KING CONSTANTINE’S TELEGRAM - Part 01

KING CONSTANTINE’S TELEGRAM

July 12, 1913.

The general commanding the Sixth Division informs me that Bulgarian soldiers under the command of a captain of gendarmes gathered in the yard of the school house at Demir-Hissar over one hundred notables of the town, the archbishop and two priests, and massacred them all. The headquarters staff ordered the exhumation of the bodies, with the result that the crime has been established. Further, Bulgarian soldiers violated young girls and massacred those who resisted them. Protest in my name to the representatives of the powers and to the whole civilized world against these abominations, and declare that to my great regret I shall find myself obliged to proceed to reprisals, in order to inspire their authors with a salutary fear, and to cause them to reflect before committing similar atrocities. The Bulgarians have surpassed all the horrors perpetrated by their barbarous hordes in the past, thus proving that they have not the right to be classed among civilized peoples.

(Signed) CONSTANTINE, King. (Page 300)

The accounts you are about to read are of those who either witnessed or themselves experienced the Greek atrocities at Kukush.

EVIDENCE OF FATHER JOSEPH RADANOV, of Kukush.

On July 2 he could distinctly see from Kukush that the surrounding villages were on fire, Salamanli among others. Fields of corn and stacks’ of reaped corn had been set on fire even behind the Greek positions. The Greeks moreover had fired upon the reapers who had gone to work in the early morning in their fields. The refugees from the neighbouring villages began to arrive upon the heights called

Kara-Bunar about a mile away, and were there bombarded by artillery.

Next day (July 3) the battle approached the town, but the Bulgarians retained their position. About midday the Greeks began to bombard Kukush, but when I left no house had taken fire. (Page 300)

FATHER JEAN CHIKITCHEV.

I took refuge after midday on July 3 with Father Michel and meant to stay with him. I saw the shells falling upon the sisters’ orphanage. I saw the hospital struck by a shell. There were at this time no Bulgarian troops in the town, although they were in their positions in front of it. The town was unfortified. The bombardment seemed to be systematic. It could not be explained as a mistake incidental to the finding of the range. Quite forty shells fell not far from the orphanage and three or possibly four houses were set on fire. At this point I left the town and fled with the refugees. Next night it looked as if the whole plain were burning.

NOTE.-Both the above witnesses were priests of the Catholic Uniate Church. (Page 300)

MR. C. [the name may not be published] a Catholic resident in the village of Todoraki near Kukush, states than on July 6 the Greek commandant of Kukush arrived accompanied by thirty infantrymen and eighty armed Turks. He was bound and left exposed to the full sun without food or water from 7 a.m. until 3 p.m. His house was pillaged, and 200 francs taken with all his personal property. On being released he learnt from the villagers that they had lost in all £T300 during the pillage. Two men were beaten and twelve were bound and sent down to prison in Salonica. The women were not maltreated. (Page 301)

PETER SHAPOV, of Zarovo near Langaza, a shepherd.

He was taking his sheep and goats on the road to Demir-Hissar when Greek cavalry overtook the refugees on the edge of the town and began to slash out with their sabres to left and right. They took 600 goats belonging to himself and his two brothers. One of his

brothers was wounded by a cavalryman and died afterwards at the Bulgarian frontier. The Bulgarian army was quite half an hour’s walk away. There were no Bulgarian troops near them. (Page 301)

MATE, Wife of Petro of Bogoroditsa, near Langaza.

I saw the Greek cavalrymen when they entered our village. I fled and in my haste was obliged to leave a baby of eighteen months behind in the village in order to flee with this one which I have with me, a child of three. I saw our village in flames. I want my child. (Page 301)

ELISAVA, Wife of Georghi of Zarovo, near Langaza.

We all fled when the shells began to fall in our village and got safely to Demir-Hissar. Then I heard people saying the Greek cavalry are coming. There was a panic; children fell on the ground and horsemen rode over them. I lost my children, save one whom I was able to carry. My husband had two others with him. I do not know what has become of him, and have not seen him since that day. (Page 301)

RHODOPE, 11th July, 1913.

This war has been very painful. We have burnt all the villages abandoned by the Bulgarians. They burn the Greek villages and we the Bulgarian. They massacre, we massacre and against all those of that dishonest nation, who fell into our hands, the Mannlicher rifle has done its work. Of the 1,200 prisoners we took at Nigrita, only forty-one remain in the prisons, and everywhere we have been, we have not left a single root of this race.

I embrace you tenderly, also your brother and your wife, Spiliotopoulos Philippos.

