Macedonia marks October 23rd, the day of the Macedonian Revolutionary Struggle. It honors the founding of VMRO – the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, in 1893 in Solun.

The organization fought to create a Macedonian state from the Balkan provinces of the Ottoman Empire – a push that was defeated by the Balkan countries who were quicker to gain independence from the Ottomans with the partition of Macedonia in 1913. But its ideas remained alive and surfaced again with the partisan movement in the Second World War and the declaration of independence in 1991.