First statute of the IMRO
In the earliest dated samples of statutes and regulations of the clandestine Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization discovered so far, it is called Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianopolitan Revolutionary Committees . These documents refer to the then Bulgarian population in the Ottoman Empire, which was to be prepared for a general uprising in Macedonia and Adrianople regions, aiming to achieve political autonomy for them. In thе statute of BMARC, that itself is most probably the first one, the membership was reserved exclusively for Bulgarians. This ethnic restriction matches with the memoirs of some founding and ordinary members, where is mentioned such a requirement, set only in the Organization's first statute. In fact, the founders of IMRO were sympathetic to Bulgarian, but hostile to the Serbian nationalism, which led them to establish in 1897 a Society against Serbs. The organization's ethnic character is confirmed by the lack of any mention of Macedonian ethnicity, and the incorporation of the Bulgarian Secret Revolutionary Brotherhood to IMRO in 1899. The name of BMARC, as well as information about its statute, was mentioned in the foreign press of that time, in Bulgarian diplomatic correspondence, and exists in the memories of some revolutionaries and contemporaries.
Due to the lack of original protocol documentation, and the fact its early organic statutes were not dated, the first statute of the Organisation is uncertain and is a subject to dispute among researchers. The dispute also includes its first name and ethnic character, as well as the authenticity, dating, validity, and authorship of its supposed first statute. The Organization was founded in Ottoman Thessaloniki at the end of 1893, and its founders - four teachers, a physician and a bookseller, considered themselves as part of the Bulgarian national movement. However, in North Macedonia, any Bulgarian influence on the country's history is a source of ongoing disputes and sharp tensions, thus such historical influences are often rejected by Macedonian researchers in principle. Certain contradictions and even mutually exclusive statements, along with inconsistencies exist in the testimonies of the founding and other early members of the Organization, which further complicates the solution of the problem. It is not yet clear whether the earliest statutory documents of the Organization have been discovered. Its earliest basic documents discovered for now, became known to the historical community during the early 1960s.
The revolutionary organization changed its name several times before adopting in 1919 in Sofia, Bulgaria its last and most common name i.e. Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization. The repeated changes of name of the IMRO has led to an ongoing debate between Bulgarian and Macedonian historians, as well as within the Macedonian historiographical community. The crucial question is to which degree the Organization had a Bulgarian ethnic character and when it tried to open itself to the other Balkan nationalities. As a whole, its founders were inspired by the earlier Bulgarian revolutionary traditions. Such activists believed that Slavic Macedonian society was reproducing the Bulgarian National Revival with a time lag. The situation was similar in Adrianople Thrace. All its basic documents were written in the pre-1945 Bulgarian orthography. The first statute of the IMRO was modelled after the statute of the earlier Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee. IMRO adopted from BRCC also its symbol: the lion, and its motto: Svoboda ili smart. All its six founders were closely related to the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki. They were native to the region of Macedonia, and some of them were influenced from anarcho-socialist ideas, which gave to organisation's basic documents slightly leftist leaning.
The first statute was drawn up in the winter of 1894. In the summer of the same year, the first congress of the organization took place in Resen. At this meeting, Ivan Tatarchev was elected as its first head. The draft of the first statute was approved there, while the drafting of its first regulations was commissioned. The occasion for convening this meeting was the celebration on the consecration of the newly built Bulgarian Exarchate church in the town in August 1894. It was decided at the meeting to preferably recruit teachers from the Bulgarian schools as committee members. Of the sixteen members who attended the group’s first congress, fourteen were Bulgarian schoolteachers. Schoolteachers were en masse involved in the committee's activity, and the Ottoman authorities considered the Bulgarian schools then "nests of bandits". On the eve of the 20th century IMRO was often called by the Ottoman authorities "the Bulgarian Committee", hence the Ottomans considered it to be Bulgarian in its
national orientation, while its members were designated as Comitadjis, i.e. "committee men".
