Foreign Representation of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization in the context of Region of Macedonia

The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO; Bulgarian: Вътрешна македонска революционна организация (ВМРО), romanized: Vatreshna Makedonska Revolyutsionna Organizatsiya (VMRO); Macedonian: Внатрешна македонска револуционерна организација (ВМРО), romanized: Vnatrešna Makedonska Revolucionerna Organizacija (VMRO)), was a secret revolutionary society founded in the Ottoman territories in Europe, that operated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Founded in 1893 in Salonica, it sought sovereignty for Macedonia under the slogan Macedonia for the Macedonians. Initially it aimed to gain autonomy for Macedonia and Adrianople regions in the Ottoman Empire, however, it later became an agent serving Bulgarian interests in Balkan politics. IMRO modeled itself after the earlier Bulgarian Internal Revolutionary Organization of Vasil Levski and accepted its motto "Freedom or Death" (Свобода или смърть). According to the memoirs of some founding and ordinary members, in the Organization's earliest statute from 1894, the membership was reserved exclusively for Bulgarians. This was later changed on the initiative of Gotse Delchev, who wanted IMRO to depart from its exclusively Bulgarian nature, so he opened the membership for all inhabitants of European Turkey and the organization begun to acquire a more separatist stance. However, these new formulas as a whole failed to attract other ethnic groups, from whom it was seen as a pro-Bulgarian society, thus IMRO remained with base only among Bulgarian Exarchist affiliated Slavic speakers in Ottoman Macedonia. It used the Bulgarian language in all its documents and in its correspondence. The Organisation founded in 1896 its Foreign Representation in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. Starting in the same year, it fought the Ottomans using guerrilla tactics, and in this, they were successful, even establishing a state within a state in some regions, including their tax collectors. This struggle escalated in 1903 with the Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising. The fighting involved about 15,000 IMRO irregulars and 40,000 Ottoman soldiers, lasting for over seven weeks. After the uprising failed, and the Ottomans destroyed some 100 villages, the IMRO resorted to more systematic forms of terrorism targeting civilians. More important, the Ilinden disaster splintered IMRO and signalled the beginning of a fratricidal conflict between the left-wing faction ("federalists") who continued to favor autonomy as step towards independent Macedonia and its inclusion into a future Balkan Federation, and the right-wing faction ("centralists") which favored unification with Bulgaria. In fact, the division was a culmination of a conflict which existed within IMRO since its formation. It was based partially on ideology, and partly in terms of personality and locality, and it would plague the Macedonian revolutionary movement over the next decades.

Georgi Nikolov Delchev (Bulgarian: Георги Николов Делчев; Macedonian: Ѓорѓи Николов Делчев; 4 February 1872 – 4 May 1903), known as Gotse Delchev or Goce Delčev (Гоце Делчев), was a prominent Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary (komitadji) and one of the most important leaders of what is commonly known as the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). He was active in the Ottoman-ruled Macedonia and Adrianople regions, as well as in Bulgaria, at the turn of the 20th century. Delchev was IMRO's foreign representative in Sofia, the capital of the Principality of Bulgaria. As such, he was also a member of the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee (SMAC) for a period, participating in the work of its governing body. He was killed in a skirmish with an Ottoman unit on the eve of the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising.

Born into a Bulgarian Millet affiliated family in Kukush (today Kilkis in Greece), then in the Salonika vilayet of the Ottoman Empire, in his youth he was inspired by the ideals of earlier Bulgarian revolutionaries such as Vasil Levski and Hristo Botev, who envisioned the creation of a Bulgarian republic of ethnic and religious equality, as part of an imagined Balkan Federation. Delchev completed his secondary education in the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki and entered the Military School of His Princely Highness in Sofia, but at the final stage of his study, he was dismissed for holding socialist literature. Then he returned to Ottoman Macedonia and worked as a Bulgarian Exarchate schoolteacher, and immediately became an activist of the newly-found revolutionary movement in 1894.

Autonomy for the region of Macedonia and Adrianople Thrace within the Ottoman Empire was a concept that arose in the late 19th century and was popular until around 1920. The plan was developed among Macedonian and Thracian Bulgarian émigrés in Sofia and covered several meanings. It was adopted and given prominence by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization and the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee.