The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization – Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (Macedonian: Внатрешна македонска револуционерна организација – Демократска партија за македонско национално единство, simplified as VMRO-DPMNE; Macedonian: ВМРО–ДПМНЕ) is a political party in North Macedonia and one of the two major parties in the country, the other being the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia.
The first section of the acronym 'VMRO' which forms the party's name derives from the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, a rebel movement formed in 1893. After undergoing various transformations, the original organization was suppressed after the military coup d'état of 1934, in its headquarters in Bulgaria. At that time the territory of the current North Macedonia was a province called Vardar Banovina, part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. As the Bulgarian army entered Yugoslav Macedonia as German satellite during WWII, former IMRO members were active in organizing Bulgarian Action Committees, charged with taking over the local authorities. After Bulgaria switched to the Allied in September 1944, they tried to create a pro-Bulgarian independent Macedonian state under the protectorate of the Third Reich.[39][40] The VMRO–DPMNE claims ideological descent from the old VMRO,[41] although there is no known continuity between the two organizations.[42] IMRO was as a whole a pro-Bulgarian grouping.[43][44] In fact the membership in the IMRO was allowed initially only for Bulgarians.[45][46]
Following the death of Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito in 1980, SFR Yugoslavia began to disintegrate and democratic politics were revived in Macedonia. Many exiles returned to then SR Macedonia from abroad, and a new generation of young Macedonian intellectuals rediscovered the history of Macedonian nationalism. Dragan Bogdanovski who was a proclaimed Macedonian rights movement activist had made a blueprint for a Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity. He had also made a statute, book of rules, and an instruction of how the party is going to work. Ljubco Georgievski together with Bogdanovski, Boris Zmejkovski and few other activists had agreed to make a party for a future independent Macedonia. In these circumstances it was not surprising that the name of the famed Macedonian rebels was revived. Under the name VMRO–DPMNE, the party was founded on 17 June 1990 in Skopje.[47]
Rise to power
After the first multi-party elections in 1990, VMRO–DPMNE became the strongest party in the Parliament. It did not form a government because it did not achieve a majority of seats; this forced it to form a coalition with an ethnic Albanian party, but it refused to do so. The party boycotted the second round of the 1994 elections claiming fraud in the first round. After winning the 1998 election, VMRO–DPMNE surprised many people when finally forming a coalition government with an ethnic Albanian party, the Democratic Party of Albanians. After their victory in the elections, they formed a new government with Ljubčo Georgievski as Prime Minister. In 1999, VMRO–DPMNE's candidate Boris Trajkovski was elected President, completing VMRO–DPMNE's takeover. Once in office, Trajkovski adopted a more moderate policy than expected.
The first President of the VMRO–DPMNE and its founder was Ljubčo Georgievski, and the former president of the party is Nikola Gruevski. Nevertheless, accused of being pro-Bulgarian politician (a stigma in Macedonia), Georgievski broke off with DPMNE and established the VMRO-NP. The party became the largest party in Parliament again after a net gain of over a dozen seats in the 2006 parliamentary elections. With 44 of 120 seats, the party formed a government in coalition with the Democratic Party of Albanians. On 15 May 2007, the party became an observer-member of the European People's Party.
The party won 2008 early parliamentary elections. In the 120-seat Assembly, VMRO–DPMNE won 63 seats, enough to form its own government, and by that, the party won 4 more years of dominance in the Macedonian Parliament (mandate period 2008-2012) and government control.[5] After the Parliament constituted itself on 21 June 2008, the President Branko Crvenkovski on 23 June 2008 gave the then VMRO–DPMNE's leader and future prime minister Nikola Gruevski the mandate to form the new government (mandate period 2008-2012).
In 2009, the party had another two major successes. While the VMRO–DPMNE-led coalition "For a better Macedonia" won in 56 out of 84 municipalities, the party's presidential candidate Gjorge Ivanov also won the presidential election.[48]
The party won again 2011 early parliamentary elections. VMRO–DPMNE won 56 seats of the 120-seat Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia, the party formed a government in coalition with the Democratic Union for Integration in the Macedonian Parliament (mandate period 2011-2015).