Memoirs' controversy
Contradictions, inconsistencies and even mutually exclusive statements exist in the testimonies of the founding and other early members of the Organization on the issue. According to the founding member Hristo Tatarchev's пemoirs, there were created two structures with the first statute from 1894: an organization and its central committee. He mentions as their names "Macedonian Revolutionary Organization" and a "Central Macedonian Revolutionary Committee" and clarifies that the word "Bulgarian" was subsequently dropped from their names. It is not clear, if its first name was simply MRO, how the definition "Bulgarian" was dropped from it subsequently. However, Tatarchev notes that he doesn't remember the first name very clearly. On the other hand, according to the founding member Gyorche Petrov, initially the IMRO was not called an "Organization", and this term was introduced after 1895. According to another founding member, Petar Poparsov, the Organization was designated initially a "Committee", and its first name was "Committee for acquiring the political rights of Macedonia, given to it by the Treaty of Berlin". Per Tatarchev, the founders of the IMRO had Zahari Stoyanov's memoir about the April Uprising of 1876, in which the statute of the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee was published, which they took as a model for the organization's first statute. According to Tatarchev, the Adrianople region was included in the organization's program in 1895, while this decision was implemented practically in 1896. However, per Dame Gruev commissioned him to start the construction of the committee network in Adrianople region in 1895. Thus, in September 1895, the first revolutionary committee was founded in Bulgarian Men's High School of Adrianople.According to Poparsov, the first statute's swatch was sent to be printed in Romania, where it burned down in a fire and its publication failed. However, according to the IMRO activist , the first statute and regulations were printed in a very limited quantity in Thessaloniki after 1894. According to Gyurov's claims, he had hidden one copy each of the statutes and regulations, but he did not manage to keep them because they fell apart due to poor storage conditions. It is known that the first statute was prepared by Petar Poparsov and was adopted at the beginning of 1894, and according to some reports, the first regulations were developed by Ivan Hadzhinikolov either in the same year or in 1895. The data presented by Gyurov has raised the question of whether the foundational documents of the Organization were really printed in Thessaloniki for the first time. It is known also that another early statute and regulations adopted in 1896, were printed in Sofia in 1897, by Gyorche Petrov and Gotse Delchev. According to Gyorche Petrov, before the drafting of the second statute and regulations in 1896, there were available others, which were still in use, that suggests there were earlier printed statutes and regulations after all.
The first statute allowed the membership only for Bulgarians and this is confirmed by Tatarchev in his memoirs from 1936 as follows: "it was allowed that every Bulgarian, from any region, could be a member", as well as in the memoirs of other revolutionaries. According to Hristo Matov, although the first statute allowed the membership only to Bulgarians Exarchists, in practice the leaders of the Organization didn't prohibit the membership of Patriarchists, Uniates and Protestants of all local nationalities, According to Ivan Hadzhinikolov, membership was open to everyone from Macedonia. According to Tatarchev's recollections, the decision about the change of the statute, so that not only Bulgarians could be members of the organization, was taken in 1896. Per the SMAC activist Vladislav Kovachev the first statute of the IMRO allowed the membership only for Bulgarians within a special article. According to the revolutionary , a revolutionary committee was founded in Thessaloniki in 1893, and per its first statute, any Bulgarian could be its member. Dimitar Vlahov maintained that initially, the organization worked only among Bulgarians who belonged to the Bulgarian Exarchate.
Per initially the organization had a nationalist character and only Bulgarians had the right to be members of it, but this ethnic restriction lasted until 1896. According to Georgi Bazhdarov, who also confirmed the statute of BMARC as a first one, the Organization was opened to other nationalities besides Bulgarians after 1900. According to the revolutionary Hristo Karamandzhukov, the statute of BMARC continued to be used even after 1902. In the memoirs of Alekso Martulkov, it is claimed that the original statute of the organization allowed only Bulgarians as members. This situation was changed in a new statute in 1896. Per Bulgarian anarchist Spiro Gulabchev, in the mid-1890s, arose the "Bulgarian Macedonian Adrianopolitan Revolutionary Committee", which, according to its statute and regulations, was a Bulgarian nationalist organization. According to , the organization was initially called the BMARC, and only Bulgarians were accepted as its members, per its first statute from 1894. Per Peyo Yavorov, the first IMRO statute was almost a copy of the old Bulgarian revolutionary statute and contained a special article according to which only Bulgarians were its members. According to Nikola Zografov in 1895 Gotse Delchev was supplied with a power of attorney from the name of the BMARC and sent to Sofia to propagate the struggle for autonomy that was open to every Bulgarian. Per Hristo Silyanov in the minds of the founders of the organization, it was Bulgarian in its ethnic composition, and its member, according to the first statue, could be "any Bulgarian". Krste Misirkov states in his brochure On the Macedonian Matters that the “Bulgarian committees” were led by "Bulgarian clerks", aiming the creation of “Bulgarian Macedonia".