Macedonian State-National Concepts and ... - Makedonika

nationalism and imperialism, the adherents of the revolutionary organization active
in the former Seres revolutionary district, bearing in mind all the past and
forthcoming events, make the following declaration:
1. Instead of Balkan nationalism which, in its aspirations for acquisition and
dominance over alien lands and peoples, has ruined the whole of the Balkan
Peninsula part by part, we raise the old flag of Macedonian autonomy, the flag of
Balkan concord and future Balkan brotherhood.
2. Macedonia should be established within its appropriate geographical borders
and mainly on the basis of Salonika and the valley of the Vardar; Skopje and Bitola
should have their own natural geographical, commercial and economic hinterland.
3. The territorial liberation of Macedonia is not an act of hostility towards the
free Balkan peoples, nor is it a forceful or separatist mutilation of their territories.
It should be established for the sake of all as a well-circumscribed geographical unit
and represent a joint capital invested for the common enterprise of those peoples —
the only thing that will unite them in peaceful life, sincere cooperation and an
honourable future.
4. Macedonia should have for itself, for the nationalities who live there and for
its Balkan brothers, the most suitable form of government, created after the example
of the Swiss Federal Republic, with full and equal freedom for all the nationalities
in educational, religious, political, cultural and economic respects under the protectorship
of the free democratic nations.
At the same time, seeing a threat to “Bulgarian national ideals”, the responsible
state agencies organized, in Sofia, on the premises of the University, an assembly
of “confirmed” and “distinguished activists from all the currents of the former
revolutionary struggle” and aimed to “reach decisions” on “two questions: (1) what
to demand, and (2) what body should demand it?” They concluded that “the only
way is to re-establish, if possible, all the brotherhoods; their delegates should elect
a new Executive Committee, a purely legal body which will be the interpreter of
the will of the émigré community, and even of the population of Macedonia”.
In spite of the reaction of prominent Macedonian activists, the Founding
Convention of the Brotherhoods started on November 22, 1918, again “in one
of the university lecture-halls”, electing a Provisional Bureau of the Brotherhoods
headed by Ivan KarandÔulov as the president and Prof. Nikola Milev as the
secretary. After two days of work, “43 delegates” elected an Executive Committee
of the Macedonian Brotherhoods in Bulgaria, headed by the same president,
and adopted the following resolution:
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The delegates of the brotherhoods, expressing the unequivocal will of the
Bulgarian population in Macedonia, give the Executive Committee an imperative
mandate to be guided by the following two principles in its activity:
(1) The indivisibility of Macedonia;
(2) Its incorporation within Bulgaria.