FYROM in WWII

The historian Minchev give an intresting(Bulgarian perception) thesis as about the situation before Bulgarian fashists entered in FYROM in WII...

"The population in Macedonia was unprecedentedly torn in bigger and smaller groups. For that various linguistic-groups the Serbi­an rulers had taken good care. But the guilt was not only theirs. There is still animosity between Protogerovists and Mihaiiovists. Serbian national socialistic organizations as Chetnik, the organization of the retired officers, the organization of the pensioners and the Sokol organization existed also until the beginning of .the war. All of them suppressed and dispersed the Bulgarian population with the aim to make them Serbs.

In Macedonia operated propagandists of the Great Powers who wanted to attract the population on their side promising to resolve the Macedonian question.

So the English propaganda was led by Serbian clerks and the army.

The French propaganda was led by the teacher in the French school Dr. Louise D. Voos.

The Italian propaganda for accession to Italy was also well organized with the assistance of the locals.

The Greek propaganda was well developed. The Greeks and their followers were tolerant to the Serbian (Yugoslav) authorities. Serb, Greek and Bulgarian followers of the Greeks worked together for their mutual cause - the English.

The Turkish propaganda led by Akif Alilov was faithful to the Serbian authority and together they planted the Anglophile and the Francophile policy. Even one of the most insignificant groups in Macedonia led by Dr. Simeon Berber worked for the annihilation of the Bulgarian spirit. The Jews group, that enumerated several thousand people affiliated with the ruling Serbs, carried out propaganda in favour of the democratic countries".



All show how complicated was the situation of that time in Macedonia. The political sympathies were intertwined with the national feelings. As a rule the non-Bulgarian elements were for the English-French block and the Bulgarians - for the power of axis. Besides, some of the former revolutionary activists were not far from the thought of solving the Macedonian question through accession of Macedonia or parts of it to Italy. The followers of Ivan Mihaylov fought for the independence of Bulgarian Macedonia. In this situation the Bulgarian population was divided in different groups. It was powerless and without faith. Everybody pulled the rug to himself". And time was crucial. The situation changed dynamically"





One more source is the Hugh Poulton (Who are the macedonians ?, pages 101-102) that speak for the issue...



"There is little doubt that the initial reaction anlong large sections of thepopulation of Vardar Macedonia who had suffered so much under the Serbian repression was to greet the Bulgarian as liberators. While Hitler did not allow the Bulgarians fornlally to annex the parts they now controlled, and the new border between the Italian and Bulgarian controlled portions was not defined, leading to periodic tensions between the two, Bulgaria was given a free hand in the areas which it controlled."






and continues......




"At first Bulgaria pursued policies, especially in education.Which the population welcomed. More than 800 new schools were built and a university was established in Skopje.' However the honeymoon period did not last long as the Bulgarians soon fell into the old Balkan trap of centralization.

The new provinces (Pirin and Vardar)were quickly staffed with officials fiom Bulgaria proper who behaved with typical official arrogance to the local inhabitants.In March 1942 the central government in Sofia took absolute control over the new territories, ushering In the classical Balkan governtmental vices of bureaucracy and corruption which further alienated the population.

Particularly insensitive, in view of the long and close association in the Balkans between religion and nationality, was the influx of Bulgarian Orthodox bishops who displayed the same negative features as the government bureaucrats."

FYROM : Article 179 Tales

How the law on "denigrating Macedonism" is an insult to free expression





As you know the several NGO and Amnesty International is extremely concerned at the frequent use of Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TPC) to prosecute human rights defenders, journalists and other members of civil society peacefully expressing their dissenting opinion. Article 301, on the denigration of Turkishness, the Republic, and the foundation and institutions of the State, was introduced with the legislative reforms of 1 June 2005 and replaced Article 159 of the old penal code.

It states that:
Public denigration of Turkishness, the Republic or the Grand National Assembly of Turkey shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and three years

What about FYROM ?

Many people we wonder why so silence as about in this multiethinic Republic when is known that the 45% are not officially Slavmacedonians.

In FYROM there is a similar article - as the Turkish one -in the "Criminal Codex of the Republic of Macedonia" ("Krivien Zakonik na Republika Makedonija")

Article 179
"The one who with intent to mock shall publicly expose to ridicule the Macedonian people and the nationalities, shall be punished with prison from three months to three years."

Now you know why the nationalities in FYROM are not able to say free theirs opinion as about the origin or the language or the heritage. "Insulting" Macedonism can lead to prosecution and jail.
Every body knows the case of the Bishop Jovan.

Why Amnesty and NGO like Helsinki Monitors still silelnce as about this think ?

Why EU and USA has never expressed serious concern about the limits on freedom of expression in FYROM and the restrictive way Article 179 ?

How many are (or were) on trial under Article 179 that makes it a crime to insult Macedonism or state organs ? Were/are Greeks among them ?

Is it insult to say that the today Slavmacedonians cannot establish a link with antiquity as they entered in the Balkans centuries after the demise of the ancient Macedonian Kindgdom ?