VMRO–DPMNE was criticised for its "antiquisation" policy (known locally as "Antikvizacija") between 2006 and 2017, in which it sought to claim ancient Macedonian figures like Alexander the Great and Philip II of Macedon for the country.[49] The policy was pursued since the coming to power in 2006, and especially since Macedonia's non-invitation to NATO in 2008, as a way of putting pressure on Greece as well as in an attempt to construct a new identity on the basis of a presumed link to the world of antiquity.[50][51] The antiquisation policy fought criticism by academics as it demonstrated feebleness of archaeology and of other historical disciplines in public discourse, as well as a danger of marginalization.[52] The policy also attracted criticism domestically, by ethnic Macedonians within the country, who saw as dangerously dividing the country between those who identify with classical antiquity and those who identify with the country's Slavic culture.[50] Ethnic Albanians saw it as an attempt to marginalize them and exclude them from the national narrative.[50] The policy, which also claimed as ethnic Macedonians figures considered national heroes in Bulgaria, such as Todor Aleksandrov and Ivan Mihailov, has drawn criticism from Bulgaria,[50] and is regarded to have had a negative impact on the international position of the country.[53] Foreign diplomats warned that the policy reduced international sympathy for Macedonia's position in the naming dispute with Greece.[50]SDSM was opposed to the project and has alleged that the monuments in the project could have cost six to ten times less than what the government paid, which may already have exceeded 600 million euros.[54][55]
Stance on agreements with Greece and Bulgaria
VMRO-DPMNE has been criticized for its hard-line stance against the Prespa Agreement that was reached in June 2018 between the Republic of Macedonia and Greece, which resolved the long-standing Macedonia naming dispute by renaming the country as North Macedonia and recognizing that Macedonian culture and language are distinct and unrelated to ancient Hellenic civilization. On 16 October 2018, US Assistant Secretary of StateWess Mitchell sent a letter to VMRO-DPMNE leader Hristijan Mickoski, in which he expresses the disappointment of the United States with the positions of the party's leadership, including him personally, regarding its position against the Prespa agreement and asks to "set aside partisan interests" and work to get the name change approved.[56][57] Mickoski expressed his hope that the Republic of Macedonia will be very soon a part of the NATO and EU families, "but proud and dignified, not humiliated, disfigured and disgraced."[58] However in 2019, Mickoski has been criticized by the SDSM Deputy Foreign Minister Andrej Žernovski, that he has insisted, if he becomes a Prime Minister, after receiving a start date for accession negotiations on the EU membership of North Macedonia, the friendship agreements with the neighboring Greece and Bulgaria, signed by Zoran Zaev's government, would be denounced.[59] According to the analyst Erol Rizaov, Mickoski's long-term goal is really the denouncement of both agreements.[60] Mickoski has said if he came to power he would revise the Prespa Agreement signed with Greece in 2018, although stating that he will abide to it.[61]
Anti-Bulgarian attitudes
According to the Macedonian newspaper Fokus, under Gruevski's leadership there was not even a single activist who supported historical revisionism regarding the Bulgarian question in a high-ranking position and he started an open confrontation with Bulgaria, consistently getting closer to Serbia and its policy.[62] The newspaper also accused his successor Hristijan Mickoski of continuing this line and taking an openly Bulgarophobic stance.[63] Bulgarian MEP Andrey Kovatchev also accused Mickoski of Bulgarophobia. The party became the main force in the 2022 North Macedonia protests against the start of the negotiation process of North Macedonia and the EU, based on reconciliation with Bulgaria.[64] In August 2022, Mickoski vowed to leave politics forever if Bulgarians were included in the country's constitution, a mandatory requirement included in the negotiating framework with the EU.[65] In September 2022, the party initiated the holding of a referendum under which the friendship treaty between Bulgaria and North Macedonia would be denounced.[66] According to the former Macedonian Prime Minister Vlado Bučkovski, Russia stays behind this anti-Bulgarian hysteria, aiming to prevent the EU-path of the country.[67]
Attitudes against historical IMRO-figures
In 2012, as part of the controversial VMRO-DPMNE project Skopje 2014, a statue of the member of the IMRO Simeon Radev, who was also a Bulgarian diplomat, was installed on the building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The statue was later taken down, with the explanation that it had been a mistake. The explanation was that Radev's relation with Macedonia was only as his place of birth, while his entire life's work was dedicated to the Bulgarian state.[68] In April 2022, a Bulgarian club named after the last leader of the historical IMRO, Ivan Mihailov (1924–1934), was officially opened in Bitola. After its opening, the club was set on fire, and the VMRO-DPMNE leader demanded that the arsonist, who was arrested, be released.[69] The deputy chairman of the party Alexander Nikoloski expressed later his support to the decision of the Commission for Protection against Discrimination, which announces that the club "Ivan Mihailov" is discriminative towards the citizens of the country on national and ethnic grounds. VMRO-DPMNE deputy Rashela Mizrahi declared also the last leader of the organization whose name it bears to be a fascist.[70][71] Later, the party submitted a bill demanding that such names be banned for use in the country to increase distancing from fascism, Nazism and National Socialism.[72][73]
