(For more information on the plight of the Macedonian children please read cha - Part 03

27. “General interest was first aroused by a controversy as to the racial derivation of modern Greeks. The war of Independence had won the sympathy of Europe; and it was a rude shock both to Greece and to her champions when Fallmerayer announced that her inhabitants were virtually Slavs. The race of the Hellenes he declared in his ‘History of the Morea’ was routed out, and Athens was unoccupied from the sixth to the tenth century. Only its literature and a few ruins survived to tell that the Greek people had ever existed. What the Slavs had began the Albanians completed.” (“History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century”, by G. P. Gooch, 1918, page 491.)

28. “There were few Muslims here; the inhabitants largely of Albanian stock, were only imperfectly assimilated into the Greek nation…” (“Politics in Modern Greece”, by Keith R. Legg, page 48.)

“The term ‘Greek’ differentiates the language spoken by inhabitants of modern Greece from the languages of the surrounding countries; but there is disagreement on what the Greek language was, is, or should be. At the time of independence, the range of local dialects was significant; substantial portions of the population spoke Albanian.” (“Politics in Modern Greece”, by Keith R. Legg, page 86.)

29. “…followed by violence, recourse was had to arms, and the two elder brothers united against Vely, the offspring of a slave; who being forced to expatriate himself, embraced the perilous profession of those Albanian knights errant, more commonly known by the appellation of kleftes or brigands.” (“The Life of Ali Pasha of Jannina, 1823, page 26.)

30. “There is the case of Karamanlides, a predominantly Turkish-speaking Christian Orthodox people, who were forced to go to Greece although they did not necessarily identify ‘ethnically’ with the Greeks. At the time of the exchange they numbered as many as 400,000.” (“Mediating the Nation News, Audiences and the Politics of Identity”, Mirca Madianou, page 31.)

31, “Morea…as Fallmerayer traces it back to the Slavic word ‘more’, the sea which nearly encircles the Morea. The Morea forms the most southern part of the Kingdom of Greece and is divided into the monarchies of Argolis, Corinth, Lakonis, Messenia, Archadia, Achaea and Elis. Overrun by the Goths and Vandals, it became prey, in the second half of the 8th c. to bands of Slavic invaders who found it wasted by war and pestilence.” (“International Cyclopedia a Compendium of Human Knowledge”, American Editor-in-Chief Richard Gleason Green, 1890, page 204.)

32. “This point is made in almost all publications on Albanian nationalism (e.g. Skendi 1967 and 1980). In the nineteenth century,

the Greek historian Constantinos Paparrigopoulos considered the Albanians a ‘race’ that could be acculturated into Hellenism. His viewpoint was greatly influenced by the considerable Albanian contribution to the Greek war of independence (1821-1828).” (“Nationalism Globalization and Orthodoxy” by Victor Roudometof, page 156.)

33. “Rhigas of Valentino….author of poems, revolutionary proclamations and a constitution…

In this document he spoke of a sovereign people of the proposed state as including ‘without distinction of religion and language – Greeks, Albanians, Vlachs, Armenians, Turks and every other race’.” (“Nations and States”, by Hugh Seton-Watson, page 113.)

34. “As of 2002 more than 98,000 foreign pupils were enrolled in Greek schools, accounting for almost 9 percent of the overall school population. As regards nationality, 72 percent are from Albania.

Clearly, Albanians are not unknown to Greeks and the new relationships emerging from the contemporary migratory context can be seen as superimposing themselves into a pre-existing trans-Balkan context.” (“The New Albanian Migration”, edited by Russell King, Nicola Mai and Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers, page 155.)

35 “Next to them in this respect are the modern Greeks, who, for the most part, are of Sclavonian origin, and, where they are not purely Sclavonian, are a cross-breed in which Sclavonian enters very largely.” (“The Phrenological Journal and Magazine of Moral Science for the year 1843”, Vol. XIV, page 246.)

36. “The modern Greeks are largely of Slavic origin. They are not the descendents of the ancient Greeks. That noble race, greatly mixed with barbarian blood during the middle ages, was almost completely destroyed in the course of the frequent uprisings against Turkish rule. Slavic immigrants gradually repopulated the country.” (“The Popular Science Monthly”, edited by J. McKeen Cattell”, Volume LXXV, July to December 1909, page 591.)

37. “There was little interest as to the nationality of the rayahs while Turkish rule was strong. They were nearly all Christians of the Byzantine type, those in Europe at least, and were hence regarded as one people, for oriental theocracy cannot conceive of nationality apart from religion. They themselves knew the differences in their origins and in such traditions as they had: some were Slavs, some Vlachs and some Albanians…” (“Political Science Quarterly” edited by the faculty of science of Columbia University, Volume twenty-third, 1908, page 307.)