The Bulgarians and Serbians also committed similar atrocities. You will have to read the report because it’s unbelievable what was done to the Macedonian people.

Unfortunately for the Macedonian people history again turned its eyes away from the Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian atrocities in Macedonia to focus on new events that were about to unfold and engulf the entire world, World War I.

While World War I raged on consuming the lives of millions of young men and women, Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia were serving their own brand of chauvinism in Macedonia. For the next five years, with the world busy with its own problems, there was no one to hear the cries of the Macedonian people at the hands of the new tyrants. If the gravestones of the dead Macedonians could speak they would tell tales of torture and executions, deception and lies. They would say, “Our Christian brothers came to liberate us but instead they murdered us because we were in their way of achieving their greatness. We were labeled ‘criminals’ because we would not yield to their demands. I ask you is it a crime to want to live as free men? Is it a crime to want to be Macedonian? Is it a crime to want to exercise free will? It is they who are the criminals for befouling everything that is Christian, for their lies and deception, and for murdering us to possess our lands. History will record August 10th 1913 as the darkest day in Macedonia, the day our future died.” (Risto Stefov)

The triple occupation worsened living conditions in Macedonia but the fighting spirit of the Macedonian people continued to live underground and abroad. Three generations of fighting for liberty, freedom and an independent Macedonia came to a close. The Ilinden generation was defeated, not by Ottoman or Muslim oppression but by the Christian cruelty and deception of the Great Powers and their proxies.

Soon after the occupation, underground societies sprang up everywhere urging the Macedonian people to refuse their new fate and oppose the partition. Accordingly, many Macedonians did so by refusing to obey the new officialdom and by not participating in the new institutions. This, however, did not stop the military regimes occupying Macedonia from systematic abuse, denationalization and violent assimilation.

The battle for “dominion of the world”, which started over Balkan affairs, soon took a sinister turn to again involve Macedonia. As the Entente Powers (Britain, France, Russia and Italy) were fighting against the Central Powers (Germany and Austro-Hungary), Bulgaria, smarting from her losses at Bucharest, remained neutral. In a turn of events, to the amazement of the Greeks, the Entente Powers approached Bulgaria with an offer of a substantial portion of Macedonian territory in exchange for its alliance. Bulgaria, however, seemed to prefer the company of the Central Powers, perhaps they offered it a bigger portion, because by late 1915 its armies marched in and invaded Macedonia. To quote the Bulgarian War Minister General Nikolaev: “We care little about the British, Germans, French, Russians, Italians, Austrians or Hungarians; our only thought is Macedonia. Whichever of the two groups of Powers will enable us to conquer it will have our alliance!” (Page 154, Radin, IMRO and the Macedonian Question)

Soon after establishing the Solun front, the occupation of Greece was complete. France had dispatched 60,000 troops to the Balkans with hopes of safeguarding the Skopje to Solun rail links. By late 1917, Entente troops were emerging victorious over the Bulgarians and Germans in Macedonia. No sooner was the battle over than a problem developed between British and French commands in Macedonia. While the British General, Milne, supported Venizelos and his attempts to constitute a pro-British provisional government in Greece, the pro-Macedonian French General, Sarrail, opposed Venizelos and sought to drive the Greek army out of Macedonia. “The ambitious plan for Macedonian autonomy drafted by the French command in 1915 and 1916 were but mere progressive steps to ensure France a strategic outpost for capital expansion.” (Page 155, Radin, IMRO and the Macedonian Question)

Once again Macedonians were caught in the middle of someone else’s war. To save face France recalled Sarrail and replaced him with a pro-Greek commander, thus avoiding a diplomatic disaster.

After establishing a government in Athens and consolidating his power in Greece, Venizelos committed nine divisions to the Macedonian front to assist Entente forces on the Solun front. To

further prove his devotion to the Entente, Venizelos committed two more divisions to fight the Bolshevists in Russia.

When the war was over, on November 11, 1918, a general armistice was signed and a Peace Conference was convened in Versailles, France. Venizelos arrived in Paris as the principle negotiator for Greece, determined to reap his reward for his solid support to his victorious allies. One of Venizelos’s objectives was to resurrect the “Megaly Idea” by annexing parts of Asia Minor, Smyrna (Ismir) in particular. He convinced the world that the Christians living in Asia Minor were Greek and should be part of Greece.

