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Dimitar Vlahov

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Dimitar Vlahov
MP
Revolutionary and politician fromMacedonia
Member of the Ottoman Parliament
In office
Fall 1908 – January 1910 (when he resigns from the Federative Party)
Personal details
Born8 November 1878
Kukush,Salonica Vilayet,Ottoman Empire(nowGreece)
Died7 April 1953 (aged 74)
Belgrade,SFR Yugoslavia(nowSerbia)
Political partyPeople's Federative Party (Bulgarian Section)

Dimitar Vlahov(Bulgarian:Димитър Влахов;Macedonian:Димитар Влахов;8 November 1878 – 7 April 1953) was a politician from theregion of Macedoniaand member of the left wing of the Macedonian-Adrianople revolutionary movement (also known asInternal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization(IMRO)). As with many other IMRO members of the time, historians fromNorth Macedoniaconsider him an ethnicMacedonianand inBulgariahe is considered aBulgarian.According to Dimitar Bechev, Vlahov declared himself until the early 1930s as a Bulgarian and afterwards as an ethnic Macedonian.[1]

Life

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He was born in Kılkış (Bulgarian/MacedonianKukush,in present-dayGreece) and attended theBulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki.After that he emigrated to thePrincipality of Bulgariaand graduated fromsecondary schoolinBelogradtchik.Vlachov also studiedchemistryinGermanyandSwitzerland,where he also took part in socialist circles. However, he graduated in these subjects fromSofia University.Here he enrolled in theBulgarian Social Democratic Workers' Party.In 1903, Vlahov entered a military service in the reserve officer's school inSofia.Then he worked as a teacher in theBulgarian Men's High School of Thessalonikiwhere he was active inIMRO.During this period, he was arrested by theOttomanauthorities. In 1905, Vlahov was released and went back toBulgariawhere he worked as a teacher inKazanlak.In 1908, after theYoung Turksrevolution he began working in theBulgariansecondary schoolinThessalonikiagain.

In the following years, Vlahov was politically active as a deputy in theOttoman Parliamentas a representative of thePeople's Federative Party (Bulgarian Section).After the dissolution of this party in 1911, he became a member of theOttoman Socialist Partyand in 1912 he was again elected as a deputy to the Ottoman Parliament. During the Balkan Wars, on the recommendation ofSimeon Radev,he was appointed head of the consular department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Sofia. He was then sent as Bulgarian consul toSmyrnain the Ottoman Empire. During the First World War, as a reserve officer, he was appointed governor of the Shtip and Prishtina districts, then under Bulgarian rule. Later he represented theKingdom of Bulgariain high diplomatic and administrative positions inOdessa,KievandVienna.When IMRO was re-established in 1920, Vlahov was elected as an alternate member of its Central Committee, representing the left wing. At that time he was secretary of theVarnaChamber of Commerce.Todor Alexandrovurged him to establish contact between IMRO andSoviet Russia.Krastyo Rakovski,his best man and a prominent figure in theComintern,served as his messenger. On behalf of IMRO, Vlahov left in July 1923 forMoscow.Thus, in 1924, IMRO started negotiations inViennawith the Comintern on collaboration between the communists and theMacedonianmovement in establishing a unitedMacedonian revolutionary movement.Vlahov assisted in the adoption of the so calledMay Manifestoon the formation of aBalkan Communist Federationand cooperation with theSoviet Union.After the subsequent rift between the Organization and the Comintern, the new leadership led byIvan Mihailovexcluded him from IMRO and he was sentenced to death. In 1925, he was one of the founders ofIMRO (United)in Vienna. He also became a member of theBulgarian Communist Party.At the end of the 1920s he worked inFrance,Germany andAustriaas a Comintern publicist. During this period he was pursued by IMRO and several failed assassination attempts were organized against him.

In 1932 members of IMRO (United), put for the first time the issue of the recognition of a separateMacedoniannationin a lecture inMoscow.[2]The question was also studied in the highest institutions of the Comintern and in the autumn of 1933, Dimitar Vlahov arrived in Moscow and took part in a number of meetings.[3]So on 11 January 1934, the Political Secretariat of the Comintern adopted a specialResolution on the Macedonian Question.From 1936 to 1944, Vlahov lived in the Soviet Union and in late 1944 he went to the newYugoslaviawithSocialist Republic of Macedonia,where he worked in high state and political positions. In November 1943, Vlahov participated in the Second Session of theAnti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslaviaand was elected in the presidium representingAegean Macedonia.[4]In November 1944 he returned to the newly liberated Skopje and became a member of theCommunist Party of Macedonia.

