BRITISH LEGATION,

SOFIA.

September 26th, 1935.

Sir,

With reference to the police discoveries relating to the United Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation, reported in my despatch No.l65 of September 16th, I have the honour to forward a few further details regarding the activities of this movement, which have reached me from what I consider to be a reliable source.

• 2. This organisation was, I am informed, created in October 1925 at Vienna by Dimitri Vlahoff, a Macedonian Communist, who now directs the Central Committee in Paris. He was assisted by certain progressive Macedonians, who hoped to be able to reach an agreement with the Mihailovists, Protoguerovists, and others and to create one united organisation. As this did not succeed, the organisation entered into relations with the Third International and in 1928 the movement became definitely communist. The Central Committee then moved to Berlin and subsequently in 1933 to Paris.

• 3. Until May 1934 the Macedonian communists, like other communists in Bulgaria, were hampered in their activities by their bitter enemies, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation. Many communists fell victims of the Mihailovist terror. Since the coup d’etat last year, however, the Macedonian communists became much more active, especially in Sofia and in Bulgarian Macedonia. I am told that the intention was to detach the three portions of Macedonia belonging to Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria, and to unite them into a Soviet Republic. The Central Committee at Paris, as already reported, received orders and money from the Third International at Moscow, and passed them to the local committees. At the same time the communist parties in Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Greece were ordered by Moscow to support the Macedonian communists. These orders were certainly carried out so far as the Bulgarian communists were concerned.

• 4. I now learn that fifty arrests were recently made in the Petritch district of Macedonia and thirty in Sofia. None of these people have been liberated. It has been remarked that the large majority were youths. According to some, the Mihailovists have revenged themselves on their enemies by denouncing to the Police as communists many innocent people.

• 5. The object of the Bulgarian communist party as a whole is said to be to revolutionize the country, whereas the object of the United Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation, which the communist party now supports, is, it is stated, more limited; namely, the revolutionizing of the Macedonian districts.