Unfortunately for Venizelos, Italy had prior claims in Asia Minor (Anatolia) which created a problem for the peacemakers. Greek ambition was viewed with suspicion by Italy so to strengthen its claims, in March 1919, Italy began to build up troops in the region. The Greeks viewed this as a threat to their own claim and before a final territorial solution was reached they demanded concessions. The reasons given were that the Greek people in Asia Minor were endangered by Turkish aggression and needed protection. After much protest on the Greek side, Britain, France and the Americans finally gave the Greeks permission to send a small defense force. Under the protection of allied warships, on May 15, 1919, Greek troops began their landing in Smyrna. Instead of staying put however, as per prior agreements, they began to occupy western Asia Minor.

No sooner were the Central Powers driven out of Greek territories than the Greek Government, by passing LAW 1051, inaugurated a new administrative jurisdiction for governing the newly acquired lands in Macedonia.

When it started to become clear that the Entente Powers were winning the war, encouraged by Woodrow Wilson’s principles of nationality, many Macedonian lobby groups placed their faith in the Peace Conference in Versailles. Wilson’s fourteen principles of nationality implicitly asserted the right of all nations to self-determination.

In his address to the Pan Slavic Assembly in Odessa in August 1914, Krste Misirkov called for achieving autonomy by diplomatic means. An article was written and extensively circulated in May 1915, which specifically dealt with the autonomy call.

The student organization “Independent Society”, in Geneva Switzerland under the slogan of “Macedonia for the Macedonians”, demanded the application of Wilson’s principles to create an autonomous Macedonia based on the principles of the Swiss Federative model.

Remnants of the old Ilinden guard also took action in the rally for an Autonomous Macedonia. After the Bulgarians murdered Iane Sandanski in 1915, his supporters fled the Pirin region to save their own lives and later regrouped in Serres to form the “Serres Revolutionary Council”. “Having noted the impetus for unification of the Southern Slavs against the Central Powers, the Council issued a ‘Declaration of Autonomy’ in October 1918, in which it appealed for membership of a Balkan Federation on the basis of Macedonian territorial integrity. This plea was ultimately rejected by the ruling cliques of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which later became known as Yugoslavia”. “By striving for political and economic hegemony over the Balkans, Balkan nationalism has thrown the Balkan peoples and states into deep contradictions and conflicts which must be begun by war, and finished by war and always war.” (Pages 158-159, Radin, IMRO and the Macedonian Question)

Once again the Macedonian people came to the forefront to plead their case and once again they were shut out. How many more wars must be fought and how much more blood must be spilled for the world to realize that there is no end to Balkan conflicts without involving the Macedonian people in resolving the Macedonian question? But, you see, that’s how the Western Great Powers want the situation to be. It was designed from the onset to be this way. They created the little Balkan states and set them on a course to fight against one another forever…

The Peace Conference, which was supposedly “the tribunal of international conscience”, had no place for “Wilsonian Justice” or

the opportunity for self-determination. Instead of practicing what they preached, the so-called “peace makers of Versailles” rewarded aggression in exchange for self-interest. A practice which has continued to this day!

With the stroke of a pen, in 1919 at the Treaty of Versailles (Paris), England and France sealed Macedonia’s fate by ratifying the principles of the 1913 Bucharest Treaty and officially endorsing the partitioning of Macedonia. This gave Greece the license it needed to pursue forced expulsion and denationalization of Macedonians and to begin a mass colonization by transplanting “potential Greeks” into the annexed territories of Macedonia.

The Neuilly Convention allowed for forced exchanges of populations. About 70,000 Macedonians were expelled from the Greek occupied part of Macedonia to Bulgaria and 25,000 “so-called Greeks” were transplanted from Bulgaria to Greek occupied Macedonia.

“Macedonia’s fate has been the subject of every kind of political combination, negotiation and treaty since 1912, each more immoral than the last, each ignoring completely the local interests and desires of a population which, with the stroke of the statesman’s pen, can be condemned to national dissolution, and denied the right to a free national life while Armenians, Albanians and Jews receive political freedom.” (Page 160, Radin, IMRO and the Macedonian Question)

The Great Powers did not dare lose the strategic importance and untapped wealth in Macedonia or dare disappoint their trusted proxies in the Balkans. Think of the endless bickering and complaining!

What was surprising, especially to the Balkan delegation, was the raising of the Macedonian question by Italy. On July 10, 1919, Italy along with the USA made a proposal to the “Committee for the Formation of New States” for Macedonian autonomy. France flatly opposed the motion while Britain proposed establishing a five-year Macedonian Commissary under the auspices of the League of Nations. Greece and Serbia, by refusing to acknowledge the existence of a Macedonian question, literally killed the motion.

It is important at this point to mention that there was “some sort of conspiracy” worldwide to stop writing about the existence of Macedonians and to erase everything about the modern Macedonians from the world scene, particularly in the press and in most publications in general. Any books written after 1913, especially the school books, mentioned no Macedonians existing in any of the divided parts of Macedonia. Also, statistics published after 1913 showed no Macedonians living in Macedonia, that is, up until 1944 when the People’s Republic of Macedonia came into existence. The Great Powers made sure there was no mention of modern Macedonians existing after Macedonia was invaded, occupied, partitioned and parts of it annexed by Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and later Albania. A prime example of this is the “Carnegie Endowment for International Peace” report, mentioned earlier, compiled by the International Commission set up to inquire into the cause and conduct of the Balkan Wars. This Commission was specifically sent to Macedonia to investigate crimes committed against the Macedonian people yet it mentions nothing about “Macedonians” in its report or in the book later written by George F. Kennan.

Another item that came out of Versailles was Article 51, the League of Nations’ code to “protect national minorities”. Article 51 of the Treaty of Versailles espouses equality of civil rights, education, language and religion for all national minorities. Unfortunately, article 51 was never implemented by the Balkan States or enforced by the League of Nations which Greece and Bulgaria, to this day, violate and ignore. Why is this? Because to this day, Greece and Bulgaria claim that “the Macedonian identity” does not exist and has never existed. So, what minorities should they be protecting? In response to the Greek claim I would like to ask the Greeks the following questions:

1. To what minorities were you referring, when on September 29, 1924 your Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikolaos Mihalakopoulou signed an agreement with the Bulgarian Foreign Minister Kalkoff?

2. To what minorities were you referring, when on August 17, 1926 you made an agreement with Yugoslavia regarding the nationality of the “Slavophones” in Greece? (Pages 159-161,G.A.L. I Kata Tis Makedonias Epivouli, (Ekdosis Deftera Sympepliromeni), Athinai 1966)

On September 29, 1924 Greece signed an agreement with Bulgaria declaring that the Macedonians in Greece were Bulgarians. Not to disappoint the Serbians, when they found out about the Greek-Bulgarian agreement, the Greeks changed their mind and on August 17, 1926 declared that the Macedonians in Greece were in reality, Serbs.

As it turned out, the loudly proclaimed “Wilson principles” at the Paris Conference were only for show. The real winners at the end of the conference were the “players”, the biggest one of all being Venizelos of Greece. “The entire forum was a farce, and its offspring the Versailles Treaty, the ultimate insult to the dignity and self-esteem (what remained of it after continuous war and bloodshed) of the long-tormented Macedonian people. Those Macedonians prodded by conscience, by the mistrust gained after generations of suffering, and by the desire for freedom, thereafter treated the Versailles Treaty, and all political treaties, with the contempt they deserve.” (Page 166, Radin, IMRO and the Macedonian Question)

At the conclusion of the Treaty, Greece got back what it had previously annexed and, additionally, received a large portion of Epirus, western Thrace, Crete and the Aegean Islands.

It is important to mention here that when Albania’s affirmation for independence was signed, at the London Conference in February 1920, more of Macedonia’s territory was partitioned. A narrow strip of land running through Lake Ohrid and southward along Macedonia’s western boundary was awarded to Albania.

Soon after arriving victorious in Greece, Venizelos, in a speech in Solun, announced his plans for a “Greater Greece” (Megali Idea) and to bring together all “Greek peoples” under a single Greater Greek State.

I remember, as a child, listening to old men in my village, sitting on the porch telling tales of bygone wars when, as young soldiers, they chased the Turks to Ankara yelling “two Turks to a bayonet”. They also told stories of how it took them sixty days to gain sixty miles and how they lost them in one day of retreat. I didn’t understand what they were talking about then but it was about the Greek exploits in Asia Minor. As mentioned earlier, after building up a large military presence in Asia Minor, Greece launched a major offensive in March 1921, and by the end of the summer it ended in disaster. Many Macedonians were also killed.

An entire generation of young Macedonian men, who were drafted into the Greek military, was sent to the Asia Minor campaigns and many lost their lives. The Greek authorities never acknowledged their service and no compensation was ever paid to the families of those “breadwinners” who lost their lives. The reason for the omission, according to the Greek authorities, was because “they were Bulgarians”.

