4. FIRST ATTEMPTS AT “SCIENTIFICALLY” ESTABLISHING A NON-EXISTENT NATION

4. FIRST ATTEMPTS AT “SCIENTIFICALLY” ESTABLISHING A NON-EXISTENT NATION

Despite the fact that socio-economic conditions after the end of World War II were favourable to “mutations” in the population in terms of its national identity, the inhabitants of Yugoslav Macedonia, at the time, were far from consciously accepting such an idea. The future of the new “nation” proved uncertain if it was going to be put on solid ground so that it could be constituted. Therefore, it was necessary to act as soon as possible. The first concern of the builders of this new “nationality” was to find a name that would be acceptable. From that moment on the easiest solution was accepted; the geographical name of the region. But that name was common to all groups of the population living in the three parts of Macedonia.

Greeks called themselves Macedonians, separate from the Slavic groups using the term Macedonians, and Vlach Macedonians.

There was no dispute behind the geographical term, the name “Macedonian” contained a long historical and cultural tradition that could not be ignored. Initially, the builders of the new “nationality” preferred not to associate with the ancient Greek Macedonians. Their efforts largely went towards acceptance of the Bulgarian component in favour of the new “nationality” in the history of Macedonia. All that was Bulgarian automatically become “Macedonian”.

When it was possible, the same process was applied to the Serbian and Greek elements in Macedonia. Builders of the new “ethnicity” obviously were not willing to be satisfied with just the success of their experience. Once the “Macedonian nationality” was constructed, through the right of appropriation, they could have the right to call everything that was of Macedonian origin, in favour of the new “nation”.

Under the weight of events that occurred at the end of the 1940s, i.e. the beginning and end of the Civil War in Greece, Yugoslav leaders renounced their policy of territorial expansion in Macedonia but did not abandon their policy of historical and cultural expansion in favour of the new “Macedonian nation”. So the term was expanded and was given a “scientific” character which caused some strong reactions and criticism from some Bulgarian and Greek historians. The controversy led to the “Macedonian question” of a new species, which was far from being just a simple quarrel between erudites. The Yugoslav re-interpretation of Macedonian history was a “conditio sine qua non” for the survival and expansion of the new “nationality”. For Bulgaria it meant that it needed to react and oppose this policy in order to prevent the “de-Bulgarization” of the history of the Slavs in Macedonia and to stop the spread of the theory of a “Macedonian nation” existing among the Bulgarian population in Macedonia. For the Greeks, finally, questioning the Yugoslav positions represented a legitimate defense against any kind of claim to the Greek heritage of Macedonia and in reaction to attempts of appropriation and monopolization of the historical Greek name.

5. DOES A “MACEDONIAN” LANGUAGE EXIST?

The specific Slavic “Macedonian” language was unknown until the Second World War. The Language of the Slavo-phone speaking residents of southern Yugoslavia and southwestern Bulgaria was known as an idiomatic form of Bulgarian.

After the creation of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, linguistic ties that united the inhabitants of Yugoslav Macedonia with Bulgaria ceased to exist for purely political reasons. For that reason a myriad of linguists and philologists took on the task of fabricating a separate written language.

The “Macedonian language” was created based on the Prilep dialect and from borrowing from the Serbian, Bulgarian, Russian and other Slavic languages. It was then recognized by the Yugoslav Constitution as one of the three official languages of the Federation.

The fact is that in the centre, especially in the northern part of Macedonia, Slavo-phone residents spoke a special Slavic dialect. But it was only a verbal dialect - without a written form - whose poor vocabulary contained no more than about a thousand to a thousand-five hundred words. Many among them were of Slavic origin, but this dialect also contained a high proportion of Greek words, original or deformed, as well as Turkish, Vlach and Albanian words. Basically, it was the western idiom dialect of the Bulgarian language, which was spoken in northern Macedonia. What especially distinguished the official Bulgarian East language from the western dialect were the letters “JA” (the changing JA). These letters from the official Bulgarian language were turned into “E” in the western dialect; for example, the Bulgarian word “LJATO” (summer) was pronounced as “LETO” in the western dialect.

After 1878, with the introduction of Bulgarian education in the Macedonian region, this idiom came even closer to the Bulgarian language no matter that it was spoken in the Macedonian zones from ancient times onwards. But the overall work of the Macedonian philosopher Aristotle, as is well-known, was written in Greek.

N. Martis (12), in a characteristic way, has revealed that: “if we agree that Macedonians speak a special, non-Greek language, how do we explain that it brutally and radically disappeared without leaving any text, with no article preserved. How then is it possible that it was not made compulsory as a language, when the Macedonians were so proud of their origin?”

Plutarch has informed us that when Alexander the Great took 30,000 Persians into his service he chose to integrate them into his army and ordered them to “learn the Greek letters and to become familiar with the Macedonian weapons” (13)

In a report written by the Roman author Titus Livy, there was a claim that the Macedonians had the same language as the other Greeks. Livy described an assembly of Greeks in Aetolia, in 200 BC, in which “stood representatives of Aetolia, Acarnania and Macedonia, people who spoke the same language”. (14)

Nikolaos Andriotis, a linguist and professor at the University of Solun, in his book “Federal State of Skopje and its language” published in English (1957) and Greek (1960), wrote: “In September 1944, a commission was established in Skopje to determine the grammar and spelling of the ‘Macedonian language’…” (p. 34)

Italian linguist Vittore Pizani in his study “Makedonika” also noted (15): “In fact, the Macedonian language is a creation of purely political origin”.

In spite of the efforts invested in over 45 years, their new language still remains of the Bulgarian branch. That, of course, does not prevent the residents of Skopje, at home and abroad, of speaking of the existence of a “Macedonian language”. Historians from Skopje are trying to prove that this was a special Slavic language dialect in order to deal with the difference between a so-called “Macedonian Slav nation” and the Bulgarians. But Bulgarian historians challenge the entire series of elements, thanks to proving that the “Macedonian” textbooks, which the people in Skopje praise, are actually Bulgarian books published in the local dialect “for Macedonian Bulgarians”, as seen by their titles.

When residents of a region speak a language, they have a suitable educational system (teachers, schools, students).

Between 1878 and 1888, the number of Greek schools, academies and maternity schools in Macedonia increased, covering 58 thousand Greek students in a total of 900 institutions. This is indisputable evidence of the Greek character of Macedonia.

One modern writer in Skopje named Krste Bitoski wrote: “The churches and schools in Bitola in the late 19th century were in Greek hands”. (16)

The Greek character of the inhabitants of Macedonia is proven through a note sent in 1901 to the Romanian Government from the chief of Romanian propaganda, Lazarescu Lekada, in which he said:

“In the villages where the population consisted exclusively of Vlachs, the Greek schools were full of students, while the Romanian schools were gone. The Vlachs contributed to the Greek schools and when they died they left their fortunes to be used for Greek education”. (17)

Accordingly, there is no doubt that the “Macedonian” language was fabricated to strictly serve defined purposes.

It should be noted that the largest part of the linguistic work carried out by Skopje did not begin until 1944 and was aimed at eliminating all the Bulgarian elements that existed in the Slav-Macedonian idiom and their replacement with Serbo-Croatian words. This work was successful enough, so far, that 10 years later the Pirin Bulgarian Macedonians had difficulties understanding the radio programs originating from Skopje.