INTRODUCTION - Part 03

INTRODUCTION

“THE MACEDONIAN QUESTION” TODAY

The “Macedonian Question” can only be understood from the context of its historical development. A development tied to events in the region in general, which provide a better understanding of the great dangers that will be created in a zone that once again deserves the definition the “Balkan powder keg”, by recognizing the state that bears the name “Macedonia” by the international community.

Using the geographic name (Macedonia), the Skopje expansionists have always strived to give it national acceptance in order to cut out a Slavic nation for themselves. It also means that they are attempting to divest from the Greek people and take part of the Greek cultural heritage that rightfully belongs to Greece. In the course of the last 45 or so years, the name Macedonia for Skopje was the only instrument of its cultural and territorial expansion at the expense of Greece.

Today, Greece has a number of serious motives to reject the recognition of the so-called “Socialist Republic of Macedonia”, of which the most important are:

First, during the course of the last 40 years Skopje was an instrument of Tito’s expansionist policy, a policy that was based on a simplistic and erroneous vision of the region’s history. And that is which, by right it leaves us to assume the existence of these expansionist claims at Greece’s expense.

Second, allegations made by Skopje that “the entire region of Macedonia was never freed”, but “only the part that is controlled by Skopje is free” clearly calls into question the sovereignty of Greece.

Third, the use of the name Macedonia by Skopje, together with its persistent refusal to recognize the toponyms which were in force in the region since the Balkan wars is also a challenge to the sovereignty of Greece.

Fourth and last: by using the name Macedonia, Skopje wants to highlight its cultural claims regarding Greece to the extent that the geographical entity Macedonia belongs to Skopje and wants to make it its own national entity. In addition to that, any recognition of an independent Yugoslav republic that would be baptized “Republic of Macedonia” would be a constant threat to peace and security in Southeast Europe.

It is well known that Bulgaria, in Skopje Region and in the Slavic fraction of its population, is asking for historical ties and ethnic closeness and that it had recognized the “Republic of Macedonia”.

The composition of the population in Skopje Region risks leading the emergence of a nationalist conflict in the Balkans. Albanians, who make up a third of the total population in the Republic of Skopje, have already expressed their disagreement with the government in Skopje and seek self-determination.

In case of recognition, the non-homogeneous population in the Republic of Skopje (composed of Albanians, Turks, Vlachs, Gypsies, Bulgarians, Serbs and others) could lead to domination of one of these minorities over the others, which ultimately would lead to absolute, unpredictable consequences.

Finally, it is clear that the Republic of Skopje today represents an economic entity which cannot survive, which is prey to ethnic antagonism and that, in addition, is surrounded by rival “contenders” and “protectors”. It also opens the door to large intervention forces, which want to increase their influence in the region.

Adding that, based on international law, the recognition of the Republic of Skopje as an independent state is unthinkable if it does not meet the determined conditions for recognition (a conceptual “nation” or “organized power”), for the following reasons:

- The historical identity of the so-called “Macedonian people” must correspond to the historical, ethnological and sociological criteria.

- The condition called “organized power” is not met: In fact, it is historically proven that the so-called “Republic of Macedonia” was created by Tito with aims at limiting Serbian power, which dates back to the establishment of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Skopje’s first order was to gain access to the Aegean Sea.

SHORT SUMMARY OF THE MACEDONIAN QUESTION

1. THE GREEK IDENTITY OF MACEDONIA: HISTORICAL OBVIOUSNESS

All historical sources agree on the geographic location of Macedonia: it lies between the Aegean Sea, the mountains Pieria and Olympus and Pieria to the south, the Ohrid and Prespa Lakes and Mount Babuna, Skomion (Rila mountains) and Rhodope Mountains to the north, the river Mesta in the East, while the west borders with the mountain ranges of Pindus and Gramos.

