SKOPJE’S THEORETICAL ALCHEMY

SKOPJE’S THEORETICAL ALCHEMY

Cyril and Methodius, “ILLUMINATING MASTERS OF EUROPE”

It has been historically proven and accepted by Slavic historians that the Slavs arrived in the Balkans in the VI century and that their

cultural history began in the X century BC. The founders of Slavic cultural history were two Greek monks from Solun known as Cyril and Methodius, who taught the Slavs the Cyrillic alphabet and steered them towards Orthodoxy. On the other hand, it has been accepted that the substrate of Slavic cultural history consists of Byzantine achievements in sciences as well as in the literary and artistic field.

Some Slavic historians, however, believe that these two Greek monks were in fact “Slavs”, and Skopje has gone as far as to throw away one of the more unfounded theses and, with no basis, claim that Cyril and Methodius, since they were originally from Solun, were in fact Macedonian Slavs and therefore the inhabitants of Skopje are their descendants (!) who had the privilege to “enlighten” their brothers by birth.

Pope John Paul II, himself a Slav, dealt a heavy blow to those theories when he, on December 31, 1980 in the apostolic encyclical (Egregiae Virtutis) address to all Catholics and with a personal letter addressed to the President of the Hellenic Republic, called Cyril and Methodius “our Greek brothers born in Solun” illuminating masters of Europe. The Pope reiterated the statement on February 14, 1981 in the church of St. Clement in Rome.

In fact, numerous Slavic politicians and historians have said that Cyril and Methodius were Greeks, as did the Czech Byzantologist F. Dvornik, Serbian historians of old Serbian literature P. Popovich, D. Sh. Radovich and G. Trifunovich and Slovenian Professor B. Grafenauer from the University of Ljubljana.

In his works “History of the Old Slavic literature” (Belgrade, 1980), Professor V. Bogdanovich, a Serbian, wrote: “Cyril and Methodius were born in Solun and have a Greek, not a Slavic origin.”

2. WHEN MAPS REVEAL THE TRUTH

Skopje’s allegations are well known in its attempts to rest its maps on a faulty foundation. However, it is searching in vain because never has there ever been any map that was printed before 1944 in which the name Macedonia as a country has been found other than

in Greece. In 1944, in the first map published by the Yugoslavs, the “Socialist Republic of Macedonia” appeared in South Serbia. In a later edition, the name “Socialist Republic” was omitted and the name Macedonia was no longer a figure in Greece: anyone who looked at this map would have concluded that “Macedonia” only existed in Yugoslavia and that there was a “Macedonian nation” which, of course had its own language.

The extent to which Skopje is willing to go to can been seen by the number of ethnographic maps produced by Skopje to demonstrate its theses regarding the existence of a, deprived of any basis, “Macedonian nation”. This includes:

a) An ethnographic map of nationalities in Macedonia in the period 1912 - 1926, published in the 1970 edition of the University of Cambridge Modern History;

b) The ethnographic map of Kieport (Berlin, 1918);

c) The ethnographic map published by the Italian Amendore Virxili in 1908, calling on the Turkish census carried out by Hilmi Pasha;

d) The map of Stanford.

In none of these maps, however, as well as in those that were published before World War II, does it contain any reference to a “Macedonian nation” for the simple reason that there never was such a nation until the Yugoslav Communist Party invented it.

At the time of the Ottoman domination (1529), the Turks applied their own system of division, as derived from the ethnographic map of 1908, based on the census carried out by Hilmi Pasha in 1904. The map does not mention Macedonia because the area was divided into “Sundzhaks” and “Vilayets” (Bitola and Solun vilayet). Shown on a map of 1350 was Emperor Stefan Dusan’s kingdom, which was mentioned as the “Kingdom of the Serbs and Greeks”. Dusan had divided his kingdom into two zones: the northern zone spreading down to Skopje, which he bestowed upon his son, and the southern zone (Greek) which he kept for himself. If there was a “Macedonian nation”, there is no doubt that he would have called his kingdom the

“Kingdom of the Serbs and Macedonians” or the “Kingdom of the Serbs, Greeks and Macedonians”.

