Showing posts with label Articles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Articles. Show all posts
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
The Reality and the Weight of History: Why the Greek People Cannot Easily Accept FYROM's Claims
By Aristide D. Caratzas
Special to The National Herald
hellenicnews.com
The dispute regarding the official name by which will be known the Former (communist) Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia has appeared to many policymakers from arcane to trivial. Yet its mishandling over the last 15 years, especially the last few months, has resulted consequences which have raised the political cost for some of the world's major players, and increased tension and the potential for instability in the Balkans, referred to by historians and diplomats as Europe's "soft underbelly."
The case in point is the unprecedented defeat of a U.S. President at an annual NATO meeting, in this case the much touted Bucharest Summit this past April: President Bush proclaimed the "strong support" of the United States to the Skopje regime's bid for NATO membership, only to have it denied under threat of a veto by the Greek Government. Nor did the NATO Secretary-General's visit to Athens and Skopje after the Summit increase the likelihood of a positive result, while the mediation process currently under the direction of U.S. diplomat Matthew Nimetz finds progress elusive.
Given the complexity of the situation, it is useful to reconsider, or perhaps consider for the first time, some of the elements of this case which make it much harder to resolve than the cursory - and sloppy - assessments of some foreign policy "professionals" have heretofore suggested.
Until now, some of these professionals, especially in Washington, have approached this process mechanistically, hoping somehow that the implicit threat of American displeasure would sway the Greek Government. On one level, they can not be faulted, as the latter has caved many times in the past; however, there is little flexibility on this issue since, after repeated polling over many years, it has become clear that over 85 percent of the Greek public consistently demands a hard line.
I remember a meeting in mid-1992 between then State Department Spokesman (later Ambassador) R. Nicholas Burns and a group of Greek American leaders. In answer to a question about the precedent affecting the European border system which would result from the recognition of the Skopje regime under the name of "Macedonia" (it then had explicit claims on Greek territory, not to mention the history outlined below), Burns slammed his notebook shut and refused to discuss the implications. Some of the Greek American leaders appeared more annoyed with the questioner than with Burns' evasive little tiff. Yet this question, as does the entire dispute regarding the name of the tenuous statelet, has its foundation in the settlements following the Second World War - in short, in recent history.
In the effort to understand causalities of issues thrust upon the stage of international affairs, it is ironic that diplomats, other foreign policy professionals and political scientists often opt to ignore history. Yet history, the word deriving from the root of the perfect tense of the Greek verb "to know," literally means "those things that I have come to know." Thus, on one level, it is simply the accretion of particular knowledge of a phenomenon over time.
It is therefore treacherous to wade into the Balkans, where human experience has been recorded for millennia and folk memories are long, and not be sensitive to recent historical traumas. To be fair, much of the discourse of those most immediately involved has related to realities of the 5th-4th Centuries BC, or cites mythological ethno-ge-netic constructions, which may be obscure to diplomats and policymakers.
Many Greeks argue by making reference to 4,000 years of the Hellenism of Macedonia, while the Skopje regime's mythology increasingly expands its symbolic pantheon to include Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great, even though the Slavic culture and language, which are the axes of its purported identity, appeared a little more than a millennium later.
Yet the history which matters most, even if it has largely been ignored so far, refers to recent events, those taking place before, during and after World War II. In the Balkans, these fall into three major categories: the unresolved issues regarding ethnic and linguistic minorities before the War; the Axis occupation and policy of collaboration with minority groups; and the successful shift from collaboration with the Nazis to alliances with communists by some of these minority groups.
In order to set a broader historical context, one need only recall the use of ethnic minorities by the German National Socialist regime to destabilize Eastern Europe in the 1930's. In practice, that meant that the Nazis encouraged the Sudeten German minority in Czechoslovakia and the German minority in Poland in order to put pressure on those states. The allegations, of what we today would call human rights violations by the Czechs and the Poles provided the justification for the interventions which led first to the collapse of the Czech state, and then to the War when the Germans attacked Poland.
The defeat of the Axis resulted in settlements which effectively ended the claims by minorities, which had collaborated with it. To cite a few prominent examples, over three million Sudeten Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia; many of their leaders were executed, and virtually all of their properties were seized. The same happened in certain parts of Poland. In Danzig, the name of which was changed to the Polish "Gdansk," the remnants of Germans were expelled, and their properties were seized. Similar acts took place in other countries which experienced occupation and collaboration of minorities with the enemy.
In Greece, after the Germans invaded in 1941, they established occupation zones for their forces and those of their Italian and Bulgarian allies. In Macedonia (only the Greek province used that name at the time), the German High Command under Field Marshal Sieg-mund List approved of the presence of Slavophone "liaison officers" to be attached to the occupying forces. These were mostly Bulgarian officers, linked to the nationalist group VMRO (Slavic for "Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization"), whose agenda was to mobilize and coordinate the activities of Slavophone inhabitants in Macedonia for the benefit of the Axis occupiers.
The leader of VMRO was Ivan "Vancho" Mihailoff (also transliterated as "Mihailov" in some of the literature), a major figure in the history of Southeast European extremist nationalist movements, though little studied even by experts.
Mihailoff had prevailed in the bloody power struggles, which included dozens of assassinations and other terrorist acts, for the leadership of VMRO by 1930. VMRO's main goal had always been the creation of an independent "Macedonian" state. It had built an extensive network in Bulgaria, which was used to provide financing for the organization, and an operational base from which the offensives into Yugoslavia and Gfeece were conducted
Mihailoff also had close links to Ante Pavelic, whom he assisted in the formation of the Ustashe (the Croatian Nazis, whose ardor and cruelty embarrassed even their German allies), and with Heinrich Himmler, to whom he introduced the Croat leader. Mihailoff cooperated with Pavelic in the spectacular assassination of King Alexander of Yugoslavia in Marseilles in 1934. The triggerman, Vlado Chernozem-ski, a close associate of Mihailoff, had been attached to the Ustashe on his order for the preceding two years. Between 1941 and 1944 Mihailoff settled in Zagreb, using it as his base of operations.
Meanwhile, the region of western Macedonia in Greece was occupied by the Italians, who were still smarting as a result of their defeat by Greek forces on the Albanian frontier. They developed a policy to exploit grievances of linguistic minorities, of which some members of the Slavophone group proved most responsive. This was the result of a visit to Rome by Pavelic, who personally persuaded Mussolini and Ciano of the wisdom of such a policy, and of Mihailoff s intention to implement it. Thus, the Italians were assisted by VMRO, which sent out agents of its irredentist "Kostour (Kastoria) Brotherhood," headed by Spiro Vasilieff in order to set the foundations.
Detachments of Slavophone volunteers were first formed in 1943, and accompanied Italian units searching for arms from the stores of the retreating Greek forces, which the country people were often hiding. These volunteers joined the Italian-sponsored "Axis-Macedonian-Bulgarian Committee," which became better known as the "Komitato" (or "Komitet"), first founded in Kastoria by Anton Kaltchev, a Bulgarian officer of Slavo-Macedonian antecedents connected to Mihailoffs VMRO who enjoyed the respect of the Germans. Soon after, a military arm of this organization was formed and came to be known as the "Macedonian-Bulgarian Command," or less formally as the "Ohrana."
Led by Kaltchev, the Ohrana was able was able to mobilize significant forces. Bands recruited from Kastoria, Fiorina and Edessa and the surrounding villages - i.e., central and western Macedonia - probably fielded about 5,000 men by mid-1943. These forces assisted the Italians in operations against Greek resistance organizations, and in intimidating and terrorizing the local population opposed to the Axis occupation.
Parallel to these military and "police" activities, Kaltchev also consolidated his control over the Slavophone population of all political inclinations. He interceded with the Germans, for example, in order to free individuals nominally identified with the Left who had been exiled by the Metaxas government. In addition, he penetrated (leftist) EAM, for a time the major Greek resistance organization, by placing his agents in its leadership ranks through SNOF, its Slavophone partner.
The Italian capitulation and withdrawal from the war in the Summer of 1943 would have left the Slavophone Axis collaborators in Greece without a sponsor had it not been for some prescient moves by the aforementioned Ivan Mihailoff. He and his supporters in the Central Committee of VMRO contacted the Germans directly (without the knowledge and authority of the Bulgarian Government). It appears that Mihailoffs plans extended beyond support of the volunteer units to setting the foundations for the creation of an independent "Macedonia" under German protection. It was also anticipated that the VMRO volunteers would form the core of the armed forces of a future independent "Macedonia," in addition to providing administration, indoctrination and education in the6 Lenn (Fiorina), Kostur (Kastoria) and Voden (Edessa) districts under German control.
Mihailoff traveled to Berlin in early August 1943, when he was received by Reichsfuhrer-SS Himmler at the Sichercheitsdienst (Security Service) headquarters, and also appears to have met with Hitler. Mihailoff apparently received consent to create two to three battalions of volunteers who would be armed and supported by the Germans, and who would be under the command and disposal of Himmler's organization. There is extensive evidence that Himmler's office followed through in order to implement the terms of this agreement, appointing SS Major (Hauptbahfiihrer) Heider to coordinate the arming and equipping the VMRO volunteers.
In March 1944 the village companies of Kastoria were reorganized into militias, and were armed and prepared for service by the Germans and Kaltchev's loyalists based in and around the villages near Edessa and Florina, also included in this project. After some initial skirmishes with the Greek ELAS resistance forces, beginning on May 4, several VMRO volunteer companies from Kastoria and Edessa participated in the anti-guerrilla "Operation May Thunderstorm," as part of the "Battle Group Lange" spearheaded by elements the Nazi 4th SS Mechanized Infantry Division.
VMRO also organized three volunteer battalions under its name. They were formed by Slavophone officers sent from Bulgaria to Edessa, where they arrived in June 1944. These officers met with SS Major Heider in order to formalize the implementation of the agreement reached between Mihailoff and Himmler. Thus were formed the 1st VMRO Volunteer Battalion-Kostur (Kastoria), headed by Captain Ivan Motikarov, with the strength of about 500 men; they were armed with machine guns and rifles, and included one sniper company. In the summer of 1944, they were assigned to a reinforced company of the 4th SS Police Mechanized Infantry Division whence, in the words of a military historian, "the civilian population was so afraid of this battle group that their very presence in the area was enough to quiet any civilian protest."
The 3rd VMRO Volunteer Battalion-Voden (Edessa) was headed by Georgi Dimchev and Atanas Pashkov. Dimchev (deemed a hero by VMRO), who was born near Gi-annitsa, and Pashkov proved successful in recruiting over 800 volunteers not only from Edessa, but also from Giannitsa and Goumenissa. They were armed and equipped, and wore on their hats the skull-and crossed bones symbol, which referred to both die Slavo-Macedon-ian revolutionaries and their new allies,Himmler'sSS.The last to form was the 2nd VMRO Volunteer Battalion-Lerin (Florina), which saw action in the waning weeks of the Axis occupation.
The German forces, assisted by their Slavophone collaborators, launched the last coordinated attack against organized Greek resistance on July 3-17. "Operation Stone Eagle" took place in the northern Pindus area by elements of the 4th SS Division, the 104th Jager Division and the 1st and 2nd VMRO Volunteer Battalions, 12-15 thousand men in total, with the objective of containing elements of the ELAS 8th and 9th Divisions. According to testimonies at the time, the objective was partly achieved.
When the Germans withdrew from Greece and Bulgaria declared war on Germany, the Ohrana and the Slavophone collaborationist effort collapsed. Anton Kaltchev fled Greece, but was apprehended by Yugoslav communist partisans and delivered to ELAS. He ended up in Thessaloniki, where he was tried by the Greek Government for war crimes and was executed.
Many of the Greek Slavophones who had filled the ranks of the VMRO volunteer (i.e., Axis collaborator) units enlisted in the ranks of SNOF, which was created by the Greek Communist Party. After Bulgaria aligned itself with the Soviets, this process accelerated. Thus, Slavophone collaborators found their way to DSE (Demokratikos Stratos Elladas), the military force of the Greek Communist Party, during the civil war in Greece, 1946-49. After the communist defeat, most of those who sided with the Axis, later with the DSE, in the name of "Macedonian" nationalism, were never allowed to return to Greece.
Mihailoff survived the war and settled in Rome, where he died in 1990, a year before the collapse of Yugoslavia. In 1950, he published a book in the United States, "Macedonia: A Switzerland of the Balkans," in which he proposed the establishment of what we would today call an independent "multi-cultural" state where the Slavo-Macedonians would have the dominant position in this entity, a thesis which, paradoxically, has been revived by some presently West European "progressives”' and American liberals.
Mihailoff wrote in the shadow of the People's Republic of Macedonia, a communist state which had formed by Marshal Tito within the Yugoslav Federation in 1945. He devoted the next 40 years of his life in guiding the nationalist extremists of the Slavo-Macedonian diaspora in the United States, Canada and Australia.
It is ironic, but not altogether surprising, that FYROM, the present successor state to the People's Republic invented by Tito, is ruled by one of VMRO's factions. While the Skopje regime formally rejects Mihailoff, it has resumed a not-so-couched irredentist, nationalist and extremist rhetoric reminiscent of the discourse of its collaborationist predecessor-namesake. It draws much of its support from the Slavo-Macedonian diaspora in the U.S., Canada and Australia, the ideological inheritor of Ivan Mihailoff, close friend and ally of Anton Pavelic and Heinrich Himmler.
In this reality, borne of a bitter historical experience, is to be sought the reason for the nearly instinctive reaction of Greek popular feeling (cutting across party lines) against FYROM's claims, whether as to its name or its revived irredentist claims about minorities and properties.
The Slavo-Macedonian collaborators and their children, who fought twice against the Greek state, should no more expect recompense by that state than the children of the Germans of the Sude-tenland expect from the Czech Republic or those of Danzig from Poland. When they accept that truth, it will be the first step for a genuine rapprochement with the Greek people.
But realism dictates that we should not be optimistic in the short term. Hijacking the name of Macedonia, arbitrarily seizing cultural symbols (e.g., Philip II, Alexander the Great, Saints Cyril and Method-ios, among others) and now claiming "minorities" and properties in Greece as this piece is being written, demonstrates that FYROM Prime Minister Nikola Gruevsky, heading the present-day VMRO, and the Skopjian leadership have inherited Mihailoffs nationalist extremist vision. Unless they sober up, they will reap the whirlwind.
Meanwhile, Bush and those of his supporters in Washington and elsewhere who have been studiedly ignorant until now, should come to understand that the Greek people -supported not only by most Greek Americans, but many other people who experienced the wrath of totalitarian extremists - are not likely to agree to terms proposed by a regime which revives the discourse of its dark past.
Mr. Caratzas, a trained historian, is an academic publisher and international policy consultant based in Athens and Scarsdale, New York
Special to The National Herald
hellenicnews.com
The dispute regarding the official name by which will be known the Former (communist) Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia has appeared to many policymakers from arcane to trivial. Yet its mishandling over the last 15 years, especially the last few months, has resulted consequences which have raised the political cost for some of the world's major players, and increased tension and the potential for instability in the Balkans, referred to by historians and diplomats as Europe's "soft underbelly."
The case in point is the unprecedented defeat of a U.S. President at an annual NATO meeting, in this case the much touted Bucharest Summit this past April: President Bush proclaimed the "strong support" of the United States to the Skopje regime's bid for NATO membership, only to have it denied under threat of a veto by the Greek Government. Nor did the NATO Secretary-General's visit to Athens and Skopje after the Summit increase the likelihood of a positive result, while the mediation process currently under the direction of U.S. diplomat Matthew Nimetz finds progress elusive.
Given the complexity of the situation, it is useful to reconsider, or perhaps consider for the first time, some of the elements of this case which make it much harder to resolve than the cursory - and sloppy - assessments of some foreign policy "professionals" have heretofore suggested.
Until now, some of these professionals, especially in Washington, have approached this process mechanistically, hoping somehow that the implicit threat of American displeasure would sway the Greek Government. On one level, they can not be faulted, as the latter has caved many times in the past; however, there is little flexibility on this issue since, after repeated polling over many years, it has become clear that over 85 percent of the Greek public consistently demands a hard line.
I remember a meeting in mid-1992 between then State Department Spokesman (later Ambassador) R. Nicholas Burns and a group of Greek American leaders. In answer to a question about the precedent affecting the European border system which would result from the recognition of the Skopje regime under the name of "Macedonia" (it then had explicit claims on Greek territory, not to mention the history outlined below), Burns slammed his notebook shut and refused to discuss the implications. Some of the Greek American leaders appeared more annoyed with the questioner than with Burns' evasive little tiff. Yet this question, as does the entire dispute regarding the name of the tenuous statelet, has its foundation in the settlements following the Second World War - in short, in recent history.