38. “Since the Christian era, as we have said, a successive downpour of foreigners from the north into Greece has ensued. In the sixth century came the Avars and the Slavs, bringing death and disaster. A more potent and lasting influence upon the country was probably produced by the slower and more peaceful infiltration of the Slavs into Thessaly and Epirus from the end of the seventh century onward.

The most important immigration of all is probably that of the Albanians, who, from the thirteenth century until the advent of the Turks incessantly overran the land.” (“The Races of Europe a Sociological Study”, by William Z. Ripley PhD, 1910, page 408.)

39. “When the Macedonians became rulers of Greece, Athens had twenty-one thousand citizens, ten thousand resident aliens and four-hundred thousand slaves.” (“Race or Mongrel”, by Alfred P. Schultz, page 86.)

“The resident aliens were mainly Aryan-Hemitic-Semetic-Egyptian-Negroid mongrels.” (“Race or Mongrel”, by Alfred P. Schultz, page 87.)

“In the course of time the Hellenic blood was corrupted to a still greater extent. In 146 BC the Romans conquered Greece…When Mummius took Corinth…All the men were killed, the women and children were sold into slavery. Later the Goths invaded Greece…laid waste the land, and expelled or exterminated the inhabitants.” (“Race or Mongrel”, by Alfred P. Schultz, pages 88 and 89.)

“The only difference between modern Greeks and the other Balkanacs lies in the fact that the environment of the modern Greeks is the environment of the Hellenes. The environment, however, has no power whatsoever to change the mongrel into a race, and the Greeks have not been changed by it.” (“Race or Mongrel”, by Alfred P. Schultz, page 93.)

40. “The ethnographic record certainly shows that Rhigas could have identified as both Vlach and Greek, and even preferred one over another in different circumstances. The Koutsovlach contribution to Greek independence is well attested.” (“Modern Greece a Cultural Poetics”, by Vangelis Calotychos, page 44.)

“He consequently never traveled to Greece to implement the second part of his plan. Like many Philhellenes and Diaspora figures Rhigas never did set foot in Greece, which was fitting for one whose image of the place bore many characteristics of a European discourse located and produced outside of the Greek mainland.” (“Modern Greece a Cultural Poetics”, by Vangelis Calotychos, page 47.)

41. “In the last year of the 15th century, and the opening years of the 16th, when the Morea was again the battlefield of the Turks and Venetians, the occupants of the plain of Argos and portions of Attica were practically exterminated, and Albanian colonists began to reoccupy the lands.” (“The Customs and Lore of Modern Greece”, by Rennell Rodd, 1892, page 17.)

42. “Modern Greece is so flimsy and fragile, that it goes to pieces entirely when confronted with the roughest fragment of the old. But there is very little of it, and if you choose you may see exactly what the Greeks of the 5th century saw, and, the people of Athens are, of course, no more Athenian than I am.” (“In Byron’s Shadow Modern Greece in the English and American Imagination”, by David Roessel, page 163.)

43. “This revival also allowed the Byzantines to re-colonize the Greek mainland. The success of that effort would prove crucial to the survival of Greek culture in future centuries, after the other lands had fallen away. Having overrun nearly all the Greek mainland, the cities, and the islands by the tenth century the Slavs in Greece have

been converted to Orthodox Christianity and thoroughly Hellenized.” (“Sailing from Byzantium How a Lost Empire Shaped the World”, by Colin Wells, page 184.)

44. “The Vlachs, on the contrary, descendants of the Romanized people of the Balkan peninsula, live in considerable numbers in the mountains of northern and central Greece.” (“The Scottish Geographical Magazine”, volume XIII, 1897, page 370.)

45. “Europe’s affinity with ancient Greece left the newborn nation of Greece in an awkward double bind. Identifying ancient Greece as the ‘childhood of Europe’ Winkelmann gave the patrimony of Greece to western Europe, leaving only more modern sights of heritage to the modern Greeks. Michael Herzfeld suggests that ‘the west supported the Greeks on their implicit assumption that the Greeks would reciprocally accept the role of living ancestors of European civilization’.” (“Possessors and Possessed”, by Wendy M. K. Shaw, page 66.)

46. “It is simply not plausible to suggest that the bulk of Greek speaking Roman citizens in the Middle Ages, let alone the former Turkish subjects of 19th century Greece, ‘lived like, ancient Greeks.” (“Macedonia and Greece the Struggle to Define a New Balkan Nation”, by John Shea, page 95.)

47. “Not less remarkable than the small size of Hellas was the small size of the Hellenes themselves. But it is much more easy to trace the boundaries of the one upon the modern map than it is to trace the blood of the other in the bodies of the modern inhabitants.

