After the WWII

After World War II the fourth period in MPO’s development began. Dramatic political changes took place on the Balkans. With the active help of the Red Army in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia social life was reshaped according to the Soviet model. In the late 40s totalitarian political regime was active in these two Balkan countries under the leadership of the communist parties. Under the pressure of Stalin and the Yugoslavian Communist Party, the Bulgarian Communist party made fatal mistakes in this period concerning the national issue. The reinstated VMRO was destroyed again, and its leaders were murdered. In Vardar Macedonia a “new Macedonian nation” was established on anti-Bulgarian basis. The “new nation” received its newly invented “Macedonian language”, newly fabricated “Macedonian history” and so on. In Pirin Macedonia there was a census done by force, and the population was forced by repression to enter they national identity as a foreign (Macedonian) minority in Bulgaria. This unprecedented policy of surrender provoked greatly the Macedonian Bulgarian emigrants in the New World. MPO’s Central Committee led the emigrants in a new struggle – this time with the aim of exposing mistakes and crimes done by the communist regimes concerning the Bulgarian national issue.

In the new situation in Southeast Europe after 1944 an important change was first registered in Ivan Mihaylov’s political behavior. He settled in Italy. Keeping in mind the actual circumstances in the Balkans, VMRO’s leader finally left his strategy of revolutionary struggle. Gradually Ivan Mihaylov was established as a legal political figure and author of the ideology of the Bulgarian national liberation movement in Macedonia. This fact allowed for a close political alliance between Ivan Mihaylov and MPO in the States, Canada and Australia in the late 40s. Mihaylov became the emigrants’ ideological leader, and MPO provided people and funds for common political struggle. In this way a new democratic patriotic front was formed, and it set the aim of protecting everything Bulgarian on the Balkans.

For four decades its representatives have rejected the existence of a “new Macedonian nation”. They have proved that the so-called “Macedonian language” is a Serbian variant of Bulgarian literary language. They have fought against falsifications of the past done in Skopje and Belgrade by the official historians. Until the 1960s the course of surrender followed by the Bulgarian Communist party had been subjected to violent criticism. They have exercised great political activities with the aim to support and attract to MPO those of the VMRO members that were persecuted by the authorities in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. With the help of UN and other humanitarian organizations human rights of Bulgarians repressed by Tito in Yugoslavia were protected. In order to prove the objective basis of Bulgarian emigrant movement and historical heritage, Ivan Mihaylov started writing his memories from the 50s to the 70s, which MPO’s Central Committee published in four large volumes. These works provide serious proof of Bulgarian national interests from the 50s to the 70s. The greatest contribution for the preservation of MPO’s high international authority as fighting for justice and freedom in the second half of the 20^th century belongs to MPO’s active members [100]. They are people like Peter Atsev, Lyuben Dimitrov, Hristo Nizamov, Ivan lebamov, Georgi Lebamov, Boris Chalev, Chris Ivanov (USA), and Blazhe Markov, Georgi Mladenov, the priest Mihaylov, Pando Mladenov (Canada).

The change in the Bulgarian government’s policy in the 60s concerning the Macedonian issue influenced also MPO’s behavior. Starting in the 70s, members of its Central Committee visited Bulgaria. The emigrants’ publications made use of the achievements of Bulgarian historical science researching in an objective way important aspects of the Macedonian issue. In the 80s the patriotic emigrants across the Atlantic and the patriotic circles in Sofia started acting again as two independent yet similar in aims factors working in the same direction, protecting the truth of the Bulgarian population’s destiny in Vardar and Aegean Macedonia.

The struggle was intensified greatly with the reappearance of VMRO and the Macedonian Scientific Institute in Sofia. These two factors in Bulgarian democratic public life again became, as until 1944, active and natural partners of the Macedonian Patriotic Organization in their efforts to settle justly the Macedonian issues. After Yugoslavia was dissolved, MPO, the scientific and public front in Sofia and the Bulgarian democratic governments provided similar help for the stabilization of the newly founded Republic of Macedonia with Skopje as its capital.

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¹⁰⁰ По тези въпроси по–подробно вж.: Митев, Тр. Създаване и дейност на либерално–демократичния емигрантски фронт, ръководен от Ив. Михайлов, за защита на македонските българи /1944 – 1990/ - Военноистор. Сборник, 1996, кн. 5, с. 61 и сл.