The conflict grew into a leadership struggle and Mihailov soon in turn ordered the assassination in 1928 of a rival leader, General Aleksandar Protogerov, which sparked a fratricidal war between "Mihailovists" and "Protogerovists". The less numerous Protogerovists soon became allied with Yugoslavia and certain Bulgarian military circles with fascist leanings and who favoured rapprochement with Yugoslavia. The policy of assassionations was effective in making Serbian rule in Vardar Macedonia feel insecure but in turn provoked brutal reprisals on the local peasant population.
Having lost a lot of popular support in Vardar Macedonia due to his policies, Mihailov favoured the "internationalization" of the Macedonian question.
Numerous assassinations were carried out by IMRO agents in many countries, the majority in Yugoslavia. The most spectacular of these was the assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia and the French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou in Marseille in 1934 in collaboration with the Croatian Ustashi. The killing was carried out by the VMRO assassin Vlado Chernozemski and happened after the suppression of IMRO following the 19 May 1934 military coup in Bulgaria. IMRO's constant fratricidal killings and assassinations abroad provoked some within Bulgarian military after the coup of 19 May 1934 to take control and break the power of the organization,
which had come to be seen as a gangster organization inside Bulgaria and a band of assassins outside it. In 1934 Mihailov was forced to escape to Turkey. He ordered to his supporters not to resist to the Bulgarian army and to accept the disarmament peacefully, thus avoiding fratricides, destabilization of Bulgaria, civil war or external invasion.[35]
Many inhabitants of Pirin Macedonia met this disbandment with satisfaction because it was perceived as relief from an unlawful and quite often brutal parallel authority. IMRO kept its organization alive in exile in various countries, but ceased to be an active force in Macedonian politics except for brief moments during World War II. Meanwhile a resolution of the Comintern for recognition of a distinct ethnic Macedonian ethnicity, which was accepted also by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (United), was published in January, 1934. IMRO (United) remained active until 1936, when it was absorbed into the Balkan Communist Federation.[36]
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