We have no accurate record of the proportions of free citizens who alone constituted the true Hellenes, but they were at most a small minority among the large population of helots and slaves.” (“The Nineteenth Century a Monthly Review”, edited by James Knowles, Vol. VI, July-December 1879, page 932.)

48. “The Albanians of Hydra and Spatsae, many of whom could not even speak Greek, regarded themselves as Greek because their allegiance was with the Orthodox Church.” (“That Greece Might Still be Free”, by William St. Clair, page 9.)

49. “Here is the ultimate Greek tragedy: that of a country forced to treat everything familiar at the time of the nation-state’s foundation as ‘foreign’ while importing a culture largely invented – or at least – redesigned by German classicists of the late eighteenth early nineteenth centuries. For many decades, and almost without interruption, Greeks were forced to put aside music, art and language that were deemed too tainted by the ‘oriental’ influences of Ottoman, Arab, Slavic and Albanian culture; to forget the partially Albanian roots of Athens and its environs…” (“The Body Impolitic” by Michael Herzfeld, page 9.)

50. “The philhellenes – the word means ‘the admirers of the Greeks’ – who began to lobby for Greek freedom were struck by the contrast between the idea of ancient Greek freedom and the servitude of the modern Greeks, who were usually assumed to be direct descendants of Pericles and company. Philhellenes generally moved at a distance from reality: they were concerned only with the myth of Athens and were capable of ignoring anything which tended to tarnish the glamour.” (“Athens from Ancient Ideal to Modern City”, by Robin Waterfield, page 296.)

Given that the Modern Greeks are NOT the descendants of any “ancient people” as they pretend to be, then how do they justify the invasion, occupation, partition and annexation of Macedonian territories? How do they justify telling the Macedonians what they can and can’t call themselves? Why are these imposters and charlatans still being taken seriously? But, as long as we pay attention to them and argue with them, they will continue to argue back and “pretend” that they are the descendants of the so-called Ancient Greeks.

Even if God himself came to earth and spoke to the Greeks and said “these people here are Macedonians” some Greeks would still have problems accepting his word.

Well there are people who identify as “Greeks”, unfortunately, ethnically speaking they are not “ethnic Greeks”; they are “politically” Greeks. Did I just say “politically Greeks”? Yes politically Greeks. They identify as Greeks not because “they are”

ethnic Greeks but because they “want to be” Greeks! It’s a matter of choice. How else can one explain how Slavs, Albanians, Vlachs, Macedonians, Christian Turks, Armenians, Russians and a whole group of other ethnicities ALL identify as “Greeks”?

In other words, anyone can be Greek provided they agree with the “Philhellenic indoctrination” of what a Greek is. Anyone who speaks Greek, claims to be a descendant of the so-called Ancient Greeks, pretends to be superior to other people, claims minorities don’t exist in Greece, is arrogant and insensitive to non-Greeks and hurls slogans like “Macedonia is Greek” can be a Greek. Can an Asia Minor Christian Turk settler who was deposited in Macedonia in the 1920’s be a Greek? Yes they can! They can even be a Macedonian, descendent of the Ancient Macedonians! Can a Macedonian whose family identified as Macedonian before Greece annexed Macedonia in 1913 identify as a Greek? Yes they can, provided they accept and swear by the “Philhellene Indoctrination”. Can any of my relatives, like myself who were born in Greece, with whom I share great grandparents be Greeks even though I identify as a Macedonian? Yes they can! They can in fact also be “full-fledged” Macedonians, direct descendants of the Ancient Macedonians! Can I be a Greek, and I did ask this question, on account of some of my family members identifying as Greeks? The answer was a flat NO! And according to the same “Greek authorities” who said I could never be a Greek, I don’t even qualify to call myself Macedonian. According to them I am a “Slav” and a “Skopjan” from some “other” country called “Skopje”, which I have yet to find on any “world” map except on maps made in Greece!

If you are still not convinced that the Greek identity is a 19th century Philhellene fabrication; an identity “created” purely for political purposes, then you had best read the following twenty-five excerpts;

1. “There were, however, several magnificent specimens of Greek palicars, who added to the advantage of soldier like, but rather swaggering carriage, all the accessories of their picturesque costume. Nine or ten of them performed the Albanian national dance, to the sound of a bad fiddle and a jingling guitar played with a quill for the amusement of her majesty, who did not seem enchanted with this exhibition.

