page_title: Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization
section_title: Armed struggle against the Ottomans
hierarchical_section_title: Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization / Ottoman era / Armed struggle against the Ottomans
caption_attribution_description: IMRO Revolutionaries from Florina, 1903
context_page_description: The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization was a revolutionary national liberation movement in the Ottoman territories in Europe, that operated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
  Founded in 1893 in Salonica, initially, it aimed to gain autonomy for Macedonia and Adrianople regions in the Ottoman Empire, however, later it became an agent serving Bulgarian interests in Balkan politics. IMRO group modeled itself after the Internal Revolutionary Organization of Vasil Levski and accepted its motto "Freedom or Death". Starting in 1896 it fought the Ottomans using guerrilla tactics, and in this they were successful, even establishing a state within a state in some regions, including their tax collectors. This effort escalated in 1903 into the Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising. The fighting involved about 15,000 IMRO irregulars and 40,000 Ottoman soldiers. After the uprising failed, and the Ottomans destroyed some 100 villages, the IMRO resorted to more systematic forms of terrorism targeting civilians.
context_section_description: The initial period of idealism for IMARO ended, however, with the Vinitsa Affair and the discovery by the Ottoman police of a secret depot of ammunition near the Bulgarian border in 1897. The wide-scale repressions against the activists of the Committee led to its transformation into a militant guerilla organization, which engaged into attacks against Ottoman officials and punitive actions against suspected traitors. The guerilla groups of IMARO, known as "chetas" (чети) later (after 1903) also waged a war against the pro-Serbian and pro-Greek armed groups during the Greek Struggle for Macedonia.
  IMARO's leadership of the revolutionary movement was challenged by two other factions: the Macedonian Supreme Committee in Sofia (Vurhoven makedono-оdrinski komitet – Върховен македоно-одрински комитет) and a smaller group of conservatives in Salonica – Bulgarian Secret Revolutionary Brotherhood (Balgarsko Tayno Revolyutsionno Bratstvo). The latter was incorporated in IMARO by 1902 but its members as Ivan Garvanov, were to exert a significant influence on the organization. 
  They were to push for the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising and later became the core of IMRO right-wing faction. The former organisation became known earlier than IMRO, after the 1895 raids into Turkish territory it organised from Bulgaria. Its founders were Macedonian immigrants in Bulgaria as well as Bulgarian army officers. They became known as the "supremists" or "externals" since they were based outside of Macedonia. The supremists resorted to terrorism against the Ottomans in the hope of provoking a war and thus Bulgarian annexation of Macedonia. For a time in the late 1890s IMARO leaders managed to gain control of the Supreme Committee but it soon split into two factions: one loyal to the IMARO and one led by some officers close to the Bulgarian prince. The second one staged an ill-fated uprising in Eastern Macedonia in 1902, where they were opposed militarily by local IMARO bands led by Yane Sandanski and Hristo Chernopeev, who were later to become the leaders of the IMARO left wing. 
  In Spring 1903, a group by young anarchists connected with IMARO from the Gemidzhii Circle – graduates from the Bulgarian secondary school in Thessaloniki – launched a campaign of terror bombing with the aim to attract the attention of the Great Powers to Ottoman oppression in Macedonia and Eastern Thrace.
  In the same time the undisputed leader of the organization, Gotse Delchev, was killed in a skirmish with Turkish forces. Although Delchev had opposed the ideas for an uprising as premature, he finally had no choice but agree to that course of action but at least managed to delay its start from May to August. After his death in 1903 IMARO organised the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising against the Ottomans in Macedonia and the Adrianople Vilayet, which after the initial successes including the forming of the Krushevo Republic, was crushed with much loss of life.
caption: IMRO Revolutionaries from Florina, 1903
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS6 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2019:06:30 21:02:44", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8201", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1034", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "727"}