Memories of an IMRO (Inner Macedonian Revolutionary Organization) freedom fighter. Today it is often said that the modern Macedonian nation has only referred to antiquity since the redesign of the capital Skopje, the remaking is well known under the label “Skopje 2014”. According to those voices, the ex-prime minister and “dictator” Nikola Gruevski was to blame.
But, this is complete nonsense of modern day propaganda, you could also directly say it is modern anti-Macedonian propaganda.
A testimony from a Macedonian freedom fighter of the Inner Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, shows the opposite. Internationally this organization is called IMRO for short, in Macedonia it is called VMRO. They fought primarily against the Ottoman rule over their Macedonian homeland, as well as against the Serbian, Bulgarian and Greek claims. The testimony we can find in the work “The severed head”, by Vasil Ivanov
Vasil Ivanov, was a Macedonian freedom fighter of IMRO, in Vasil Chekalarov’s unit. He wrote his memoirs entitled “The Severed Head on July 9, 1913” and described the activities of his unit in the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) and its tragic end. The book was published in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1928.
On page 82 of his memoir, Ivanov writes:
Greece and Serbia were nothing but little puppies to me, while Macedonia was always Macedonia. She had her own glorious kings who gave no peace to our new prisoners. Philip of Macedon destroyed the Greeks and only Demosthenes barked against him. Did the Greeks not remember the call to the Athenians: “O Philip, oh barbarian…” that Philip the barbarian comes to destroy Hellenism, which then Alexander the Great, the Macedonian king, finally destroyed and reached the top of the impossible in a very short time, and was not defeated by any king? But these kings were not barbarians. The Greeks mix the terms, they regard their atrocities and crimes as cultural acts and the Macedonians’ struggle for freedom, church and school justice – for banditry and robbery.
On page 52, Ivanov wrote:
Oh why don’t I have the power of Alexander the Great to transform this disgusting and filthy Greek tribe into the only thing that suits them – to be European prostitutes and bring joy to those men, European spendthrifts and sadists seek!
Literature: The severed head on July 9, 1913 by Vasil Ivanov, 1928, Sofia
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