The emigrant history of Bulgarians overseas is rich and long-suffering, with a significance unparalleled in the struggle to preserve Bulgarian political and spiritual consciousness. For this reason, the commemoration of the 101st anniversary of the Macedonian Patriotic Organization, the largest emigrant organization of Bulgarians in the world, is of great significance to every Bulgarian, no matter in which part of the world he is.
The MPO was founded by refugees from all parts of Macedonia in Fort Wayne, Indiana, back in 1922. For 101 years the organization has held its own Congress, and this year the event is being celebrated from September 1 to 3 in Columbus, Ohio, where the MPO has its own club and is active. Information about the Congress and everything related to it is relayed by a BGNES reporter, part of the agency's team that is among the guests at this year's event and the main media with a mission to cover it.
The event is attended by prominent members and activists associated with the Macedonian Patriotic Organization, including the hosts of the MPO Club of Columbus in the person of Gregory Chachov, Canadian, descendant of Macedonian Bulgarians Nick Stefanov, as well as many representatives of the Macedonian Bulgarians of the new emigration in North America. The official guest of the event is the Consul General of Bulgaria in Chicago Svetoslav Stankov.
Among the official invitees is the Executive Director of the Bulgarian News Agency (BGNES) Petar Kolev. The presence of more than 400 representatives of the descendants of the Bulgarian emigration from the region of Macedonia is expected.
The existence of the Macedonian Patriotic Organization is fraught with challenges that continue to this day. The founding of the MPO was the decision of Todor Alexandrov, who united all the small existing organizations in North America at that time. Later the MPO expanded to South America - Brazil and Argentina, and also to Australia and New Zealand.
The main goal of the organization was to defend the rights of the Bulgarians from enslaved Macedonia against Serbian and Greek propaganda and terror. Over the years it has worked actively to create a Bulgarian lobby, maintaining contacts with the American political, business and scientific elite, including engaging representatives of Congress and the administration in Washington with the Bulgarian cause.
Since its inception, the MPO has defended the Bulgarian ethnic character of Macedonia. The MPO's print organ, the Macedonian Tribune, informs the American and world public about the plight and plight of the Bulgarians in Macedonia and the oppression imposed on them by the Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz Tito after 1945.
Bulgarian emigration appeared in the United States in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and initially the ratio between Bulgarians from the liberated lands and enslaved Macedonia was approximately equal - about 50,000 people in total. With the outbreak of the Balkan Wars, changes occurred. Then some of the Bulgarians from the Kingdom of Bulgaria, who were subject to compulsory military service, returned to their homeland to participate in the wars for national unification. Because of this, the ratio within the Bulgarian ethnic body in the new world changed in favour of the Macedonian Bulgarians, and after the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine, under which Macedonia was finally torn apart, they began to withdraw their relatives, families and friends from there. Thus, between the two world wars, Macedonian emigration to the United States and Canada dominated the structure of the Bulgarian emigrant body. Bulgarians in Aegean and Vardar Macedonia under Greek and Serbian rule were placed in an extremely difficult situation. The necessity has arisen for this vast wreck of the Bulgarian ethnic body in America to form a patriotic political organization of its own, which, by promoting the ideas of the Bulgarian national cause - the truth about the Bulgarians in Macedonia, will engage the attention of the world community for a just solution of the Macedonian question.
Thus, from 2 to 4 October 1922, the first founding congress of the Macedonian Patriotic Organization was held in Fort Wayne, USA. After the end of World War II, the MPO played an outstanding role in the efforts to give the Macedonian question its proper place on the diplomatic scene. The MPO exposed what was happening in Vardar Macedonia. It was the organization that dealt the first blow to Macedonianism by publicizing concrete facts - the murders of Bulgarians who had fallen victim to the Macedonian transformation of Macedonian society, the forced Macedonization of the Bulgarians in Macedonia, analyses of the falsification of Bulgarian history in Macedonia, and proof of the untenability of the narrative of the existence of an ancient Macedonian nationality.
The MPO is an example of the fact that Bulgarians, wherever they are in the world, manage to preserve their national consciousness and contribute to the defence of their national interests. This year's 101st Congress of the Macedonian Patriotic Organization in Columbus, USA is dedicated to this ideology. / BGNES
