First statute of the IMRO

Due to the lack of original protocol documentation, and the fact its early organic statutes were not dated, the first statute of the clandestine Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) 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. Certain contradictions and 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 1960s.

The revolutionary organization set up in 1893 in Ottoman Thessaloniki changed its name several times before adopting in 1919 its last and most common name i.e. Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). 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. All its basic documents were written in the pre-1945 Bulgarian orthography. The first statute of the IMRO from 1894 was modelled after the statute of the earlier Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee (BRCC).

On the eve of the 20th century IMRO was often called "the Bulgarian Committee", while its members were designated as Comitadjis, i.e. "committee men". In the earliest dated samples of statutes and regulations of the Organization discovered so far, it is called Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianopolitan Revolutionary Committees (BMARC). 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 is presumably 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. 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.