By the Treaty of Lausanne in July 1923, the Greco-Turkish war came to an end. Greece and Turkey signed a population exchange agreement using “religion as the basic criterion for nationality.” (Page 120, Richard Clogg, A Short History of Modern Greece)

The November 1925 issue of National Geographic Magazine best illustrates the magnitude of the human wave, the audacity of the Greek and Turkish authorities and the total disregard for human life. “History’s Greatest Trek, Tragedy Stalks the Near East as Greece and Turkey Exchange Two Million of their People. ...1922 began what may fairly be called history’s greatest, most spectacular trek-the compulsory intermigration of two million Christians and Muslims across the Aegean Sea.” “ ...the initial episodes of the exchange drama were enacted to the accompaniment of the boom of cannon and the rattle of machine gun and with the settings pointed by the flames of the Smyrna holocaust.” (Page 533, Melville Chater, National Geographic, November 1925)

“Stroke of the Pen Exiles 3,000,000 People. It is safe to say that history does not contain a more extraordinary document. Never

before in the world’s long pageant of folk-wanderings have 2,000,000 people-and certainly no less than 3,000,000 if the retroactive clause is possible of complete application-been exiled and re-adopted by the stroke of the pen” (Page 569, National Geographic, November 1925). “Even if regarded as a voluntary trek instead of a compulsory exchange, the movement would be without parallel in the history of emigration.” “One might just add that history has never produced a document more difficult of execution. It was to lessen these difficulties that exchangeability was based in religion and not race. Due to five centuries of Turkish domination in Greece, the complexities in determining an individual’s racial status are often such as would make a census taker weep.” (Page 570, National Geographic, November 1925)

“Greece with one-fifth Turkey’s area has 1,5000,000 more people. Turkey with a population of 5,000,000 and naturally rich territory contains only 15 people to the square mile...Greece, with less than one fifth of Turkey’s area, emerges with a population exceeding the latter’s for the fist time by 1,500,000 people averaging 123 to the square mile.” (Page 584, National Geographic, November 1925)

“History’s Greatest Trek has cost 300,000 lives. Conservative estimates place it at 300,000 lives lost by disease and exposure.” (Page 584, National Geographic, November 1925)

“The actual exchange was weighted very heavily in Turkey’s favour, for some 380,000 Muslims were exchanged for something like 1,100,000 Christians.” “The total population in Greece rose between 1907 and 1928 from 2,600,000 to 6,200,000.” “After the Greek advances of 1912, for instance, the Greek elements in Greek Macedonia had constituted 43 percent of the population. By 1926, with the resettlement of the refugees, the Greek element has risen to 89 percent.” (Page 121, Richard Clogg, A Short History of Modern Greece)

After all this, surprisingly (and shamefully) Greece still claims her population to be homogeneous; direct descendents of the peoples of the ancient City States.

“If Greece exists today as a homogeneous ethnos, she owes this to [the Asia Minor Catastrophe]. If the hundreds of thousands of refugees had not come to Greece, Greek Macedonia would not exist today. The refugees created the national homogeneity of our country. (Antonios Kandiotis, Metrpolite of Florina, Page 141 in Anastasia Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood)

According to Karakasidou, almost half of the refugees were settled in urban centres and rural areas in Macedonia. “Searching for locations in which to settle this mass of humanity, the Greek government looked north to the newly incorporated land in Macedonia...” “...by 1930, 90 percent of the 578,844 refugees settled in rural Greece were concentrated in the regions of Macedonia and western Thrace. Thus Macedonia, Greece’s newly acquired second ‘breadbasket’ (after Thessaly), became the depository for East Thracian, Pontic, and Asia Minor refugees.” (Page 145, Anastasia Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood)

While Greece was contemplating repopulating Macedonia with alien refugees, new developments were boiling to the surface in Greek occupied Macedonia.

“A book of great importance to Macedonian linguistics and historiography was published in Athens; that was the primer entitled ABECEDAR (A B C), printed in the Latin alphabet, and intended for the children of the Macedonian national minority in Greece - the ‘Slav speaking minority’ as Sir Austin Chamberlain, British diplomat and delegate to the League of Nations, and Sir James Erick Drumond, General Secretary to the League of Nations, referred to the Macedonians in Greece.” (Page 184, Voislav Kushevski, ‘On the Appearance of the Abecedar’ in Istorija magazine, 1983, No. 2)

“In 1920 Greece signed before the League of Nations a treaty obliging it to grant certain rights to the minorities of non-Greek origin in Greece. Four years later, in 1924, at the suggestion of the League of Nations, Greece and Bulgaria signed the well-known Kalfov-Politis Protocol under which Bulgaria was obliged to grant the Greek minority in Bulgaria their minority rights (language, schools and other rights), while Greece, recognizing the Macedonians from the Aegean part of Macedonia as a ‘Bulgarian’

minority, was to grant them their minority rights. This agreement was seemingly very much in favour of Bulgaria, but when in 1925 the Greek government undertook certain concrete steps towards the publication of the first primer made for the specific needs of that minority, it made it clear that there were no grounds on which Bulgaria could be officially interested in any ‘Bulgarian minority’ or expect the primer to be in Bulgarian, for that minority - though speaking a Slav language - was neither Bulgarian nor Serbian.

