Ivan Mihailov

Ivan Mihailov (bulg.: Иван Михайлов), also known as Vanche Mihailov (bulg.: Ванче Михайлов), (August 26, 1896, Novo Selo, present-day Republic of Macedonia – September 5, 1990, Rome, Italy) was a Bulgarian revolutionary, leader of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization after 1924.

Mihailov studied at the Bulgarian Secondary School "St. Cyril and Methodius" in Thessaloniki until the Second Balkan War when the school was closed by the new Greek administration and he was forced to continue his studies at a Serbian school in Skopje. He was offered a scholarship by the Serbian Ministry of Education to pursue a degree at a European university but declined and enlisted instead in the Bulgarian army. After the end of World War I, Mihailov settled in Sofia and started to study law at the Sofia University where he was contacted by activists of the IMRO and offered to work as a secretary for IMRO’s leader at that time, Todor Alexandrov.

After the death of Alexandrov on August 31, 1924, Mihailov was elected member of the Central Committee of IMRO and shortly afterwards became leader of the organisation. The election of Mihailov as leader of IMRO marks a period of intensification of the armed struggle of the organisation in Greek, and especially in Serbian Macedonia. A total of 63 terrorist acts and attacks on bridges, warehouses, Serbian police stations and military targets were undertaken between 1922 and 1930, the number of the assassinated Serbian officials and collaborators of the regime in Belgrade numbered some 1,000.

In the late 1920s, Mihailov got into contact with the leader of the Croatian Ustase movement, Ante Pavelic and the two organisations started to co-operate in their struggle against the Serbian regime. The most obvious result of that co-operation was the assassination of the arch-foe, King Alexander I of Yugoslavia, on October 9, 1934 in the French city of Marseilles. The assassination was carried out by the personal driver of Mihailov, Vlado Chernozemski .

The events in 1934 prompted the Bulgarian government to take action against the IMRO and expelled Mihailov from Bulgaria. The organisation was tolerated by previous Bulgarian governments as its goal was the liberation of the Macedonian Bulgarians. As a result of this, IMRO had built an extensive network in Pirin Macedonia and Sofia, which was used to provide financing for the organisation and an operational base from which the incursions into Yugoslavia and Greece were conducted.

After 1934, Mihailov lived in Turkey, Poland and Hungary to finally settle in the capital of the Independent State of Croatia, the Ustaša puppet-state between 1941 and 1944. In 1941, Mihailov was offered by the Germans to head a future semi-independent Macedonian state but he declined favouring the occupation of Vardar Macedonia by Bulgaria. In 1944, he was forced to flee again, this time to Italy where he lived for the rest of his life. Although IMRO was no longer active, Mihailov continued his interest in the fate of the Macedonian Bulgarian writing books and publishing articles.

His wife Mencha Krnicheva is also a notable person. It is said that in order to marry her, she had to carry out an order and complete it, which she successfully completed. She killed Todor Panica in the Burg theater in Vienna, in 1925. Later a trial was held, after which she was released. In later statements, she says that she killed Todor Panica , because of his transformation from a macedonian revolutionary into a bulgarian policeman (or in other words, he served Bulgaria).

Ivan Mihailov about the developments in Vardar Macedonia after 1944

The following is an excerpt from an article by Ivan Mihaylov:

"There has been a Macedonian Question only since the Congress of Berlin.

I have always been part of the Macedonian Liberation Movement but I am a son of the Bulgarian people, just as the Slavs of Macedonia have been Bulgarians for a thousand years.

For us, a "Macedonian nation" means Yugoslavism and Yugoslavism means imperialism, which aims at snatching Thessaloniki and a part of Bulgaria. In two words: a "Macedonian nation" can mean the addition of one million new Serbs to the Serbian people.

There is no narrow nationalism in favour of any nationality within IMRO. When it defends nationalism, it must be understood in the sense that the organisation is against the denationalisation of the ethnicity, whatever it may be.

In united Europe (if it becomes a reality), Macedonia should be represented by itself, not by Belgrade and Athens, or by anybody else."