And these men, who were exposing themselves in this absurd manner, were the far-famed Colocotroni, Nikitas, surnamed the Turkofagos, or Turk eater, Makryani, Vasso of Montinegro, Nota Botsaris, and other equally celebrated.” (“Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine”, Vol. XLIII, January – June 1838)

2. “When Athens was chosen as the site for the modern capital of the new nation, and its (re)construction was planned along lines of Hellenic purity, the unsettling evidence of Greece’s Ottoman heritage along with local vernacular forms had to be confronted, all the more so when situated in the immediate vicinity of remains of classical antiquity. Early nineteenth-century Athens was viewed as a ‘disgraceful site’ (Boyer 1996: 163) full of imperfections, ranging from the city’s physical aspect to the spoken language that called for, ‘filtering-out’ interventions.” (“Contested Landscapes Movement, Exile and Place”, Edited by Barbara Bender and Margot Winer, page 23)

3. “In 1851, at the time of her enfranchisement, Greece possessed about one million inhabitants, of whom a quarter were Albanians or Walachians. The population was a residue of invaders of all peoples, and notable of Slavs. For centuries the Greeks properly so called had disappeared from Greece. From the time of the Roman conquest, Greece was regarded by every adventurer as a nursery of slaves, which everyone might have recourse to with impunity.” (“The Psychology of Socialism”, by Gustav Lo Bon, page 206)

4. “The Greek influence which has partially Hellenized the Vlachs of Macedonia to-day can hardly date from before the Turkish conquest. It is the work not of the Byzantine Empire but of the modern Church, and seems to have reached its height during the eighteenth century.” (“Macedonia its races and the future”, by H. N. Brailsford , page 181)

5. “Greek statesman said Albanian was not a language – it had no literature, not even an alphabet - it is a mere patois, and would die out in a generation, and the children of the Albanian soldiers and sailors would all be good Greeks.” (“The Catholic Presbyterian an

International Journal Ecclesiastical and Religious”, vol. II, July – December 1879, edited by Professor W. G. Blaikie D.D., L.L.D., F.R.S.E., page 319).

6. “ We have many instances of the daring of these Greek robbers, one of which I shall here relate, as received from their chief, no less a personage than Colocotroni, who was in our service, and has since, as may be remembered, made himself conspicuous in Greece. He is an Albanian, and, as he acknowledges, a kleftis (robber).” (“Selections from my Journal during a residence in the Mediterranean”, pages 110 and 111)

7. “…the historical absurdity of declaring Hellenic civilization the expression of a culture uncontaminated by foreign elements can be explained by a simple fact that tends to be disregarded – namely, that Hellenic civilization that we know it was in effect the invention of the ‘Science of Antiquity’, of Classics. As such, it could have been (and was) endowed with whatever signification the discipline found useful.” (“Dream Nation Enlightenment, Colonization and the Institution of Modern Greece”, by Stathis Gourgouris, page 134)

8. “After successive treaties, (London 1913, Bucharest 1913), Greece acquired much of Macedonia, Epirus, Crete and the north-eastern islands of the Aegean. Greek land increased by 70 percent and the population almost doubled from 2,800,000 to 4,800,000 some of whom were Slavs and Turks.” (“Entangled Identities Nations and Europe”, Edited by Atsuko Ichijo and Willfried Sohn, page 112)

9. “Yet so much of the Sclavonian element had been infused into the latter that the modern Greeks are found to differ widely from their remote ancestors.” (“Foreign Quarterly Review”, Vol. XXVI, 1841, page 73)

10. “…the question of Greece’s political and ethnic status generated a considerable amount of debate in western Europe. As Michael Herzfeld argues in ‘Ours once more: Folklore, Ideology and the Making of Modern Greece’: ‘to be a European, was in ideological terms, to be a Hellene’ (1982: 15). Many Europeans of the time, however, believed the contemporary Greeks to be an

adulterated version of the Classical Greeks – ‘Byzantine Slavs…” (“Grafting Helen The Abduction of the Classical Past”, Matthew Gumpert, pages 239 and 240)

11. “…since the Greeks are a composite people among whom the descendents of the veritable Greek of old are in a great minority. The majority are of Albanian and Solute blood, races which even the Romans found untamable.” (“In Greek Waters: a Story of the Grecian War of Independence (1821-1827)”, By G.A. Henty, 1893, page 40)

12. “General interest was first aroused by a controversy as to the racial derivation of modern Greeks. The War of Independence had won the sympathy of Europe; and it was a rude shock both to Greece and her champions when Fallmerayer announced that her inhabitants were virtually Slavs. The race of the Hellenes, he declared in his ‘History of Morea’, was routed out and Athens was unoccupied from the sixth to the tenth century. Only its literature and a few ruins survived to tell that the Greek people ever existed. What the Slavs had begun the Albanians had completed.” (“History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century”, by G.P. Gooch, pages 490 and 491)