“The Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes” was founded after World War I and then, if there were Macedonians, that kingdom would have been called “The Kingdom of the Serbs, Greeks and Macedonians”. In 1824, E. Z. Koal issued a new historical map of Greece in Baltimore. In the legend the map publisher wrote the name Macedonia as part of continental Greece and its border extended north of Bitola.

3. THE GREEK CHARACTER OF THE SLAVO-PHONES

During the period marked by a strong Greek-Bulgarian rivalry, various statistics on the ethnic composition of the population in Macedonia were published. The data presented had significant differences, this is because the statistical information was based on various criteria and put in the services of the various national aspirations and their authors.

Macedonia in the Ottoman Empire was administratively divided into two vilayets, the Solun and Bitola Vilayets. The Inspector General of these vilayets resided in Solun. In the course before the Balkan wars, that position was occupied by Hilmi Pasha. The results of the census conducted under Hilmi Pasha up to 1904 seemed to be quite close to reality. The results appear in the following table:

Greeks Bulgarians

Solun Vilayet Bitola Vilayet TOTAL:

373,227 261 283 634 510

207,317 178 412 385 729

In a conversation with French writer Paiaris, in regards to the Slavo-phones, Hilmi Pasha said: “My personal opinion and the opinion of my government is that these people are Greeks. Our classification of our citizens is based on the function of the church and the school they go to. They themselves say that they are Greeks as long as there is no strong pressure exerted on them.” (8) In 1871, Russian historian Golubinski wrote: “These so-called Greeks feel much more and deeper hatred and disdain than the real Greeks, towards anything that could be considered Bulgarian or Slavic”. (9) A memorandum addressed to the French Government in 1903 by the residents of Bitola Region, in this respect was more illustrative than any other source: “We speak Greek, Bulgarian and Albanian; but because of that we are no less Greek and no one could dispute that fact”. (10)

The considerable Greek education system in Macedonia provides additional evidence of the Greek character of the Slavo-phones and the other residents in the region in general. In Bitola region, in the city Bitola alone there were 284 Greek schools of which one was a high school, one was a general school, one for girls only, one for boys only, one for seminars, one Academy and 14 elementary schools. In Krusevo there was a high school with three classrooms, a school for girls, another for boys, four elementary schools and a maternity school. There were primary schools, schools for girls, secondary education institutions and maternity schools everywhere including in Magarevo, Tarnovo, Miloshishta, Nizepole, Gopeshi, Belishte, Brusnik, Lavtsi, Duhovo, Strumitsa, Gevgelia and Melnik.

In some cases the Greeks, who were forced to live with non-Greeks and were in constant contact with the non-Greek population, did lose their language but they never lost their national consciousness. In fact, they even spread their Greek national consciousness to the Slavic and Vlach populations.

The region connected with Greece after the Balkan wars encompassed most of the Solun and Bitola Vilayets.

During the course of 10 to 15 years (1913-1925) the large population movements that took place in Greek Macedonia substantially changed the ethnic composition of the region. During the wars of 1912 to 1919, tens of thousands of Bulgarians left the region until the final departure of 53 thousand Bulgarians who, based on a voluntary agreement of population exchange between Greece and Bulgaria, left for Bulgaria. Only the Slavo-phones in

western Macedonia remained, who largely had a Greek consciousness.

The following table contains statistics provided by the League of Nations about Greek Macedonia in 1926 (after the population exchange between Greece and Turkey):

Greeks Muslims Bulgarians Others (especially Jews) Total:

1,341,000 88.8% 2,000,000 0.1% 77,000 5.1% 91,000 6.0% 1,511,000

Between the two wars, the Greek government led the following policy: in 1924, in the framework of the society of nations, Greece and Bulgaria signed a protocol - known as the “Kalfov - Politis Protocol” by which Greece sent its Slavo-phone population from its territory to Bulgaria. Unfortunately this created widespread discontent in the country prompting Serbia to react by dropping the Greek-Serbian alliance agreement of 1913 - a protocol which the Greek parliament refused to ratify.

Then the League of Nations liberated Greece from the obligations it had accepted.