.1903, No.267; Allan Upward, The East End of Europe, London 1908, p.217; Κσλζηαληίλνο Καξαβίδαο, Αγξνηηθά, Athens 1931, p.212; Γεώξγηνο Μόδεο, Μαθεδνληθόο Αγώλ θαη καθεδόλεο αξρεγνί, Salonica 1950, p.34.

110 Кирил Пърличев, Кюстендилският конгрес на ВМРО, 1908 г., Sofia 2001, p.38, 41 & 45.

111 Καξαβίδαο 1931, p.221 & 223; Michael Palairet, The Balkan economies, c.1800-1914, Cambridge 1997, p.343.

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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 Valı 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 town‟s Greek inhabitants as a measure to enforce a heavy “revolutionary tax” (itself a fine for the community‟s function as a tax farmer) was in fact an action promoted by the Organization‟s 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 çiftliks, “it was not easy for entrepreneurs to come and settle in a revolted country”116. A milder form of peasant relieve had been a relative substitution of sharecropping by the more advantageous to the tiller form of çiftlik 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 Organization‟s 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. Μαδαξάθεο-Αηληάλ 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 Valı!”

114 Κσλζηαληίλνο Σζώπξνο, Αλακλήζεηο (Μειέλνηθν - Θεζζαινλίθε), Salonica 1992, p.32. For the original IMRO order of the boycott (22.6.1904): Ива Бурилкова –Цочо Билярски (eds), Яне Сандански. Спомени, Sofia 2007, p.172. For the tax farming practiced by the Greek Community, against the prohibition declared by IMRO: Ησάλλεο Βιάρνο, «Ο Μαθεδνληθόο Αγώλ εηο ηελ πεξηνρήλ Μειελίθνπ. Δθζέζεηο ησλ κεηξνπνιηηώλ Δηξελαίνπ θαη Αηκηιηαλνύ», Σεξξαϊθά Χξνληθά, 8 (1979), p.95-6.

115 Βιάρνο 1979, p.116-7; ΗΑΤΔ 1905/68, M. Tsamados to MFA, Serres 15.10.1905, No.247, and 21.10.1905, No.258; ΗΑΤΔ 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 Αξγπξόπνπινο 1970, p.57.

117 А. Разбойников, Чифлигарството в Македония и Одринско, Salonica 1913, p.43. For this special form of çiftlik exploitation (kesim), see also Христов 1964, p.98; Gounaris 1993, p.18; Παιακηώηεο 1914, p.37 & 94-5.

118 See for example Bulletin d‟Orient (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.

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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 fighter‟s essential know-how, the reactivation of which (sometimes through its transmission to the next generation) was to play an important role in the region‟s 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 Organization‟s emergence in the Macedonian hinterland should be seen as “the beginnings of Communism in Macedonia”124.

120

ΗΑΤΔ 1909/Γ4/Β, A. Sahtouris to MFA, 5.2.1909, No.77, and 22.2.1909, No.117. The Party‟s 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” (Билярски – Бурилкова 2007, p.956). The Organization‟s 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” (Съюз на Българските Конституционни Клубове, Дневници на учредителния и втория конгреси, 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 çiftlik since at least two decades (ΗΑΤΔ 1909/Γ5/Β, A. Sahtouris to MFA, Serres 25.5.1909, No.361; Васил Кънчов, Македония. Пътеписи, Sofia 2000, p.234).

121 Παιακηώηεο 1914, p.36-7; Пърличев 2001, p.41; Георги Трайчев, Преспа, Sofia 1923, p.31; René Pinon, «La question de Macédoine et des Balkans», in Les questions actuelles de politique étrangère en Europe, Paris 1911, p.224-31; Данчо Зографски, Австриски документи за историjата на македонскиот народ. vol. I (1905-1906), Skopje 1977, p.158-61; Παύινο Κνύθεο, Άιωλα Φιώξηλαο. Αγώλεο θαη ζπζίεο, Athens 1990, p.26-7; ЦДА, ф.246к, оп.1, а.е.438, л.170, «Годишен отчет за състоянето на Пелагонийската епархия през 1910/11 учебна година», Monastir 31.10.1911; ЦДА, ф.246к, оп.1, а.е.459, л.125, Ф. Чочков, «Годишник за вървежа на учебното дело в Леринската епархия през учеб. 1911-912 година, Lerin 5.7.1912; ф.246к, оп.1, а.е.462, л.64, Д. Цирнов, «Рапорт за състоянието на Баракли-Джумайския духовен район през полугодието на учебната 1911-1912 година», Bayraklı Cumaya 8.2.1912, No.181.

122 Димитар Влахов, Мемоари, Skopje 1970, p.81, for an explicit acknowledgment of this fact by one of PFP‟s historic leaders.

123 Σάζνο Κσζηόπνπινο, «„Ζ Μαθεδνλία θάησ από ην δπγό ηεο ειιεληθήο θεθαιαηνθξαηίαο‟: Έλα ξεπνξηάδ ηνπ „Ρηδνζπάζηε‟ ζηηο ζιαβόθσλεο πεξηνρέο (1933)», Αξρεηνηάμην, 11 (2009), p.6-36; Σάζνο Κσζηόπνπινο, «Σν Μαθεδνληθό ζηε δεθαεηία ηνπ ‟40», in Υξήζηνο Υαηδεησζήθ (ed.), Θζηνξία ηεο Ειιάδαο ηνπ 20νύ αηώλα, vol.IV/1, Athens 2009, p.363-415.

124 Αξγπξόπνπινο 1970, p.44.

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