Internal Revolutionary Organisation

The Internal Revolutionary Organisation or IRO was a Bulgarian revolutionary organisation founded and built up by Bulgarian revolutionary Vasil Levski in the period between 1869 and 1871. The organisation represented a network of regional revolutionary committees which were governed by a Central Committee in the town of Lovech. The foundation of IRO reflected Levski’s ideas that the centre of revolutionary activity be transferred from the Bulgarian emigrant circles in Romania to Bulgaria proper. In 1871, Levski prepared the Charter of the organisation in the spirit of his own political views: liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottomans through a nationwide revolution and establishment of the country as a democratic republic with guarantees for the equality of all of its citizens regardless of their ethnicity or religion.