13. “Old Corinth passed through its various stages, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Turkish. After the War of Independence it was again Greek, and, being a considerable town, was suggested as the capital of the new Kingdom of Greece. The earthquake of 1858 leveled it to the ground with the exception of about a dozen houses. A mere handful of the old inhabitants remained on the site. But fertile fields and running water made it attractive; and outsiders gradually came in. At present, it is an untidy poverty-stricken village of about 1,000 inhabitants, mostly of Albanian Blood.” (“The Encyclopedia Britannica” Eleventh edition, Vol. VII, 1910, page 148)

14. “The modern Greeks possess none of the qualities which make nations great. Their existence is due to the battle of Navarino, for in the autumn of 1827 Greece was unquestionably conquered by the arms of the Grand Vizier Reshid Mehmed and by Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt, and again the ‘untoward event’ of Navarino could only occur at a time when Phil-Hellenism was a sort of social disease,

caused by hallucinations and by the illusion of finding in the present a mongrel inhabitants of the Morea and Attica the descendents of the ancient Hellenes.” (“The Syrian War and the decline of the Ottoman Empire (1840-1848)”, by Byron Augustus Jochmus, page 100)

15. “The notion of a ‘Greek’ identity in the modern sense is itself in large part the creation of the movement towards statehood. It was not until the nineteenth century that the term came to describe a homogenous ethnic group in the modern sense. Instead, the people of the Peloponnesos, including Argolida, made up an intricate mosaic of ethnicities and languages. In Argolida dialects of Albanian, Greek, Turkish and other local languages were spoken (Andromedas 1976).” (“Blood and Oranges Immigrant Labour and European Markets in Rural Greece”, by Christopher M. Lawrence, page 12)

16. “…Greek national feeling was already quite strong at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Even the Albanian-speaking Orthodox did not regard themselves only as Rum (members of the religious community or Orthodox Christian millet) but also as real Greeks.” (“From Geopolitics to Global Politics”, editor Jacques Levy, page 174)

17. “…he devoted his personal attention exclusively to the latter, assigning Joannina to his son-in-law, Thomas Preliubovich, in 1367, and Aetolia and Akarnania to two Albanian chiefs, belonging to the clan Boua and Liosa – a name still to be found in the plains of Attica. Thus, about 1362, all north-west Greece was Albanian…” (“The Latins in the Lavant a History of Frankish Greece (1204-1566), by William Miller M.A., 1908, page 294)

18. “Overrun by the Goths and Vandals, it became a prey, by the second half of the 8th c., to bands of Slavic invaders, who found it wasted by war and pestilence. Gradually however, these barbarians were subdued and Grecianized by the Byzantine Emperors. Nevertheless the numerous names of places, Rivers, etc., in the Morea of Slavic origin, prove how firmly they had routed themselves, and that the Moreotes are anything but pure Greeks.” (“The International Encyclopedia a Compendium of Human Knowledge”, edited by Richard Gleeson Green, 1890, page 204)

19. “…between a cheer and a whine, and presently their Imperial Majesties of Greece, cantered up the hill attended by four dignitaries, and as many equerries. The queen was dressed in a dark green riding-habit, black beaver with drooping feather, and veil. King Otho wore the Albanian costume of crimson, gold embroidered jacket and legs, white fustanela, with a richly chased saber belted over his shoulder.” (“Scampavians from Gibil Tarek to Stamboul”, by Harry Gringo, 1857)

20. “There was little interest as to the nationality of the Rayahs while Turkish rule was strong. They were nearly all Christians of the Byzantine type, those in Europe at least, and were hence regarded as one people, for oriental theocracy cannot conceive nationality apart from religion. They themselves know the difference in their origins and in such traditions as they had: some were Slavs, some Vlachs and some Albanians…; they were all non-Muslims, all Rayahs, and in a sense all Greeks.” (“Political Science Quarterly”, Columbia University, 1908, page 307)

21. “The revolution of 1821 has restored the ancient appellation ‘Elines’, but as it is used chiefly by the inhabitants of Bavarian Greece, who perhaps don’t constitute more than one fourth of the Greek nation, it may safely be said that the mass of the people still call themselves ‘Romaii’ and their language ‘Romaiki’.” (“A Romaik Grammar”, by E.A. Sophocles, 1842, page iv)

22. “From their manners, their features and their names of many of their neighbouring places, I should be tempted to regard them [Mainiotes] proceeding of Sclavonian blood: many travelers pretend, however, to have discovered in these barbarous hordes traces of a Spartan origin.” (“Recollections of a Classical Tour through various parts of Greece, Turkey and Italy made in the years 1818 and 1819”, by Peter Edmund Laurent, 1821, page 182)

