Ivan Mihailov - Mihailov's View About The Macedonian Question

Mihailov's View About The Macedonian Question

There are different political opinions about Mihailov's activity in Bulgaria, but scholars agree that he was a defender of the statement about the strong Bulgarian character of the Slav-speaking population in the region of Macedonia. He was a follower of the idea about an independent United Macedonian multiethnic state with prevailing ethnic Bulgarian element, something as "Switzerland on the Balkans". According to his personal secretary Vida Boeva he was constantly canvassing by means of petitions, letters of protest, memoirs addressed to the UN etc. By the name of Macedonian Patriotic Organisation emphasizing that the Macedonian Republic was a colony of Serbia, under other name, as a Macedonian nation. He declared also that Macedonia is Bulgarian and the Slavs in Macedonia are Bulgarian. All these people that had the power in Macedonia were serbophils or grecophils. He believed that the Macedonians are part of the Bulgarian nation and the founders of IMRO were people who accepted the San Stefano Bulgaria. The Bulgarianness of Mihailov is recognized by several Macedonian historians like academician Ivan Katardzhiev, director of the Historical Sciences section in the Department of Social Sciences in the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts and the director of the Macedonian State archive Ph.D. Zoran Todorovski. According to Katardjev the policy of Mihailov for establishment of an independent Macedonian state meant a Macedonian state of the Bulgarians in Macedonia. That denotes a second Bulgarian state, but not a national ethnic Macedonian state. Katardjev stated Michaylov's view about the term "Macedonian" was, that this is a generalizing, regional term, including different ethnicities as Bulgarians, Aromanians, Albanians but not ethnic Macedonians. Katardjiev defines all Macedonian revolutionaries from the period before 1930s as "Bulgarians" and asserts that separatism of some Macedonian revolutionaries toward official Bulgarian policy was only a political phenomenon without an ethnic character. Todorovski asserts that "All of them declared themselves as Bulgarians....".