The very fact that official Greece did not, either de jure or do facto, see the Macedonians as a Bulgarian minority, but rather as a separate Slav group (‘Slav speaking minority’), is of particular significance. The primer, published in the Latin alphabet, was based on the Lerin - Bilola dialect. After Gianelli’s Dictionary dating from the 16th Century, and the Daniloviot Cetirijazicnik written in the 19th century, this was yet another book written in the Macedonian vernacular. The primer was mailed to some regions in Western Aegean-Macedonia (Kostur, Lerin and Voden), and the school authorities prepared to give Macedonian children, from the first to the fourth grade of the elementary school, instruction in their own mother tongue. (Grigorios Dafnis, ‘Greece between the two world wars’, ‘Elefteria’ newspaper, March 15, 1953, Dionisios Romas in ‘Elefteria’ newspaper of October 9 and 12, 1954 and Dimitrios Vazuglis in Racial and religious minorities in Greece and Bulgaria, 1954)

The Greek governments have never made a sincere attempt to solve the question of the Macedonians and their ethnic rights in Greece. Thus, while measures were being undertaken for the opening of Macedonian schools, a clash between the Greek and Bulgarian armies at Petrich was concocted, which was then followed by a massacre of the innocent Macedonian population in the village of Trlis near Serres. All this was aimed at creating an attitude of insecurity within the Macedonians so that they themselves would give up the recognition of their minority rights and eventually seek safety by moving to Bulgaria. The Greek governments also skillfully used the Yugoslav-Bulgarian disagreements on the question of the Macedonians in Greece, and with organized pressure on the Macedonian population, as was the case in the village of Trlis, tried

to dismiss the Macedonian ethnic question from the agenda through forced resettlement of the Macedonian population outside of Greece.

The ABECEDAR, which actually never reached the Macedonian children, is in itself a powerful testimony not only of the existence of the large Macedonian ethnic minority in Greece, but also of the fact that Greece was under an obligation before the League of Nations to undertake certain measures in order to grant this particular minority their rights.” (Hristo Andonovski).

Let us face the facts here. All these treaties that Greece signed with Bulgaria and Turkey on population exchanges and the rights of these people were sanctioned and guaranteed by the Great Powers. The Great Powers were well aware of what Greece was up to and what it was doing with the Macedonians but they continued to create conditions to not only allow the torment of the Macedonian people but to hide their own involvement behind Greece, a practice which is exercised to this day.

The League of Nations (the United Nation’s predecessor) may have undertaken certain measures to protect the national minorities in Greece but this was done in theory only because no processes were put in place to ensure that these measures were properly implemented. And this has also been the case, without exception, with the Great Powers when it came to the Macedonian people. The Great Powers, in the short term, did everything in their power to secure the Macedonian people’s support, even if they had to work contrary to their objectives, but in the long term they “never” delivered anything that was in the interests of the Macedonian people.

Hellenizing Greek Occupied Macedonia

When the Greeks consolidated their power in Macedonia they told the Macedonian people that this is Greece now and that they were now Greeks, and if they didn’t agree with it they could pick up what they could carry and leave immediately. Many did just that, particularly those who were affiliated with the Bulgarian church; they just picked up their things and left.

The Muslims were all kicked out and so were the Macedonians who insisted on being Macedonian and not Greeks, Serbians, or Bulgarians. Those who insisted too much found themselves with a noose around their necks hanging from a tree.

Sometime later Greece exchanged populations with Bulgaria and got rid of more Macedonians who were refusing to become Greeks and imported all kinds of non-Greek people from Bulgaria and from the Caucasus’s who claimed to be Greeks.

Greece had no problem accepting anyone who agreed to be “Hellenized” and accept the Greek definition of being Greek. And what was this definition you ask? Just look up the old Greek constitution from the 1820’s and you will find out.

It said that anyone who was an Orthodox Christian could be a Greek provided they agreed with the Greek philosophy (to be given a Greek name and baptized in the Greek Church and not to work against the Greek cause) and were willing to learn to speak Greek.

People from Armenia and even Russia have claimed to be Greeks. All they had to do to prove this was say that their great grandmother was Greek and have a couple of witnesses sign their claim and they became instant Greeks. That about sums it up...