23. “The Greeks have not taken much interest in their past until Europeans became enthusiastic discoverers and diggers of their ruins. And why should they have cared? The Greeks were not Greek but rather the illiterate descendants of Slavs and Albanian fishermen who spoke a debased Greek dialect and had little interest in the

broken columns and temples except as places to graze their sheep. The true philhellenists were the English – of whom Byron was the epitome – and the French, who were passionate to link themselves to the Greek ideal.” (“The Pillars of Hercules” by Paul Thereoux, page 316)

24. “…Neohellenic Enlightenment sanctioned a selective tradition, with particular emphasis upon an imaginary classical antiquity, and sought to suppress what was deemed to be a ‘non-significant tradition’, mainly the Byzantine and Ottoman legacy. Through this ideological management of the past, it achieved the displacement of a substance part of the history, memory and experience of those it sought to shape into modern Greeks.” (“Tormented by History Nationalism in Greece and Turkey”, by Umut Oskirimu and Spiros A. Sofos, page 24)

25. “There are two other difficulties involved in the history of the Turkish period. In tracing the movements of merchandise and men in the Balkan peninsula it is extremely difficult to differentiate the various races involved. Western travelers knew little, Turkish authorities cared less. Even the polyglot Vlachs themselves knew nor cared a great deal and until the rise of national consciousness at the end of the eighteenth century were probably quite happy with the label of Greek, which was good enough for outside observers.” (“The Vlachs the History of a Balkan People”, by T.J. Winnifrith, pages 124 and 125)

So, what have we learned from the comments made by all the authors I have presented so far?

Well, we have learned that the Greek identity is not an “ethnic identity” at all but rather a “politically motivated artificial identity” created by the 19th century Philhellenes to serve some greater political purpose. We have learned that the 19th century Greeks, recent ancestors to today’s Greeks, were not “ethnic Greeks” at all. The majority belonged to the Slav, Albanian, Vlach and later Macedonian ethnic groups. In other words they became “Greek” either by force or by choice. This cannot be disputed!

What can be disputed, however, is the ownership of a heritage that does not belong to the Modern Greeks. For example Modern Greeks cannot claim the heritage of the so-called “ancient Greeks” as their own just because they call themselves “Greeks” and learned to behave like the Ancient Greeks. This is like saying that I can claim my neighbour’s father’s house if I changed my last name to match his and pretend to be my neighbour’s brother. Can I legally do that? Can I one day show up at my neighbour’s house and say “I am your brother and this house is mine”?

Wouldn’t I have to prove my descent from the man I claim to be my father?

Well this is exactly what the Greeks are doing! With the help of a bunch of Westerners they usurped the Ancient Greek heritage, or I should say was given to them by the European monarchies, which does not belong to them, and now they think they are the owners of Greece. Ah, but that’s not all! Since they annexed a large chunk of Macedonian land in 1913 by war, they also usurped the Macedonian heritage, that is, until they were challenged by the real Macedonians. They usurped the Macedonian heritage the same way they usurped the Greek heritage by “pretending” to be Macedonians, descendants of the Ancient Macedonians and by pushing the real Macedonians out into extinction. How clever is that?

I don’t think any Macedonian cares what the Greeks call themselves, who they are and who they “pretend” to be but the Macedonians sure care when these “pretenders” try to lay claim to the Macedonian heritage especially at the expense of the real Macedonians! Sharing the ancient heritage is one thing but claiming it to be exclusively theirs, especially since it can be proven that they are imposters, is another.

We are faced with two problems when dealing with this issue. First, the Modern Greeks are not Greeks at all. They call themselves Greeks not because they are Greeks but because they want to be Greeks. There are benefits to being Greek. There is a country “Greece” to call their own, which should never have been created in the first place because such a country never existed before. Then there is that illustrious past with all its glory which should never

have been “assigned” to a people who had nothing to do with it. Second, these same people were not only allowed to annex 51% of Macedonia but were given full rights to “assimilate” the Macedonian people, turning them into Greeks, and usurping the Macedonian heritage as their own. Hence the slogan “the Ancient Macedonians were Greek” therefore “the Modern Macedonians must also be Greek”.

But wanting to be Greeks is not the same as “being” Greeks. Just because one “wants to be a Greek” does not mean one has the right to lay claim to the Ancient Greek heritage just as I have no right to lay claim to my neighbour’s house just because I “want” to be his brother!

This leads to the very important legal question; if these people are Greek because they want to be Greek and they are Macedonian because they want to be Macedonian, then legally what right do they have to either the Ancient Greek heritage or the Ancient Macedonian heritage? Given that we have proven that the Modern Greeks are “not Greek at all” what moral and legal right do they have to interfere in the affairs of the Macedonian people? More importantly, as Macedonians and rightful heirs to the Macedonian heritage, why are we allowing these imposters to interfere in our affairs? Isn’t it about time to tell them to “hit the road and mind their own business”?

