Dimitar Vlahov

Dimitar Yanakiev Vlahov (Bulgarian: Димитър Янакиев Влахов; Macedonian: Димитар Јанакиев Влахов) (1878 in Kukush, Ottoman Empire – 1953 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia) was a Macedonian Bulgarian politician from the region of Macedonia and member of the left wing of the Macedonian-Adrianople revolutionary movement (also known as Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO)). As with many other IMRO members of the time, historians from the North Macedonia consider him an ethnic Macedonian and in Bulgaria he is considered a Bulgarian. Vlahov declared himself until the early 1930s as a Bulgarian and afterwards as an ethnic Macedonian.[1][2] However such left-wing Macedonian activists, former members of the BCP and the IMRO (United) never managed to get rid of their strong Bulgarophile sentiments, and thus practically continued to feel themselves as Bulgarians even in Communist Yugoslavia.[3][4][5]

Dimitar Vlahov
Revolutionary and politician from Macedonia
Born1878
Kukush, Salonica Vilayet, Ottoman Empire (now Greece)
Died1953
Belgrade, SFR Yugoslavia (now Serbia)
Dimitar Vlahov

MP
Member of the Ottoman Parliament
In office
Fall 1908 – January 1910 (when he resigns from the Federative Party)
Personal details
Political partyPeople's Federative Party (Bulgarian Section)

Life

He was born in Kılkış (Bulgarian/Macedonian Kukush, in present-day Greece) and attended the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki. After that he emigrated to the Principality of Bulgaria and graduated from secondary school in Belogradtchik. Vlachov also studied chemistry in Germany and Switzerland, where he took part in socialist circles. However, he graduated in these subjects from Sofia University. Here he enrolled in the Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers' Party. In 1903, Vlahov entered a military service in an officer's school in Sofia. Then he worked as a teacher in the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki where he was active in IMRO. During this period, he was arrested by the Ottoman authorities. In 1905, Vlahov was released and went back to Bulgaria where he worked as a teacher in Kazanlak. In 1908, after the Young Turks revolution he began working in the Bulgarian secondary school in Thessaloniki again.

In the next few years, Vlahov was politically active as a member of the Ottoman Parliament as a representative from the People's Federative Party (Bulgarian Section). After the dissolution of the PFP in 1911, he became a member the Ottoman Socialist Party and in 1912 was elected again as a deputy in the Ottoman Parliament. During the First World War as a reserve officer he was appointed a governor of the then under Bulgarian rule Stip and Pristina districts. Later was a representative of the Kingdom of Bulgaria in high diplomatic and administrative positions in Odessa, Kiev, and Vienna. With the reestablishment of IMRO in 1920, Vlahov was elected as alternate member of its Central Committee, representing the left wing. At that time he was a Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce in Varna. Todor Alexandrov urged him to establish a contact between IMRO and Soviet Russia. As a messenger served Krastyo Rakovski, his best man and prominent figure of the Comintern. On behalf of IMRO, Vlahov departed in July 1923 to Moscow. So in 1924, IMRO entered negotiations in Vienna with the Comintern about collaboration between the communists and the Macedonian movement and the creation of a united Macedonian movement. Vlahov helped the subscription of the so-called May Manifesto about forming a Balkan Communist Federation and cooperation with the Soviet Union. After the subsequent rift between the organization and the Communists, the new leadership headed by Ivan Mihailov excluded him from the organization and he was sentenced to death. In 1925, he was one of the founders of the IMRO (United) in Vienna. He also became a member of Bulgarian Communist Party. During the late 1920s, he worked in France, Germany and Austria as a Comintern publicist. During this period he was chased by IMRO and against him were organized several failed assassination attempts.

In 1932 members of IMRO (United), put for the first time the issue of the recognition of a separate Macedonian nation in a lecture in Moscow.[6] 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.[7] So on January 11, 1934, the Political Secretariat of the Comintern adopted a special Resolution on the Macedonian Question. From 1936 to 1944, Vlahov lived in the Soviet Union and in 1944 he went to the new Yugoslavia with Socialist Republic of Macedonia, where he worked in high state and political positions.

In 1948 on a meeting of the Central committee of the Macedonian Communist Party he claimed that the decision by the IMRO (United) from 1932 on the formation of a separate Macedonian ethnicity and language was a political mistake.[8] Later his name was scraped from Macedonian anthem.[9] Afterwards he was gradually pushed out of his power positions from the pro-Yugoslav circle around Lazar Kolishevski. Vlahov was dismissed, because he came from the Bulgarian Communist Party, communicated much better in Bulgarian than in the newly codified Macedonian language, and had little political support in then SR Macedonia.[10] He died in Belgrade in 1953.

Footnotes
  1. Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia, Dimitar Bechev, Scarecrow Press, 2009, ISBN 0810862956, p. 235.
  2. During the 20th century, Slav Macedonian national feeling has shifted. At the beginning of the 20th century, Slavic patriots in Macedonia felt a strong attachment to Macedonia as a multi-ethnic homeland... Most of these Macedonian Slavs also saw themselves as Bulgarians. By the middle of the 20th. century, however Macedonian patriots began to see Macedonian and Bulgarian loyalties as mutually exclusive. Regional Macedonian nationalism had become ethnic Macedonian nationalism... This transformation shows that the content of collective loyalties can shift. Region, Regional Identity and Regionalism in Southeastern Europe, Ethnologia Balkanica Series, Klaus Roth, Ulf Brunnbauer, LIT Verlag Münster, 2010, ISBN 3825813878, p. 127.
  3. Palmer, S. and R. King Yugoslav Communism and the Macedonian Question, Archon Books (June 1971), p. 137.
  4. According to the Macedonian historian Academician Ivan Katardzhiev all left-wing Macedonian revolutionaries from the period until the early 1930s declared themselves as "Bulgarians" and he asserts that the political separatism of some Macedonian revolutionaties toward official Bulgarian policy was yet only political phenomenon without ethnic character. This will bring even Dimitar Vlahov on the session of the Politburo of the Macedonian communist party in 1948, when speaking of the existence of the Macedonian nation, to say that in 1932 (when left wing of IMRO issued for the first time the idea of separate Macedonian nation) a mistake was made. Katardzhiev claims all this veterans from IMRO (United) and Bulgarian communist party remained only at the level of political, not of national separatism. Thus, they practically continued to feel themselves as Bulgarians, i.e. they didn't developed clear national separatist position even in Communist Yugoslavia. Академик Катарџиев, Иван. Верувам во националниот имунитет на македонецот, интервју за списание "Форум", 22 jули 2000, број 329.
  5. "Tribune. Издание: 2007/118, освежено: 05.11.2007. Уште робуваме на старите поделби. Разговор со приредувачот на Зборникот документи за Тодор Александров, д-р Зоран Тодоровски. 27.06.2005". Archived from the original on 11 October 2007. Retrieved 2007-10-11.CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  6. Произходът на македонската нация - Стенограма от заседание на Македонския Научен Институт в София през 1947 г.
  7. Мемоари на Димитър Влахов. Скопје, 1970, стр. 356.
  8. Академик Катарџиев, Иван. Верувам во националниот имунитет на македонецот, интервју за списание "Форум", 22 jули 2000, број 329.
  9. Pål Kolstø, Strategies of Symbolic Nation-building in South Eastern Europe, Routledge, 2016, ISBN 1317049365, p. 188.
  10. Andrew Rossos, Macedonia and the Macedonians: A History; Hoover Institution Press Publication, Hoover Press, 2013, ISBN 081794883X, p. 238.
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