THE HONORABLE THE SECRETARY OF STATE WASHINGTON - Part 01

THE HONORABLE THE SECRETARY OF STATE WASHINGTON

Sir:

I have the honor to present below a signed editorial from the Bulgarian newspaper ZORA of October 13, 1943, written by Yordan Badev, one of the most vigorous and enthusiastic exponents of the unification of Macedonia with Bulgaria. Badev is himself a Macedonian born at Bitolya in 1888/ He received his higher education in the University of Sofia and Lausanne. By profession he is a newspaper writer and in addition is a literary man and dramatist of some repute. He is an able writer and doubtless a sincere Macedonian patriot. He has made his home in Sofia for many years.

Mr. Badev is concerned to show the Bulgarian character of the Macedonian villagers. He maintains that in spite of Serbian rule - or Serbian slavery, as he calls it -during the last twenty-five years the Macedonian villager is still essentially Bulgarian, speaking the Bulgarian language and maintaining Bulgarian traditions. The Serbian effort toward the de-Bulgarization of Macedonia made its greatest efforts in the towns rather than the villages, the Serbian policy being to Serbianize the towns and then to Serbianize the villages. The three principal agencies in this work were the school, the barracks and the police station. The writer points out that the Serbians gave very little attention to education in the villages, as shown by the fact that the number of village schools found in Macedonia by the Bulgarian authorities in 1941 was approximately the same as the number of schools maintained there by the Bulgarian Exarchate in Turkish times before 1912.

One of the means of arousing the interest of the village population in Macedonia and of encouraging their Bulgarianism, has been the opening of reading rooms in the villages. These reading rooms (chitalishta) contain a small library, Bulgarian newspapers, a lecture room and sometimes an assembly hall, or a social room for gatherings o: various kinds. They are found all over Bulgaria and have been spread through Macedonia during the last two years. The writer points out that the number of these reading rooms in the Bitolya district has now reached seventy. Apart from their pro propaganda uses, these reading rooms are most useful institutions, as they form social centers in the villages and small towns where such are otherwise lacking, except as provided by the local church. The writer believes that the villagers in Macedonia have responded with great enthusiasm to the unification movement.

This editorial emphasizes the primary problem connected with the settlement in Macedonia, the fact that a large proportion of the population there is consciously Bulgarian. The Macedonian population as a whole is very much mixed, a fact always overlooked by the Bulgarian propagandists, but in most areas of that part of Macedonia which was under Serbian rule from 1918 to 1941 the most numerous element in the population is undoubtedly Bulgarian in its sentiment and in its language and traditions. This fact only adds to the extreme difficulty of arriving at any settlement of the Macedonian question which will bring peace and the opportunity for prosperity to that troubled province.

In free translation Mr. Badev's editorial reads as follows:

THE PEASANT WITH REGARD TO HIS OWN EDUCATION

By Yordan Badev

“Among the impressions which the former Prime Minister -now a Regent -Professor Bogdan Filov, gave as the result of his recent tour in Macedonia, there was one characteristic affirmation: that the people in the Macedonian villages have been kept unspoiled both in their Bulgarian language and in their national or patriotic sentiment. Serbian slavery of a quarter of a century has not succeeded in erasing from the spirit of the peasants the memory of recent struggles for free Bulgaria, nor from the life of the peasants the hold of Bulgarian national customs. It is true that the Serbians considered it as one of their first problems in Macedonia to win over the towns and from there to creep on to the villages. And they tried by all means of suggestion and of moral and physical pressure--particularly through the school, the barracks and the police station -first to separate the youth from its Bulgarian tradition by directing it more toward the lightness and laxity characteristic of Serbian national character. For such 'cultural conquests' the villages lacked suitable conditions. And as it was the village that held secondary place with regard to the educational policy after a quarter of a century of Serbian domination, the Bulgarian educational authorities found in the Macedonian villages about the same number of schools as had been established there by the Exarchate down to 1912. The Serbs showed absolutely no interest in the enlightenment of the villages. And so much the better, for in this way the Macedonian village was left more freely to follow along the path of its own national traditions. There is hardly a village in Macedonia which does not keep alive the memory of some Bulgarian leader, some teacher or priest, some national celebration, some battle of its own living or dead heroes of the time when the whole Bulgarian nation of Macedonia fought with arms in its hands for its freedom and for its national unification. In the villages more than in the towns have been preserved those Bulgarian national songs about kings, heroes, supernatural creatures, about the sun god, about the earth and bread and the like and also new songs concerning 'glorious leaders' and ‘standard bearers’. In these songs are treasured, parallel with the image of that distant and recent national past, also the unity, the uncorrupted wholeness of the Bulgarian national language. Far from

the dynamic culture of the towns, the village also lives far from the destruction of the gossip, slander and looseness of the town vagabonds. It treasures in a crude primitive way the whole, sound and lasting Bulgarianism which is expressed today in the inspiration coming from the achievement of national unification, is loyalty to Bulgarian law and in zeal and efforts for more education. This was best understood and declared by the numerous teachers who, in many Macedonian villages, were the first teachers delegated to teach and instruct, and who had to make their own path to the villages and to separate households in order to find a place both for a home and a school.

“A new and inspiring manifestation of the love of the Macedonian peasant for education is his interest in the national reading room. Twelve kilometers northwest of Bitolya at the feet of Mount Pelister, there nestles a small village -Lara -of about one hundred households, of which fifty are Bulgarian and forty- seven Turkish. Enthused for good work, the teacher in charge of the Bulgarian Reading Union stirred by his preaching these wide- awake but poor Lara villagers arousing in them the desire for a reading room. In a short time in the most prominent place in the village, with the labor of ants and with the free offerings of the villagers and without significant help from outside, a large two-story structure was built with all the necessary rooms for a reading room, library, social hall, cooperative room and the like. And the example of the people of Lara has spread as a beneficent contagion; all surrounding villages are planning to equal and surpass them in their zeal and sacrifice. Thanks to the regard of the peasant for education and to the noble rivalry for spiritual priority in the Bitolya district alone, in the two years of freedom the reading rooms have increased from two to seventy. It is clear that the peasant in Macedonia has been kept sound and wide-awake ready to make sacrifices in the name of a more fortunate national future. But in order that this readiness may be wisely used, one condition is absolutely necessary; that this spirit be awakened and encouraged not by a dry order but by conviction and love. The people give readily only to him who knows how to ask.” (ZORA, October 13, 1943).

Respectfully yours Burton Y. Berry, American Consul General To Department in original and hectograph

Bulgarians in Greek Macedonia - August 9, 1943

The Foreign Service of the United States of America No, 1106 (R-1013) American Consulate General, Istanbul, Turkey

SUBJECT: Bulgarians in Greek Macedonia