But as I have repeatedly stated in this book, Greece is not alone in its interference in Macedonian affairs. There are also the Great Powers who today are led by the Unites States, and as I said before, they not only do not want a Macedonian state to exist but are trying their best to erase everything Macedonian, as if Macedonia and the Macedonian people never existed.

(For more information about the origin of the modern Greeks please read my book “Who are the Modern Greeks?” published in 2016.)

Revival of the Macedonian state and nation

In April 1941 Germany invaded Yugoslavia and opened the door for fascist ally Bulgaria to occupy almost all of geographic Macedonia.

On October 11, 1941 the Macedonian people launched a war of liberation against the Bulgarian occupation and by 1943 anti-fascist sentiments gave support to a growing communist movement, which later established the Communist Party of Macedonia (CPM). During the same year a number of governing and liberation movements as well as the first Macedonian military units were established over the entire geographical region of Macedonia. The Headquarters of the National Liberation Army published a manifesto of its goals for the liberation of Macedonia. The first session of the Anti-Fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM) was held on August 2nd, 1944 at the St. Prohor Pchinski Monastery. Forty-one years after the 1903 Ilinden Uprising representatives from all parts of Macedonia gathered together for this occasion and decided on a constitution for the modern Macedonian State which they named “People’s Republic of Macedonia”. The ASNOM presidium was formed with Metodia Andonov Chento as its first President and a decision was made to constitute a modern Macedonian State that would become part of the new Federal Yugoslavia. In April 1945 the first Macedonian government was established with Lazar Kolishevski as its first President. In 1958 the Ohrid Archbishopric was restored and in 1967 its autocephaly was declared. The Macedonian people, at least in one part of Macedonia, were finally free to govern themselves but not without great difficulties and opposition from both inside and outside of Yugoslavia.

One example of those “great” difficulties experienced was how Macedonian patriots like Metodia Andonov-Chento, president of the ASNOM presidium, were treated after the People’s Republic of Macedonia was established.

Metodia Andonov-Chento was a man who always demanded rights, freedom and happiness for the Macedonian people. He was truly a man who fought for Macedonia and the Macedonian people. Unfortunately he was deprived of his freedom for 11 years. He was

sentenced to hard labour and, except for his parental rights, lost all his political and individual civil rights, and that was five years after serving his sentence... He was tried at the People’s District Court in Skopje by President Panta Marina, members Lazar Moisov and Kole Chashule, and by assistant public prosecutor Blagoia Popovski. The verdict was pronounced in accordance with the Law on Crimes Against the People and the State, and was read after the main and public hearing took place on November 19, 20 and 21, 1946.

Skopje, November 23, 1946

This was the ruling of the People’s Court against Metodia Andonov-Chento, the first president of the Republic of Macedonia. This is how he was judged and this is how everything ended for him. His appeal, addressed to the Supreme Court of Macedonia and to the Skopje District Court, was rejected and his new arguments never appeared in the courtroom to face justice or in public. He never got a chance to defend himself and possibly affect his 11 year harsh sentence of hard labour, which became his fateful destiny and, a little later, his end.

Was this a fair sentence for the mistakes and for the acts committed? Perhaps this was a tax for the unrepentant repentance of a never-ending plea for forgiveness?

Was this a tax that had to be paid?

And what were Chento’s “big sins” which earned him the wretched and infamous titles “traitor”, “spy”, “sinner”, “collaborator” working with the enemy and with foreign forces...? What earned him this series of orderly, difficult, dangerous, accusatory qualifications that at that time, or at any other time, cut a man down, wiped him out and removed him from the public and from history forever?

For more information regarding what happened to Metodia Andonov-Chento please read Fidanka Tanaskova’s book “Metodia Andonov-Chento”.

Then, in 1991, the “Peoples’ Republic of Macedonia”, the part of Macedonia that was originally occupied by Serbia during the 1912, 1913 Balkan Wars, which was part of Federal Yugoslavia declared its independence from the Yugoslav federation by referendum and became a free and sovereign state called the Republic of Macedonia. But not without facing many obstacles…

Although still restricted from speaking their language and practicing their culture, ethnic Macedonians living in Greece and Bulgaria, as a result, began to assert their rights as people first by speaking Macedonian in public and then by singing Macedonian songs at weddings and festivals. Initially, from fear of persecution, they only sang and played melodies without lyrics but in time and as the numbers grew they began to add lyrics and even record songs in Macedonian.

