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The outcry in the American society caused by the defeat of the Ilindenko- Preobrajensko Uprising in 1903 created the prerequisites for the foundation of a Bulgarian-American social committee in March 1904. The committee's aim was to lend moral and economic support to the affected population, as well as aid the continuation of the struggle of the Macedonian Bulgarians for liberation from Ottoman rule. Among the leaders of the committee on the Bulgarian side there were the Bansko citizens Ivan Radulov and Konstantin Stefanov. The letter published here, written by Kiril Parlichev and Hristo Matov to Ivan Radulov on 26/12/1903 and now kept in a private archive, sheds additional light on the chronology and participants in these events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1903, Ilinden Uprising in Macedonia and Eastern Thrace was the most massive, widespread and longest uprising in the new Bulgarian history. It was preparing for 10 years by three powerful organizations - the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization of Supreme Committee of Bulgaria and the Secret Officer's Brotherhoods in the Bulgarian army. Its political strategy was to mobilize all the forces of the Macedonian and Thracian Bulgarians and with a massive and widespread uprising, attract the attention of European countries, activate the diplomatic bodies of the great powers and force the Ottoman Empire to grant political autonomy to both areas. Besides the political purpose, the uprising pursued existential purpose - to save the Bulgarians in Macedonia and Eastern Thrace from extermination, expulsion and ethnic cleansing. This is testified by the statements of the Exarch Joseph to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Religions in Sofia and personally to King Ferdinand that, in the first half of 1903 in Macedonia and Adrianople, there is an attempt to conducting genocide and ethnic cleansing by the Turkish authorities. It seems that the accelerated transition of traditional repressive policy towards the Bulgarians from the usual repression to previously unknown forms of genocide and ethnic cleansing is due to an incorrect analysis of the state of the Macedonian-Adrianople revolutionary movement by the Sublime Porte. It is likely that the Turkish authorities had completely wrongfully interpreted the experiments with terrorist means and methods of some figures of the internal organization as evidence that the Bulgarians have adopted the tactics of individual terror, like the Armenians and of being concluded that the IMRO disintegrated to individual terrorist nuts and lost its mass support. Such a miscalculation could easily entice the leaders of Turkish politics to seize the moment and try to bring up the "Armenian Model" of repression from Anatolia to the Balkans. To this, the organizers and leaders of the Ilinden Uprising opposed the strategy of saving power by successive or stepwise announcement of the uprising in individual counties. Thus the rebel activities continued for nearly three months, and accelerated the occurrence of reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along with the differences between the various organizational units of the territory in relation to the time and manner of conducting the fighting, Ilinden Uprising and its leaders largely reminiscent of the April Uprising and the apostles of the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee. And this fact is not accidental - IMRO was established in its "image" and therefore one of the first names of IMRO was Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committees. Bulgarian character of the uprising has been recognized by a number of foreign scientists, public figures and politicians, in many of the statistics for the national identity of the population in Macedonia. About the nature of the liberation movement another important argument is testifying - all organizational documents are issued solely in Bulgarian. In nearly forty-year history from 1893 to 1934 in the archives of the IMRO/VMRO there is no programming prototype document into another language. The heroism of the Bulgarian officers, rebels and regular participants in Ilinden Uprising was not in vain. This latest attempt to reject the foreign power showed to Europe and the world that Macedonian and Thracian Bulgarians do not give up the common struggle for national liberation and that a match of strength with the Ottoman Empire was only postponed! [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The failure of the Ilinden Uprising in the summer and autumn of 1903 caused severe ideological and organizational and institutional crisis in the IMARO. The established after the suppression of the rebellion atmosphere of elemental reform generated centrifugal irreversible processes, which naturally led to the establishment of different often opposing factions and groups within the Organization. In general terms the ideological contradictions in the internal organization, during the period, can be identified with the two main currents in it, holding its own relatively recognizable programs - moderate and reformist (left). The process of their formation was very dynamic and variable, and categorical distinction is largely arbitrary. Along with the two main currents, there were also many other smaller factions in the formation of which the leading considerations were not so much ideological as tactical. The most significant events of this type were Saraphism (to 1907), and during the Young Turks regime - the existed almost a year Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (BMARO). The division was not fully resolved until the beginning of the Balkan war. What unites all ideological currents and groups in IMRO is the fact that they strongly identified themselves with Bulgarian nationality and acted with the consciousness that they defended the interests of the Bulgarian population in the Ottoman Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the reform agenda in Macedonia in October 1903 in the gendarmerie, judiciary and tax systems. Implementation of reforms is followed by reports of Romanian consuls Lazar Duma and Dimitrie Gika to the Ambassador in Constantinople and the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Bucharest. The position of the Aromanians in Thessaloniki and Bitolia districts is revealed, their participation in various municipalities in the reform activities and that of other ethnic groups - Bulgarians, Greeks and others; their mutual solidarity and hostility. Analyzed documents show the failure of reforms and their meaninglessness within the Ottoman Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]