in what is today North Macedonia, because Yugoslav communism and Macedonian nationalism are closely related. He was regarded as an Axis collaborator in Communist Bulgaria, but has been rehabilitated later, supporting its narrative that negates the existence of a widespread Macedonian national identity before the end of World War II. 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. Biography Early years Ivan Mihaylov was born on 26 August 1896 in the village of Novo Selo (Štip Municipality) (today a quarter of Štip, North Macedonia), in the Kosovo Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. Mihaylov studied at the Bulgarian Men's High School in Thessaloniki up until the Second Balkan War (1913), when the school was closed by the new Greek administration. He later continued his schooling at a Serbian school in Skopje, then in the Kingdom of Serbia. A scholarship was offered to him by the Serbian Ministry of Education to pursue a degree at a European university, but he declined. During the First World War, he enlisted in the Bulgarian Army, which occupied the region at the time. After the end of the war, Mihaylov emigrated to Bulgaria, settling in Sofia. Here he began studying law at the Sofia University. It was at this time that he was offered to work as personal secretary to the then IMRO leader Todor Aleksandrov. Leader of the IMRO On 31 August 1924, Todor Aleksandrov was assassinated in unclear circumstances and IMRO soon came under the control of Mihaylov, who had become a powerful figure in Bulgarian politics. IMRO's leadership was quick to blame Aleksandrov's murder on the communists, while they claimed that Mihaylov may have actually been responsible for the murder. These events created friction between factions within the organization and led to several high-profile murders, including that of Petar Chaulev (who led the Ohrid uprising in 1913) in Milan. During the interwar period IMRO, took action against several former members of IMRO's Sandanist (left-wing) faction. Gjorche Petrov was killed in Sofia in 1922, Todor Panitsa (who had previously killed the right-wing Boris Sarafov and Ivan Garvanov) was assassinated in Vienna in 1924 by Mihaylov's future wife Mencha Karnichiu. Dimo Hadjidimov, Georgi Skrizhovski, Aleksandar Bujnov, Chudomir Kantardjiev and many others were killed