But allow me the opportunity here to emphasize that by “Greek” I don’t mean “Greek citizen”, I mean “Greek nationality”. I don’t know if the same rules apply today but in the past one could not simply be a Greek citizen and belong to an ethnic minority in Greece. Greece claims no minorities live in Greece, only the 2%

Muslim minority, but that is a religious minority and not an ethnic one. These Muslims are considered to be of “Greek” nationality.

Before 1913 and before the Greco-Turkish war, the Macedonian people were a majority in Macedonia with minorities such as Albanians, Vlachs, Christian Turks and others. After Greece occupied Macedonian territories it cleansed itself of non-Greeks; it assimilated everyone it could, evicted those who did not agree with its principles and jailed and murdered all those who caused trouble.

But those who remained in Macedonia were still Macedonians and still a majority in Greek occupied Macedonia, that is until Greece deposited 600,000 Turkish Christian settlers and colonists acquired during the population exchange with Turkey by the Treaty of Lausanne. After that Greece published demographic statistics claiming that the population in Greece was 98% pure Greek and 2% Muslim Greek.

Another point I want to make here is that Greece recognized a 2% Muslim population on its territory. Doesn’t that strike you as odd, that Greece, who evicted every Muslim from Macedonia, would now recognize a Muslim minority in Thrace? Why?

I believe Greece did this in order to preserve the Patriarchate in Istanbul and the Christian people living around it. Greece made an agreement with Turkey to preserve the Muslims in Thrace if Turkey spared the Christian population in Istanbul. Greece had high hopes that, in time, this population would grow, expand and become a majority in Istanbul. But it is disappointing for Greece that the future did not turn out in its favour. While the Muslim population in Thrace is growing, in spite of all obstacles, the Christian population in Istanbul is shrinking.

Did you know that Greece does not allow the Muslims living in Thrace to purchase new homes, properties or even tractors? And as Muslims leave to visit Turkey, they are not allowed to return. Yes, this is going on in Greece today. I saw this in a Greek television documentary as well as heard it from Greek human rights activists.

Even before Greece had secured its grip on its occupied part of Macedonia, Greek officials were sent to administer “the new lands”. The first official Greek administrator arrived in Solun near the end of October 1912, accompanied by two judges, five customs officials, ten consulate clerks, a contingent of reporters and journalists and 168 Cretan soldiers. Among other things, the first order of business was to “Hellenize the New Lands”.

“After the Greeks occupied Aegean Macedonia, they closed the Slavic language schools and churches and expelled the priests. The Macedonian language and names were forbidden, and the Macedonians were referred to as Bulgarians, Serbians or natives. By law promulgated on November 21, 1926, all place names (toponymia) were Hellenized; that is the names of cities, villages, rivers and mountains were discarded and Greek names put in their place. At the same time the Macedonians were forced to change their first and surnames; every Macedonian surname had to end in ‘os’, ‘es’, or ‘poulos’. The news of these acts and the new, official Greek names were published in the Greek government daily ‘Efimeris tis Kiverniseos no. 322 and 324 of November 21 and 23, 1926. The requirements to use these Greek names is officially binding to this day. All evidence of the Macedonian language was compulsorily removed from churches, monuments, archeological finds and cemeteries. Slavonic church or secular literature was seized and burned. The use of the Macedonian language was strictly forbidden also in personal communication between parents and children, among villagers, at weddings and work parties, and in burial rituals.” (Page 109, John Shea, Macedonia and Greece, The Struggle to Define a New Balkan Nation)

The act of forbidding the use of the Macedonian language in Greece is best illustrated by an example of how it was implemented in the Township of Assarios (Giuvezna). Here is a quote from Karakasidou’s book Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood.

“[We] listened to the president articulate to the council that in accordance with the decision [#122770] of Mr. Minister, General Governor of Macedonia, all municipal and township councils would forbid, through [administrative] decisions, the speaking of other idioms of obsolete languages within the area of their jurisdiction for

the reconstitution of a universal language and our national glory. [The president] suggested that [the] speaking of different idioms, foreign [languages] and our language in an impure or obsolete manner in the area of the township of Assirios would be forbidden. Assirios Township Decision No. 134, 13 December 1936.” (Page 162, Anastasia Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood)

By 1928 1,497 Macedonian place-names in the Greek occupied Macedonia were Hellenized (LAW 4096) and all Cyrillic inscriptions found in churches, on tombstones and icons were destroyed (or overwritten) prompting English Journalist V. Hild to say, “The Greeks do not only persecute living Slavs (Macedonians)..., but they even persecute dead ones. They do not leave them in peace even in the graves. They erase the Slavonic inscriptions on the headstones, remove the bones and burn them.”

