Sunday, January 20, 2008

Grecomans

“Grecomans” was used by the Bulgarians as a derogatory term to define the Greek Slavophones, i.e. those who remained firm to the Ecumenical Patriarchate and to Hellenism.
It is interesting to note that in 1883, despite the growth of the Bulgarian national and ecclessiastical movement, the situation in terms of ecclesiastical affiliation in the northern “border” bishoprics of the contested central zone presented the following picture Bishopric of Ohrid and Prespa, patriarchist families 3030, exarchist 6003; Bishopric of lPelagonia (Monastir), patriarchist 6459, exarchist 4988; Bishopric of Moglena (Florina), patriarchist 2433, exarchist 699. The majority of these patriarchists were Vlachophone and Slavophone “Grecomans”.

Please keep in your mind the names of the Bishoprics.

Data from [AYE/”Constantinople Embassy” / 1883, Dokos (Monastir) to Koundouriotis (Con/pole), No. 210, 15/27 Nov. 1883] , [Dillimas and Orientations by Evagellos Kofos]


Grecomaniac or Grecophile

The above words are terms that used from the ultra-nationalist in order to determine the Greek Slavphones during the Greek Struggle in the 19th and in the beginning of the 20th century.These terms came from Bulgarian or Serbian nationlist elements.

Today the FYROMacedonian ultra-natiolists diaspora centers REPLACE these odds and using these terms in order to insult these Greeks.

For the sake of the thread let us accept that the old Bulgarians, those who in current Makedonoski theory “considered” themselves Bulgarians and who, in fact, lived in Macedonia, as a minority community, however, as is apparent from the Ottoman statistics for 1905, have erroneously been taken as constituting a segment of the “Macedonian” nation.

As we have said, however, these people were Bulgarians:
they never (at that time) called themselves “Macedonians”; they fought as comitadjis in the ranks of the Bulgarian Committee and later, in 1924, taking advantage of the Kafantaris-Molov agreement on the “voluntary exchange of populations”, they left for Bulgaria. None of them moved to what was then the district of Skopje –which, moreover, was at that time certainly not called “Macedonia”: it was merely “Vardarska Banovina” (Directorate of the Axios), an administrative district of the then Kingdom of Serbia.

Serbia consequently delivered a protest to the Greek government for having exchanged these people for Greeks living in Bulgaria when, according to Serbia, they were in fact Serbs, (not, of course, “Macedonians”). All the “Bulgarophones”, as they were called at that time, who remained in Greece were old Patriarchists (adherents of the Ecumenical Patriarchate) from the time of the Bulgarian Schism, veterans of the Macedonian Struggle:

“Grecomaniacs” (passionately Greek), in the words of the Bulgarians and their descendants.

The following discussion on the nationality of these Bulgarian speakers, which Michel Paillares reports (op.cit., pp. 50-51) having had with Hilmi Pasha, the Inspector General of the Macedonian vilayets of Monastir and Thessaloniki, is significant:

Paillares:
But these Bulgarophones insist that they are really Greeks?

Hilmi:
They say they are Greeks when no coercion, no constraint, is brought to bear on them.

Paillares:
And what is your opinion, Your Excellency?

Hilmi:
My opinion, and the opinion of my government, is that they are Greeks. We classify our subjects according to which schools and which Church they attend. Being unable to win people by peaceful propaganda, the Comitadjis do not hesitate to make use of the most atrocious methods. They turn to the knife, the revolver, the axe

It is equally significant that much earlier, in 1871, the Russian Goloubinskii (see the relevant note in my dissertation on “The liberation of Thessaloniki”, op.cit., pp. 25-26) had written:

These purported Greeks nourished a more implacable hatred and a more intense scorn for all things Bulgarian or Slavic than did real Greeks.

Just recently my attention was drawn to a passage in the magazine Tachydromos, an extract from a book by Giovanni Amadori-Virgili, a former Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, entitled “La questione Rumeliota (Macedonia, Vecchia Serbia, Albania, Epiro) e la politica italiana”, published in 1908 as number 1 in a series by the Biblioteca Italiana on foreign policy.

The passage in question reads:

Through their partiotic sentiments and their devotion to Greek traditions and Greek culture, the Slav-speaking Greeks of Macedonia express their vigorous determination to be Greeks.

Legally, after the population exchange, the subject was closed, for those who remained were those who did not want to leave Greece, who did not choose to be Bulgarians. Nowhere is there any mention of the term “Macedonians”. If today certain of their descendants have discovered that they are “Macedonians”, that does not alter the situation, because it was to them, or at least to some of them, that the Skopje radio station addressed its March 5, 1990 broadcast, saying that “the most dangerous ones are those same hellenized Macedonians, the traitors, the anti-Macedonians” (here I would merely recall the slogan launched in 1895 by the Bulgarian Committee: “Death to the Grecophiles”).

After all this, then, how many “authentic” indigenous “Macedonians” did Greece have, according to the Skopjians?
And after all that, how is it possible to maintain that there was a single “Macedonian” people, which was dismembered and divided among Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria?
Let us take a closer look at what is currently being advaced on the subject of oppressed “Macedonians”. Skopjians tend to contradict themselves, now proclaiming the existence of 300.000 oppressed “Macedonians” in Greek Macedonia (this was the figure given by Simovski: cf. Peter Hill in the draft for the new Australian encyclopaedia and my communication to the Athens Academy, op.cit., p. 97), now 230.000 (Skopjian radio, 25 September 1991). In a also old statement to “Nova Makedonija” (29 July 1992),

Kiro Hatzivasilief declared:
“As to how many of this ethnic group (“Macedonians”) there are living in Greece, unfortunately no one has precise statistic data”.

And let us not overlook Mr Sidiropoulos (an ethnic “Macedonian” and member of the nationalist Uranio Toxo), who affirmed on an Australian national television broadcast in 1994 that the number of “Macedonians” in Greece amounted to no fewer than 1.000.000.

Of course today the Uranio Toxo nationalist claim other numbers (??) after the slaps in the several Greek elections.Also many of them became again Bulgarians by rejected theirs ancient Macedonian descents.


Grecoman Villages at the 40s

Among the Slavmacedonian villages that involved in that decade at the black period of the modern Greek history, were some of them that resisted in the blackmails of the autonomistic and foreighn influence organizations like Ohrana(1943, Bulgaria) and SNOF or NOF(1943-1949, Yugoslavia mainly and Bulgaria only at the beggining).Of course a lot of villages felt as also felt and other Greek villages in other regions of the mainland at the time of the occupation and civil war.

Known Grecoman villages were the Proti(Kabasnica), Ammohori, Mesohori, Veve (Banica), Melite(Vostarane), Kratero and Kele.I will stand to the latter ones.

Kratero village completed destroyed from the DSE forces(Communist) in March of 1947.

Kele, a historical village because in 1913 the known komitadji Tsakalarof killed, with the Proti were the core of the Grekoman resistance against the commitadjis(Bulgarian or Yugoslavian).Also as I mention in my previous post(without to get any answer) the number of the Slavmacedonian that involved in the several autonomistic moovements estimated in 3000-40000 people in total population of 100000-120000 people.

In the last year of the supposing civil war in Macedonia the Slavmacedonians estimated in 14000 when the all DSE were 20000.

This post dedicated to the Greek Makedontsi of the Diaspora

1 comment:

  1. I am from Proti and we have not changed at all.

    ReplyDelete

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