Ivan Mihailov

Ivan Mihaylov Gavrilov (Bulgarian: Иван Михайлов Гаврилов; Macedonian: Иван Михајлов Гаврилов; 26 August 1896 – 5 September 1990), known also by his short name as Vancho Mihaylov (Bulgarian: Ванчо Михайлов; Macedonian: Ванчо Михајлов), was a Bulgarian revolutionary in interwar Macedonia, and the last leader of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO).

Under Mihaylov, the IMRO became notoriously anti-communist and identified itself closely with Bulgarian nationalism, thus eliminating not only the enemies of the Bulgarian national idea in Macedonia but also its left-wing opponents within the Macedonian liberation movement. He changed also the organization's tactics from guerrilla campaigns to individual terrorist acts. Numerous terrorist attacks were carried out by IMRO against Yugoslav officials under his leadership, the most spectacular of which was the assassination of Alexander I of Yugoslavia, in collaboration with Croatian Ustaše. He cooperated also actively with revanchist powers, such as Mussolini's Fascist Italy, Admiral Horthy's Hungary and Hitler's Nazi Germany. During World War II, IMRO had de facto full control of Bulgarian part of Macedonia, which it used as a base for hit and run attacks against Yugoslavia and Greece. During the last stage of the Second World War he tried to realize the IMRO's plan to create an Independent Macedonia. However Mihaylov rejected then its realization, due to the lack of real German military support, along with his reluctance to take a course that would lead to a civil war.

During the Cold War, Mihaylov lived in Italy, while the emigrant Macedonian Patriotic Organization in the USA and Canada, worked under his guidance, on the old IMRO's goal of an independent Macedonia. This was acknowledged by a CIA analyst report from 1953, which dubbed the MPO as "the US branch of the IMRO", and asserted that it acted as a money raising organ to support Mihaylov's activity. At the beginning of the fall of communism and the breakup of Yugoslavia, only a months before his death in 1990, he kept insisting: "I am Bulgarian from Macedonia" and "I would recommend to the young people in Macedonia to hold on to the fact that we have been Bulgarians for thousand years." Mihaylov was considered a Bulgarophile traitor and fascist in Communist Yugoslavia. He is still regarded as such in what is today North Macedonia, while the organization he led is seen as a controversial Bulgarian organization, because its ideas clash with the Yugoslav Macedonian historical narrative. According to Bulgarian historian Chavdar Marinov, he was regarded as a Nazi collaborator in Communist Bulgaria. Mihaylov has been partially rehabilitated later there, supporting Bulgarian narrative that negates the existence of a widespread Macedonian national identity before the end of World War II, and he has been fully rehabilitated today.

Mihaylov is the author of 4 volumes of Memoirs and a number of articles and pamphlets such as "Macedonia - Switzerland in the Balkans", "Stalin and the Macedonian Question", as well as other materials describing the Macedonian struggle for freedom.