Residents of this region (Macedonians) are regarded as the oldest Greek tribes and friendly to Thessaly, especially to the Magnesians who were also of Aeolian origin. The language they spoke is one of the oldest idioms of Greece, and was similar to the Aeolian, arcade-Cypriot and Mycenaean dialect. As for the Macedonian religion, it was the same as that of the other Greeks, their myths and traditions were found throughout the entire Greek world. (1)

Skopje now wants to attribute Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great to a Slavo-Macedonian nationality (sic!) - Who not only acted as Greeks, but as champions of Pan-Hellenism by incarnating the old idea of a united Greek state which would include all the Greek cities.

The expert Johann Gustav Droizen, among others, in his “History of Alexander the Great”, said that Philip and Alexander “brought and gave the peoples of Asia not Macedonian culture, because it did not have special status, but Greek culture”.

During the following years, more precisely after the emergence of the Slavs and Bulgarians in the Balkans (VI and VII century AD), the geographical region of Macedonia, as they have defined it, remained a bastion and bridgehead of Hellenism as it was in ancient times.

Polibius qualifies Macedonia as a “first line of defense” and acknowledges the Macedonians, on account of their victory over the Barbarians (i.e. non-Greeks), “had aims at preserving the safety of (the other) Greeks” (2), a position which during the Byzantine

period was taken by the French historian Paul Lemerl, in his classic work: “Philip and Eastern Macedonia” (Paris, 1945).

The terms “Macedonia” and “Macedonians” which define a separate ethnic group cannot be found in any official text, be it new or old. Neither can they be found in the Berlin Agreement nor in the Treaty of San Stefano, which was annulled by the first; these concepts were never spoken of as such. According to the official Turkish census taken in 1905, the people in the Solun and Bitola vilayet were thought to be Greeks, Bulgarian and Bulgaro-phones with a majority Greek element, but nowhere in that list is there any mention of Macedonians; that is because of the clear reason that no one has stated that such an identity existed. (3) E. M. Kuzineli, who was French consul in Solun, in his book “Journey to Macedonia” (Paris, 1851) tells us that Bulgarians (that’s the name at the time that was given to the Slavo-phones) “never entered the forests located in the foot of Mount Vermion where the population remained Greek”. The German geographer Leonard D. Schulze, while describing the same region in his works “Macedonian Lands” (Jena 1927) noted that in terms of language, traditions, cultural affinity, national will and religion, the inhabitants of Macedonia are “authentically Greek as are their brethren in the south”.

This author, by other means, because of that has accepted that which Lord Salisbeli has claimed. Salisbeli represented Great Britain at the Berlin Congress on June 19, 1878, during which time he said “Macedonia and Thrace are also Greek like Crete”.

The fact that a small percentage of the population in that region spoke a language whose substrate was Bulgarian, and in addition to the presence of numerous loans from the Slavic, Greek, Vlach and Albanian languages, is in no way evidence of a Slavic and Bulgarian origin. Just as was proven relatively recently with the forced return of the Greeks from Asia Minor to Greece who did not speak a word of Greek, linguistic criteria taken in isolation has no value.

It should also be noted that among the veterans of the “Macedonian Struggle” (1904-1908), many spoke a local idiom while keeping a perfect Greek consciousness, Kotas, Dalipis, Kiruna, Gonos and

many others. In connection to these non-Greek speaking Greeks, Russian historian E. Golubinsti (4) noted that “they had a horrible deep hatred and contempt for everything that was Bulgarian or Slavic”.

After the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, old Macedonia was divided so that 51% of its territory was given to Greece, 38.32% to Yugoslavia and 10.11% to Bulgaria. (5). Voluntary exchange of populations was done on the basis of bilateral agreements (The Nice Agreement of 1919 envisioned a voluntary exchange between Greece and Bulgaria, the same with the 1926 so-called Kafantaris-Molov Protocol) and the settlement of the Greek part of Macedonia, after the Greeks were returned from Turkey, which completed the homogenization of the Greek population: and in spite of the existence of some bilingual residents, the population since then has been pure Greek.

