The Serb
authorities coerced the population to speak the Serb language,
changed Macedonian names to Serb ones in brutally carried campaigns
and imposed a corrupt and incompetent bureaucracy upon the suffering
multitudes.
IMRO never gave up its proclaimed goal to liberate both occupied
parts of Macedonia - the Aegean and the Vardar ones. But, as time
passed and as the nature of its organization and operation evolved,
the perfunctoriness of its proclamations became more and more
evident. The old idealists - the intellectuals and ideologues, the
Goce Delcev types - were removed, died in battle, or left this
mutation of their dream. The IMRO insignia - skull and crossbones -
linked it firmly to the Italian Balckshirts and the Nazi brown ones.
The IMRO has developed into a fascist organization. It traded opium.
It hired out the services of its skilled assassins (for 20 dollars a
contract). It recruited members among the Macedonian population in
the slums of Sofia. Finally, they openly collaborated with the
Fascists of Mussolini (who also supported them financially), with
the Ustashe (similarly supported by Italy) and with the Nazis (under
Ivan Mihailov, who became the nominal quisling ruler of Vardar
Macedonia). It was an IMRO man ("Vlado the Chauffeur") who murdered
King Alexander of Yugoslavia in 1934.
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