I am sure that Hild and many others like him were well aware that the “living Slavs”, and dead ones for that matter, to whom he is referring were actually all Macedonians but, as I said earlier, the “world” by this time had conspired to hide that fact from public view.

In the years following World War I, the Macedonian people underwent extensive measures of systematic denationalization. The applications of these “denationalization schemes” were so extensive and aggressively pursued that, in the long term, they eroded the will of the Macedonian people to resist.

“In Greece, in 1929 during the rule of Elepterios Venizelos, a legal act was issued ‘On the protection of public order’. In line with this Act each demand for nationality rights is regarded as high treason. This law is still in force.

On December 18, 1936, Metaxas’s dictatorial government issued a legal Act ‘On the activity against state security’ on the strength of which thousands of Macedonians were arrested, imprisoned, expelled or exiled (EXORIA) on arid, inhospitable Greek islands, where many perished. Their crime? Being ethnic Macedonian by birth.

On September 7, 1938 legal Act No. 2366 was issued banning the use of the Macedonian language. All Macedonian localities were flooded with posters: ‘Speak Greek’. Evening schools were opened in which adult Macedonians were taught Greek. Not a single Macedonian school functioned at the time.” (Page 8, What Europe has Forgotten: The Struggle of the Aegean Macedonians, A Report by the Association of the Macedonians in Poland)

Many Macedonians were fined, beaten and jailed for speaking Macedonian. Adults and school children alike were further humiliated by being forced to drink castor oil when caught speaking Macedonian.

In Vardar (Serbian occupied) Macedonia, the Serbian authorities attacked the problem of denationalization and assimilation by enacting laws, such as the September 24, 1920 “Resolution for the Settlement of the New Southern Regions”, designed to effectively exclude Macedonians from owning any property. The Macedonian language was banned along with cultural institutions through a uniform code known as the December 30th, 1920 EDICT, which was aimed at persecuting all political and trade union associations.

The bulk and most arable of Macedonian lands were awarded to Serbian army officers who survived the World War I Solun front. Land was also awarded to the Serbian administrators of Macedonia including government bureaucrats, judges and the police.

The denationalization measures were complemented with aggressive re-education programs producing “little Serbs” out of the Macedonian children. As for the unwilling adults, they were given two options - “live as a Serb” or “die as a Macedonian”!

In Pirin (Bulgarian occupied) Macedonia, the Bulgarian government enforced compulsory name changes and, through repressive political and economic means, stepped up the assimilation process. Initially land reforms favoured the poor, including the Macedonian peasants. Later, however, that too changed and Macedonians here were exposed to a similar fate as the Macedonians in Greek and Serbian occupied Macedonia.

The Macedonians in Albania posed little threat to Albania’s authority and faired relatively better than their kin in Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia. The village inhabitants were not persecuted or subjected to any comprehensive denationalization programs. As a result the Macedonian culture flourished, original names remained and the people spoke Macedonian uninhibited.

Many of the Macedonian regional revolutionary leaders, fooled by the Balkan League’s propaganda, voluntarily joined the League’s armies in 1912 to help oust the Ottomans and liberate Macedonia. When it was over and the so-called “liberation” turned into an “occupation”, they found themselves prisoners of the League’s soldiers. Those fortunate enough to have escaped, fled to Pirin Region and joined Iane Sandanski’s Cheta, which was still active at the time. After Sandanski’s assassination in 1915, however, many of his followers went underground and later re-emerged in Serres to form the “Serres Revolutionary Council”.

The left wing of the Macedonian revolutionary organization re-emerged prior to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference with high hopes of settling the Macedonian question by lobbying the peace delegates. After realizing that their efforts were futile, they gave up and merged together with the Provisional Mission of western Macedonia to form the Macedonian revolutionary organization (United). Macedonia is alive, “United” in spirit if not in substance. Unfortunately, because of Macedonia’s division and the impenetrable barriers (closed borders) erected, putting up a united national front was difficult if not impossible. Even though there was much desire to achieve a ‘united autonomous Macedonia’, no form of mobilization was practical. So how was the Macedonian revolutionary organization going to achieve its objectives? Some leaders believed that by internationalizing the Macedonian question and by working with the supportive political elements of each Balkan State, the denationalization process could be slowed down, even reversed, and a climate for reunification created. The Macedonian revolutionary organization believed that by employing new, revolutionary and non-nationalistic tactics the barriers erected in Macedonia could be penetrated. By joining the “international class struggle against a common oppressor”, the Macedonian revolutionary organization believed self-determination could be