It should be said that Greek Macedonia became a perfectly homogeneous part of Greece; and what is more accurate is that after the occupation (1945-1949), almost all bilingual people who did not have a Greek national awareness left for neighbouring countries, especially to Yugoslavia (6). They must have trumped their Greko-phone or Bulgaro-phone nationality for a “Macedonian” nationality, in other words for a Slavo-Macedonian nationality.

Before the appearance of this situation, a number of violent episodes, such as the Ilinden Uprising, took place during which, on August 2, 1903, the Bulgarians rose up against the Turks in the town Krushevo, near Bitola, where the vast majority of the population was Greek. In fact, the Bulgarians rose against the Greek population there in an attempt to exterminate it - with the complicity of Turkey - without actually harming the other residents of the city. (7).

Up until 1914, “Macedonia” as a Slavic state and the “Macedonian nation” as a separate national entity were totally unknown concepts. Part of Macedonia, which was connected to Serbia as well as one that belonged to Bulgaria, represented only a small part of the territory along the Greek border and represented only an insignificant part of Serbia. Skopje, which today presents itself as the capital of the “Republic of Macedonia”, is actually located far

from Macedonia. When the “People’s Republic of Macedonia”, later renamed the “Socialist Republic of Macedonia”, was established at the end of the German occupation it became connected to Skopje and Tetovo, which never belonged to Macedonia. This was arbitrarily done with the intention of showing the presence of a Serbian population in this sparsely populated part of Macedonia which was located across the Greek border (in which both Serbs, Greeks, Vlachs, “Turko-phones” Muslim Bulgarians) or at least a Slavophone population had is own language and vague national consciousness. Creating a “People’s Republic of Macedonia” was the ultimate goal for creating a “Macedonian” state, this time under the Slavic cap and a way to the sea for Yugoslavia.

2. Conflicts between national movements in the XIX century

The peoples of the Balkans, during the XIX century, acquired their core around which they constituted their nation-states and their national ideologies which, in some places, coincide with zones of mixed populations which came under national pretensions.

Macedonia was one of those places in which such problems were especially strongly manifested. In the 19th century, this geographical area was the scene of a collision of four antagonistic national ideologies - Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian and Albanian. Because of that, to achieve their aspirations, it was necessary for each of the parties, as an essential factor, to use the national identity of the people of the region.

At that time, without talking about Muslims who represented about one third of the total population, it was extremely difficult to precisely determine the national identity of the Christians in Macedonia. Until mid-19th century, the rural masses remained faithful to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, guardian of the Greek language, the Byzantine tradition and even historical memory. It should have further enhanced the spontaneous enthusiasm which led the non-Greek speaking groups to the Greek culture, i.e. the Slavo-phones, Vlaho-phones and Albano-phones. However, in the background, and, in particular Slavo-phone zones in the centre and north of Macedonia, the Greek national ideology slowly progressed; already in the region it then began to spread to other places. Antagonism between the Greek and Bulgarian church ultimately increased after the establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870, which was at the root of serious clashes between Greeks and Bulgarians in areas of mixed populations in Macedonia.

The Greek-Bulgarian conflict

The Greek national ideology, of course, put its emphasis on Macedonia’s classical Greek past, in the era of Alexander the Great and his work. It was exactly in this era where the local Slavic idiom - but with the Greek alphabet - was soon printed and inserted in the programs of the schools that were still under Ottoman control, a brochure telling the life of Alexander and insisting on the continuity of the Greek nation. In parallel with that, was the effort to cultivate and spread the tradition of the Byzantine Empire. Both multinational empires - the empire of Alexander the Great and the Byzantine Empire - were actually offered as reliable examples, which made it possible to believe that despite the differences in language and customs, different population groups would choose to identify with the Greek culture in the broadest framework of the state. That was a vision of the sort that Rigas Phereos (Riga Defere) had with regards to a Balkan federation.

For its part, the Bulgarian national ideology was trying to sell the Slavo-phones in Macedonia a Bulgarian cultural tradition. But here Bulgarians stumbled on one major obstacle: a significant part of the Slavo-phone population, especially in the central and southern regions, actually preserved their living, historic Greek tradition. Bulgarians soon realized that historical factors proved insufficient to ensure the spread of the Bulgarian national ideology; and thus turned to other ways of modeling their national consciousness.