Revocation of Canada's Recognition of the FYROM as the Republic of Macedonia

To: Parliament of Canada

To the Parliament of Canada,

The recognition of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, as the Republic of Macedonia is a mistake for many reasons. Firstly, Macedonia is a province in the northern region of Greece, one which has been around for thousands of years. Recognizing FYROM as Macedonia only further promotes their attempts at confusing history and claiming the ancient Greek Macedonian history as their own.

"Occupying the bigger part of northern Greece, Macedonia first appears on the historical scene as a geographical-political unit in the 5th century BC, when it extended from the upper waters of the Haliakmon and Mount Olympus to the river Strymon. In the following century it reached the banks of the Nestos. The history of the Macedonians, however, may be said to commence somewhere around the beginning of the 7th century BC.

Although very little of the Macedonian tongue has survived, there is no doubt that it was a Greek dialect. This is clear from a whole series of indications and linguistic phenomena by which the koine of the region is "colored" which are not Attic but which can only have derived from a Greek dialect. For example: The vast majority of even the earliest names, whether dynastic names or not, are Greek, formed from Greek roots and according to Greek models: Hadista, Philista, Sostrata, Philotas, Perdikkas, Machatas and hundreds of others.

The inhabitants of Macedonia are descendants of the old Arian (Greek) settlers. Prehistorical data is very clear on this point. Since the dawn of history, the names of the people and the places in 'Macedonia are Greek (Karanos, Perdiccas, Amyntas, Aeropus, Alcetas, Kleitos, Emathia, Eidomene, Haliacmon, Echedorus, Dion, etc).

Alexander of Macedon I :

"Had I not greatly at heart the common welfare of Greece, I should not have come to tell you; but I am myself a Greek by descent, and I would not willingly see Greece exchange freedom for slavery. I am Alexander of Macedon."

Alexander of Macedon I states himself that he is Greek, but from the northern region of Macedonia.

The language of the Skopjians was and is a Bulgarian dialect. Beginning in the 1860 and 70s, the Bulgarian idiom was dubbed 'makedonski' by the first Macedonists, without success initially they attempted to promote the term among the wider Slavonic population of Macedonia. In 1903 whilst in Sofia, Krste Misirikov, (who indeed possessed of a strong Bulgarian conscience) was the first person to transform the idiom into a literary language by laying down the principles of the 'Makedonski' language in his book: ''Za Makedonckite Raboti'' (On Macedonian Matters). Come the Balkan wars, the Slavic idiom of the population of Vardar was still regarded by most Slavologists and foreign observers as a Bulgarian dialect, despite Serbian claims of it being an off-shoot of the Serbian language. In 1913 Yugoslavia undertook a policy of de-bulgarianization and Serbinization of the Slavic idiom of Vardarska. In 1945 a similar policy was adopted in terms of de-bulgarianising the dialect by the YCP (Yugoslav Communist Party) who codified the "Macedonian" alphabet and language. The codification of the idiom was based in part on the principles laid down by Misirkov.

Despite the Slavs of F.Y.R.O.M being under the rule of Belgrade for 75 years (monarchist rule from 1913 until communist rule from 1945), the so-called "Macedonian" language of F.Y.R.O.M is still mutually intelligible with standard Bulgarian and from a linguistic point is undeniably a Bulgarian dialect.

The 'Macedonian' language, as a self-contained Slav tongue, was completely unknown until the time of the Second World War. The language used by the Slav-speaking inhabitants of southern Yugoslavia and south-western Bulgaria was known to be an idiomatic form of Bulgarian.

After the foundation of the 'Socialist Republic of Macedonia ', attempts were made, for obvious political reasons, to break the linguistic bonds which joined the inhabitants of Yugoslav Macedonia with Bulgaria. For that reason, an army of philologists and scholars of literature was pressed into service to construct a separate written language.

Taking the Perlepes dialect as their starting-point and borrowing widely from Serbian, Bulgarian, Russian and other Slav languages, the 'Macedonian literary language' was created and recognized by the Yugoslav Constitution as one of the country's three official languages.

Countries are products of historical events, which is why they are born and die. Nations do not. Nations are entities that take a very arduous time to evolve.

The same thing is true for their appellation. Nations cannot be given birth and receive names whenever politicians wish by legislation, as it is the case of the FYROM. The present-day Hellenic nation is the result of social, civic and linguistic amalgamation of more than 230 tribes speaking more than 200 dialects that claimed descent from Helen, son of Deukalion. The Hellenic nation is blessed to espouse in its lengthy life great personalities such as politicians, educators, soldiers, philosophers and authors. They have all contributed in their own way to the molding of their nation. They are the result of natural maturity and a consequence of historical, social, civic, linguistic and political developments that have taken place in the last 4,000 years."

The word Macedonia is deeply embroiled in ancient Greek history and the attempts of the FYROM to create a liaison between the ancient Greek Macedonians, the ancient Greek Macedonian history and the Slavic “Macedonians” of the FYROM will only have negative effects for the future.

We look forward to your revoking the recognition of the FYROM as the Republic of Macedonia.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

sign the petition

Macedonism, a ultra-Nationalilst ideology that spread from FYROM Worldwide

The known dispute is going on between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) on the name “Macedonia,” which FYROM is using since 1991 when it broke away from the crumbling state of Yugoslavia.

The dispute goes deeper than the use of the name.

It is an attempt by FYROM to discredit the ancient Macedonians’ ethnicity, break the connection between present-day Greek Macedonians and the Macedonians of antiquity, and establish a connection between FYROM’s Slavs with ancient Macedonia.The historically,linguistically and archaeologically incorrect challenge is that Macedonia was never part of Greece and the Macedonians were barbarians who spoke a language in comprehensible to theother Greeks.

Cause of this ultra-nationalist behaviour is a ideology that flourish and in FYROM borders and grow dynamically in diaspora Slavmacedonians.

This ideology call as Macedonism.

Macedonism is a political term used to refer to a set of ideas regarded as characteristic of ethnic Slavonic Macedonian nationalism. The term is mostly used in a poltical and cultural sense by opponents of such views, mainly by Bulgarian and recently sometimes from Greek authors (Sfetas, Aggelopoulou) where it has strong negative connotations. It is occasionally also used in international scholarship ( John D. Bell) and in a positive sense by Slavonic Macedonian authors themselves like Alexandar Donski.

ORIGINS

The roots of the concept were first developed in the late 19th century, in the context of Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian initiatives to take control over the region of Macedonia, which was then ruled by the Ottoman Empire. It was used to refer to the idea that Macedonians constituted a distinct ethnicity, separate from Bulgarians. The first to coin the term Macedonists in this sense was the Bulgarian author Petko Rachev Slaveykov, who used it to criticise such a view in an article The Macedonian Question published on 18th January 1871 in the newspaper Makedoniya in Constantinople. Also an early recorded use of the exact term Macedonism is in a report by the Serbian politician Stojan Novakoviζ from 1887. He proposed to employ the Macedonist idea as an ally of Serbian as opposed to Bulgarian influence in Macedonia

MAIN IDEAS

Among the beliefs and opinions that are often perceived as typical of Slavmacedonian nationalism and are criticised as parts of “Macedonism” by those who use that term are the following:

• The idea that there is a fundamental, ancient ethnic distinction between Slavmacedonians and Bulgarians, going much further back than the political divisions between the two nations during the 20th century
• The belief that this distinction is related to the inheritance of ethnic elements of the ancient non-Slavic tribe of the Bulgars, supposed to form an essential part of modern Bulgarian but not Macedonian heritage
• The idea that there is ethnic continuity between the Slavmacedonians and the Ancient Macedonians, the inhabitants of the kingdom of Macedon under Alexander the Great
• Irridentist political views about the neighbouring regions of Greek Macedonia (”Aegean Macedonia”) and parts of southwest Bulgaria (”Pirin Macedonia”) and about Slavmacedonian minorities living in these areas, connected to the political idea of a United Macedonia.

Other, related areas of Slavmacedonian-Bulgarian national polemics relate to:

The presence of the Bulgars in Medieval Macedonia and their connection with today Slavmacedonians

• The ethnic character of various medieval historical figures and entities, including the saints Cyril and Methodius, the medieval Tsar Samuil and his kingdom, and the medieval Archbishopric of Ohrid
• The historical role of the Bulgarian Exarchate and the ethnic character of Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization
• The historical role of various Macedonian (Greeks, Bulgarian) insurgent movements during the Ottoman rule ( Ilinden Uprising) and during the Bulgarian occupation of Geographical Macedonia in World War II (National Liberation War of Macedonia).
• The opinion that a separate “Macedonian” nationhood was an artificial product of Yugoslav propaganda during the 20th century and the belief of some Bulgarians that Macedonians should naturally form part of the Bulgarian nation.

On the other hand, areas of Slavmacedonian-Greek national polemics relate to:

The origin of the ancient Macedonians and ancient Macedonian language and their relation to the today Slavonic -and close to the Bulgarian - "Macedonian" and Greek nations and languages.

• The Greeks have Sub-saharan origin ( The Arnaiz-Villena controversy)
• Greeks discover Macedonia as a name in 1988(FYROM Minister Milososki in Mega Channel,1 Nov 2007)

CONCLUSION

With these perspectives in mind, the insistence of FYROM Slavs to be called “Macedonians,” a name dictatorially established and supported by communism’s brutal force and in the present from the US administration, clashes now with the age-old freedom of Hellenic Macedonians to be called “Macedonians.”

If FYROM considers itself Macedonia, a false and audaciously daring step that brings the origin of its Slavic inhabitants close to Philip and Alexander the GreaT then the insistence of these people tobe called “Macedonians” clashes head on with the age-old freedom of others to be called “Macedonians.”

FYROM has the right to survive and prosper, but it does not have the right to acquire, by international recognition, an advantage enjoyed by no otherstate in the world:

…to use a name which of itself propagandizes territorial aspirations at Greece’s expense !!!

sources

1. THE VISION OF "GREATER MACEDONIA"
2. Macedonisn in FYROM
3. The Ethnic and Historical origins of F.Y.R.O.M
4. How to Construct a Nationality
5. Historical revisionism / negationism in the Balkans