Front Matter

Inhabited Places in Aegean Macedonia

By Todor Hristov Simovski (Edited by Risto Stefov)

Inhabited Places in Aegean Macedonia

************** January 20, 2019 **************

PREFACE

The decision to publicize this book, especially on the internet, was determined by the book’s extraordinary content in dealing with the Macedonian exodus since 1912, instigated and propagated by Macedonia’s occupiers, Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria. Todor Simovski, its author, has taken an extra step beyond other authors and has described not only the Macedonian forced exodus over the years, but also the trials, tribulation and suffering the exiled Macedonian people underwent on their way out and in their new settlements, especially in Bulgaria.

Simovski spares no detail in explaining the legal hoops the Greek state underwent not only to evict these people from their native lands, but to also Hellenize Macedonia and the Macedonians who remained at home.

Simovski has also taken a step further in describing how Greece Hellenized the Peloponnesus, Attica, Epirus and generally what people call “Greece proper”, formerly a purely Slavonic region.

This is a book that goes beyond numbers and population statistics which everyone should read.

Risto Stefov

IN PLACE OF AN INTRODUCTION

As a consequence of the Balkan Wars (1912-13) and the Bucharest Peace Treaty of 28 July (10 August) 1913, ratified by the Neuilly Peace Treaty of 14/27 November 1919 and the Sèvres Peace Treaty of 28 July (10 August) 1920, Macedonia was divided among the three Balkan states of Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria. (1)

That part which came under Greece, and ever since has been a constituent part of the Greek state, occupies an area of 33,953 km² out of Macedonia’s entire territory totaling 66,474 km². (2)

With the inclusion of Aegean (Greek occupied) Macedonia into its framework, and the other territories gained during and after the Balkan Wars, Greece was enlarged from 63,211 km² to 129,880 km² and its population increased from 2,631,952 to 6,204,684 inhabitants as registered in 1920. (3) Thus it shared state borders with the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and with Bulgaria, although these were neither its natural, nor its ethnic, borders with these states.

Out of a total of 2,000,000 inhabitants which the whole of Macedonia had had before its division, more than half, i.e. 1,163,477 inhabitants, lived in Aegean (Greek occupied) Macedonia. (4)

The national composition of its population, which as a consequence of its five centuries of thralldom had undergone serious ethnic changes, on the eve of the Balkan Wars was as follows: Christian Macedonians 362,000, Moslem Macedonians 41,000, Turks 295,000, Christian Greeks 240,000, Moslem Greeks 14,000, Christian Vlachs 46,000, Moslem Vlachs 3,500, Moslem and Christian Albanians 9,000, Jews 60,000, Romanies 30,000, while the rest were inhabitants of other nationalities. (5)

In the present case there is no intention of going into the history of Aegean (Greek occupied) Macedonia’s national composition but it is certainly worth underlining that, before the coming of the Turks, it was the Macedonian population that prevailed in these parts and that, despite the frequent wars in the past which had brought about

devastation, destruction and migrations, Macedonians still remained the main nationality in Aegean (Greek occupied) Macedonia.

However, what could not have happened in the past for a period of more than five centuries, took place in a relatively short time in the period after the Balkan Wars when major migrations and ethnic changes of unforeseeable consequences to the Macedonian people as a whole occurred.

The division of Macedonia among the three neighbouring countries inflicted a great historic injustice on the Macedonian people which up to then had fought persistently for its national freedom. The only option it had left was a further struggle which this time, owing to the new circumstances, became far more complex and difficult.

With this division, in addition to all the other repercussions, Macedonians from all three parts of Macedonia were subject to assimilatory torture and enforced emigration with the single purpose of altering Macedonia’s ethnic composition. These tendencies brought about consequences which have been expressed above all in the changing of Aegean (Greek occupied) Macedonia’s national structure to the detriment of the Macedonians.

This policy on the part of neighbouring Greece was facilitated chiefly by several historic events which it utilized for its own goals:

1. The First and the Second Balkan wars (1912-1913)

2. The First World War (1914-1918)

3. The Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922 and the Lausanne Convention of 1923

4. The Second World War and the Greek Civil War (1940-1949)

5. The policy that has been applied since the Civil War in Greece, a refined policy yet equally perfidious and denationalizatory regarding the Macedonians in Aegean (Greek occupied) Macedonia.