They started to exploit linguistic affinities. After that they tried to manipulate the indignation of the people against the social oppression of the Ottoman occupation. Their goal was to start a people’s uprising which, if skillfully led, would turn into a Bulgarian national movement. After that they tried to exploit antagonism between the rural population and the Greek clergy, fiercely denouncing what they called “spiritual submission to the

Ecumenical Patriarchate”. Bulgarian schools in towns and villages in Macedonia began to flourish with the help of the Bulgarian state. The original ambition of those schools was to instill a sense of pride into students with Bulgaria’s medieval history, especially with Tsar Samoil’s Empire, whose capital was Ohrid. But the Bulgarian historical arsenal could not be a counterweight to the Greek cultural and historical heritage of Macedonia; which pushed the Bulgarians to engage in systematic falsification of history, simply grabbing historical events and personalities.

And as such they took the Greek missionaries Cyril and Methodius and presented them as Bulgarians. The apostolic and educational work they brought to the Slavs became “a political and cultural act accomplished by the Bulgarians”. Some general texts of that time went so far as to claim that Alexander the Great, present in spirit and in the heart of the population in Macedonia, was of Bulgarian origin. It was a tactic that cannot but remind us of the current propaganda about Alexander the Great coming out of Skopje claiming him to be a magnate of Skopje.

Serbians, Romanians and Vlachs later appeared on the Macedonian stage. The Serbians felt the need to mobilize the memory of the Serbian presence in Macedonia in the Middle Ages - despite the fact that, from a chronological point of view, their presence was limited to the time of King Dushan and his successors (XIV century).

The Romanians and Vlachs

In the last two decades of the XIX century another actor appeared on the Macedonian stage - the Romanians: the Romanians sought to impose their own national Vlach ideology. Of all the non-Greek speaking population in Macedonia, the Vlachs warmly supported the Greek national ideology. They represent a living example of the truth that one non-Greek speaking population can be perfectly integrated into the Greek national movement. During the war for independence in 1821, a similar phenomenon was observed in the Albanian speaking Christians (“Arvaniti”) who totally identified with the Greek national cause.

However, towards the end of 1860, the Romanian national ideology began to focus its attention on some Vlach communities and its impact increased in 1877 with Romania’s independence. The Romanian propaganda machine excelled in the common Latin origin of the Romanian and Vlach language, while trying to exploit the historical factor, especially with the fantastic theories of a common Vlach origin between the southern Balkan Vlachs and the Danube Romanians. Although not negligible, the effects of such propaganda, however, remained limited. One of the root causes that prevented the Romanians from winning a majority for their cause was that the Vlachs, for centuries identified with the Greeks with whom they lived and actively participated in all the battles for the liberation of the Greek nation. Faced with such a living historic memory, historical arguments concerning the Roman period did not hold.

Another very important problem which began to unfold in the XIX century was: namely, to what extent the Slavo-phones were of Macedonian Bulgarians or Slavs belonging to a special Slavic group. At that time, the name “Macedonian” was widespread, either in its regional and geographical, or in its cultural significance. When the Serbians realized that they would fail to turn the Slavo-phones in Macedonia into pure Serbians, they decided to implement a special thesis which identified the Slavo-Macedonian as a separate people who were different from the Bulgarians but very close to the Serbians.

Later, some revolutionaries drawn from the ranks of the Bulgarian national movement began to promote the idea of a Macedonian state, independent in relation to Bulgaria and their slogan was “Macedonia for the Macedonians”, but it was just a manoeuver. In fact, it was an impression given by the leaders of the movement fighting for an independent Macedonia, they were very careful not to change the historical Bulgarian identity of the Slavs in Macedonia and to remain supporters of the Bulgarian national ideology. They only differed from Sofia with their political goal: autonomy and not unification.