The party does not have a good reputation in the Western world.[74] It is often associated with neo-fascism and with Marine Le Pen's party in France (i.e National Rally).[74] VMRO-DPMNE was widely accused of nepotism and authoritarianism and was involved in a series of wiretapping, corruption and money-laundering scandals, with the Macedonian Special Prosecution ordering in 2017 a series of investigations against the party's former leader and ex-PM Nikola Gruevski, as well as ministers and other high-ranked officials, for involvement in illegal activities. In 2018, and amid ongoing investigations, a Skopje court froze the party's property assets.[75] Gruevski himself was sentenced in 2018 but fled when he was ordered to serve his prison sentence. Nevertheless, Gruevski remained an honorary chairman of the party until July 2020.[76]
Criticism by Georgievski
Ljubčo Georgievski espoused in an interview with Radio Free Europe in 2012, that VMRO-DPMNE is his personal failure. According to him, it became a fake party without any ideology. Georgievski announced that he feels obliged to nail the party every single day. According to him, if the party policy of fabricating hoaxes about the Macedonian past continues, the ethnic Macedonians will gradually lose the support of all ethnic communities in the country.[77]
In 2015, he espoused in an interview for Radio Free Europe his opinion that the then government had a clear goal: to keep the country closer to Serbia, and at some future stage to join the northern neighbor. According to him a classical pro-Yugoslav policy of Serbianisation was being conducted, where confrontation with all the other neighbors was taking place, but the border between Macedonian and Serbian national identity had been erased. "Stop the Serbian assimilation of the Macedonian nation" was the motto of the billboards that were placed then on Skopje streets, through which the Party launched a campaign for preserving the Macedonian national identity. The pro-governmental press claimed that the "Bulgarian" Georgievski organised a new provocation. As a result, the billboards were removed quickly by the VMRO-DPMNE authorities.[78][79]
Georgievski has insisted 10 years later, that it continues to be hidden by the modern Macedonian historians that the historical IMRO-activists were Bulgarians, saying that he IMRO victims for the idea of an Independent Macedonia are proclaimed traitors, while the communist spies from UDBA are seen as heroes and that this is what VMRO-DPMNE keeps doing, which is a total paradox.[80] According to him, after his departure, agents of the former Yugoslav security service were massively introduced into the party's leadership.[81]
Youth Force Union
The Youth Force Union (Macedonian: Унија на млади сили на ВМРО-ДПМНЕ), also known as UMS (Macedonian: УМС), is the youth wing organization of the VMRO-DPMNE. It considers itself a continuation of historical youth organizations which spread the ideals of VMRO for independent Macedonia.[82]
A number of projects arising from the Youth Force Union were conducted in the past 20 years. Formed in 1991, the most remarkable and influential President of YFU was Filip Petrovski; he was its leader in the period 1997–2000, and member of parliament 1998–2001.
^According to the personal evaluation of the founder of the party Ljubco Georgievski, not only he, but also 90 percent of VMRO-DPMNE members in the early 1990s, as well as 50 percent of the government he led from 1998 to 2002, felt themselves as Bulgarophiles. He also accused his successor Gruevski of being a Serboman. For more see: Што се случува во десницата? Утрински весник, број 3294 од 31 мај 2010 година.
^Per the leading VMRO-DPMNE member Aleksandar Lepavcov his grandfather called himself Bulgarian. His father was Bulgarian or, to put it most mildly, a big Bulgarophile. I am also Bulgarophile, but above all I am Macedonian. I know my roots, but today the situation is as it is. For more see: New Faces in Skopje, Lessons from the Macedonian Elections and the Challenges Facing the New Government, International Crisis Group (ICG), UNHCR, 8 January 1999.
^Friedman, Eben. (2002). Party System, Electoral Systems and Minority Representation in the Republic of Macedonia from 1990 to 2002†. pp= 235-236 in European Yearbook of Minority Issues Online. 2. pp. 227-245. 10.1163/221161103X00111.
^Fluri, Philipp H.; Gustenau, Gustav E.; Pantev, Plamen I. (19 September 2005). "Macedonian Reform Perspectives". The Evolution of Civil-Military Relations in South East Europe: Continuing Democratic Reform and Adapting to the Needs of Fighting Terrorism. Springer. p. 170. ISBN978-3-7908-1572-6.
^Vera Stojarová, Peter Emerson (2013) Party Politics in the Western Balkans; Routledge, ISBN1135235856, p. 175.
^Hugh Poulton, Who are the Macedonians?, Hurst & Company, 2000, ISBN9781850652380, p. 207.
^Danforth, Loring M. (1995). The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World. Princeton University Press. p. 144. ISBN0691043574. ...the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization – Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE), an ultranationalist party whose irredentist platform called for the creation of a "United Macedonia".
^"Вмро – Дпмне". Vmro-dpmne.org.mk. Retrieved 30 April 2014.
^The party politics in Macedonia, 1993, Skopje, G. Ljubancev
^Troebst.S, ‘An Ethnic War That Did Not Take Place: Macedonia, Its Minorities and Its Neighbours in the 1990s’, p. 78 in David Turton (ed.), War and Ethnicity: Global Connections and Local Violence (Rochester, 1997 ), pp. 77–103.
^Dimitar Bechev, Historical Dictionary of North Macedonia, Historical Dictionaries of Europe, Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, p. 124, ISBN1538119625.
^Piacentini A., Make Macedonia Great Again! The New Face of Skopje and the Macedonians’ identity dilemma edited by Evinç Doğan in Reinventing Eastern Europe: Imaginaries, Identities and Transformations; Place and space series; Transnational Press London, 2019; ISBN1910781878, p. 87.
^Tom Lansford as ed., Political Handbook of the World 2018-2019; (2019) CQ Press, p. 968, ISBN1544327137.
^Pandeva, I.R. (2022). North Macedonia and Russia: An Ambiguous Relationship. In: Kaeding, M., Pollak, J., Schmidt, P. (eds) Russia and the Future of Europe. The Future of Europe. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95648-6_35
^Tomáš Vlček, Martin Jirušek, Russian Oil Enterprises in Europe: Investments and Regional Influence, Springer, 2019, p. 143, ISBN3030198391.
^Vassilis Petsinis, From pro-American to pro-Russian? Nikola Gruevski as a political chameleon. 22 May 2015. openDemocracy.
^Jasmin Mujanovic, Hunger and Fury: The Crisis of Democracy in the Balkans, Oxford University Press, 2018, ISBN0190877391, pp. 115; 162.
^Rajchinovska Pandeva, I. (2021). North Macedonia: The Name in Exchange for European Union Membership?. In: Kaeding, M., Pollak, J., Schmidt, P. (eds) Euroscepticism and the Future of Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41272-2_26
^"Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict: Greece, Bulgaria, and the Macedonian Question," Victor Roudometof, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002, ISBN0275976483, p. 99.
^Todor Chepreganov et al., History of the Macedonian People, Institute of National History, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje,(2008) p. 254.
^Bernard A. Cook, Europe Since 1945: An Encyclopedia, Volume 2, Taylor & Francis, 2001, ISBN9780815340584, p. 813.
^"A more modern national hero is Gotse Delchev, leader of the turn-of-the-century Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), which was actually a largely pro-Bulgarian organization but is claimed as the founding Macedonian national movement." Kaufman, Stuart J. Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War. Cornell University Press, 2001, ISBN0801487366, p. 193.
^The first name of the IMRO was "Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committees", which was later changed several times. Initially its membership was restricted only for Bulgarians. It was active not only in Macedonia but also in Thrace (the Vilayet of Adrianople). Since its early name emphasized the Bulgarian nature of the organization by linking the inhabitants of Thrace and Macedonia to Bulgaria, these facts are still difficult to be explained from the Macedonian historiography. They suggest that IMRO revolutionaries in the Ottoman period did not differentiate between ‘Macedonians’ and ‘Bulgarians’. Moreover, as their own writings attest, they often saw themselves and their compatriots as ‘Bulgarians’ and wrote in Bulgarian standard language. For more see: Brunnbauer, Ulf (2004) Historiography, Myths and the Nation in the Republic of Macedonia. In: Brunnbauer, Ulf, (ed.) (Re)Writing History. Historiography in Southeast Europe after Socialism. Studies on South East Europe, vol. 4. LIT, Münster, pp. 165-200 ISBN382587365X.
^The revolutionary committee dedicated itself to fight for "full political autonomy for Macedonia and Adrianople." Since they sought autonomy only for those areas inhabited by Bulgarians, they denied other nationalities membership in IMRO. According to Article 3 of the statutes, "any Bulgarian could become a member". For more see: Laura Beth Sherman, Fires on the mountain: the Macedonian revolutionary movement and the kidnapping of Ellen Stone, Volume 62, East European Monographs, 1980, ISBN0914710559, p. 10.
^The most controversial revisionist effort concerned the attempt to include the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (VMRO) of the interwar period within the Macedonian national narrative. Previous scholarship had regarded this organization as a reactionary force of Bulgarian expansionism, pointing to its support for conservative circles in Bulgaria, its contacts with the fascist Croatian Ustashe and Nazi Germany, and its display of Bulgarian national identity. The attempt to rehabilitate it was directly linked to efforts by the VMRO-DPMNE party, to declare itself the legitimate successor of the historical VMRO. For more see: Serving the Nation: Ulf Brunnbauer, Historiography in the Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) After Socialism, Historein, Vol 4 (2003).
^Vangeli Anastas (2011). "Nation-building ancient Macedonian style: the origins and the effects of the so-called antiquization in Macedonia". Nationalities Papers. 39: 13–32. doi:10.1080/00905992.2010.532775. S2CID154923343.
^Љубчо Георгиевски:Во Македонија се крие дека Делчев бил бугарски учител – Жртвите за самостојна Македонија ги правиме предавници, а удбашите херои. May 6, 2022, iNFOMAX.