I - REPERCUSSIONS DURING THE BALKAN WARS (1912-1913)

After the First Balkan War, declared on 4 (17), i.e. 5 (18), October 1912, the allied Serbian, Bulgarian, Greek and Montenegrin forces inflicted heavy losses on the Ottoman Turkish army, so that Turkey was compelled to seek a truce (4 December, 1912). The war with Turkey was legally concluded with the signing of the London Peace Treaty of 17 (30) May 1913, whereby the European part of Turkey’s territory was conceded to the allies without determining the borders between them. Because of this, and mainly because of the mutual disagreement as to which country should retain and occupy the larger part of the newly-liberated Macedonian territories, the Second Balkan War, which ended soon after with the complete defeat of Bulgaria, started. (6)

It should be noted that the allied troops showed their mutual intolerance and insatiable aspirations even in the course of the First Balkan War when the Turkish and the other Moslem population of Macedonia suffered most. Thousands of Moslems were slaughtered by the allied troops and their wealth was plundered, their houses burnt and even whole villages and entire parts of towns inhabited by Moslems were burnt. (7)

During the First Balkan War it was not only the Moslem population that suffered in the occupied territories, although it experienced the greatest loss. Consistently carrying out their imperialistic plans in Macedonia, the new conquering armies and authorities resorted to torturing that Christian population which, according to their calculations and opinions, did not consider itself as theirs. (8)

In the Second Balkan War, which turned out to be much cruller and broke out on 29 June 1913, the Macedonian people paid the highest price. During this war thousands of innocent Macedonians were slain, particularly by the Greeks. The majority of them were women and children, especially in the areas around Kukuš (Kilkis) and Valoviš, where the military operations were waged. Dozens of Macedonian villages and the beautiful Macedonian town of Kukuš (Kilkis) were burnt and destroyed. The Bulgarian troops showed

equal cruelty to the Greek population, particularly in the towns of Serres and Doksat. (9)

As a consequence of the two Balkan Wars, Bulgaria received around 112,000 refugees, of whom 50,000 were Macedonians and 30,000 of them were from Aegean (Greek occupied) Macedonia. (10)

In the territory of Aegean (Greek occupied) Macedonia Greece received about 157,000 refugees, mainly Turks and fewer Greeks, Patriarchist Macedonians and Vlachs from Bulgaria, Vardar (Serbian occupied) and Pirin (Bulgarian occupied) Macedonia, Thrace and Asia Minor. (11) The rest, mainly Turks and other Moslems, moved via the port of Salonica to Turkey immediately after the normalisation of the situation, supported by the Greek authorities who deliberately made their lives insupportable in order to get rid of them. (12)

However, in spite of the fact that in the Second Balkan War, due to the above-mentioned atrocities, Macedonians were significantly scattered in certain districts (Kukuš [Kilkis], Valovišta, Serres, etc.) they still remained the main nationality in Aegean (Greek occupied) Macedonia and the absolute majority in the areas bordering with Bulgaria and Vardar (Serbian occupied) Macedonia, which was then within the framework of Serbia.

This situation could not by any means satisfy the Greek designs for Hellenising this wealthy, and up to then non-Greek, area. This could have been achieved only by enforced migration or assimilation of the Macedonians and by enforced migration of the Turkish and other Moslem population, on the one hand, and by resettling it with a Greek and pro-Greek-oriented population from the Caucasus, Asia Minor and other areas, on the other hand.

For these reasons, immediately after the concluded truce, a strong pressure was exerted upon the Macedonians and the Turks to move out of the Greek state. This pressure forced a certain number of Macedonian families to emigrate to Bulgaria and Serbia (more precisely, to Vardar (Serbian occupied) Macedonia, which was part of it) and there was also an increased emigration to countries overseas. (13) This emigration was temporarily interrupted by the

First World War and the deployment of Allied troops (French, British, Serbian, etc.) on the territory of Aegean (Greek occupied) Macedonia.