He was born in Novo Selo, Shtipsko (now in Macedonia). He studied at the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki "Saints Cyril and Methodius". During World War I he was a Bulgarian clerk in Shtip municipality, for a while is in the ranks of the Bulgarian Army. After the war he studies at the Faculty of Law of the Sofia University.He is a founding member and chairman of (early 1920) the Macedonian student company "Vardar". Then he was invited by Todor Alexandrov as secretary in overseas representation of VMRO.
The active legal activities of Ivan Mihajlov ends with the murder of T. Aleksandrov (31 August, 1924), who was his friend and teacher. Mihajlov was elected as a member of the Central Committee of VMRO (1924-1934) and starts to punish the murderers of Alexandrov. He became head of the right stream in the Macedonian liberation movement and in the following years became the actual leader of VMRO.
He prefers the tactic of individual terror. On his orders are carried out terrorist actions against federatists, farmers and communists. Strenghten are the fratricidal struggles in VMRO, which leads to weakening of the organization and society in Bulgaria turns against it.
After the coup of May 19, 1934 the government led by Kimon Georgiev aims to destroy VMRO in order to improve the relations between Bulgaria and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The organization is banned. Mihajlov goes into hiding and his wife Mencha Karnicheva had to emigrate to Turkey. He gets extramural death sentence. Later he lives for some time in Poland, Hungary and Croatia. After 1945 he settles permanently in Rome, Italy.
In the Italian capital Vanche became a unifying figure for Bulgarian emigrants from Macedonia, he became the head of the Macedonian political organizations in the US and Canada. He is the author of the books "Macedonia - Switzerland of the Balkans" (1950), "Memories (4 volumes, 1958-1973)," V.M.R.O. "(1978) and others. Iv. Mihajlov died in Rome on September 5, 1990 Today a monument of Vanche is errected in Borissova Gradina Park in the capital. Streets in Sofia, Burgas, Blagoevgrad, Gabrovo and other cities in Bulgaria carry his name.