With the imminent breakup of Yugoslavia looming over the horizon, Macedonians worldwide began to see the possibility of at last having their own State. Even the oppressed Macedonians in Greece began to feel the fervor and started to form their own movements.

It was in 1982 that, for the first time since the 1940s, Macedonian songs and dances began to be openly and publicly expressed.

In their fight for human rights as national minorities in Greece, Bulgaria and Albania organizations such as Vinozhito, OMO Ilinden, OMO Ilinden-Pirin, Bratstvo, MIR, Prespa, MED and others began to form. To help their compatriots in the occupied Macedonian territories, human rights and other organizations began to form in the Diaspora. These organizations became the voice of the Macedonian people in the occupied territories. Initially the most active were the Detsa Begaltsi (Refugee children from the Greek Civil War) who organized worldwide and brought world attention to their plight, unfortunately without much success. Greece refused to hear their pleas and would not budge on their issues. International institutions were silent on this matter.

As federal Yugoslavia began to disintegrate in the late 1980’s the Macedonians in the Peoples’ Republic of Macedonia sought their chance to finally create their own state. On September 8, 1991, in a

referendum, 95% of eligible voters approved of a sovereign and independent Republic of Macedonia with Kiro Gligorov as its President.

The will of the people was confirmed on September 18, 1991 at the Macedonian Parliament with the declaration for acceptance of the results from the referendum.

The next important step in strengthening the state was the adoption of the Constitution on November 17, 1991.

The internationally legal subjectivity of the state was recognized on April 8, 1993 with an acclamation of the UN General Assembly. Macedonia was admitted as the 181st full-fledged member but not without conditions.

Fearing that it might lose its Macedonian occupied territories, Greece was first to object to the Republic of Macedonia’s independence.

Although the European Community acknowledged that Macedonia had fulfilled the requirements for official recognition, due to the opposition of Greece which was already a member of the community, the EC decided to postpone the recognition. Greece, afraid that Macedonia might put forward a historical, cultural and linguistic claim over Aegean (Greek occupied) Macedonia, insisted that the new nation had no right to use the name “Macedonia” and use the emblem of ancient Macedonia on its flag. In July 1992 there were massive demonstrations by Macedonians in the capital Skopje over the failure to receive recognition. But despite Greek objections, Macedonia in 1993 was admitted to the United Nations under the temporary reference (not an official name) “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”. Full diplomatic relations with a number of EC nations followed, while Russia, China, Turkey, Bulgaria and most nations ignored Greece’s objections and recognized Macedonia under its constitutional name “Republic of Macedonia”. The United States of America, Britain and France did not.

Greece, dissatisfied with the results, in February 1994 imposed a trade embargo on Macedonia in an attempt to force President

Gligorov to make changes to his country’s name, nation and language and amend the Constitution to remove Article 47 which stipulated that “the Republic of Macedonia cares for the statue and rights of those persons belonging to the Macedonian people in neighboring countries, as well as Macedonian ex-parties, assists their cultural development and promotes links with them.” Ironically, Greece also has a similar article in its own Constitution, as is normal for any country in the world to care for its minorities in other countries.

Faced with an economic collapse and left without any support from the international community, Macedonia had no choice but to change its flag and constitution, after which Greece lifted the embargo.

In 1995 Human Rights Watch - Helsinki condemned Greece for the oppression of its ethnic Macedonian minority, which Greece denies exists. Both Amnesty International and the European Parliament urged Greece to recognize the Macedonian language and stop oppressing ethnic Macedonians living within its borders. Like many time before, here again we see international institutions paying lip service to the Macedonian people and actually doing nothing to help them.

Still reeling from the Greek embargo, from the internationally imposed embargo on Serbia, its traditional trading partner, and from unresolved issues with Greece, the Republic of Macedonia was faced with a new set of problems, a war at home.

Due to the conflict north of Macedonia and as a result of the NATO bombing of Serbia, an influx of war refugees numbering in the three hundred thousand entered Macedonia. This created economic as well as political strain on impoverished Macedonia, which on one hand had to cope with an overnight population increase of 15% and on the other with criticism from various human rights groups for the ways it handled the refugees.

No sooner was that crisis over when armed bands of Albanian fighters spilled over from the Serbian conflict began to infiltrate and stir up trouble in Macedonia.

It is noteworthy at this point to mention that the United States and its western allies were very much involved in the 2001 war on both sides, on the side of the Albanian armed bands and on the side of the Macedonian military. While these Albanian armed bands were armed and trained in Kosovo by an American/NATO organization the Macedonian military was also reorganized by the same American/NATO organization. In other words, the Americans and NATO were secretly managing and controlling both sides of the war.

Here is what Pande Petrovski, the Macedonian general who led the Macedonian military during the 2001 war had to say: