KING CONSTANTINE’S TELEGRAM - Part 05

However, the need to unburden the country’s port cities of several hundred thousand destitute refugees as quickly as possible did not allow time to send north ‘suitable’ refugees or take proper account of the capacity of the receiving places to secure a tolerable existence for the newcomers. Thus almost half the refugees settled in the district of Florina spoke Turkish and little or no Greek. Many Pontians spoke Turkish, and the Caucasians spoke a form of Greek unintelligible to most Greek-speakers, let alone to the Slav Macedonians whom the refugees were expected to Hellenize in speech. Hordes of destitute humanity went north determined to take root in lands claimed or already occupied by the indigenous peasants. The newcomers brought with them, along with the determination of the survivors of a great disaster, the support of the authorities who were eager to secure the contested region in the way their counterparts across the border were trying to secure their own lands, namely by strengthening the dominant linguistic and cultural element of the national state against all other groups. The influx of refugees in villages where the available land was insufficient to satisfy their needs created unbearable pressures on the Slav Macedonians to leave their homes for less inhospitable lands than those they were obliged to share with newcomers whom they despised. Those who chose to remain did so for all the reasons why peasants everywhere have always chosen to live next to unwelcome newcomers and under unfriendly rulers.

As a result of this type of settlement, old cleavages and conflicts, dating from the Greek-Bulgarian conflict at the beginning of the century, already described, were intensified, especially in mixed villages and towns. One reason for the intensification of conflict concerned land. Indigenous peasants, Greek- and Slav-speaking,

resented the distribution of Muslim and communal land to the refugees. Cultural differences between these people and the refugees kept the two communities further apart. And administrators from southern Greece, bearers of an ideology and policy aiming to obliterate linguistic traces other than Greek, put Slav Macedonians at a disadvantage compared to other Greeks and turned the existing gap into a dangerous chasm.

Many villages, particularly mixed ones, quarreled over disputed land, and were torn apart and bled white as the result of costly lawsuits. It took more than ten years to draw village boundaries on pastureland, while many disputes over arable land were settled only after the Second World War. Officials of the Commission for the Settlement of Refugees, who were themselves refugees or associated with refugee interests, were expected to favour the newcomers in their disputes with the indigenous peasants over lands.” (John S. Koliopoulos. “Plundered Loyalties”. Pages 42-43)

Following is a segment from John S. Koliopoulos’s book “Plundered Loyalties” that deals with the subject of Macedonians and communists during the 1930’s but represents the Greek point of view in this matter.

“In December 1929 the district governor of Florina reported that on visiting the Slav Macedonian villages of Ano Hydrousa, Sphika and Karyai he encountered not only resentment against state and communal taxation but also ‘anti-state sentiments’. He discerned the same sentiments in the refusal of the inhabitants of five ‘indigent’ villages of Lake Prespa to cooperate in leasing the taxes on the lake fishery. Mikrolimni, Agios Achilleios, Bronteron, Kallithea and Pyksos apparently harboured ‘anti-state’ sentiments. Such an attitude and the inroads the communists were able to make in Slav Macedonian villages in the 1930s led to stringent legislative and administrative measures, especially by the right-wing dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas (1936-41). In addition to banning the speaking of Slav Macedonian in public, the dictatorship imprisoned or deported an unknown number of communist cadres of the region, many of them Slav Macedonians or simply sensitive to their grievances. Gendarmerie and administrative and appointed communal officials, in their effort to curry favour with the strong men of the day, were

prepared to go out of their way to combat communist and ‘anti-state’ sentiments. Pastoralists of the region were obliged to provide evidence of their true Greek sentiments to be able to rent summer grazing land. Gendarmerie officers and appointed village headmen had to be satisfied that applicants for such transactions were ‘God-fearing family men’ and ‘nationalists’. Neither Slav Macedonians nor refugees were considered to be above suspicion.

A Maniot gendarmerie officer named Periandros Poulakos was representative of state officials of the period in the region. As commanding officer of the Amygdala gendarmerie station, he made a name for himself in the district of Eordaea as a ruthless guardian of law and order as conceived by the Metaxas dictatorship. In December 1938, assisted by the village chief of the National Youth Organization (Ethniki Organosis Neon) (EON) and under orders from the district governor of Kozani, he arrested an inhabitant who was seen in the village cafe when he was expected to attend church like others. In March 1939 the same officer arrested, again with the assistance of the Youth chief and the president of the village of Koila, an inhabitant of that village who opened his coffee shop, which he also used as a barber’s shop, on Independence Day (25 March) to shave two village men. Several inhabitants made statements under oath that from that and similar behaviour in the past they were convinced that the barber was a communist sympathizer. Several months later Poulakos arrested a Slav Macedonian in the village of Ermakia and other members of his family and kept them in custody, longer than was permitted in an effort to extract the depositions he was demanding. The Slav Macedonian with another man of the same village beat the village field guard, a refugee who had caught them stealing grapes from a vineyard.

Had it not been for the war and the ensuing foreign occupation of the region in the first half of the 1940s, the ruthless drive to transform the region in the ways described might possibly have succeeded. However those events put an end to this process of assimilating different linguistic and cultural groups into a homogeneous national community and initiated, instead, developments that further intensified existing cleavages.” (John S. Koliopoulos. “Plundered Loyalties”. Pages 44-46)

“The first intimations of what was to come had been sensed before the Axis occupation, as early as the winter of 1940-1, even as Greece was fighting Italy people wondered about the attitude of the Slav Macedonians: would they fight with the rest of the Greeks? The great majority of them did fight the Italians even more tenaciously than most southern Greeks, if only because the fighting was taking place not far from their homes. The local army units were the first to repulse the Italian invaders in October and the first to march into Albania in November…

A related warning was the deportation of a number of Slav Macedonians during the war for security reasons. They were mostly communists, or people whom the authorities did not trust to move freely in the zone of military operations.” (John S. Koliopoulos. “Plundered Loyalties”. Page 50)

“A contemporary Partisan view adds another side to the issue. ‘The friction between our bands and the Greek Antartes in the region of Kastoria and Florina,’ Tempo and Ortche wrote in one of their reports to the Partisan GHQ in August 1944, ‘has been caused by the Greek Antartes, when they moved into the region and started pressing Macedonians into their units. The Macedonians, according to their leaders, maintained that they were prepared to fight the Germans, but that they waited for their own units to be formed so as to enlist in them. The Greeks did not approve [the formation of the units] and instead started oppressing the Macedonian people. The result was an exodus of the Macedonians in the direction of Monastir, where Michailov waited to press them into his own units and fight against the Greeks. Faced with this situation, our political commissars let the fugitives, after consulting Radosavljevich, form their own units in the Florina-Monastir area of operations. Some of our commissars then started spreading the idea that the Macedonians could enlist in our army and that service with us would be as if they were serving in the Greek army, since both we and the Greeks are fighting against the fascist conquerors. At this point the Macedonians started enlisting in our army en masse, and the Greeks intensified their pressure on the Macedonians. The commanders of the Antartes issued orders for the confiscation of the property of those who enlisted in our army, and this caused confusion. In the

talks conducted by Radosavljevich, a member of the KKE (CPG) Macedonian Bureau said that it was preferable for the Macedonians to be on the side of the Germans than on our [the Yugoslav]. The Greeks in general appear to share this view. Our representatives pressed the Greeks to accept the formation of a Kastoria-Florina battalion, but they are opposed. We are convinced that the Greeks must somehow find a way to form such a battalion. If they don't, we'll have to form it ourselves, in which case we’ll clash with the Greeks.’” (John S. Koliopoulos. “Plundered Loyalties”. Pages 127-128)

INTERVIEWER – Oh yes – John Koliopoulos. I bought that book.

RISTO – The stories told by Koliopoulos are similar to my stories but are told from a different point of view. For one, he uses the Greek toponyms ignoring the fact that these place names had Macedonian names and did not exist by their Greek names prior to the 1920’s when Greece changed all the place and people’s names from Macedonian to Greek. He also looks at what was done to the Macedonians as fair, as if these Macedonians were somehow undeserving… in their own native lands. And, on top of the abuses they received at the hands of the Greeks, he gives the impression that he expects the Macedonians to be loyal, obedient and grateful to their Greek masters. That’s the way I see him telling the story… he has separated himself from the Macedonians, who by the way are Greek citizens and just as much a part of Greek society as the rest of the people living in that country… But to be fair to all sides I decided to also quote Koliopoulos here…

INTERVIEWER – Oh well yes but I haven’t read the book…

RISTO – He was so apologetic in the introduction and as I read his book I found out he did not write what the people had told him. At some point he even admitted that.

INTERVIEWER – Maybe they were afraid.

RISTO – You means maybe he was afraid? He could not publish what the people told him because what the people told him did not fit with the Greek narrative. Remember, according to the Greeks, we

Macedonians do not exist. We are Slavophone Greeks. Greeks is the operative word… Look at what happened to Anastasia Karakasidou. The Greeks were prepared to blow up the publishing house if it published her book. And why? Because she said a few things the Greeks did not agree with.

Here is what she said:

“If Greece exists today as a homogeneous ethnos, she owes this to the Asia Minor Catastrophe. If the hundreds of thousands of refugees had not come to Greece, Greek Macedonia would not exist today. The refugees created the national homogeneity of our country. (Antonios Kandiotis, Metrpolite of Florina, in Anastasia Karakasidou’s book “Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood”. Page 141)

According to Karakasidou, almost half of the refugees were settled in urban centres and rural areas in Macedonia. “Searching for locations in which to settle this mass of humanity, the Greek government looked north to the newly incorporated land in Macedonia...” “...by 1930, 90 percent of the 578,844 refugees settled in rural Greece were concentrated in the regions of Macedonia and western Thrace. Thus Macedonia, Greece’s newly acquired second ‘breadbasket’ (after Thessaly), became the depository for East Thracian, Pontic, and Asia Minor refugees.” (Anastasia Karakasidou. “Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood”. Page 145)

The act of forbidding the use of the Macedonian language in Greece is best illustrated by an example of how it was implemented in the Township of Assarios (Giuvezna). Here is a quote from Karakasidou’s book Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood.

“[We] listened to the president articulate to the council that in accordance with the decision [#122770] of Mr. Minister, General Governor of Macedonia, all municipal and township councils would forbid, through [administrative] decisions, the speaking of other idioms of obsolete languages within the area of their jurisdiction for the reconstitution of a universal language and our national glory. [The president] suggested that [the] speaking of different idioms, foreign [languages] and our language in an impure or obsolete manner in the area of the township of Assirios would be forbidden.

Assirios Township Decision No. 134, 13 December 1936.” (Page 162, Anastasia Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood)

As far as I am concerned there was nothing offensive written in Karakasidou’s book to anger the Greeks, yet they were angry, angry enough to threaten to burn down a reputable publishing house.

Now let us continue with our story.

As I mentioned earlier, by 1928, 1,497 Macedonian place names in the Greek occupied Macedonia were Hellenized (LAW 4096) and all Cyrillic inscriptions found in churches, on tombstones and icons were destroyed (or overwritten) prompting English Journalist V. Hild to say, “The Greeks do not only persecute living Slavs (Macedonians)..., but they even persecute dead ones. They do not leave them in peace even in the graves. They erase the Slavonic inscriptions on the headstones, remove the bones and burn them.”

It is traumatic to have a people’s history ripped from under them like the Greeks did to the Macedonians, to have every place name and every person’s name changed. We feel that trauma to this day.

I have people write me, asking me to tell them the Greek name of their village because they only know the Macedonian name. These are people who are born in Canada, the USA and Australia whose parents have already died and who now want to go to Greece and visit the village of their ancestors but they don’t know what it’s called in Greek.

Some had already gone to Greece but returned disappointed because no one could tell them where the village was because they never heard of its Macedonian name.

We even have problems identifying each other as people. There are many people from my village who I don’t know by their Greek names. Unless they tell me their Macedonian name and which Macedonian family they belong to, I won’t know who they are.

My village “Oshchima” was renamed to “Trigonon” by the Greeks in the 1920’s and there is no history of it before that because it was

not only renamed, its Macedonian name was completely erased. This was done to every village, town, city, river, mountain, lake and every person’s name. We were erased out of existence.

Even before Greece had secured its grip on Macedonia, officials were sent to administer “the new lands”. The first official Greek administrator arrived in Solun near the end of October 1912, accompanied by two judges, five customs officials, ten consulate clerks, a contingent of reporters and journalists and 168 Cretan soldiers.

Among other things, the first order of business was to “Hellenize the New Lands”.

“After the Greeks occupied Aegean Macedonia, they closed the Slavic language schools and churches and expelled the priests. The Macedonian language and names were forbidden, and the Macedonians were referred to as Bulgarians, Serbians or natives.

By law promulgated on November 21, 1926, all place names (toponymia) were Hellenized; that is the names of cities, villages, rivers and mountains were discarded and Greek names put in their place. At the same time the Macedonians were forced to change their first and surnames; every Macedonian surname had to end in ‘os’, ‘es’, or ‘poulos’.

The news of these acts and the new, official Greek names were published in the Greek government daily Efimeris tis Kiverniseos no. 322 and 324 of November 21 and 23, 1926.

The requirements to use these Greek names is officially binding to this day. All evidence of the Macedonian language was compulsorily removed from churches, monuments, archeological finds and cemeteries. Slavonic church or secular literature was seized and burned. The use of the Macedonian language was strictly forbidden also in personal communication between parents and children, among villagers, at weddings and work parties, and in burial rituals.” (For more information see page 109, John Shea, Macedonia and Greece, The Struggle to Define a New Balkan Nation)

In the years following World War I, the Macedonian people underwent extensive measures of systematic denationalization. The applications of these “denationalization schemes” were so extensive and aggressively pursued that in the long-term, they eroded the will of the Macedonian people to resist.

“In Greece, in 1929 during the rule of Elepterios Venizelos, a legal act was issued ‘On the protection of public order’. In line with this Act each demand for nationality rights is regarded as high treason. This law is still in force.

On December 18, 1936, Metaxas’s dictatorial government issued a legal Act ‘On the activity against state security’ on the strength of which thousands of Macedonians were arrested, imprisoned, expelled or exiled (EXORIA) on arid, inhospitable Greek islands, where many perished. Their crime? Being ethnic Macedonian by birth.

As mentioned earlier, on September 7, 1938 legal Act No. 2366 was issued banning the use of the Macedonian language. All Macedonian localities were flooded with posters: ‘Speak Greek’. Evening schools were opened in which adult Macedonians were taught Greek. Not a single Macedonian school functioned at the time.” (See page 8, What Europe has Forgotten: The Struggle of the Aegean Macedonians, A Report by the Association of the Macedonians in Poland)

Many Macedonians were fined, beaten and jailed for speaking Macedonian. Adults and school children alike were further humiliated by being forced to drink castor oil when caught speaking Macedonian.

Such was the life for the Macedonians under Greek rule… in their own ancestral homeland and place of birth no less.

INTERVIEWER – What happened to the Macedonian people after they left Greece?

RISTO – Macedonians have been leaving Macedonia since Macedonia was occupied by the Romans. Many went north and east and established Macedonian colonies. More recently, many had fled Macedonia during the various uprising against the Ottomans and some ended up north of Macedonia as far north as Russia. There was a Macedonian colony established in Russia during the 18th century.

More recently, during the 19th century, many fled to Bulgaria. When Bulgaria became independent it attracted Macedonian pechalbari (migrant workers), who left their homes before and after the failed 1903 Ilinden Uprising. Many decided to make Bulgaria their permanent home. According to Macedonian activists in Bulgaria, as many as 2 million Macedonians have settled over the years in Bulgaria.

After 1878, while the Ottoman economy in Macedonia was crashing down by leaps and bounds, the Bulgarian economy was improving dramatically. This was partly due to the cheap labour provided by a large influx of Macedonian pechalbari (migrant workers). Experiencing a very different life in Sofia, in contrast to life in the village, many Macedonian pechalbari were seduced into believing the Bulgarian propaganda that Macedonians are Bulgarians, and many decided to make Bulgaria their home.

What is interesting about that is that the descendants of those Macedonians today are the staunchest Bulgarians, even though they know that they are Macedonians. The Macedonians who decided to remain in Bulgaria were not attached to the lands. In other words they had no land or farms of their own to work on and their options of finding good paying jobs were limited.

Many decided to become educated to widen their prospects. Being educated they were able to take on work in the Bulgarian government and advance upwards. Georgi Dimitrov, leader of the Bulgarian Communist Party and Secretary of the Comintern, for example, was a Macedonian. Even today there are many members of Parliament in the Bulgarian government who are of Macedonian descent.

I have a friend, an Armenian academic, a PhD, who runs a museum in the States. He was educated in Bulgaria. He told me that most Bulgarian academics know the truth about Macedonia but will not talk. I am sure most academics in Greece know the truth about Macedonia also and they don’t dare say a word either. They can’t say anything because they will lose their jobs.

The Macedonian immigrant population in Russia from the 18th century has already been assimilated and today it is lost. A lot of names of prominent Macedonians who left for Russia have been recorded in history but it would be difficult to find their descendants because Macedonian names are so similar to Russian names. But it should be easier to find Macedonians in Bulgaria because they emigrated more recently. Unfortunately they can’t declare themselves Macedonian because Bulgaria does not recognize the Macedonian identity.

Things in Greece haven’t changed much either. It’s quieted down but it is still oppressive, especially after the Greek Civil War. From what I am told, about 85% of the Greek people before the civil war were in favour of having a socialist system but they had to settle for what they got, an “oppressive system”, at least for the Macedonians, because that’s what Britain and the United States wanted.

I know this was not what the Macedonian people wanted but this couldn’t have been good for the majority of the Greek people either. Perhaps that is why so many Greeks dislike Americans…

Both Greece and Bulgaria have painted themselves into a corner with regards to “the Macedonian National Question”, i.e. what to do with the Macedonian people, especially now that the Republic of Macedonia has emerged as an independent Macedonian state.

The Americans, the British and their Western allies created the “Macedonian problem” by being belligerent towards the Macedonian people since the Ottoman Empire began to fall apart… but to be more accurate, since the Roman Empire conquered and partitioned Macedonia into pieces.

It was the end of Macedonia and Macedonian independence. Perseus, the Macedonian King, was taken to Rome as a prisoner of war, or as Peter Green puts it, “to adorn Paullus’s treasure rich triumph”. The Macedonian monarchy was abolished and Macedonia was demilitarized and partitioned into cantons so that it would never again be able to fight back. As further insurance of its passivity, Macedonian leaders were rounded up and taken to Rome.

The real horror of the Macedonian defeat was not Pydna but what the Roman army did afterwards. Before leaving Macedonia, the Roman army was unleashed on the civilian population and allowed to loot, pillage and rape uncontrollably. It has been said that an unimaginable amount of treasure, including gold, jewels and art, was carried off to Rome. A large segment of the population was taken into slavery. Severe restrictions were placed on trading commodities including lumber, and most of the state taxes were now diverted to Rome. According to Livy, Macedonia was divided into four regions, each with its own Roman council, and was forced to pay half the tribute to Rome. This would have otherwise been paid to the Macedonian king. If that was not enough, Paullus lent the Aetolians (Greeks) five hundred soldiers so that they too could exact their own brand of revenge on the Macedonians. What happened next is a tragedy of great proportion that not even the old authors dare describe. The Romans indeed proved themselves to be ruthless, the “true barbarians” that they were, but this was only the beginning.

In 27 BC Augustus declared Macedonia a Senatorial province and had its territory significantly reduced. With time, in the decades that followed, Macedonia was partitioned into territories. After Diocletian’s reforms, Macedonia became part of the Diocese of Moisia and at the time of Constantine it became part of the Illyrian Prefecture. At the end of the 4th century AD, Macedonia was split into two provinces, Macedonia Prima with Solun (Salonika) as its capital and Macedonia Salutoris. Later during the 5th and 6th centuries another name appeared: Macedonia Secunda with Stobi as its capital.

As mentioned earlier, after Perseus’s defeat at Pydna in 168 BC, Macedonia was partitioned into four regions and became Roman territory. It was particularly during this period that Macedonia was

robbed of its cultural treasures including the many monuments of art located in Solun, Pella and other culturally rich cities. Macedonia’s treasures were transferred to Rome and paraded as trophies of Roman victories on Roman streets during triumph festivals. After 148 BC the four regions of Macedonia were united again but made into a Roman province with Solun as its capital. What is also interesting is that all city states and jurisdictions south of Macedonia, including Athens and Sparta, were also annexed and added to this large Roman province called Macedonia. This merger lasted for about one hundred and twenty years until 27 BC. In 27 BC Augustus separated the region to form the province of Macedonia and the province of Achaia. For one hundred and twenty years Solun, not Athens, was the capital or “mother city” of this vast province called Macedonia.

It was no coincidence that Macedonia was again partitioned in 1913 and given to four divergent states to assimilate its people and remove them from this planet forever. Macedonia was a powerful force very much despised by the West as evidenced by the West’s behaviour towards it.

Even today the Americans and their European allies are behind the so-called “name dispute”. They want Macedonia to change its name because they want Macedonia to cease to exist! They want Macedonia to change its own name as the first step to self-destruction.

Every single international convention and every single human right in existence has been violated in order to achieve this objective – “persuade Macedonia to change its name so that it can begin to self-destruct”. This is the road the Great Powers have taken today to solve the Macedonian problem.

I am convinced Greece on its own does not have the power to have done all these things, including commit genocide against the Macedonian people, several times, and get away with it. Greater powers are at hand behind Greece, pulling the strings…

And now back to our story.

Regarding the Macedonian people who were driven out of Greek occupied Macedonia by the violence of the Greek Civil War, as I mentioned earlier, initially they were sent from Albania to the various Eastern European countries but mostly to Poland and the USSR. A few years later many made attempts to move to the Republic of Macedonia, Canada, the USA and Australia but were restricted by the iron curtain.

In fact, what is ironic about this is that the Macedonian people were led by Zahariadis and his partner Tito into believing that they could unite Greek occupied Macedonia with the People’s Republic of Macedonia while an international border, i.e. “the iron curtain” ran between them.

Years later, after re-uniting with their children who were living in different countries, most Macedonians from Greek occupied Macedonia settled in the Republic of Macedonia.

Those who had family members living in Canada, the USA and Australia emigrated over the years to join them. The situation, after the 1970’s, has basically remained static. These Macedonians, having declared themselves as Macedonians, are still unwelcome by Greece which has not only exiled them but has also confiscated their properties.

INTERVIEWER – Tell me about the Greek Macedonians.

RISTO – Years ago when the communists on the left of the political spectrum decided to recognize the existence of Macedonians in Greek occupied Macedonia they decided to call them “Slavo-Macedonians”. The Greeks belonging to the middle and the right of the political spectrum did not recognize the existence of any Macedonian group living in Greece. For them there were no Macedonians living in Greece.

So what does this mean? Why Slavo-Macedonians and not just Macedonians? There were no other groups of people who were called “Macedonians”? So why Slavo-Macedonians, to distinguish them from whom?!

I believe the word “Slavo” as a prefix to the word Macedonians has a different meaning for different people.

To the Macedonians it means “Slavic” Macedonians, an acceptable term at the time, which defined them as Slavic speaking Macedonians. Well, at least it was better than calling them “endopii” (indigenous) Greeks.

To the progressive Greeks the word “Slavo” meant they were Greek people who spoke a Slavic language and lived in geographic Macedonia.

To the fascist Greeks it meant foreigners who came to Greece from the Slavic countries pretending to be Macedonians so that they could carve out a chunk of Macedonia and steal it from them.

According to the Fascists, with Metaxas as their idol, only pure Greeks who descended from the ancient Greeks lived in Greece.

To the people of the outside world, who have been conditioned to associate Macedonia with “Ancient Greece”, “Slavo” implied “Slavic”, a people who do not belong in Macedonia. In other words, to the outside world, a “Slavo-Macedonian” was someone who was not of Macedonian origin, who was a Slav, a settler and a newcomer, whose ancestors arrived in Macedonia during the 6th century AD. In other words, a “Slavo-Macedonian” could not possibly be a Macedonian because the “real” Macedonians were Greek.

Well, let us look and see what happened after the Republic of Macedonia surfaced as an independent state.

In 1988 when it became inevitable that a new Macedonian State was about to be declared, from the breakup of the Yugoslav federation, the word “Macedonia” became very popular in Greece.

After attempting to extinguish the name for seventy-six years, the Greek State reversed its policy and made Macedonia a very popular word in the Greek vocabulary. It even renamed its northern province (Greek occupied Macedonia) to Macedonia, claiming for historical

reasons that it was the only legitimate Macedonia and belonged to Greece.

Also after all the years of claiming that only Greeks lived in Macedonia, Greek authorities almost overnight “invented” a new ethnicity called “Greek Macedonians”. This new ethnicity, it appears, is Macedonian but of Greek origin, descendents from the ancient Macedonians and rightful heirs to the Macedonian heritage.

The present population of Greek occupied Macedonia is approximately 2 million people. Approximately 1 million are of direct Macedonian descent. After nearly a century of systematic effort to denationalize the Macedonians, many have succumbed and developed a Greek consciousness and refer to themselves as Greeks or “Greek Macedonians”. But this only happened after the Republic of Macedonia became an independent state.

The Greek state has always portrayed the Greek identity as being more cultured and superior. The Macedonian identity has always been portrayed as an uncivilized, barbaric and dirty presence within a pure Greek space.

As I mentioned earlier, the psychological aim was to make people abandon using the Macedonian language. It has gotten to the point where one is looked down upon for speaking Macedonian. The language is referred to as the “local idiom.”

It is interesting to note that the Macedonian language is recognized internationally, but it is forbidden in Greece. After three generations of policies of denationalization by the Greek state, the Macedonian consciousness among the population has been badly damaged to the point where those who retain their Macedonian consciousness fear to declare it openly.

This fear is difficult to comprehend by those who grew up in free and open societies. You have to experience it to understand it.

Among the older generation of Macedonians the fear is pervasive and ingrained. It is as if the person is always on guard for his actions

and words for fear that he will be betrayed or heard by Greek authorities.

When one Macedonian was pressed further on this issue he blurted out in exasperation, “It (fear) has gotten into the genes!”

The other 1 million of the 2 million people, who live in Greek occupied Macedonia, are non-Greek colonists and settlers who were brought to Greek occupied Macedonia over the years, predominantly from Asia Minor, as late as the 1920’s.

In fact, according to the same Greeks who yesterday were yelling and screaming that “there is no such thing as a Macedonian”, a sentence that has been yelled in my face many times, were now claiming that there are Macedonians. They were saying that Asia Minor Christian Turk colonists are the “real” Macedonians and we, the rightful heirs to the Macedonian heritage, were “Slavs”, “Skopjans”, “Bulgarians”, “Old Bulgarians” and many other derogatory words that they found in their vocabulary.

At this point I would like to summarize the history of how Macedonia became Greek.

1. It is a well-documented fact that Greece, in 1912, 1913 during the two Balkan wars, entered and forcibly occupied Macedonian territory illegally without the consent of the Macedonian people. It then, along with its partners Bulgaria and Serbia, went on a rampage bombing Macedonian villages and indiscriminately killing and murdering entire populations (first genocide).

2. It is a well-documented fact that as soon as Greece consolidated its hold on Greek Occupied Macedonia, it murdered or forcibly exiled all Macedonians who refused to accept its conditions (second genocide).

3. It is a well-documented fact that after ethnically cleansing the Macedonian population, Greece brought Greek settlers from Asia Minor, Epirus and other regions and settled them on Macedonian territory, mostly on the lands of the exiled Macedonians, without their consent.

4. It is a well-documented fact that during the early 1920’s Greece began a campaign of denationalization by banning the Macedonian language and making it illegal to speak Macedonian in Macedonia. It then proceeded to forcibly change all peoples’ names and toponyms.

5. It is also a well-documented fact that during the Greek Civil War, Greece exiled a large part of the Macedonian population, including the refugee children, illegally expropriated properties and issued them to new settlers (third genocide).

The territory which Greece today calls “Greek Macedonia” is in fact “Greek Occupied Macedonia” and has been occupied since 1912. The so-called “Greek Macedonians” are not really Macedonians at all, in fact the majority of them are Christian Turks and other settlers and colonists who Greece has been depositing on Macedonian lands since the Balkan wars (1912, 1913).

During 1989 to 1993 the Greek Foreign Ministry, headed by Andonis Samaras, used a secret fund to pay Greek journalists $130 million dollars (US) to promote the “Greek-ness” of Macedonia! Although these funds were originally intended for external promotion, according to the testimony of former Prime Minister Constantinos Mitsotakis, they ended up in the pockets of Greek journalists.

There is much, much more that can be said about the Greek position and its denial of the existence of the Macedonians but all they are doing is lying to themselves and to the world in order to cover up what they have done and hope that we will go away and leave them alone.

The Greeks refuse to look at the problem from our point of view, from the Macedonian point of view, and see how much damage they have done to us and how badly they have hurt us over the years.

So let us get on with our story.

INTERVIEWER - For people like Koliopoulos and some of the other authors in Greece who at the moment is writing… how are they viewed by the Greek state? Are they viewed as troublemakers who are opening up a can of worms?

RISTO – There are certain segments in Greek society that oppose opening up old wounds no matter how pro-Greek their motives may be. Karakasidou is one example. I read her book and found it to be pro-Greek, upholding and abiding by the Greek point of view. She did not recognize the Macedonians. In fact the only thing she said was that there were people there who still speak “Bulgarian” in the village where she did her study. Yet the local Greek people became violently upset and were threatening her with violence.

One thing I found about the Greek authorities is that they don’t really care about regurgitating what has already been written and is public knowledge. It is already available in library books and on the internet anyway. So why worry? If Risto Stefov wants to summarize it and pass it on to his readers, let him!

The Greek authorities are only concerned with “new”, never before seen information. They want to preempt that and have answers for it before it becomes public knowledge. It’s the same with Koliopoulos’s work. In fact Koliopoulos is good for the Greeks because he doesn’t exactly agree with what’s been said outside of Greece, but presents another, a different point of view… to muddy the waters even further.

INTERVIEWER – Earlier you mentioned Endopii… indigenous. What’s that all about?

RISTO – It is ironic that the Macedonian people are called “indigenous” and at the same time they are called “Slavs” who don’t belong in Macedonia. Again, here the Greeks painted themselves into a corner. The moment they prohibited their own people from calling them Macedonians, they had to call them something. Initially they called them “Bulgarians” and “Serbians”. Then, when Greece declared itself 98% pure Greek and 2% Muslim Greek, they had very little left to call them… to distinguish them from the “loyal” Greeks… so they began to call them “locals” but “locals” what?

Everyone was local, even the newcomer colonists. So they began to call the Macedonians “endopii” meaning indigenous.

When a Macedonian arrived in the Greek court and the judge asked him to present his case the lawyer would say he is “endopios” for whom a translator would be required. There were actually educated Macedonians, certified by the Greek government, to be court translators. These certificates are still in existence. I have seen one.

INTERVIEWER – Where did you get it from?

RISTO – From someone in Greece.

INTERVIEWER – A person gave it to you?

RISTO – Yes, someone from Greece gave it to me. And do you know what this means?

It means Greece had recognized that the Macedonian people spoke a unique language in the region that was not Bulgarian or Serbian, which they called an “idiom”. The age-old Macedonian language that enlightened Eastern Europe, the Greeks called an idiom. How bizarre is that?

I also have a copy of a Greek personal identification card that has the name “Oshchima” on it as a place of origin; a place that today Greece says does not exist… and never existed.

And then we have the “Abecedar”, the Macedonian primer.

A book of great importance to Macedonian linguistics and historiography was published in Athens; was the primer entitled ABECEDAR (A B C), printed in the Latin alphabet, and intended for the children of the Macedonian national minority in Greece.

“In 1920 Greece signed before the League of Nations a treaty obliging it to grant certain rights to the minorities of non-Greek origin in Greece. Four years later, in 1924, at the suggestion of the League of Nations, Greece and Bulgaria signed the well-known Kalfov-Politis Protocol under which Bulgaria was obliged to grant

the Greek minority in Bulgaria their minority rights (language, schools and other rights), while Greece, recognizing the Macedonians from the Aegean part of Macedonia as a ‘Bulgarian’ minority, was to grant them their minority rights. This agreement was seemingly very much in favour of Bulgaria, but when in 1925 the Greek government undertook certain concrete steps towards the publication of the first primer made for the specific needs of that minority, it made it clear that there were no grounds on which Bulgaria could be officially interested in any ‘Bulgarian minority’ or expect the primer to be in Bulgarian, for that minority - though speaking a Slav language - was neither Bulgarian nor Serbian.

The very fact that official Greece did not, either de jure or do facto, see the Macedonians as a Bulgarian minority, but rather as a separate Slav group (‘Slav speaking minority’), is of particular significance. The primer, published in the Latin alphabet, was based on the Lerin - Bilola dialect. After Gianelli’s Dictionary dating from the 16th Century, and the Daniloviot Cetirijazicnik written in the 19th century, this was yet another book written in the Macedonian vernacular. The primer was mailed to some regions in Western Aegean-Macedonia (Kostur, Lerin and Voden), and the school authorities prepared to give Macedonian children, from the first to the fourth grade of the elementary school, instruction in their own mother tongue. (Grigorios Dafnis, ‘Greece between the two world wars’, ‘Elefteria’ newspaper, March 15, 1953, Dionisios Romas in ‘Elefteria’ newspaper of October 9 and 12, 1954 and Dimitrios Vazuglis in Racial and religious minorities in Greece and Bulgaria, 1954)

The Greek governments have never made a sincere attempt to solve the question of the Macedonians and their ethnic rights in Greece. Thus, while measures were being undertaken for the opening of Macedonian schools, a clash between the Greek and Bulgarian armies at Petrich was concocted, which was then followed by a massacre of the innocent Macedonian population in the village of Trlis near Serres. All this was aimed at creating an attitude of insecurity within the Macedonians so that they themselves would give up the recognition of their minority rights and eventually seek safety by moving to Bulgaria. The Greek governments also skillfully used the Yugoslav-Bulgarian disagreements on the question of the

Macedonians in Greece, and with organized pressure on the Macedonian population, as was the case in the village of Trlis, tried to dismiss the Macedonian ethnic question from the agenda through forced resettlement of the Macedonian population outside of Greece.

The ABECEDAR, which actually never reached the Macedonian children, is in itself a powerful testimony not only of the existence of the large Macedonian ethnic minority in Greece, but also of the fact that Greece was under an obligation before the League of Nations to undertake certain measures in order to grant this particular minority their rights” (Hristo Andonovski).

INTERVIEWER – Have you got the abecedar?