Metodija Andonov-Čento(second from left), Víctor Manuel Villaseñor, United Nations Representative (center), Dimitar Vlahov (second from right) and others, in Bitola, February 1946

On 26 November, at the First Conference of the National Liberation Front of Macedonia, he was elected its president, and at the Second Session ofAnti-fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia(ASNOM) in December he was elected a member of the Presidium of ASNOM. At the Third Session of ASNOM in April 1945 he became a member of the Presidium of the National Assembly of Macedonia.

Post-war, Vlahov argued that Macedonians had "all the elements" that make a nation. In his 1950 bookMacedonia-Comments of the History of the Macedonian People,he claimed that modern Macedonians came from a fusion of Slavs with theancient Macedonians,thatSamuel of Bulgaria's empire was a Macedonian state, and thatCyril and Methodiuswere Macedonians' gift to Slavism, among other assertions.[5]

PerIvan Katardzhievin 1948 on a meeting of the Central committee of theMacedonian Communist Partyhe claimed that the decision by the IMRO (United) from 1932 on the formation of a separate Macedonianethnicityand language was a political mistake.[6]Based on Katardziev's opinion, Stefan Dechev maintains that Vlahov's pro-Bulgarian sentiments had remained after WWII.[7][8]Later his name was removed from theMacedonian anthem.[9]Afterwards he was gradually pushed out of his power positions from the pro-Yugoslav circle aroundLazar Kolishevski.Vlahov was dismissed, because he communicated much better in Bulgarian than in Macedonian and had little political support in SR Macedonia, among other reasons.[10]He died inBelgradein 1953.

Footnotes

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  1. ^Though, in the 1920s Vlahov, as well as the IMRO-U as a whole, still defined the Slavs of Macedonia as Bulgarians, by the 1930s his views had evolved in support of a separate Macedonian ethnic nation that he saw, faithful to the Marxist theories on nationhood, as a product of the advent of capitalism to Macedonia in the 19th century rather than a primordial fact.For more see: Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia, Dimitar Bechev, Scarecrow Press, 2009,ISBN0810862956,p. 235.
  2. ^Произходът на македонската нация - Стенограма от заседание на Македонския Научен Институт в София през 1947 г.
  3. ^Мемоари на Димитър Влахов. Скопје, 1970, стр. 356.
  4. ^Alexis Heraclides (2021).The Macedonian Question And The Macedonians.Taylor & Francis. p. 91.
  5. ^Alexis Heraclides (2021).The Macedonian Question And The Macedonians.Taylor & Francis. pp. 171–172.
  6. ^Академик Катарџиев, Иван. Верувам во националниот имунитет на македонецот, интервју за списание "Форум", 22 jули 2000, број 329.
  7. ^As the historian Ivan Katardziev pointed out many years ago, even the veterans of the left-wing IMRO (United) in the second half of the 1940s "remained only at the level of political and not national separatism." In this sense, we can say that today's definition of Macedonian national identity necessarily went through Yugoslav socialization and overt anti-Bulgarianism, and this certainly also goes through a historical narrative from Yugoslav times, which seriously ignores historical facts. Not by chance, speaking of personalities like Dimitar Vlahov or Pavel Shatev, Katardziev adds: "They practically felt like Bulgarians.For more: "Стефан Дечев: Две държава, две истории, много „истини “и една клета наука - трета част.Marginalia, 15.06.2018.
  8. ^In conclusion, Gotse and IMRO were "children of the Exarchate", and the later ethnic Macedonia was mostly the creation of an young generation brought up from the end of the 20s of the 20th century in Belgrade or Zagreb, who had a different sensibility. The old IMRO people were not like that. It is not by chance that the distinguished historian Ivan Katardziev in an interview from the late 90s said that even one Dimitar Vlahov until the end of his life could not feel what it means to be an ethnic Macedonian, he remained with the old political Macedonianism of Gotse Delchev and Yane Sandanski, who is a very Bulgarian phenomenon.For more: Стефан Дечев: Дори македонските тълкувания за езика от Средновековието и 19 в. да са тенденциозни, защо да е невъзможно да се признае съществуването на стандартен македонски книжовен език?Marginalia, 17.12.2019.
  9. ^Pål Kolstø, Strategies of Symbolic Nation-building in South Eastern Europe, Routledge, 2016,ISBN1317049365,p. 188.
  10. ^Andrew Rossos, Macedonia and the Macedonians: A History; Hoover Institution Press Publication, Hoover Press, 2013,ISBN081794883X,p. 238.
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