In the effort to understand causalities of issues thrust upon the stage of international affairs, it is ironic that diplomats, other foreign policy professionals and political scientists often opt to ignore history. Yet history, the word deriving from the root of the perfect tense of the Greek verb "to know," literally means "those things that I have come to know." Thus, on one level, it is simply the accretion of particular knowledge of a phenomenon over time.
It is therefore treacherous to wade into the Balkans, where human experience has been recorded for millennia and folk memories are long, and not be sensitive to recent historical traumas. To be fair, much of the discourse of those most immediately involved has related to realities of the 5th-4th Centuries BC, or cites mythological ethno-ge-netic constructions, which may be obscure to diplomats and policymakers.
Many Greeks argue by making reference to 4,000 years of the Hellenism of Macedonia, while the Skopje regime's mythology increasingly expands its symbolic pantheon to include Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great, even though the Slavic culture and language, which are the axes of its purported identity, appeared a little more than a millennium later.
Yet the history which matters most, even if it has largely been ignored so far, refers to recent events, those taking place before, during and after World War II. In the Balkans, these fall into three major categories: the unresolved issues regarding ethnic and linguistic minorities before the War; the Axis occupation and policy of collaboration with minority groups; and the successful shift from collaboration with the Nazis to alliances with communists by some of these minority groups.
In order to set a broader historical context, one need only recall the use of ethnic minorities by the German National Socialist regime to destabilize Eastern Europe in the 1930's. In practice, that meant that the Nazis encouraged the Sudeten German minority in Czechoslovakia and the German minority in Poland in order to put pressure on those states. The allegations, of what we today would call human rights violations by the Czechs and the Poles provided the justification for the interventions which led first to the collapse of the Czech state, and then to the War when the Germans attacked Poland.
The defeat of the Axis resulted in settlements which effectively ended the claims by minorities, which had collaborated with it. To cite a few prominent examples, over three million Sudeten Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia; many of their leaders were executed, and virtually all of their properties were seized. The same happened in certain parts of Poland. In Danzig, the name of which was changed to the Polish "Gdansk," the remnants of Germans were expelled, and their properties were seized. Similar acts took place in other countries which experienced occupation and collaboration of minorities with the enemy.
In Greece, after the Germans invaded in 1941, they established occupation zones for their forces and those of their Italian and Bulgarian allies. In Macedonia (only the Greek province used that name at the time), the German High Command under Field Marshal Sieg-mund List approved of the presence of Slavophone "liaison officers" to be attached to the occupying forces. These were mostly Bulgarian officers, linked to the nationalist group VMRO (Slavic for "Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization"), whose agenda was to mobilize and coordinate the activities of Slavophone inhabitants in Macedonia for the benefit of the Axis occupiers.
The leader of VMRO was Ivan "Vancho" Mihailoff (also transliterated as "Mihailov" in some of the literature), a major figure in the history of Southeast European extremist nationalist movements, though little studied even by experts.
Mihailoff had prevailed in the bloody power struggles, which included dozens of assassinations and other terrorist acts, for the leadership of VMRO by 1930. VMRO's main goal had always been the creation of an independent "Macedonian" state. It had built an extensive network in Bulgaria, which was used to provide financing for the organization, and an operational base from which the offensives into Yugoslavia and Gfeece were conducted
Mihailoff also had close links to Ante Pavelic, whom he assisted in the formation of the Ustashe (the Croatian Nazis, whose ardor and cruelty embarrassed even their German allies), and with Heinrich Himmler, to whom he introduced the Croat leader. Mihailoff cooperated with Pavelic in the spectacular assassination of King Alexander of Yugoslavia in Marseilles in 1934. The triggerman, Vlado Chernozem-ski, a close associate of Mihailoff, had been attached to the Ustashe on his order for the preceding two years. Between 1941 and 1944 Mihailoff settled in Zagreb, using it as his base of operations.
Meanwhile, the region of western Macedonia in Greece was occupied by the Italians, who were still smarting as a result of their defeat by Greek forces on the Albanian frontier. They developed a policy to exploit grievances of linguistic minorities, of which some members of the Slavophone group proved most responsive. This was the result of a visit to Rome by Pavelic, who personally persuaded Mussolini and Ciano of the wisdom of such a policy, and of Mihailoff s intention to implement it. Thus, the Italians were assisted by VMRO, which sent out agents of its irredentist "Kostour (Kastoria) Brotherhood," headed by Spiro Vasilieff in order to set the foundations.
Detachments of Slavophone volunteers were first formed in 1943, and accompanied Italian units searching for arms from the stores of the retreating Greek forces, which the country people were often hiding. These volunteers joined the Italian-sponsored "Axis-Macedonian-Bulgarian Committee," which became better known as the "Komitato" (or "Komitet"), first founded in Kastoria by Anton Kaltchev, a Bulgarian officer of Slavo-Macedonian antecedents connected to Mihailoffs VMRO who enjoyed the respect of the Germans. Soon after, a military arm of this organization was formed and came to be known as the "Macedonian-Bulgarian Command," or less formally as the "Ohrana."
Led by Kaltchev, the Ohrana was able was able to mobilize significant forces. Bands recruited from Kastoria, Fiorina and Edessa and the surrounding villages - i.e., central and western Macedonia - probably fielded about 5,000 men by mid-1943. These forces assisted the Italians in operations against Greek resistance organizations, and in intimidating and terrorizing the local population opposed to the Axis occupation.
Parallel to these military and "police" activities, Kaltchev also consolidated his control over the Slavophone population of all political inclinations. He interceded with the Germans, for example, in order to free individuals nominally identified with the Left who had been exiled by the Metaxas government. In addition, he penetrated (leftist) EAM, for a time the major Greek resistance organization, by placing his agents in its leadership ranks through SNOF, its Slavophone partner.
The Italian capitulation and withdrawal from the war in the Summer of 1943 would have left the Slavophone Axis collaborators in Greece without a sponsor had it not been for some prescient moves by the aforementioned Ivan Mihailoff. He and his supporters in the Central Committee of VMRO contacted the Germans directly (without the knowledge and authority of the Bulgarian Government). It appears that Mihailoffs plans extended beyond support of the volunteer units to setting the foundations for the creation of an independent "Macedonia" under German protection. It was also anticipated that the VMRO volunteers would form the core of the armed forces of a future independent "Macedonia," in addition to providing administration, indoctrination and education in the6 Lenn (Fiorina), Kostur (Kastoria) and Voden (Edessa) districts under German control.
Mihailoff traveled to Berlin in early August 1943, when he was received by Reichsfuhrer-SS Himmler at the Sichercheitsdienst (Security Service) headquarters, and also appears to have met with Hitler. Mihailoff apparently received consent to create two to three battalions of volunteers who would be armed and supported by the Germans, and who would be under the command and disposal of Himmler's organization. There is extensive evidence that Himmler's office followed through in order to implement the terms of this agreement, appointing SS Major (Hauptbahfiihrer) Heider to coordinate the arming and equipping the VMRO volunteers.
In March 1944 the village companies of Kastoria were reorganized into militias, and were armed and prepared for service by the Germans and Kaltchev's loyalists based in and around the villages near Edessa and Florina, also included in this project. After some initial skirmishes with the Greek ELAS resistance forces, beginning on May 4, several VMRO volunteer companies from Kastoria and Edessa participated in the anti-guerrilla "Operation May Thunderstorm," as part of the "Battle Group Lange" spearheaded by elements the Nazi 4th SS Mechanized Infantry Division.
VMRO also organized three volunteer battalions under its name. They were formed by Slavophone officers sent from Bulgaria to Edessa, where they arrived in June 1944. These officers met with SS Major Heider in order to formalize the implementation of the agreement reached between Mihailoff and Himmler. Thus were formed the 1st VMRO Volunteer Battalion-Kostur (Kastoria), headed by Captain Ivan Motikarov, with the strength of about 500 men; they were armed with machine guns and rifles, and included one sniper company. In the summer of 1944, they were assigned to a reinforced company of the 4th SS Police Mechanized Infantry Division whence, in the words of a military historian, "the civilian population was so afraid of this battle group that their very presence in the area was enough to quiet any civilian protest."
The 3rd VMRO Volunteer Battalion-Voden (Edessa) was headed by Georgi Dimchev and Atanas Pashkov. Dimchev (deemed a hero by VMRO), who was born near Gi-annitsa, and Pashkov proved successful in recruiting over 800 volunteers not only from Edessa, but also from Giannitsa and Goumenissa. They were armed and equipped, and wore on their hats the skull-and crossed bones symbol, which referred to both die Slavo-Macedon-ian revolutionaries and their new allies,Himmler'sSS.The last to form was the 2nd VMRO Volunteer Battalion-Lerin (Florina), which saw action in the waning weeks of the Axis occupation.
The German forces, assisted by their Slavophone collaborators, launched the last coordinated attack against organized Greek resistance on July 3-17. "Operation Stone Eagle" took place in the northern Pindus area by elements of the 4th SS Division, the 104th Jager Division and the 1st and 2nd VMRO Volunteer Battalions, 12-15 thousand men in total, with the objective of containing elements of the ELAS 8th and 9th Divisions. According to testimonies at the time, the objective was partly achieved.
When the Germans withdrew from Greece and Bulgaria declared war on Germany, the Ohrana and the Slavophone collaborationist effort collapsed. Anton Kaltchev fled Greece, but was apprehended by Yugoslav communist partisans and delivered to ELAS. He ended up in Thessaloniki, where he was tried by the Greek Government for war crimes and was executed.
Many of the Greek Slavophones who had filled the ranks of the VMRO volunteer (i.e., Axis collaborator) units enlisted in the ranks of SNOF, which was created by the Greek Communist Party. After Bulgaria aligned itself with the Soviets, this process accelerated. Thus, Slavophone collaborators found their way to DSE (Demokratikos Stratos Elladas), the military force of the Greek Communist Party, during the civil war in Greece, 1946-49. After the communist defeat, most of those who sided with the Axis, later with the DSE, in the name of "Macedonian" nationalism, were never allowed to return to Greece.
Mihailoff survived the war and settled in Rome, where he died in 1990, a year before the collapse of Yugoslavia. In 1950, he published a book in the United States, "Macedonia: A Switzerland of the Balkans," in which he proposed the establishment of what we would today call an independent "multi-cultural" state where the Slavo-Macedonians would have the dominant position in this entity, a thesis which, paradoxically, has been revived by some presently West European "progressives”' and American liberals.
Mihailoff wrote in the shadow of the People's Republic of Macedonia, a communist state which had formed by Marshal Tito within the Yugoslav Federation in 1945. He devoted the next 40 years of his life in guiding the nationalist extremists of the Slavo-Macedonian diaspora in the United States, Canada and Australia.
It is ironic, but not altogether surprising, that FYROM, the present successor state to the People's Republic invented by Tito, is ruled by one of VMRO's factions. While the Skopje regime formally rejects Mihailoff, it has resumed a not-so-couched irredentist, nationalist and extremist rhetoric reminiscent of the discourse of its collaborationist predecessor-namesake. It draws much of its support from the Slavo-Macedonian diaspora in the U.S., Canada and Australia, the ideological inheritor of Ivan Mihailoff, close friend and ally of Anton Pavelic and Heinrich Himmler.
In this reality, borne of a bitter historical experience, is to be sought the reason for the nearly instinctive reaction of Greek popular feeling (cutting across party lines) against FYROM's claims, whether as to its name or its revived irredentist claims about minorities and properties.
The Slavo-Macedonian collaborators and their children, who fought twice against the Greek state, should no more expect recompense by that state than the children of the Germans of the Sude-tenland expect from the Czech Republic or those of Danzig from Poland. When they accept that truth, it will be the first step for a genuine rapprochement with the Greek people.
But realism dictates that we should not be optimistic in the short term. Hijacking the name of Macedonia, arbitrarily seizing cultural symbols (e.g., Philip II, Alexander the Great, Saints Cyril and Method-ios, among others) and now claiming "minorities" and properties in Greece as this piece is being written, demonstrates that FYROM Prime Minister Nikola Gruevsky, heading the present-day VMRO, and the Skopjian leadership have inherited Mihailoffs nationalist extremist vision. Unless they sober up, they will reap the whirlwind.
Meanwhile, Bush and those of his supporters in Washington and elsewhere who have been studiedly ignorant until now, should come to understand that the Greek people -supported not only by most Greek Americans, but many other people who experienced the wrath of totalitarian extremists - are not likely to agree to terms proposed by a regime which revives the discourse of its dark past.
Mr. Caratzas, a trained historian, is an academic publisher and international policy consultant based in Athens and Scarsdale, New York
Friday, August 01, 2008
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Nicolas Sarkozy lays down alliance terms of engagement
Dr. George Voskopoulos in American ChronicleJune 06, 2008
During his visit to Athens the French President Nicolas Sarkozy gave lessons on solidarity among alliance partners. He was clear about alliance obligations, something that other Greek allies have not honored, although they request the political and logistical support of Athens. Yet, this should not be a surprise to anyone, at least for those of us who have received a French education and are parts of le monde francophone.
The charismatic French leader made some explicit remarks on the Greece-FYROM name dispute as he is amongst those who do not find Greek worries "absurd". As he pointed out referring to the Greece-FYROM name dispute, "we have chosen to support Greece and we will not change our position. Greece and France wish to see FYROM get closer to NATO and the EU, yet, the name dispute will have to be settled first. The solidarity of France towards Greece is a fact and it will go on in the future. The Greek position is justified, responsible and open to a dialogue…".
This is one single statement never heard from American officials investing in the op-portunistic Atlanticism of Slav Macedonian government. Actually the State Depart-ment has invested a lot in a continuous, outdated act of cannibalizing history and has overlaid NATO´s commitment to the defence of one of its members.
American policy in the issue has been dominated by inflexibility. Ever since 1996 there was hard evidence that the US undermined the name issue and Greek security and dealt with it as if it were a "name game". A. Mallias, Head of the first Mission in FYROM in the mid-1990s, was one of the first diplomats who sensed US determination to proceed with recognition of FYROM with its constitutional name. In mid-June 1996 he was the one who alerted the then Greek Foreign Minister on US non-facilitating policy [1]. Evidently current American policy is not just a temporary deviation from alliance commitments, a fact that clearly sets a number of priorities for the next American president.
The last time an American leader felt apologetic for America´s policy vis-à-vis Greece was B. Clinton. While visiting Athens he expressed his apologies for the US not standing by the Greek side and the democratic forces crashed under the military might of a handful of low-rank military officers. We should have been more careful with our Greek allies…we should have done more to prevent the expression of the military coup in Greece in 1967…we focused exclusively on the Soviet Union and forgot our obligations to our ally, B. Clinton said. It takes a charismatic leader to ac-knowledge mistakes of the past and Bill Clinton was one of those.
That was probably the first and last moral support Greece got from an ally that has de jure served ever since 1952. Still too many in Greece think that this is not enough. N. Sarkozy made this feeling more acute and exposed American inability to accommo-date the institutionally-derived expectations and security considerations of an allied country.
Nicolas Sarkozy was more than explicit in setting the framework that should deter-mine relations between allies. "The Greek people can count on us and we can count on them", he said. It is sad enough that very few people in Greece could ever picture an American official saying the same thing today. Nikolas Sarkozy gave alliances a raison d´ être and a meaning something urgently expected form the next American administration.
Monday, June 02, 2008
American-Greek relations at odds
Dr. George Voskopoulos in American Chronicle
June 01, 2008
June 01, 2008
The US and Greece have been strategic allies ever since the end of the Second World War. Greece became a NATO member in 1952 thus cementing the alliance´s south-east European flank against the Warsaw Pact. In this way the leaders of the country hoped to strengthen democracy and assist development in the only country that practiced free market in the region.
During the Cold War years the Atlantic Alliance provided a reliable casus foederis against non-alliance members, a fact that left out of this collective security mecha-nism the biggest military threat the country faced. Still Greek governments supported alliance policies vis-à-vis neighboring countries and refrained from upsetting its cohe-sion and its overall effectiveness in dealing with Soviet expansion. This explains Greek subtle policy vis-à-vis non-aligned Yugoslavia and Tito´s expansionist dreams.However, today the picture of bilateral relations looks rather gloomy. One of the causes of the rift is the Greece-FYROM dispute over the latter´s constitutional name. At the end of the Cold War the issue originally appeared to be a technicality, yet it proved to be more than that.
Under the circumstances FYROM is treated as a de facto and de jure ally and Greece as alliance outcast. All of a sudden the US appears willing to overlay the essentials that brought the two countries together. They give Athens wrong signals and adopt an inconceivable policy that affects bilateral relations. The prerequisites of turning American-Greek relations into a meaningful strategic partnership again are simple. Most of them apply to every single partnership built on consensus not coercion. Even-tually going back to the basics will assist the revitalization of this strategic partnership and trigger the so needed by both sides understanding of the issue at hand.
The first refers to the US being able to acknowledge the vital interest of a local part-ner who faces multidimensional hostile activities by a neighboring state wishing to join the Atlantic Alliance. Vital interests are defined in terms of threats, their percep-tion and intensity and the degree they affect the survival of a country. Eventually they may turn into non-negotiable national interests and lead to a dead end.
In the so called "Macedonian dispute" [1] Greece has made every single effort to meet the other side half way. It is obvious that the Greek political elite is ready to accept a name with a geographical definition that leaves no space for further misunderstanding. Greece has taken a step back in its rhetoric and policy with a view to enhancing stability in the region.
However the other side refuses to adopt a name that clearly distinguishes it form the Greek province Macedonia. Constructivism may be a useful, at times, approach to international relations, yet, it runs the risk of over-extending into relativism, thus making any claim, whether sustainable or not, appear attractive or noble. Eventually it dramatically blurs the dividing line between facts and beliefs, something American officials should comprehend. The semantics of Skopje rejecting the covertly implied by the Greek government solution enhances suspiciousness in Athens and eventually reveals the real motives behind Macedonianism, a state ideology built on Great Idea inspirations. These are externalized in the form of a demand, a historical duty on the part of Slav-Macedonians and especially the Diaspora to unite geographical Macedonia. A part of this strategy includes "liberation" of Greek Macedonia. A less informed or misinformed reader would probably think that there used to be a united country dismembered by neighboring states. Yet, the truth is different. What we know is that "the region of Macedonia, inhabited by Slavs from the fifth century, was never able to have its own independent state" [2]. Still even if history had proven an unfortunate experience for our neighbors they would not be liable to advance irredentism as a means of purging it. This would certainly give many in the region the right to start claiming possessions of the past. It would probably give me and another 1.200.000 Greeks forced out of Asia Minor the right to claim our property. This is not the case and we should all ac-knowledge certain facts of history, politics and reality.
Second, the issue at hand is not related to race purity or historical accuracy but security. The concept affects not only inter-state relations but national psychology. After all, the feeling of security bears a strong psychological aspect. This makes the in-volvement of the Atlantic Alliance imperative on the basis of its being a collective security mechanism. Once an ally faces hostile propaganda and overt irredentist claims NATO should be in a position to intervene and protect existing non prospec-tive members. It is a matter of priorities stemming from alliance commitments not vague ideological stances. Providing stability is what gives NATO its raison d´ être and makes it a meaningful (or meaningless?) alliance.
Washington´s support to a revisionist state constitutes today´s paradox with American policy in the issue. The US joins lines with extremists in FYROM and supports the weakest but aggressive party, a non-NATO member not a strategic ally that has defended the territorial status quo and served the alliance´s interests ever since 1952. Greece is the only NATO member and EU country that still faces military and non-military threats. It is the only NATO member whose security has been solely con-structed on the realist concept of self-help.A substantial number of US senators have acknowledged that Greek worries are not imaginary and do not constitute a side-effect of national psychosis. Actually this could not have been the case since there are tangible facts that turn FYROM into the odd man in the Balkans. It also exposes the inability of the political establishment in Skopje to define real enemies as illustrated by the 2001 crisis.
What is disappointing with US policy is its easiness to dismiss Greek security considerations, at least on the practical level, since in terms of rhetoric the State Department is more careful. What we have seen so far is a policy of punishing a NATO ally for defending territorial status and regional stability, a policy that means to consistently provoke Athens through the use of the term Macedonia, a policy of supporting all those inside and outside the country that wish to destabilize the political system.
It is fully understood that America´s strategic priorities vary from balancing short-term needs and long-term interests in a region prone to Russian influence. Yet, long- term allies and their interests cannot vanish into thin air. They have been there to sup-port what used to be the West and they will be there in times of need. Supporting a country that has just discovered the merits of Atlanticism (this is what I call opportun-istic Atlanticism) gives merit to those – like me - who suggest that NATO has lost its collective security meaning, a debate inaugurated in the early 1990s after the demise of the Soviet Union.
US policy during the last years has been a challenge to foes and allies since it has lost its "persuasive credibility", arbitrariness and ability to see the obvious. It has led allies to question NATO´s scope, its utility and above all its ability to impose norms of in-ternational behaviour based on rigid, uncompromised principles and values. Above all it lacks the ability to devise policies formulated outside the current militarily and power-imposed ethos.
In 2005 T.K. Vogel and Eric A. Witte, senior fellows of the Democratization Policy Council, commented on the gap between American policies and rhetoric suggesting that "grand rhetoric about democracy and freedom only resonates when it is supported by actual policy". [3] In the same way American policies cannot bear multidimensional semantics that can be interpreted in many contending ways. It has to be clear at least vis-à-vis allies such as Greece.
One of the greatest challenges leaders and simple individuals have always faced is to cope with power and how to put it in good use. Whether a university professor or the leader of a superpower one needs internal balancing mechanisms to reconciliate needs, values, prerogatives and commitments. In the case of an alliance priorities should be formed on the basis of the needs of those inside and the advertised ethical basis of American active involvement in world politics. It takes at least two to have peace..at least two to go to war and at least two to form an alliance.
notes
[1] The term "Macedonian issue" is rather inaccurate, since "the Macedonians of to-day are not, as many in the West think, descendants of the long vanished Macedoni-ans of Alexander the Great. They are Slavs, who speak a language related to the Serbo-Croatian and the Bulgarian. Together with other Slavs, they came from the Russo-Polish-Ukrainian plains at the end of the Great Migrations, in the sixth and seventh centuries A.D. and settled in the mountainous Balkan land then ruled by the Byzantine emperor. All the Slav tribes that almost fourteen hundred years ago had established in the Byzantine provinces known of old as Macedonia in the second half of the nineteenth century began to use the name of that province as their own national appellation". See Stoyan Pribichevich, Macedonia, its people and history, The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, 1982, p. 2
[2] Stephane Lefebvre, "The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM): Where to?", European Security, vol. 3, n. 4, winter 1994, p. 711.
[3] "America should ditch its tyrant friends", International Herald Tribune, August 15, 2005.
Sunday, June 01, 2008
FYROM ACADEMICIANS CONTINUOUSLY AVOID HONEST DIALOGUE
PAN-MACEDONIAN ASSOCIATION, Inc.The historically, linguistically and archeologically incorrect challenges to Greece emanating from Skopje that ancient Macedonian was not a part of the ancient Greek world, but today’s FYROM’s inhabitants are the direct descendents of the ancient Macedonians, has been exacerbated by systematic and relentless propaganda for quite some time now.
On April 25, 2008 the prestigious Smithsonian Residence Association Program presented “A Glimpse into Macedonia, Past and Present” by art historian and “Macedonian” native, Aneta Georgievska-Shine. The electronic advertisement for this stated that Dr. Georgievska-Shine will speak about her native, “Macedonia”: “Home to exquisite Byzantine churches with beautifully preserved frescoes and valuable icons, the Republic of Macedonia is a country of rich and complex cultural identity. From antiquity, when Alexander the Great created an empire that reached as far away as India, to the first decades of the 20th century, when this country finally gained its present-day borders, Macedonia has been one of the most contested geopolitical prizes in southeastern Europe”.
We were somewhat pleasantly pleased that Dr. Georgievska-Shine presented a rather generous Hellenistic view to the Ancient Macedonians and the later Byzantine era, however, at numerous instances her subtle, well planed, remarks and arguments left room for dispute. These remarks and arguments that to the general audience appear as benign acceptable conditions actually hide behind dangerous malignant propaganda. Dr. Georgievska-Shine did refer to the FYROM inhabitants as “Slav-Macedonians” for most of her presentation but she subtly mentioned: “Alexander I of Macedon was the first Macedonian king to promote the adoption of the Attic culture.” In addition, alluding to Alexander the Great’s conquests, she mentioned: “Philip’s son Alexander the Great created an even bigger empire, not only conquering the rest of Greece but also seizing control of the Persian Empire, Egypt and lands as far east as the fringes of India. He adopted and spread the Greek culture in these territories.”
If this claim of “adoption” of the Greek language is true, thus eluding that the Macedonians spoke something other that Greek and therefore were not part of the then Greek world, then, at what point in his life did he “adopt” the Greek name Alexander meaning “defender of man” and what was his name prior to this point?
If his father Phillip was not Greek, why did he also have a Greek name meaning “friend of the horse”?
At what point did Alexander also “adopt” the Hellenic culture and religion the he spread to all ends of the then known world?
Why were the Macedonians allowed to take part in the ancient Olympic games that only Hellenes?
At the end of the presentation the Smithsonian Residence Association organizers of the conference allowed time for only one question and one comment. The question asked was: If the Macedonians were Greek, as you mentioned during your presentation, what is the relationship of today’s inhabitants of the FYROM with the ancient Macedonians? On what historical and ethno-cultural basis do you make the link of the modern day Slavs to Alexander?” Dr. Georgievska-Shine’s reply was that “…since the Macedonians were one of the most powerful peoples in the region, the Slavs adopted elements of the most dominant populace…in addition numerous conquerors overtook the region that those peoples did not exist any more.”
Someone from the audience then replied “Perhaps a lot of conquerors had settled on the area for a while, but they came and went… Greeks can claim that they have uninterruptedly been living in the same area, they talk a language that linguistically derives from the same Greek language and have preserved customs and features in the culture which come from antiquity,” adding “I find Dr Georgievka Shine’s comments on the “adoption of the Attic Greek dialect” by Alexander I the Macedon and by Alexander the Great fallacious, as the ancient Macedonians had their own Greek-Doric (North-West Doric) dialect, which can be attested by the Pella Katadesmos.”
Record note: In 1986 a scroll was found in the area of Pella and published in the Hellenic Dialectology Journal in 1993. It is known as the Pella katadesmos or the curse of Pella. It was written in the mid 4th century BC. According to the Journal “It is a magic spell or love charm written by a woman, named Dagina, whose lover Dionysophōn is apparently about to marry Thetima.” She invokes "Makron and the demons"to cause Dionysophon to marry her rather than Thetima. Professors Olivier Masson in the Oxford Classical Dictionary and James L. O’Neils from the University of Sidney, both concur that “The language is a harsh but distinctly recognizable form of North-West or Doric Greek, and the low social status of its writer, as evidenced by her vocabulary and belief in magic, strongly hint that a unique form of Doric Greek was spoken by lay people in Pella at the time the tab was written.
We were not afforded the opportunity to ask and discuss many other questions/arguments with Dr. Georgievska Shine’s as it is traditionally done in any academic environment, especially of the caliber as that of the Smithsonian Institute, as the program coordinators of the aforementioned institute cut us off with the excuse that the hall had to be readied for a different event. Furthermore, the speaker appeared to have been rushed off through an unseen exit, not event giving us the chance to have a few minutes of casual conversation with her. We met with a few of the Smithsonian coordinators just outside of the lecture hall for some time and expressed our concerns but during this time we did not see anyone making any sorts of preparation in the lecture hall.
Dr. Georgievska Shine during her presentation mentioned: “The Slavs of the Ottoman Macedonia were members of the Orthodox millet according to the Ottoman administration system that recognized religious and not national identities. They declared themselves largely as Christians.”
Record note: Even though we were not given the opportunity to reply to Dr. Georgievska-Shine during the question/answer period, we would her to note that the census by Himli Pasha in 1906 refers to various ethnicities in that area; however there is no mention of any “Macedonians.”423,000 41.71% Muslims (Turks and Albanians) 259,000 27.30% Greeks 178,000 18.81% Bulgarians 13,150 1.39% Serbs 73,000 7.72% others
We also like her to note that during the Ottoman era there was no use of the term Macedonia (meaning the boundaries of the geographic or ancient Macedonia). Macedonia was divided in two vilaets; the vilaet of Thessaloniki and the vilaet of Monastiri (Bitola). Skopje, the present capital of FYROM, was in a separate vilaet, the Kossovo vilaet with Skopje as its capital also. The Kossovo vilaet was outside of and was never any part of the so-called geographic Macedonia. Dr. Georgievska-Shine should also note that the percentages she mentioned that were received by the countries that liberated the area from the Ottomans-“Greece received 52%, “Macedonia” 38%, and Bulgaria 10%,” do not correspond to historic Macedonia, but to the area liberated from the Turks by the four allies (Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and Mavrovounion). That is, the area that was liberated was the area of the Ottoman vilaets of which the geographic Macedonia was a part of and a smaller portion of the whole liberated area. Actually Greece received 70% of the historic geographic Macedonia. About 3/5 of today’s FYROM, never belonged to ancient Macedonia, including its capital, Skopje, as this part was in the Kossovo vilaet which, as mentioned, was outside of the geographic Macedonian area.
Dr. Georgievska-Shine stated: “Vardar Macedonia incorporated into Serbia and referred to as South Serbia. The easternmost part of Macedonia ceded to Bulgaria (Pirin Macedonia). The southern part (Agean Macedonia) incorporated into Greece and referred to as northern Greece.”
Record note: The liberation of present day Greece from the Ottomans did not happen simultaneously in all former Greek territories, but it happened in different stages. In 1912-13, parts of Macedonia and Epirus were liberated. Since then Macedonia has been called as such. In fact, the first administrator in Thessaloniki in 1913 was called “Governor of Macedonia”. The term Northern Greece was ONLY for the Greek Ministry in Thessaloniki, because it included the region of Thrace as well. The Treaty of Bucharest on August 10, 1913 only set the borders of Bulgaria and its neighbors. It did not split “Macedonia,” as many FYROM sources are claiming. It did however split relevant Turkish vilayets.
The area that later comprised of the former Yugoslavia's southern republic was not called Macedonia but it bore the name of Vardarska Banovina (Province -of the river- Vardar). It was in 1944 that Marshal Joseph Broz Tito, the communist dictator ruling Yugoslavia at that time, created Yugoslavia's southern republic and called it "People’s Republic of Macedonia" and in 1963 "Socialist Republic of Macedonia" for purely political and expansionist reasons.
Record note: It is not the first time that American citizens of Macedonian/Greek descent, members of the Pan-Macedonian Association USA, observed their history being falsified, and denied their right to defend their ancestral history in prestigious academic institutions, right in their homeland!! On September 20, 2003, a symposium, titled "The Importance of Ilinden in the Awakening of Macedonian National Consciousness", took place in the School of Journalism, Columbia University, on September 20, 2003 and was sponsored by the Harriman Institute of Columbia Univeristy, the East Central European Center and the Macedonian Arts Council. It had as its main theme the anniversary of the Ilinten revolution against the Turkish rule in the Balkans. Mr. Kiro Gligorov, the former President of the FYROM, was the main speaker.
The theme of Mr. Gligorov's speech was "Macedonia from Ilinten until Now". Other participants in the discussion were Dr. Nadine Akhund, from Columbia University, addressing "1903 Seen Through the Eyes of Europe", Dr. Duncan Perry, "1903-The Ilinden Uprising and its Legacy". Mr. Blaze Ristovski from the Macedonian Academy of Science and Arts (MANU) introduced "Macedonia in 1903" and Dr. Andrew Rossos from the University of Toronto spoke on "Macedonian National Consciousness in 1903".
Dr. Nantine Akhurd, who received her doctorate at the University of Sorbonne, France, spoke first. She addressed the events that occurred in 1903 in Macedonia. She came to certain conclusions from the research she did, based on the correspondence of various European diplomats of that time. She read certain letters of diplomats and at the end she concluded that the Turks did not keep accurate records, "therefore it is difficult to calculate the exact number of the ethnicities that existed in the Turkish-occupied Macedonia. However from the correspondence of the diplomats we can assume the most prevailing nationalities were Slavic, Bulgarian and Serbian. In addition there were French, German and Italian companies in Salonik". No mention at all about the Greek element in the area!!
The rest of the academicians spoke and all of them praised and glorified the Ilinten uprising, which even though was not successful, "Macedonia" emerged as an international issue, which resulted in the awakening of the "Macedonian" national consciousness. No one mentioned that this uprising was staged by the Bulgarians and the Bulgarians were inviting all the nationalities in the area, even the peasant Turkish population, to revolt against the Sultan. No one pointed out that the Manifesto of Krushevo was written in Bulgarian. None of the academicians revealed that during the revolt, with Krushevo as its epicenter, the Turks who had been bribed by the Bulgarians exterminated the Greek population and the Hellenized Vlachs of Krushevo. No one mentioned that 366 Greek homes and 203 Greek shops were destroyed by the vengeance of the Turks and Bulgarians. The Slavs, today's self-proclaimed "Macedonians" were coerced to finance the "revolution", but as soon as they found the chance, they escaped to the mountains (Douglas Dakin).
Dr. Duncan Perry in his book The Politics of Terror: The MacEdonian Liberation Movement, 1893-1904, identified this uprising as an act of terror. It is not known under which circumstances he changed his opinion and why during the deliverance of his theme he concluded that the Ilinten revolution "awakened the "Macedonian" national consciousness".
A translator read Mr. Blaze Ristovski's lecture. King Philip, Alexander the Great, as well as Cyril and Methodius were depicted as "Macedonian" personas. Following a ten-minute break, Mr. Herbert S. Okun, former American Ambassador to UN, introduced the keynote speaker, the former President of the FYROM, Mr. Kiro Gligorov. The American former Ambassador named Mr. Gligorov as the "peace-maker" of the Balkans and "George Washington" of "Macedonia", since under his direction "Macedonia" was able to face various problems such as the problems with the Serbian Church, problems with the Albanians and issues with Greece about the name".
A copy of Mr. Gligorov's translated in English address was distributed to the audience, since the former President spoke in "Macedonian". Some college students, sitting near us, explained that they were Bulgarians, they however could understand everything that Mr. Gligorov was saying (but don't the FYROM people insist that their language is the same language that Alexander the Great and his "Macedonian" soldiers were using to communicate?). Mr. Gligorov's speech lasted for two hours and he continuously was receiving messages from various individuals. In the beginning we thought that individuals in charge of the symposium were trying to urge him to be brief, but as we assumed they were rather urging him to do otherwise. Thus reaching the end of his lecture there was no time for the academically established etiquette of "questions and answer period" between panelists and audience, especially in such an institution of higher learning as the Columbia University.
From various articles written previously there were a number of voices that advocated contradictory theories about the origins of the FYROM inhabitants. Here are some testimonies from The FYROM’s officials:
The former President of The FYROM, Kiro Gligorov said: “We are Slavs who came to this area in the sixth century ... we are not descendants of the ancient Macedonians" (Foreign Information Service Daily Report, Eastern Europe, February 26, 1992, p. 35).
Also, Mr Gligorov declared: "We are Macedonians but we are Slav Macedonians. That's who we are! We have no connection to Alexander the Greek and his Macedonia… Our ancestors came here in the 5th and 6th century" (Toronto Star, March 15, 1992).
On 22 January 1999, Ambassador of the FYROM to USA, Ljubica Achevska gave a speech on the present situation in the Balkans. In answering questions at the end of her speech Mrs. Acevshka said: "We do not claim to be descendants of Alexander the Great … Greece is Macedonia’s second largest trading partner, and its number one investor. Instead of opting for war, we have chosen the mediation of the United Nations, with talks on the ambassadorial level under Mr. Vance and Mr. Nemitz." In reply to another question about the ethnic origin of the people of FYROM, Ambassador Achevska stated that "we are Slavs and we speak a Slav language.”
On 24 February 1999, in an interview with the Ottawa Citizen, Gyordan Veselinov, FYROM'S Ambassador to Canada, admitted, "We are not related to the northern Greeks who produced leaders like Philip and Alexander the Great. We are a Slav people and our language is closely related to Bulgarian." He also commented, “There is some confusion about the identity of the people of my country."
In addition, the Foreign Minister of the FYROM, Slobodan Casule, in an interview to Utrinski Vesnik of Skopje on December 29, 2001, said that he mentioned to the Foreign Minister of Bulgaria, Solomon Pasi that they "belong to the same Slav people.”
Conclusion: Consequently, the plethora of questions, including questions about FYROM’s officials testifying their no-relation to ancient Macedonians that we had, remained unanswered in both prestigious US institutions of higher learning. Both were unacceptable incidents for the caliber of such institutions.
We consider that Columbia University and the prestigious Smithsonian Institute were unknowingly used by the FYROM propagandistic entities to further their quest to legitimize the usurpation of the Macedonian name, history, and culture while negotiations for resolution of these are ongoing between FYROM and Greece. Since we, and the general audience, were not afforded the opportunity to ask questions and to have a full discussion of the subject matter presented by Dr. Georgievska-Shine at the Smithsonian on April 25, 2008, we consider that the Smithsonian Institute should afford the opportunity for a presentation at the institute from the Hellenic perspective.
Cc Barbara Tuceling, Director of Smithsonian Resident Associate Program
Francine C. Berkowitz, Office of International Relations SRAP
Fay Dale Browning, Program Manager-Education and Cultural Program Smithsonian Assoc.
Senator Robert Menendez
Senator Barack Obama
Senator Olympia Snowe
Senator Carl Levin
Senator Debbie Stabenow
Congressman Gus Bilirakis
Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney
At the end of the presentation the Smithsonian Residence Association organizers of the conference allowed time for only one question and one comment. The question asked was: If the Macedonians were Greek, as you mentioned during your presentation, what is the relationship of today’s inhabitants of the FYROM with the ancient Macedonians? On what historical and ethno-cultural basis do you make the link of the modern day Slavs to Alexander?” Dr. Georgievska-Shine’s reply was that “…since the Macedonians were one of the most powerful peoples in the region, the Slavs adopted elements of the most dominant populace…in addition numerous conquerors overtook the region that those peoples did not exist any more.”
Someone from the audience then replied “Perhaps a lot of conquerors had settled on the area for a while, but they came and went… Greeks can claim that they have uninterruptedly been living in the same area, they talk a language that linguistically derives from the same Greek language and have preserved customs and features in the culture which come from antiquity,” adding “I find Dr Georgievka Shine’s comments on the “adoption of the Attic Greek dialect” by Alexander I the Macedon and by Alexander the Great fallacious, as the ancient Macedonians had their own Greek-Doric (North-West Doric) dialect, which can be attested by the Pella Katadesmos.”
Record note: In 1986 a scroll was found in the area of Pella and published in the Hellenic Dialectology Journal in 1993. It is known as the Pella katadesmos or the curse of Pella. It was written in the mid 4th century BC. According to the Journal “It is a magic spell or love charm written by a woman, named Dagina, whose lover Dionysophōn is apparently about to marry Thetima.” She invokes "Makron and the demons"to cause Dionysophon to marry her rather than Thetima. Professors Olivier Masson in the Oxford Classical Dictionary and James L. O’Neils from the University of Sidney, both concur that “The language is a harsh but distinctly recognizable form of North-West or Doric Greek, and the low social status of its writer, as evidenced by her vocabulary and belief in magic, strongly hint that a unique form of Doric Greek was spoken by lay people in Pella at the time the tab was written.
We were not afforded the opportunity to ask and discuss many other questions/arguments with Dr. Georgievska Shine’s as it is traditionally done in any academic environment, especially of the caliber as that of the Smithsonian Institute, as the program coordinators of the aforementioned institute cut us off with the excuse that the hall had to be readied for a different event. Furthermore, the speaker appeared to have been rushed off through an unseen exit, not event giving us the chance to have a few minutes of casual conversation with her. We met with a few of the Smithsonian coordinators just outside of the lecture hall for some time and expressed our concerns but during this time we did not see anyone making any sorts of preparation in the lecture hall.
Dr. Georgievska Shine during her presentation mentioned: “The Slavs of the Ottoman Macedonia were members of the Orthodox millet according to the Ottoman administration system that recognized religious and not national identities. They declared themselves largely as Christians.”
Record note: Even though we were not given the opportunity to reply to Dr. Georgievska-Shine during the question/answer period, we would her to note that the census by Himli Pasha in 1906 refers to various ethnicities in that area; however there is no mention of any “Macedonians.”423,000 41.71% Muslims (Turks and Albanians) 259,000 27.30% Greeks 178,000 18.81% Bulgarians 13,150 1.39% Serbs 73,000 7.72% others
We also like her to note that during the Ottoman era there was no use of the term Macedonia (meaning the boundaries of the geographic or ancient Macedonia). Macedonia was divided in two vilaets; the vilaet of Thessaloniki and the vilaet of Monastiri (Bitola). Skopje, the present capital of FYROM, was in a separate vilaet, the Kossovo vilaet with Skopje as its capital also. The Kossovo vilaet was outside of and was never any part of the so-called geographic Macedonia. Dr. Georgievska-Shine should also note that the percentages she mentioned that were received by the countries that liberated the area from the Ottomans-“Greece received 52%, “Macedonia” 38%, and Bulgaria 10%,” do not correspond to historic Macedonia, but to the area liberated from the Turks by the four allies (Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and Mavrovounion). That is, the area that was liberated was the area of the Ottoman vilaets of which the geographic Macedonia was a part of and a smaller portion of the whole liberated area. Actually Greece received 70% of the historic geographic Macedonia. About 3/5 of today’s FYROM, never belonged to ancient Macedonia, including its capital, Skopje, as this part was in the Kossovo vilaet which, as mentioned, was outside of the geographic Macedonian area.
Dr. Georgievska-Shine stated: “Vardar Macedonia incorporated into Serbia and referred to as South Serbia. The easternmost part of Macedonia ceded to Bulgaria (Pirin Macedonia). The southern part (Agean Macedonia) incorporated into Greece and referred to as northern Greece.”
Record note: The liberation of present day Greece from the Ottomans did not happen simultaneously in all former Greek territories, but it happened in different stages. In 1912-13, parts of Macedonia and Epirus were liberated. Since then Macedonia has been called as such. In fact, the first administrator in Thessaloniki in 1913 was called “Governor of Macedonia”. The term Northern Greece was ONLY for the Greek Ministry in Thessaloniki, because it included the region of Thrace as well. The Treaty of Bucharest on August 10, 1913 only set the borders of Bulgaria and its neighbors. It did not split “Macedonia,” as many FYROM sources are claiming. It did however split relevant Turkish vilayets.
The area that later comprised of the former Yugoslavia's southern republic was not called Macedonia but it bore the name of Vardarska Banovina (Province -of the river- Vardar). It was in 1944 that Marshal Joseph Broz Tito, the communist dictator ruling Yugoslavia at that time, created Yugoslavia's southern republic and called it "People’s Republic of Macedonia" and in 1963 "Socialist Republic of Macedonia" for purely political and expansionist reasons.
Record note: It is not the first time that American citizens of Macedonian/Greek descent, members of the Pan-Macedonian Association USA, observed their history being falsified, and denied their right to defend their ancestral history in prestigious academic institutions, right in their homeland!! On September 20, 2003, a symposium, titled "The Importance of Ilinden in the Awakening of Macedonian National Consciousness", took place in the School of Journalism, Columbia University, on September 20, 2003 and was sponsored by the Harriman Institute of Columbia Univeristy, the East Central European Center and the Macedonian Arts Council. It had as its main theme the anniversary of the Ilinten revolution against the Turkish rule in the Balkans. Mr. Kiro Gligorov, the former President of the FYROM, was the main speaker.
The theme of Mr. Gligorov's speech was "Macedonia from Ilinten until Now". Other participants in the discussion were Dr. Nadine Akhund, from Columbia University, addressing "1903 Seen Through the Eyes of Europe", Dr. Duncan Perry, "1903-The Ilinden Uprising and its Legacy". Mr. Blaze Ristovski from the Macedonian Academy of Science and Arts (MANU) introduced "Macedonia in 1903" and Dr. Andrew Rossos from the University of Toronto spoke on "Macedonian National Consciousness in 1903".
Dr. Nantine Akhurd, who received her doctorate at the University of Sorbonne, France, spoke first. She addressed the events that occurred in 1903 in Macedonia. She came to certain conclusions from the research she did, based on the correspondence of various European diplomats of that time. She read certain letters of diplomats and at the end she concluded that the Turks did not keep accurate records, "therefore it is difficult to calculate the exact number of the ethnicities that existed in the Turkish-occupied Macedonia. However from the correspondence of the diplomats we can assume the most prevailing nationalities were Slavic, Bulgarian and Serbian. In addition there were French, German and Italian companies in Salonik". No mention at all about the Greek element in the area!!
The rest of the academicians spoke and all of them praised and glorified the Ilinten uprising, which even though was not successful, "Macedonia" emerged as an international issue, which resulted in the awakening of the "Macedonian" national consciousness. No one mentioned that this uprising was staged by the Bulgarians and the Bulgarians were inviting all the nationalities in the area, even the peasant Turkish population, to revolt against the Sultan. No one pointed out that the Manifesto of Krushevo was written in Bulgarian. None of the academicians revealed that during the revolt, with Krushevo as its epicenter, the Turks who had been bribed by the Bulgarians exterminated the Greek population and the Hellenized Vlachs of Krushevo. No one mentioned that 366 Greek homes and 203 Greek shops were destroyed by the vengeance of the Turks and Bulgarians. The Slavs, today's self-proclaimed "Macedonians" were coerced to finance the "revolution", but as soon as they found the chance, they escaped to the mountains (Douglas Dakin).
Dr. Duncan Perry in his book The Politics of Terror: The MacEdonian Liberation Movement, 1893-1904, identified this uprising as an act of terror. It is not known under which circumstances he changed his opinion and why during the deliverance of his theme he concluded that the Ilinten revolution "awakened the "Macedonian" national consciousness".
A translator read Mr. Blaze Ristovski's lecture. King Philip, Alexander the Great, as well as Cyril and Methodius were depicted as "Macedonian" personas. Following a ten-minute break, Mr. Herbert S. Okun, former American Ambassador to UN, introduced the keynote speaker, the former President of the FYROM, Mr. Kiro Gligorov. The American former Ambassador named Mr. Gligorov as the "peace-maker" of the Balkans and "George Washington" of "Macedonia", since under his direction "Macedonia" was able to face various problems such as the problems with the Serbian Church, problems with the Albanians and issues with Greece about the name".
A copy of Mr. Gligorov's translated in English address was distributed to the audience, since the former President spoke in "Macedonian". Some college students, sitting near us, explained that they were Bulgarians, they however could understand everything that Mr. Gligorov was saying (but don't the FYROM people insist that their language is the same language that Alexander the Great and his "Macedonian" soldiers were using to communicate?). Mr. Gligorov's speech lasted for two hours and he continuously was receiving messages from various individuals. In the beginning we thought that individuals in charge of the symposium were trying to urge him to be brief, but as we assumed they were rather urging him to do otherwise. Thus reaching the end of his lecture there was no time for the academically established etiquette of "questions and answer period" between panelists and audience, especially in such an institution of higher learning as the Columbia University.
From various articles written previously there were a number of voices that advocated contradictory theories about the origins of the FYROM inhabitants. Here are some testimonies from The FYROM’s officials:
The former President of The FYROM, Kiro Gligorov said: “We are Slavs who came to this area in the sixth century ... we are not descendants of the ancient Macedonians" (Foreign Information Service Daily Report, Eastern Europe, February 26, 1992, p. 35).
Also, Mr Gligorov declared: "We are Macedonians but we are Slav Macedonians. That's who we are! We have no connection to Alexander the Greek and his Macedonia… Our ancestors came here in the 5th and 6th century" (Toronto Star, March 15, 1992).
On 22 January 1999, Ambassador of the FYROM to USA, Ljubica Achevska gave a speech on the present situation in the Balkans. In answering questions at the end of her speech Mrs. Acevshka said: "We do not claim to be descendants of Alexander the Great … Greece is Macedonia’s second largest trading partner, and its number one investor. Instead of opting for war, we have chosen the mediation of the United Nations, with talks on the ambassadorial level under Mr. Vance and Mr. Nemitz." In reply to another question about the ethnic origin of the people of FYROM, Ambassador Achevska stated that "we are Slavs and we speak a Slav language.”
On 24 February 1999, in an interview with the Ottawa Citizen, Gyordan Veselinov, FYROM'S Ambassador to Canada, admitted, "We are not related to the northern Greeks who produced leaders like Philip and Alexander the Great. We are a Slav people and our language is closely related to Bulgarian." He also commented, “There is some confusion about the identity of the people of my country."
In addition, the Foreign Minister of the FYROM, Slobodan Casule, in an interview to Utrinski Vesnik of Skopje on December 29, 2001, said that he mentioned to the Foreign Minister of Bulgaria, Solomon Pasi that they "belong to the same Slav people.”
Conclusion: Consequently, the plethora of questions, including questions about FYROM’s officials testifying their no-relation to ancient Macedonians that we had, remained unanswered in both prestigious US institutions of higher learning. Both were unacceptable incidents for the caliber of such institutions.
We consider that Columbia University and the prestigious Smithsonian Institute were unknowingly used by the FYROM propagandistic entities to further their quest to legitimize the usurpation of the Macedonian name, history, and culture while negotiations for resolution of these are ongoing between FYROM and Greece. Since we, and the general audience, were not afforded the opportunity to ask questions and to have a full discussion of the subject matter presented by Dr. Georgievska-Shine at the Smithsonian on April 25, 2008, we consider that the Smithsonian Institute should afford the opportunity for a presentation at the institute from the Hellenic perspective.
Cc Barbara Tuceling, Director of Smithsonian Resident Associate Program
Francine C. Berkowitz, Office of International Relations SRAP
Fay Dale Browning, Program Manager-Education and Cultural Program Smithsonian Assoc.
Senator Robert Menendez
Senator Barack Obama
Senator Olympia Snowe
Senator Carl Levin
Senator Debbie Stabenow
Congressman Gus Bilirakis
Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney
Sunday, May 18, 2008
WHAT IS THE NATIONAL CHARACTER OF THE MACEDONIAN SLAVS
This is the first issue in the series of "Macedonia: and the Macedonian Question".
Throughout the series, we will be inviting emminent academics and political figures from around the world to view, examine and comment on this most difficult of socio-political problems.
The series will deal at length with all aspects of the question, from the ancient movements and settlements of peoples to the most up-to-date polls and censuses; from the manipulation of people by the use of force and terror to the more insidious techniques of modern propaganda; and from the development of early slavic languages to the present, unprecedented accusations of the creation of a new, "literary standard language", all of which have been used to convince a people of who they are and what they are not!
Ultimately, this publication hopes to help the efforts being made to set straight the problems within the region known as Macedonia and to disentangle the knot of misinformation, hidden facts and lies, all of which has resulted in particular interpretations (or misinterpretations) of history. This is the legacy of many periods of instability, dating back to the 1877 - 78 Russo-Turkish War and the Bulgarian liberation, the Berlin Treaty of 1879 and decades of Serbianization and of the far more protracted and subtle Hellenization of the Southsrn region of Macedonia. Of course, the last 45 years of totalitarian rule has done more to bury the truth than any other single force, but this series will endeavour to confront the expantionist nationalism that presently seeks to continue its history of falsification and oppression of the Bulgarian character of Macedonia.
By presenting the views of outside observers and "innocent bystanders", we feel sure that this series will help to give the clearest and most objective view of the problems and their best solutions and will serve as an essential companion to the other publications, concerning this problem, which have more "involved" contributors.
We are certain that, in the end, by careful work and study, the truth will out and real and, above all, just solutions will be found and adopted.
Andy Barrett
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. President, Dear friends. Ladies and gentlemen,
First of all please allow me to express my sinccrcsl gratitude to the President of this Organization and to the Committee for having afforded me the precious opportunity of addressing this Conference. Time is short and I do not want to claim your attention longer than is absolutely necessary. I honestly feel that perhaps my justification for speaking to you about the problems of Macedonia is somewhat flimsy. What are my credentials? It is true, I am a professor of Slavic and East European Studies, but as far as my teaching and writing is concerned, Russia and, more recently, Poland have come more closely under my observation. I hope , nevertheless, that you might forgive me my boldness to appear here before you when I refer to a point of saving grace in my favour: I love the Southeast of Europe, and five wonderful years of my life were spent in Bulgaria in the capacities of an academic teacher and a public servant. There I had the opportunity of meeting people from all walks of life, of making myself familiar with the history, the culture and living conditions of the country and last but not least, of striking up close and firm friendships, some of which have survived the trials and tribulations of the catastrophic events which living through has been our common lot. I also availed myself of the possibility of making a trip to Macedonia and, although the journey was short, places like Kratovo, Skopic, Veles, Shtip and Goma Dzumaya are for me not merely names, geographic nomenclature or statistical data, but I can say: I was there; I saw, I listened and heard; I have not forgotten!
I will not go into a presentation of the manifold facts of history, ethnography, linguistics, folklore and statistics which bear testimony - and I think this testimony is incontrovertible - of the Bulgarian character of the Slavic-speaking population settled in Macedonia. Whole libraries, have been written to establish the Bulgarianism of the Macedonian Slavs and I believe that many of you are much more intimately familiar with this vast literature than I could ever be. And, Indeed, it would be absurd if I, a mere outside observer, and only an occasional one at that, would presume to teach you things which you not only know, but live.
Let me, however, point out one circumstance which in my eyes, has profoundly changed the whole situation. Up to the Second World War the Bulgarian Macedonians, after the retreat of Turkey from Europe, had to struggle incessantly for the preservation of their heritage against the encroachment and machinations of the Pan-Serbian circles, carried under the slogan that Macedonia is nothing but Southern Serbia; and on the other hand they had to fight the absurd notion propounded by Athens, that the Bulgarian-speaking Macedonians are but "Slavophone Greeks". That would be the same as if the English would assert that the French-Canadians are but "Francophone" English people! Recent events have taught us what reactions to expect from the French-Canadians if such insinuations were to be made.
I believe, however, that it was easier to counter the Pan-Serbian claims, even though they were dressed in the political scholarship of men like A.Belie and Jovan Cvijic, because here was only the matter of a spirited and well-reasoned defense against the illegitimate ambitions of expansionists, which was, at bottom, still old fashioned nationalism. And this is still the situation in which the Macedo-Bulgarians find themselves under Greek rule.
I wish,however, to call your attention to a much more sinister device concocted in Belgrade under the sign of the Red Star, the Hammer and the Sickle. That the invention of a separate Macedonian nation, a Macedonian literary language and even a Macedonian history, is divorced from all the evidences of historical research and scholarship. By sophistry and the distortion of the historical facts it is said, for example, that St.Clement of Ochrid was a member of some separate Macedonian people which has never exited, and that the language used by the apostles and teachers of the Slavs for the christianization and the enlightenment of the Slavonic world was a separate Macedonian idiom, which has nothing or only very little to do with the Bulgarian language as such. In order to find some historical foundation for these unproven and undemonslrable allegations, historians of this school have even restyled the West-Bulgarian Kingdom of Tsar Samuel as a state run for the benefit of the mythical separate Macedonian people. Let me quote only one authority, the eminent Russian byzaniologist, A. A. Vassilijev, whose monumcnted history of the Byzantine Empire is generally considered a standard work in this field. What has he to say about the national character of Samuels Kingdom?"Afler the death of John Tzimisoes the Bulgarians took advantage of the internal complications in the Empire and rebelled against Byzantine domination. The outstanding leader of this period was Samuel, the energetic ruler of Western independent Bulgaria, and probably the founder of a new dynasty, one of the most prominent rulers of the First Bulgarian Empire." In the entire passage dealing with this heroic, as well as tragic episode in Bulgarian history, Vassiljev consistently uses the term "Bulgaria". In a footnote, it is true, he mentions the hypothesis put forward by the Serbian historian D.Anastasijevich that Samuel's Kingdom was not lawfully Bulgarian, but a "Sloveno-macedonian Empire". But quite obviously he does not make this hypothesis his own. I think that in the market of international historical scholarship the authority of Professor Vassiljev rates considerably higher than that of Mr.Anaslasijevich. Another noteworthy fact that is such attempts to deprive the Bulgarians of their history and heritage by declaring that they were not Bulgarians at all, had already been made in the years soon after the First World War. This shows that the recent creation of a separate non-Bulgarian Macedonian nation, complete with history, literary language, folklore, etc., by fiat from above, does have its precedent.
It goes without saying that the endeavors to divest the Macedo-Bulgarians of their national identity were accompanied in recent times by violent measures designed to lend force to the arguments set forth by Pan-Serbian propaganda, no matter whether this propaganda appeared disguised as scholarship or downright indoctrination. Let me quote from a symposium entitled," The case for an Autonomous Macedonia" compiled and edited in 1945 by Mr.Christ Atanasoff. One of the crown witnesses summoned to testify was the well-known British Balkan expert. Miss Edith Durham. In 1931, she wrote the following in the paper La Macedonian, published in Geneva: "During the Balkan War there was a Serbian schoolmaster - an Austrian subject - at Cetinje, who taught German in the boy's school. He rejoiced greatly over the conquest the Serbian army was making in Macedonia. It would add much valuable land to Serbia. An Englishman said to him: "Oh, but Serbia cannot annex these places, they are all Bulgar". The inhabitants put the article after the noun. This is well known as a Bulgar peculiarity. The Serb replied: "That does not matter. When our army has been there for two years, you will find no articles after nouns there, I can assure you". But, in spite of torture, murder, imprisonment, the Bulgai article still lives on at the end of the noun."
Since it was not possible to do away with that stubborn post posited article by administrative matters, comprising the whole gamut from violent suppression to persistent persuasion and bribery, a new tack had to be tried. The article was declared not to be a peculiarity of the Bulgarian language, but also a characteristic of a hitherto non-existent separate Macedonian language.
In parenthesis let me say this: Since the disappearance of the classical, semi-Hellenic Macedonian Kingdom of Philip, Alexander and Perseus in Roman limes, the terms "Macedonian" and the "Macedonia" have been used as geographic terms for that area in Southeastern Europe, which is still known under this name. Since the middle ages it has been inhabited predominantly by Slavo-Bulgarians and by minorities of Albanians, Valachians, Turks, Greeks, Gypsies, Jews and, as the statistics of the 19th and 20th Centuries show, surprisingly few Serbians. For more than a thousand years the Slavs living in this area have been considered Bulgarians, or to be more precise. Western Bulgarians whose idiom is distinguished by certain dialectical peculiarities, without thereby losing its general Bulgarian character. This clearly recognized fact, incidentally, caused the great 19th century philologists, who laid the groundwork for a systematic study of this language to call it, in the early stages of its development, Old Bulgarian. The language employed by Sts.Cyril and Metodi, St.Klement and St.Naum and a host of other medieval writers and teachers is an old Bulgarian idiom. Please allow me to make a personal remark in this context. When I, in the spring "of 1931, began to study Slavic philology at the University of Munich, we used the famous handbooks and grammar of this language written by the celebrated German Slavist, August Leskich. These books described and analyzed the phonology, morphology, vocabulary syntax of a language which unequivocally was designated as Old Bulgarian :Handbuch or Grammatik der Altbulgarichen Sprache. It is also true that the term "Old Church Slavonic", most frequently used nowadays,was sometimes applied to this language, but one should keep in mind that this term is basically meaningless, at least up to the times of Peter the Great. In the course of his secularizing transformations and reforms, Peter favored the introduction of the Russian vernacular into common usage, relegating the then library language of the Muscovite Tsardom, still based as it were on Old Bulgarian, to purely liturgical and ecclesiastical purposes. This practice was later followed by other awakening Slavic nations, especially those of the Orthodox faith.profoundly. Nevertheless may it be said here, in parenthesis only, that the Old Bulgarian imprint on the native language of the Russians was so strong that even nowadays authoritative scholars in the field of Slavic linguistics and philology, such as Boris Unbegaun, speak with good reason about the partially Old Bulgarian character of the Russian standard literary language.
Thus, the fiction of Macedonia as "Southern Serbia" could not be maintained in the long run because it really held no water. Even responsible Serbian leaders could not close their eyes to this fact. Even the Yugoslav Ambassador in Sofia, Mr.Milanovich, in a moment of deep crisis for the Yugoslav State, that is in the summer of 1940, saw fit to forward to his master in Belgrade the Prime Minister Slojadinovich, a statement from Macedonia received in Bulgaria on the situation in this region. Here we read: "Everybody has to know that today Macedonia is not lost for Bulgaria, but on the contrary, there exists a healthy Bulgarian spirit more than ever. Some call themselves Macedonians, but this is due to the terrible reaction which the name Bulgarian provokes in the Serbians. It is well known that all injustices, robbery and violence create reaction and disgust. This is exactly what the Serbians have achieved in Macedonia. When they came to Macedonia they knew that Bulgarians lived in this country. That is why they thought, by crude measures and lawlessness, to frighten the people and to win them over for the Serbian cause. But all was in vain. And now they are surprised at the anti-Serbian feelings in the hearts of the majority of people. The common wish of the people is : Let Gypsy come, only let this one, the Serbian, go away. Anathema to any Bulgarian who will forget his own brothers.".
The war and its aftermath did away with the Pan-Serbian military-bourgeois monarchy. Overboard went what Marxists call Bourgeois nationalism and chauvinism. But let no man be deceived that the substitution of the old order by the dictatorship of a Communist party and its leader spelt the disappearance of an expansionist Greater Serbian nationalism. Had the means employed between 1912 and 1940 been crude and brutal, and therefore in the end unsuccessful, new devices had to be invented, this time more clever, more insidious, in order to attain the same goal. This time under the banner of a Yugoslav Communist Revolution! If we have failed so far wean away the Macedonians from their Bulgarianism, because we tried so hard to make them into Serbians, well, then let us now try to insinuate that they arc neither Serbians nor Bulgarians, but a separate national entity, for instance, Macedonians with their own history, language and culture; but let us also make it perfectly clear to them that only we here in Belgrade are willing and able to guarantee this artificial nationality concocted in the test tubes of Serbian Communists and their non-Communist predecessors. The whole Macedonian nation and the so called language -this I wish to affirm here before you- is not a philologicum, but a polilicum designed according to the well tried maxim of old: divide et impcra - divide and rule. History teaches that a ruler, a parly or a leading group which enjoys unlimited power and has the will to use this power ruthlessly for the attainment of its goal, has always found partisans, advocates and adherents prepared to do the bidding of those at the helm of the state, sometimes against their own belter knowledge. Wasn't it one of the great cynics on the throne. Henry the VIII of England, who said when planning something particularly outrageous and arbitrary "let me first carry out this measure, afterwards I shall always find professors at Oxford to justify it". So it is no wonder that in Skopie and elsewhere the Belgrade government should have found learned collaborators who fell for their line. I think that under the circumstances prevailing one should not judge them and their zealous efforts too harshly. But it is deplorable that scholars abroad with solid academic reputations and achievements, who are not exposed to the pressures of the intellectual under totalitarian regimes, should also swallow this latest Belgrade bait hook, line and sinker. Can they really accept the thesis that, contrary to their own testimony and conviction, people like the Miladinoff brothers, Gregory Perlicerr, Alexander Todoroff, Damjan Gruev, Gotse Delceff, Peju Javoroff, Anion Strashimirof, Dimitr Taleff are Macedonians in the sense of the word bestowed upon it with the blessings of the Belgrade party bosses? And what about men who figure so prominently in the Pantheon of Bulgarian letters like Ivan Vazoff and Teodor Trajanoff who lived and worked in Bulgaria proper, but whose family background is Macedonian, Bulgaro-Macedonian that is. What about such a significant figure of the Bulgarian Renaissance like Raiko Zhinzifoff from Veles, who declared in 1963 in his Novobulgarska sbirka - or did he, perhaps, call it Novo-Makedonska sbirka? "As Bulgarian language we regard that language which is spoken in all Macedonia, Thrace and Bulgaria proper. The differences between the dialects are negligible. Every Bulgarian who does not suffer from nearsighteness cannot designate a certain expression as "Macedonian" or "Thracian"., for there are no "Macedonians" or "Thracians" as individual nations, but only Slavo-Bulgarians - in short, one Bulgarian people and one Bulgarian language".
One could object here that this is a voice from the long forgotten depth of the 19th century. One could also maintain that Zhinzifoff, with all his linguistic and folklore erudition, was not up to par with regard to the achievements of philological science, that is that we in the 20th century know better now. Let us then examine a few testimonies belonging to our century.
Let us first listen to the voice of practical common sense, the voice of a man who would never lay claim to the reputation of a learned academic linguist. The opinions of this man, however, deserve to be listened to attentively and carefully because they are based on the profound national experience of a statesman and a leader of his people, Ivan Mihailoff.In his book, Makedonia: A Switzerland of the Balkans, edited and translated by Christ Anastasoff, he makes the following observations pertinent to the linguistic problem: "Like the scholars of different countries who were familiar with Macedonia, so also did the Turkish authorities and all the rest of the objective observers consider the Macedonian Slavs as Bulgarians. This was not only upon the basis of the logically had introduced in their schools, but on the basis of all other ethnic features by which a given nationality is judged. The local dialects of the Macedonian Slavs arc basically considered by all as Bulgarian language. Every nationality employs its own common literary language, while in every nationality meets different dialects. As far as the Bulgarian dialects in Macedonia arc concirned they do not vary very much from the rest of the Bulgarian dialects as, for instance, do dialects among the Germans, Italians and other nationalities. The dialects of the Germans in Switzerland is, perhaps, the most difficult for all the rest of the Germans.
But that did not prevent the Swiss of German origin to consider as their own the common German literary language. Precisely so, before the appearance of the regimes of national oppression in Macedonia after 1912, the native Bulgarians officially used that literary language which is common for all the Bulgarians of the world and to the formation of which the cultural workers of Macedonia have contributed a great deal." This point of view deserves to be firmly kept in mind, especially in view of the artificial construction of a new "Macedonian" nation and language as commanded from above. For this purpose the chief perpetrators of this dubious enterprise now take great pains to smuggle into this newfangled synthetic idiom all sorts of Serbanianist and other foreign ingredients so as to alienate the Macedo-Bulgarians from their historical, cultural and linguistic matrix.
But what has the linguistic science of the 20-th century to say about these attempts to deny the Bulgarian character of the Slavic idiom spoken in Macedonia? Here I cannot go into the details of the lingiustic argument adduced by international scholars, to refute the claims. To note that Professor A.M.Selishchev, the eminent Russian philologist, in his article entitled "Macedonian Dialectology and Serbian Linguistics" already in 1935 destroyed the claims of Serbian scholars like Velich, Djordjevich, Pavlovich and others that the idiom spoken in Macedonia is closer to Serbian than to Bulgaria should be enough. This task he performed in a thorough scholary way, basing himself upon the findings and achievements of modern linguistic research in the field of Slavic philology. Whoever is interested in the course of his irrefutable reasonic can study this article in a volume recently published by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences under the title L'histoire Bulgare dans les Ouvrages des Savants Europeens. Professor Selishchev cannot be suspected of any sort of polilicing. He has worked in Russia under the old as well as the new regime; following nothing, to the best of his abilities, but the dictates of his scientific conscience. It is remarkable to see how to this pure scholar and cabinet savant, far as he was from the passionate turmoil of the political motives behind the scientific smokescreen spread by the named Serbian scholars. He said: "The aim of all these books is the same: namely, to furnish an historical, ethnographic and linguistic justification for Serbian domination in Macedonia - to furnish this justification by means of true scholarship. The arrogance in the style, the irony with which the Bulgarian people are treated is another common feature of the books of Belgrade professors. In the case of Professor Georgevich this irony borders upon downright rudeness. On the other hand, everything Serbian is idealized. The attempts of the authors of such books to clothe their products in a science-like garb must be unmasked. The true character of their content, harmful to all science, must be demonstrated".
The results of the linguistic and ethnographic research in the field of Macedo-Bulgarian studies undertaken by Professor Selishchev not so long ago match the findings not only of the Bulgaro-Macedonian philologist Krusle Misirkoff, which he published in 1910-1911, but also of a number of 19th century Serbian scholars like Stefan Verkovich, Tuminski, A.Hadzic, Vasa Peladic and others. That authors like Selishchev, Misirkoff and Verkovic working at different times and under completely different circumstances should have arrived at the same results, with regard to the Bulgarian character of the dialects spoken in Macedonia and their geographic extensions points to two noteworthy qualities of their research Its exactitude and its factual and logical consistency, in view of which all the counter-arguments of Serbian and Pseudo-Macedonian opponents take on the suspect colouring of sophisty and political expediency. More proof was recently given for the Bulgarianism of the Macedonian dialects by the Bulgarian philologist Blagoi Shklifoff in a paper about the idiom spoken in the area of Kostur. From the evidence he is able to muster, it becomes perfectly clear that the Kostur dialect cannot be used to buttress the hypothetical existence of a separate and individual Slavic language called Macedonian, but that here, as elsewhere, we deal with but another variant of the Bulgarian language as spoken by the Western half of the nation.If indeed, this is the conclusion at which Mr.Shklifoff arrives, the dialects in Macedonia are by their character intrinsically different from those spoken in Moesia and Thrace, then these differences would have to show more than anywhere else in the dialect of Kostur, the area of which borders on two non-Slavic linguistic regions, located geographically distant from the other Bulgarian dialects. A strictly scholary approach to this idiom, however, cannot but establish its basically Bulgarian character. The paper by Mr.Blagoi Shklifoff was published in 1968. Sclishches's analysis and demolition of the claims raised in 1935. But the same position and results are visible in the book about Macedonia by the Czech Balkaniologic Vladimir Sis which was printed in Prague in 1914 and came out in Zurich, Switzerland in 1981 in a German translation. After Sis enumerates all the factors which effect the closest mutual correspondence between Old Bulgarian and the Modem Bulgarian language as spoken also in Macedonia, he points to certain philological peculiarities by means of which the Bulgarian language is distinguished from all other Slavic language, Serbian included. After a painstaking comparison between the Bulgarian standard literary language and various dialects spoken in Macedonia, he arrives at the following conclusion which I shall quote here verbatim "Whoever is familiar with the basic structural principles of the two neighboring languages must, even though he may not be a philologist, arrive, on the basis of the examples cited here, at the same conclusion to which also the French slavicist, Louis Leger, came, and I repeat his words: The Macedonian Slavs are Bulgarians and speak a Bulgarian dialect. Indeed, even the Serbian Vuk Karadzic, who was the first to publish some Macedonian folksongs, selected them in order to determine with their help the basic characteristics of the Bulgarian language. That there occur Serbanianisms in some North Macedonian dialects does not prove anything. It is inevitable that in border areas between two linguistically kindred groups a certain inlcrminigling of vocabulary lakes place. If the fin Serbianisms in the regions of Tetovo or Kumanovo, we also find Bulgarianisms in the Prizren dialect behind the Shar Planina, a purely Serbian area. The Russian scholar Hilferding says in his book An Excursion Into Hersegovina And Old Serbia:" In the language of the Serbians around Prizren it is clearly noticeable how much it tends to resemble the Bulgarian dialects. It would be interesting to investigate how this blend of the Serbian language with the Macedo-Bulgarian has come about. "That authorities marshalled here in such an imposing array would be sufficient to support and prove the point I wish make here, namely, that the language spoken by the Slavs between Skopie and Salonica, Kostur and Kustandil is neither Serbian nor "Macedonian", but Bulgarian. Please allow me to invite one more witness to make his deposition. The man and scholar I am refering to is a former countryman. Professor Guslav Wcigand, the eminent German Balkanologist, cthnographer, linguist and lexicographer. Wcigang ordinarily was no Slavist. When he began his career, his research interests were centered in Rumania and Albania. He is one of the very few Western Scholars to give the world a grammar and reader of the Albanian languagc. But in the course of his studies he became convinced that he would have to embrace with his research also the Slavic groups settling in this, as Christ Atanasoff has called it, tragic peninsula. This extension of his studies had the effect that Wcigang became also a linguistic expert in the Modern Bulgarian language, a field in which again he proved himself as grammarian and lexicographer. In 1924, he published in Leipzig his fundamental work Ethnographic von Maccdonicn, a chapter of which is devoted under the headline "The Bulgarian Language As Spoken In Macedonia" (Das Makedonische Bulgarisch) to linguistic issues. The result of Weigand's meticulous observations do not essentially diverge from the findings of the other students of these affairs, quoted in this context. But in one point, at least as far as I can sec on the basis of the limited number of documents available to me, Weigang had an intuition which had not occured, at least in so many words, to other scholars. He was , of course, fully aware of what was going on at that time in Macedonia, a period which Ivan Michailov, as we have seen, so aptly called "The Regimes Of National Oppression". He must have speculated which devices, apart from brute force, the oppressors might yet use to achieve their goal - the denationalization of the Macedo-Bulgarians. As a well-trained experienced linguist and ethnographcr it was, in all probability, clear to him that all the attempts at Serbanization would end in futility and frustration. But then - what other means could the enemy of the Bulgarian nationality propose to undermine and destroy Macedonian Bugarianism? And here he hit intuilively what was to happen 20 years later. The artificial, test tube creation of a separate Macedonian History, literary language and nation. Here are the conclusions at which Weigang arrived after a conscientious examination of the linguistic and ethnographic facts: "Whatever segment of this language we analyze, again and again it becomes evident that we deal here not with the Serbian, but the Bulgarian language. All attempts of Serbian chauvinists to design the Bulgarian language as spoken in Macedonia as a Serbian dialect or as a mixed language of indefinite character will therefore end in failure. One could pose the question whether, perhaps, the Macedonian Slavs haven't their own language, something in between Serbian and Bulgarian. Such an assumption, however, would be absolutely unjustified, for, as we have seen, in phonology, morphology and syntax Macedonian Bulgarian and Bulgarian proper harmonize in every respect. Certain exclusively Macedonian peculiarities cannot essentially change this picture. In the lexicon there occurs a number of words of Greek or Turkish origin which do not exist in the Serbian or Bulgarian vocabulary. In proportion to the overall lexicon, however, their number is quite insignificant, as can be seen from the linguistic samples adduced here, which clearly demonstrate that Macedonian can only be considered a Bulgarian Dialect".
In the 1926, the Russian journalist L.Nemanov, a representative of the respectable emigre newspaper Poslednie Novosti, edited in Paris, travelled in what then was officially called "Southern Serbia". He published a report about his impressions and experiences under the title, "What I Saw in Macedonia". His findings are those of a man who was probably a good practical linguist, but certainly not a learned professor of linguistics. They felicitously supplement the results of strict academic research, in his own trend of observant impressionism, he relates: "The Serbian authorities insist that the language spoken by the population in Macedonia is not Bulgarian, but a Macedonian dialect of the Serbian language. This reminds me of a case when a Serbian man of science was trying to prove to me that in general there was no Bulgarian language, but that it was a Shop dialect of the Serbian, to which I seriously retorted that Russian as an independent language was nonexistent to except as a Moscow dialect of the Serbian language. That is why whatever the Serbian politicians cail the language in Macedonia, it is a fact that this local language is comprehensible to me, a man knowing a bit of Bulgarian, while it is difficult for me to understand Serbian". This statement, not devoid of humor as it is, may furnish some comic relief after all the dry seriousness of philological research and linguistic inquiry. But one should not forget that it is the question of depriving a people of its national identity, the first blows are invariably directed at its language, because a common language, a common heritage and a common destiny are the chief characteristics of historical nationality. And the pride in just this heritage and the hopes and aspirations of a common destiny, in rcturn,arc expressed in just this common language. So the best way to emasculate a national group is to rob it of its native tongue or to corrupt it. If it should turn oul impossible to extirpate the language of a group one desires to oppress and destroy - well, then let's try to persuade them and the world that their language docs not exist at all, that in reality it is quite another language they arc speaking, a language of whose existence they had not even dreamed before, which, however, exists because we tell them so. You do not speak Bulgarian, you have never spoken Bulgarian, neither have St.Cyril, St.Methodius, St-Clemens, Tsar Simeon or Tsar Samuel. They have all spoken Macedonian only, ignorant and unenlightened as they were, they didn't notice. The same is true of the Miladinoff, Gotse Delchev, Peju Javoroff or Teodor Trajanoff. They did not know, but now they are better informed because we tell them so.
A nation which will not surrender its own national identity and national heritage, will not give up its native tongue, the treasure house of all its achievements and aspirations. When the Israelis and the Irish succeeded in re-establishing their own state, it was the first legitimate, and natural endeavor of their leading minds to recapture their lost or half-lost native idioms and restore them to their rightful glory. When, before the First World War, the Prussian government undertook to ban instruction in Polish in the schools in the eastern provinces of Prussia these decrees were bitterly and resolutely resisted by the Polish minority. In the end, all these measures proved futile, but they have contributed to poisoning the atmosphere between Germans and Poles down to our own day. The press tells us what undesirable things happened in the Southern Tyrol where the Italian government shows but scant regard for the cultural rights of the German-speaking minority. Alas, these examples, spread all over the globe, could be multiplied ad infinitum. It also shows that even at a lime when many of the more advanced nations are making great moral efforts to overcome a narrow-minded, self-centered and often aggressive nationalism there persists the feeling that questions of language and national identity cannot and must not be resolved by cither brute force or cunning persuasion, or by distortion and falsification of the historical and statistical facts. In his attempts to explain the origins of human language, the great German humanist, statesman and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt once declared that all research in this problem leads to a point where further explanation avails nothing, where even the keenest, most critical intelligence will have lo admit that human language in its deepest well-springs is a divine miracle. From the limes of the ancient Helenes on, the nations have delighted in their own languages, have recorded them not only with the intelligent curiosity of science and scholarship, but also with a sense of awe and wonder. At bottom, their languages have always appeared to them as a precious vessel, a national possession cherished above all other things, a sacred covenant with their inscrutable destiny. As long as there is one living soul also among the Macedo-Bulgarians who remembers this deep in his heart and acts accordingly, the Macedo-Bulgarian cause is not lost. Keep the banner of your language flying, then the hope for a free Macedonia for the Macedo-Bulgarians will be resurrected again and again, and in the end, if Heaven wills it so, Macedonia's goal will be fulfilled.
(Professor Heinrich A.Stammler, IMRO - Union of The Macedonian Brotherhoods in Bulgaria, Sofia, 1991), www.promacedonia.org
Throughout the series, we will be inviting emminent academics and political figures from around the world to view, examine and comment on this most difficult of socio-political problems.
The series will deal at length with all aspects of the question, from the ancient movements and settlements of peoples to the most up-to-date polls and censuses; from the manipulation of people by the use of force and terror to the more insidious techniques of modern propaganda; and from the development of early slavic languages to the present, unprecedented accusations of the creation of a new, "literary standard language", all of which have been used to convince a people of who they are and what they are not!
Ultimately, this publication hopes to help the efforts being made to set straight the problems within the region known as Macedonia and to disentangle the knot of misinformation, hidden facts and lies, all of which has resulted in particular interpretations (or misinterpretations) of history. This is the legacy of many periods of instability, dating back to the 1877 - 78 Russo-Turkish War and the Bulgarian liberation, the Berlin Treaty of 1879 and decades of Serbianization and of the far more protracted and subtle Hellenization of the Southsrn region of Macedonia. Of course, the last 45 years of totalitarian rule has done more to bury the truth than any other single force, but this series will endeavour to confront the expantionist nationalism that presently seeks to continue its history of falsification and oppression of the Bulgarian character of Macedonia.
By presenting the views of outside observers and "innocent bystanders", we feel sure that this series will help to give the clearest and most objective view of the problems and their best solutions and will serve as an essential companion to the other publications, concerning this problem, which have more "involved" contributors.
We are certain that, in the end, by careful work and study, the truth will out and real and, above all, just solutions will be found and adopted.
Andy Barrett
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. President, Dear friends. Ladies and gentlemen,
First of all please allow me to express my sinccrcsl gratitude to the President of this Organization and to the Committee for having afforded me the precious opportunity of addressing this Conference. Time is short and I do not want to claim your attention longer than is absolutely necessary. I honestly feel that perhaps my justification for speaking to you about the problems of Macedonia is somewhat flimsy. What are my credentials? It is true, I am a professor of Slavic and East European Studies, but as far as my teaching and writing is concerned, Russia and, more recently, Poland have come more closely under my observation. I hope , nevertheless, that you might forgive me my boldness to appear here before you when I refer to a point of saving grace in my favour: I love the Southeast of Europe, and five wonderful years of my life were spent in Bulgaria in the capacities of an academic teacher and a public servant. There I had the opportunity of meeting people from all walks of life, of making myself familiar with the history, the culture and living conditions of the country and last but not least, of striking up close and firm friendships, some of which have survived the trials and tribulations of the catastrophic events which living through has been our common lot. I also availed myself of the possibility of making a trip to Macedonia and, although the journey was short, places like Kratovo, Skopic, Veles, Shtip and Goma Dzumaya are for me not merely names, geographic nomenclature or statistical data, but I can say: I was there; I saw, I listened and heard; I have not forgotten!
I will not go into a presentation of the manifold facts of history, ethnography, linguistics, folklore and statistics which bear testimony - and I think this testimony is incontrovertible - of the Bulgarian character of the Slavic-speaking population settled in Macedonia. Whole libraries, have been written to establish the Bulgarianism of the Macedonian Slavs and I believe that many of you are much more intimately familiar with this vast literature than I could ever be. And, Indeed, it would be absurd if I, a mere outside observer, and only an occasional one at that, would presume to teach you things which you not only know, but live.
Let me, however, point out one circumstance which in my eyes, has profoundly changed the whole situation. Up to the Second World War the Bulgarian Macedonians, after the retreat of Turkey from Europe, had to struggle incessantly for the preservation of their heritage against the encroachment and machinations of the Pan-Serbian circles, carried under the slogan that Macedonia is nothing but Southern Serbia; and on the other hand they had to fight the absurd notion propounded by Athens, that the Bulgarian-speaking Macedonians are but "Slavophone Greeks". That would be the same as if the English would assert that the French-Canadians are but "Francophone" English people! Recent events have taught us what reactions to expect from the French-Canadians if such insinuations were to be made.
I believe, however, that it was easier to counter the Pan-Serbian claims, even though they were dressed in the political scholarship of men like A.Belie and Jovan Cvijic, because here was only the matter of a spirited and well-reasoned defense against the illegitimate ambitions of expansionists, which was, at bottom, still old fashioned nationalism. And this is still the situation in which the Macedo-Bulgarians find themselves under Greek rule.
I wish,however, to call your attention to a much more sinister device concocted in Belgrade under the sign of the Red Star, the Hammer and the Sickle. That the invention of a separate Macedonian nation, a Macedonian literary language and even a Macedonian history, is divorced from all the evidences of historical research and scholarship. By sophistry and the distortion of the historical facts it is said, for example, that St.Clement of Ochrid was a member of some separate Macedonian people which has never exited, and that the language used by the apostles and teachers of the Slavs for the christianization and the enlightenment of the Slavonic world was a separate Macedonian idiom, which has nothing or only very little to do with the Bulgarian language as such. In order to find some historical foundation for these unproven and undemonslrable allegations, historians of this school have even restyled the West-Bulgarian Kingdom of Tsar Samuel as a state run for the benefit of the mythical separate Macedonian people. Let me quote only one authority, the eminent Russian byzaniologist, A. A. Vassilijev, whose monumcnted history of the Byzantine Empire is generally considered a standard work in this field. What has he to say about the national character of Samuels Kingdom?"Afler the death of John Tzimisoes the Bulgarians took advantage of the internal complications in the Empire and rebelled against Byzantine domination. The outstanding leader of this period was Samuel, the energetic ruler of Western independent Bulgaria, and probably the founder of a new dynasty, one of the most prominent rulers of the First Bulgarian Empire." In the entire passage dealing with this heroic, as well as tragic episode in Bulgarian history, Vassiljev consistently uses the term "Bulgaria". In a footnote, it is true, he mentions the hypothesis put forward by the Serbian historian D.Anastasijevich that Samuel's Kingdom was not lawfully Bulgarian, but a "Sloveno-macedonian Empire". But quite obviously he does not make this hypothesis his own. I think that in the market of international historical scholarship the authority of Professor Vassiljev rates considerably higher than that of Mr.Anaslasijevich. Another noteworthy fact that is such attempts to deprive the Bulgarians of their history and heritage by declaring that they were not Bulgarians at all, had already been made in the years soon after the First World War. This shows that the recent creation of a separate non-Bulgarian Macedonian nation, complete with history, literary language, folklore, etc., by fiat from above, does have its precedent.
It goes without saying that the endeavors to divest the Macedo-Bulgarians of their national identity were accompanied in recent times by violent measures designed to lend force to the arguments set forth by Pan-Serbian propaganda, no matter whether this propaganda appeared disguised as scholarship or downright indoctrination. Let me quote from a symposium entitled," The case for an Autonomous Macedonia" compiled and edited in 1945 by Mr.Christ Atanasoff. One of the crown witnesses summoned to testify was the well-known British Balkan expert. Miss Edith Durham. In 1931, she wrote the following in the paper La Macedonian, published in Geneva: "During the Balkan War there was a Serbian schoolmaster - an Austrian subject - at Cetinje, who taught German in the boy's school. He rejoiced greatly over the conquest the Serbian army was making in Macedonia. It would add much valuable land to Serbia. An Englishman said to him: "Oh, but Serbia cannot annex these places, they are all Bulgar". The inhabitants put the article after the noun. This is well known as a Bulgar peculiarity. The Serb replied: "That does not matter. When our army has been there for two years, you will find no articles after nouns there, I can assure you". But, in spite of torture, murder, imprisonment, the Bulgai article still lives on at the end of the noun."
Since it was not possible to do away with that stubborn post posited article by administrative matters, comprising the whole gamut from violent suppression to persistent persuasion and bribery, a new tack had to be tried. The article was declared not to be a peculiarity of the Bulgarian language, but also a characteristic of a hitherto non-existent separate Macedonian language.
In parenthesis let me say this: Since the disappearance of the classical, semi-Hellenic Macedonian Kingdom of Philip, Alexander and Perseus in Roman limes, the terms "Macedonian" and the "Macedonia" have been used as geographic terms for that area in Southeastern Europe, which is still known under this name. Since the middle ages it has been inhabited predominantly by Slavo-Bulgarians and by minorities of Albanians, Valachians, Turks, Greeks, Gypsies, Jews and, as the statistics of the 19th and 20th Centuries show, surprisingly few Serbians. For more than a thousand years the Slavs living in this area have been considered Bulgarians, or to be more precise. Western Bulgarians whose idiom is distinguished by certain dialectical peculiarities, without thereby losing its general Bulgarian character. This clearly recognized fact, incidentally, caused the great 19th century philologists, who laid the groundwork for a systematic study of this language to call it, in the early stages of its development, Old Bulgarian. The language employed by Sts.Cyril and Metodi, St.Klement and St.Naum and a host of other medieval writers and teachers is an old Bulgarian idiom. Please allow me to make a personal remark in this context. When I, in the spring "of 1931, began to study Slavic philology at the University of Munich, we used the famous handbooks and grammar of this language written by the celebrated German Slavist, August Leskich. These books described and analyzed the phonology, morphology, vocabulary syntax of a language which unequivocally was designated as Old Bulgarian :Handbuch or Grammatik der Altbulgarichen Sprache. It is also true that the term "Old Church Slavonic", most frequently used nowadays,was sometimes applied to this language, but one should keep in mind that this term is basically meaningless, at least up to the times of Peter the Great. In the course of his secularizing transformations and reforms, Peter favored the introduction of the Russian vernacular into common usage, relegating the then library language of the Muscovite Tsardom, still based as it were on Old Bulgarian, to purely liturgical and ecclesiastical purposes. This practice was later followed by other awakening Slavic nations, especially those of the Orthodox faith.profoundly. Nevertheless may it be said here, in parenthesis only, that the Old Bulgarian imprint on the native language of the Russians was so strong that even nowadays authoritative scholars in the field of Slavic linguistics and philology, such as Boris Unbegaun, speak with good reason about the partially Old Bulgarian character of the Russian standard literary language.
Thus, the fiction of Macedonia as "Southern Serbia" could not be maintained in the long run because it really held no water. Even responsible Serbian leaders could not close their eyes to this fact. Even the Yugoslav Ambassador in Sofia, Mr.Milanovich, in a moment of deep crisis for the Yugoslav State, that is in the summer of 1940, saw fit to forward to his master in Belgrade the Prime Minister Slojadinovich, a statement from Macedonia received in Bulgaria on the situation in this region. Here we read: "Everybody has to know that today Macedonia is not lost for Bulgaria, but on the contrary, there exists a healthy Bulgarian spirit more than ever. Some call themselves Macedonians, but this is due to the terrible reaction which the name Bulgarian provokes in the Serbians. It is well known that all injustices, robbery and violence create reaction and disgust. This is exactly what the Serbians have achieved in Macedonia. When they came to Macedonia they knew that Bulgarians lived in this country. That is why they thought, by crude measures and lawlessness, to frighten the people and to win them over for the Serbian cause. But all was in vain. And now they are surprised at the anti-Serbian feelings in the hearts of the majority of people. The common wish of the people is : Let Gypsy come, only let this one, the Serbian, go away. Anathema to any Bulgarian who will forget his own brothers.".
The war and its aftermath did away with the Pan-Serbian military-bourgeois monarchy. Overboard went what Marxists call Bourgeois nationalism and chauvinism. But let no man be deceived that the substitution of the old order by the dictatorship of a Communist party and its leader spelt the disappearance of an expansionist Greater Serbian nationalism. Had the means employed between 1912 and 1940 been crude and brutal, and therefore in the end unsuccessful, new devices had to be invented, this time more clever, more insidious, in order to attain the same goal. This time under the banner of a Yugoslav Communist Revolution! If we have failed so far wean away the Macedonians from their Bulgarianism, because we tried so hard to make them into Serbians, well, then let us now try to insinuate that they arc neither Serbians nor Bulgarians, but a separate national entity, for instance, Macedonians with their own history, language and culture; but let us also make it perfectly clear to them that only we here in Belgrade are willing and able to guarantee this artificial nationality concocted in the test tubes of Serbian Communists and their non-Communist predecessors. The whole Macedonian nation and the so called language -this I wish to affirm here before you- is not a philologicum, but a polilicum designed according to the well tried maxim of old: divide et impcra - divide and rule. History teaches that a ruler, a parly or a leading group which enjoys unlimited power and has the will to use this power ruthlessly for the attainment of its goal, has always found partisans, advocates and adherents prepared to do the bidding of those at the helm of the state, sometimes against their own belter knowledge. Wasn't it one of the great cynics on the throne. Henry the VIII of England, who said when planning something particularly outrageous and arbitrary "let me first carry out this measure, afterwards I shall always find professors at Oxford to justify it". So it is no wonder that in Skopie and elsewhere the Belgrade government should have found learned collaborators who fell for their line. I think that under the circumstances prevailing one should not judge them and their zealous efforts too harshly. But it is deplorable that scholars abroad with solid academic reputations and achievements, who are not exposed to the pressures of the intellectual under totalitarian regimes, should also swallow this latest Belgrade bait hook, line and sinker. Can they really accept the thesis that, contrary to their own testimony and conviction, people like the Miladinoff brothers, Gregory Perlicerr, Alexander Todoroff, Damjan Gruev, Gotse Delceff, Peju Javoroff, Anion Strashimirof, Dimitr Taleff are Macedonians in the sense of the word bestowed upon it with the blessings of the Belgrade party bosses? And what about men who figure so prominently in the Pantheon of Bulgarian letters like Ivan Vazoff and Teodor Trajanoff who lived and worked in Bulgaria proper, but whose family background is Macedonian, Bulgaro-Macedonian that is. What about such a significant figure of the Bulgarian Renaissance like Raiko Zhinzifoff from Veles, who declared in 1963 in his Novobulgarska sbirka - or did he, perhaps, call it Novo-Makedonska sbirka? "As Bulgarian language we regard that language which is spoken in all Macedonia, Thrace and Bulgaria proper. The differences between the dialects are negligible. Every Bulgarian who does not suffer from nearsighteness cannot designate a certain expression as "Macedonian" or "Thracian"., for there are no "Macedonians" or "Thracians" as individual nations, but only Slavo-Bulgarians - in short, one Bulgarian people and one Bulgarian language".
One could object here that this is a voice from the long forgotten depth of the 19th century. One could also maintain that Zhinzifoff, with all his linguistic and folklore erudition, was not up to par with regard to the achievements of philological science, that is that we in the 20th century know better now. Let us then examine a few testimonies belonging to our century.
Let us first listen to the voice of practical common sense, the voice of a man who would never lay claim to the reputation of a learned academic linguist. The opinions of this man, however, deserve to be listened to attentively and carefully because they are based on the profound national experience of a statesman and a leader of his people, Ivan Mihailoff.In his book, Makedonia: A Switzerland of the Balkans, edited and translated by Christ Anastasoff, he makes the following observations pertinent to the linguistic problem: "Like the scholars of different countries who were familiar with Macedonia, so also did the Turkish authorities and all the rest of the objective observers consider the Macedonian Slavs as Bulgarians. This was not only upon the basis of the logically had introduced in their schools, but on the basis of all other ethnic features by which a given nationality is judged. The local dialects of the Macedonian Slavs arc basically considered by all as Bulgarian language. Every nationality employs its own common literary language, while in every nationality meets different dialects. As far as the Bulgarian dialects in Macedonia arc concirned they do not vary very much from the rest of the Bulgarian dialects as, for instance, do dialects among the Germans, Italians and other nationalities. The dialects of the Germans in Switzerland is, perhaps, the most difficult for all the rest of the Germans.
But that did not prevent the Swiss of German origin to consider as their own the common German literary language. Precisely so, before the appearance of the regimes of national oppression in Macedonia after 1912, the native Bulgarians officially used that literary language which is common for all the Bulgarians of the world and to the formation of which the cultural workers of Macedonia have contributed a great deal." This point of view deserves to be firmly kept in mind, especially in view of the artificial construction of a new "Macedonian" nation and language as commanded from above. For this purpose the chief perpetrators of this dubious enterprise now take great pains to smuggle into this newfangled synthetic idiom all sorts of Serbanianist and other foreign ingredients so as to alienate the Macedo-Bulgarians from their historical, cultural and linguistic matrix.
But what has the linguistic science of the 20-th century to say about these attempts to deny the Bulgarian character of the Slavic idiom spoken in Macedonia? Here I cannot go into the details of the lingiustic argument adduced by international scholars, to refute the claims. To note that Professor A.M.Selishchev, the eminent Russian philologist, in his article entitled "Macedonian Dialectology and Serbian Linguistics" already in 1935 destroyed the claims of Serbian scholars like Velich, Djordjevich, Pavlovich and others that the idiom spoken in Macedonia is closer to Serbian than to Bulgaria should be enough. This task he performed in a thorough scholary way, basing himself upon the findings and achievements of modern linguistic research in the field of Slavic philology. Whoever is interested in the course of his irrefutable reasonic can study this article in a volume recently published by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences under the title L'histoire Bulgare dans les Ouvrages des Savants Europeens. Professor Selishchev cannot be suspected of any sort of polilicing. He has worked in Russia under the old as well as the new regime; following nothing, to the best of his abilities, but the dictates of his scientific conscience. It is remarkable to see how to this pure scholar and cabinet savant, far as he was from the passionate turmoil of the political motives behind the scientific smokescreen spread by the named Serbian scholars. He said: "The aim of all these books is the same: namely, to furnish an historical, ethnographic and linguistic justification for Serbian domination in Macedonia - to furnish this justification by means of true scholarship. The arrogance in the style, the irony with which the Bulgarian people are treated is another common feature of the books of Belgrade professors. In the case of Professor Georgevich this irony borders upon downright rudeness. On the other hand, everything Serbian is idealized. The attempts of the authors of such books to clothe their products in a science-like garb must be unmasked. The true character of their content, harmful to all science, must be demonstrated".
The results of the linguistic and ethnographic research in the field of Macedo-Bulgarian studies undertaken by Professor Selishchev not so long ago match the findings not only of the Bulgaro-Macedonian philologist Krusle Misirkoff, which he published in 1910-1911, but also of a number of 19th century Serbian scholars like Stefan Verkovich, Tuminski, A.Hadzic, Vasa Peladic and others. That authors like Selishchev, Misirkoff and Verkovic working at different times and under completely different circumstances should have arrived at the same results, with regard to the Bulgarian character of the dialects spoken in Macedonia and their geographic extensions points to two noteworthy qualities of their research Its exactitude and its factual and logical consistency, in view of which all the counter-arguments of Serbian and Pseudo-Macedonian opponents take on the suspect colouring of sophisty and political expediency. More proof was recently given for the Bulgarianism of the Macedonian dialects by the Bulgarian philologist Blagoi Shklifoff in a paper about the idiom spoken in the area of Kostur. From the evidence he is able to muster, it becomes perfectly clear that the Kostur dialect cannot be used to buttress the hypothetical existence of a separate and individual Slavic language called Macedonian, but that here, as elsewhere, we deal with but another variant of the Bulgarian language as spoken by the Western half of the nation.If indeed, this is the conclusion at which Mr.Shklifoff arrives, the dialects in Macedonia are by their character intrinsically different from those spoken in Moesia and Thrace, then these differences would have to show more than anywhere else in the dialect of Kostur, the area of which borders on two non-Slavic linguistic regions, located geographically distant from the other Bulgarian dialects. A strictly scholary approach to this idiom, however, cannot but establish its basically Bulgarian character. The paper by Mr.Blagoi Shklifoff was published in 1968. Sclishches's analysis and demolition of the claims raised in 1935. But the same position and results are visible in the book about Macedonia by the Czech Balkaniologic Vladimir Sis which was printed in Prague in 1914 and came out in Zurich, Switzerland in 1981 in a German translation. After Sis enumerates all the factors which effect the closest mutual correspondence between Old Bulgarian and the Modem Bulgarian language as spoken also in Macedonia, he points to certain philological peculiarities by means of which the Bulgarian language is distinguished from all other Slavic language, Serbian included. After a painstaking comparison between the Bulgarian standard literary language and various dialects spoken in Macedonia, he arrives at the following conclusion which I shall quote here verbatim "Whoever is familiar with the basic structural principles of the two neighboring languages must, even though he may not be a philologist, arrive, on the basis of the examples cited here, at the same conclusion to which also the French slavicist, Louis Leger, came, and I repeat his words: The Macedonian Slavs are Bulgarians and speak a Bulgarian dialect. Indeed, even the Serbian Vuk Karadzic, who was the first to publish some Macedonian folksongs, selected them in order to determine with their help the basic characteristics of the Bulgarian language. That there occur Serbanianisms in some North Macedonian dialects does not prove anything. It is inevitable that in border areas between two linguistically kindred groups a certain inlcrminigling of vocabulary lakes place. If the fin Serbianisms in the regions of Tetovo or Kumanovo, we also find Bulgarianisms in the Prizren dialect behind the Shar Planina, a purely Serbian area. The Russian scholar Hilferding says in his book An Excursion Into Hersegovina And Old Serbia:" In the language of the Serbians around Prizren it is clearly noticeable how much it tends to resemble the Bulgarian dialects. It would be interesting to investigate how this blend of the Serbian language with the Macedo-Bulgarian has come about. "That authorities marshalled here in such an imposing array would be sufficient to support and prove the point I wish make here, namely, that the language spoken by the Slavs between Skopie and Salonica, Kostur and Kustandil is neither Serbian nor "Macedonian", but Bulgarian. Please allow me to invite one more witness to make his deposition. The man and scholar I am refering to is a former countryman. Professor Guslav Wcigand, the eminent German Balkanologist, cthnographer, linguist and lexicographer. Wcigang ordinarily was no Slavist. When he began his career, his research interests were centered in Rumania and Albania. He is one of the very few Western Scholars to give the world a grammar and reader of the Albanian languagc. But in the course of his studies he became convinced that he would have to embrace with his research also the Slavic groups settling in this, as Christ Atanasoff has called it, tragic peninsula. This extension of his studies had the effect that Wcigang became also a linguistic expert in the Modern Bulgarian language, a field in which again he proved himself as grammarian and lexicographer. In 1924, he published in Leipzig his fundamental work Ethnographic von Maccdonicn, a chapter of which is devoted under the headline "The Bulgarian Language As Spoken In Macedonia" (Das Makedonische Bulgarisch) to linguistic issues. The result of Weigand's meticulous observations do not essentially diverge from the findings of the other students of these affairs, quoted in this context. But in one point, at least as far as I can sec on the basis of the limited number of documents available to me, Weigang had an intuition which had not occured, at least in so many words, to other scholars. He was , of course, fully aware of what was going on at that time in Macedonia, a period which Ivan Michailov, as we have seen, so aptly called "The Regimes Of National Oppression". He must have speculated which devices, apart from brute force, the oppressors might yet use to achieve their goal - the denationalization of the Macedo-Bulgarians. As a well-trained experienced linguist and ethnographcr it was, in all probability, clear to him that all the attempts at Serbanization would end in futility and frustration. But then - what other means could the enemy of the Bulgarian nationality propose to undermine and destroy Macedonian Bugarianism? And here he hit intuilively what was to happen 20 years later. The artificial, test tube creation of a separate Macedonian History, literary language and nation. Here are the conclusions at which Weigang arrived after a conscientious examination of the linguistic and ethnographic facts: "Whatever segment of this language we analyze, again and again it becomes evident that we deal here not with the Serbian, but the Bulgarian language. All attempts of Serbian chauvinists to design the Bulgarian language as spoken in Macedonia as a Serbian dialect or as a mixed language of indefinite character will therefore end in failure. One could pose the question whether, perhaps, the Macedonian Slavs haven't their own language, something in between Serbian and Bulgarian. Such an assumption, however, would be absolutely unjustified, for, as we have seen, in phonology, morphology and syntax Macedonian Bulgarian and Bulgarian proper harmonize in every respect. Certain exclusively Macedonian peculiarities cannot essentially change this picture. In the lexicon there occurs a number of words of Greek or Turkish origin which do not exist in the Serbian or Bulgarian vocabulary. In proportion to the overall lexicon, however, their number is quite insignificant, as can be seen from the linguistic samples adduced here, which clearly demonstrate that Macedonian can only be considered a Bulgarian Dialect".
In the 1926, the Russian journalist L.Nemanov, a representative of the respectable emigre newspaper Poslednie Novosti, edited in Paris, travelled in what then was officially called "Southern Serbia". He published a report about his impressions and experiences under the title, "What I Saw in Macedonia". His findings are those of a man who was probably a good practical linguist, but certainly not a learned professor of linguistics. They felicitously supplement the results of strict academic research, in his own trend of observant impressionism, he relates: "The Serbian authorities insist that the language spoken by the population in Macedonia is not Bulgarian, but a Macedonian dialect of the Serbian language. This reminds me of a case when a Serbian man of science was trying to prove to me that in general there was no Bulgarian language, but that it was a Shop dialect of the Serbian, to which I seriously retorted that Russian as an independent language was nonexistent to except as a Moscow dialect of the Serbian language. That is why whatever the Serbian politicians cail the language in Macedonia, it is a fact that this local language is comprehensible to me, a man knowing a bit of Bulgarian, while it is difficult for me to understand Serbian". This statement, not devoid of humor as it is, may furnish some comic relief after all the dry seriousness of philological research and linguistic inquiry. But one should not forget that it is the question of depriving a people of its national identity, the first blows are invariably directed at its language, because a common language, a common heritage and a common destiny are the chief characteristics of historical nationality. And the pride in just this heritage and the hopes and aspirations of a common destiny, in rcturn,arc expressed in just this common language. So the best way to emasculate a national group is to rob it of its native tongue or to corrupt it. If it should turn oul impossible to extirpate the language of a group one desires to oppress and destroy - well, then let's try to persuade them and the world that their language docs not exist at all, that in reality it is quite another language they arc speaking, a language of whose existence they had not even dreamed before, which, however, exists because we tell them so. You do not speak Bulgarian, you have never spoken Bulgarian, neither have St.Cyril, St.Methodius, St-Clemens, Tsar Simeon or Tsar Samuel. They have all spoken Macedonian only, ignorant and unenlightened as they were, they didn't notice. The same is true of the Miladinoff, Gotse Delchev, Peju Javoroff or Teodor Trajanoff. They did not know, but now they are better informed because we tell them so.
A nation which will not surrender its own national identity and national heritage, will not give up its native tongue, the treasure house of all its achievements and aspirations. When the Israelis and the Irish succeeded in re-establishing their own state, it was the first legitimate, and natural endeavor of their leading minds to recapture their lost or half-lost native idioms and restore them to their rightful glory. When, before the First World War, the Prussian government undertook to ban instruction in Polish in the schools in the eastern provinces of Prussia these decrees were bitterly and resolutely resisted by the Polish minority. In the end, all these measures proved futile, but they have contributed to poisoning the atmosphere between Germans and Poles down to our own day. The press tells us what undesirable things happened in the Southern Tyrol where the Italian government shows but scant regard for the cultural rights of the German-speaking minority. Alas, these examples, spread all over the globe, could be multiplied ad infinitum. It also shows that even at a lime when many of the more advanced nations are making great moral efforts to overcome a narrow-minded, self-centered and often aggressive nationalism there persists the feeling that questions of language and national identity cannot and must not be resolved by cither brute force or cunning persuasion, or by distortion and falsification of the historical and statistical facts. In his attempts to explain the origins of human language, the great German humanist, statesman and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt once declared that all research in this problem leads to a point where further explanation avails nothing, where even the keenest, most critical intelligence will have lo admit that human language in its deepest well-springs is a divine miracle. From the limes of the ancient Helenes on, the nations have delighted in their own languages, have recorded them not only with the intelligent curiosity of science and scholarship, but also with a sense of awe and wonder. At bottom, their languages have always appeared to them as a precious vessel, a national possession cherished above all other things, a sacred covenant with their inscrutable destiny. As long as there is one living soul also among the Macedo-Bulgarians who remembers this deep in his heart and acts accordingly, the Macedo-Bulgarian cause is not lost. Keep the banner of your language flying, then the hope for a free Macedonia for the Macedo-Bulgarians will be resurrected again and again, and in the end, if Heaven wills it so, Macedonia's goal will be fulfilled.
(Professor Heinrich A.Stammler, IMRO - Union of The Macedonian Brotherhoods in Bulgaria, Sofia, 1991), www.promacedonia.org
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Decoding policy choices and motives in the Greece-FYROM name dispute
Dr. George Voskopoulos in American ChronicleMay 11, 2008
The Balkans have been an immature subordinate system ever since the demise of the Ottoman empire. The "Macedonian Issue", the time-proof dispute in the Balkans, first emerged as a side-effect of the evolutionary stages of the "Eastern Question" and the liberation of the Ottoman conquests, namely the Balkan peoples, who gradually rose against their conqueror and attempted to set up their territorial bases with a view to forming nation-states.
The "Macedonian Question" emerged as a result of antagonism among Balkan nation-states that wished to get the lion´s share from the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Yet, the course to liberation had hardly finished when Balkan peoples turned against each other, in order to secure a greater territorial chunk out of the Balkan Peninsula, a policy that led contending Balkan nationalisms to clash.
In the post Second World War era, the dispute was rooted in the rivalry over control of geographical Macedonia and annexation of Greece´s northern province Macedonia. Greek Macedonia has been the diachronic target of irredentist activities on the part not only of Bulgaria but also Yugoslavia. In the summer of 1945 Marshal Tito articulated a verbal assault on Greece and eventually verified its policy of annexing Greek Macedonia [1]. C. L. Sulzberger reporting for The New York Times on November 17, 1946 is more than clear: "Yugoslav foreign policy has two major revisionist objec-tives--Trieste and Salonika--and one minor one-- Klagenfurt, in Austria. At the mo-ment the emphasis is still on Trieste…". [2]
This very policy alarmed Greece, which, assisted by the US, internationalized the issue. In March 1947 "Mark Ethridge, American representative on the United Nations Balkans Commission of Inquiry, has moved to extract from representatives of Yugoslavia and Bulgaria a clear answer to Greek charges that their countries are waging an undeclared war to detach the Greek Province of Macedonia" [3].
A month later the US confirms these irredentist activities, presenting hard evidence in favour of Greek positions. I quote W.H. Lawrence reporting from Geneva for The New York Times: "The United States circulated among the ten other members of the United Nations Balkan investigating commission today a proposed summary of the evidence on the Macedonian issue. This summary tends to prove that Yugoslavia and Bulgaria interfered in Greek internal affairs so as to win Greek Macedonia for Yugo-slavia and western Thrace for Bulgaria". [4]
During the Greek Civil War Slav inhabitants of the wider geographical area of Macedonia joined Greek left forces in the struggle against government units. According to the report, "about 600 purported representatives of communities in Greek, Yugoslav and Bulgarian Macedonia met this week in a small village in the Vitsi mountain area of north-western Greece near the Albanian border, according to a rebel radio broad-cast heard today in Salonika". [5] The promise repeatedly made to them was that should left wing forces in Greece prevail Slav Macedonians would be allowed to annex Greek Macedonia and establish a Macedonian state.
The above constitute indicative only historical evidence of how the Macedonian issue had been formulated under the then political and social conditions. A sensible question would probably concern the relation between today´s situation and the then con-ditions. First, the events described set clearly the long-established historical frame-work of irredentist activities against Greek Macedonia. Second, they eliminate the conceptual basis of Greece being part of an instability chain that tars the image of the Balkans and the Greek people of being victims of a certain national paranoia and obsession with history. Foreign policies are driven by national interests and the need for survival, particularly in zones of turmoil, characterized by territorial fluidity and Great Idea syndromes.
Greece operates on the same motives despite incoherent policies adopted during the last decades. It is a pro-status quo country as indicated by its will to endorse the 1995 Interim Agreement with FYROM. The evident advantage of the Agreement was that it allowed both countries to provide a very general framework of coexistence. Actually it was an act of support of FYROM since it allowed it to use the name "Macedonia" although irredentist activities continued to tar bilateral relations. This very fact constitutes a breach of the Agreement itself. Yet, this temporary arrangement created further problems to the Greek side as it allowed FYROM to build its strategy on the state-stemming ideology of "Macedonianism".
Originally (1920s) the issue was formulated on a Marxist basis and the aim of establishing a Balkan Communist Federation. Yet, in the post-Cold War era the issue cen-tered around the need of the neophyte state FYROM to support its national identity and distance itself politically, culturally and institutionally from dissolving Yugoslavia and Belgrade operating as the eminence grise of former Yugoslav Republics.
The dispute that emerged over the name of the newly-founded state, was considered by Greek administrations and the Greek people to be a substantial actual not potential non-military threat, in a fluid security environment, diachronically dominated by un-predictability, irredentist claims (covertly or overtly expressed), lack of internal cohesion and warring conflicts among Balkan states over the control of the geographical region of "Macedonia", which appears to be one of the most disputed areas of Europe.
The ethnically-orientated use of the name "Macedonia", along with the use of historic symbols, associated with Greek territorial sovereignty over Greek Macedonia, provoked Greek national sentiment, since it was regarded as the cornerstone of a long-standing irredentist policy against Greece. The inference of the name "Macedonia", a name of tantamount importance for those familiar with Balkan politics and history brought back to memory Tito´s plans for the creation of a communist federation in the Balkans and the eventual annexation of Greek Macedonia, that was meant to become part of a united Macedonia, under a Communist leadership.
Greek officials estimated that the emergence of the neophyte state would be followed by an attempt, on the part of Slav-Macedonians, to enhance independence and cultural autonomy, by means of legitimisation through "historical proof", which was eventu-ally used as an unfortunate means of applying the undeniable right of a small nation for self-determination and self-rule.
To the Greek policy-makers eyes, the "Macedonian issue" emerged as a double threat.
First, it was the revival of Balkan antagonism for domination over geographical Ma-cedonia and more particularly Greek Macedonia, which is the oldest and biggest part of the geographical region Macedonia and the part with the most strategic importance, since it provides an outlet to the Aegean Sea.
Second, it was a threat to Greek national identity and cultural heritage, a notion that triggered the massive demonstrations in Thessaloniki in February 1994, the biggest ever in Greece.
The signifier of these mas-sive activation of Greek public opinion is that, although Greece was and still is a Bal-kan state not nurturing irredentist aims against FYROM, it was the local actor that most heatedly objected to its recognition under the name Macedonia, since, the con-notation "Macedonia" has been solely associated with the Greek northern province and "denotes an exclusive and integral part" history and culture of the Greek people.
For FYROM, it was a matter of survival in an unstable Balkan security environment, as the country was facing direct military threats from Yugoslavia, the ultra-nationalists in Albania and the danger of self-dissolution, stemming from the exis-tence of contending ethnic minorities, the most substantial of which was the ethnic Albanians, who, after long years of suppression, wished to have their cultural identity acknowledged. At the same time, there was a need to silence elements of Bulgaro-philia domestically, a fact that led to suppressive policies against those in FYROM who identified themselves as Bulgarian-Macedonians.
Within the wider context of the Communist establishment and ideology, national identities had to be overlaid. Emphasis was given to class associations and class struggle since ethnicity was a "bourgeois feature". As a consequence, the enhance-ment of a different ethnic identity, different from the artificial "Yugoslav identity", was of a sine quo non prerequisite for the political and cultural autonomy of the neo-phyte state, as well as for the social cohesion and domestic balance of the emerging political entity. Yet, this very need gave birth to the falsification of Greek history, which was used as a means of emancipating the Slav-Macedonian identity and FY-ROM´s independence from Belgrade´s suppressive ethnic policy.
In their quest for international support and political emancipation from Belgrade, the post-Cold War administrations of the country became trapped in the dictates of popu-lism and nationalism, as expressed by the diaspora, something I personally witnessed as a young student in Canada in the early 1980s.
Evidently, the early Marxist and ideological platform of the Macedonian issue had turned into a matter of survival for a small and weak country that struggled for inde-pendence. These are noble aims supported by all of us who envisage a free democratic world. Yet, the early euphoria triggered by the demise of the Communist establish-ment led to a major mistake at least in terms of priorities. That is overlaying the secu-rity implications of independence and the unconditional support for self-determination. The tendency to overlay the security aspects of the adopted policy by Skopje took place under the pressure of the emerging warring conflict in dissolving Yugoslavia
Greece´s primary aim in the "Macedonian Question" has been the containment of irredentist activities against Greek Macedonia, as well as the ethnic implications of the name "Macedonia" used by FYROM, since the Post-Second World War name "Re-public of Macedonia", devised by Tito coincided with the Greek province Macedonia.
The name issue would be of minor importance to Greece if it did not imply that FYROM claimed for itself a wider geographical area, consisting of the historic Mace-donia and kingdom of ancient Makedon, 90% of which lies within Greek territory. This served practical purposes as well as claims on historical continuity. In its turn this very claim aimed at "legitimizing" irredentist claims on the basis of alleged his-torical ties with Greek Macedonia. Yet, the very name itself set a clear and evident irredentist claim, as the geographical interpretation of it, gives it an ethnic character. It wrongly implies that there used to be a single, united Macedonian state partitioned by means of military force.
Of course the main issue here is that young people in FYROM and across the world grow up with the dream of "liberating" Greek Macedonia, a task "imposed" to them by history. Na-tional identity is not an issue to be dissolved with a political decision not even an honourable compromise. Beliefs are far stronger than political decisions.
The major and catalytic drawback of Greek foreign policy ever since the early post-Cold War emergence of the Macedonian issue was its inability to underline the secu-rity dimensions of the issue [6]. History, despite inconsistent, contending narratives and explanation of motives of the parts involved, has been a tool in the hands of na-tionalists not a goal in itself. It has been used simultaneously as a means of question-ing (FYROM) and supporting the territorial status quo (GREECE). Under this spec-trum any policy and solution that leaves space for future misunderstanding is totally unacceptable. Actually it happened in the past and led to an impasse. The current Greek administration has been more than explicit on that and I certainly hope that it will support its views with stern zeal.
In the case of our neighbours it is now clear that partnerships can only be built on common goals supported by common institutions and values (EU) or alliance mem-bership (NATO) that provides a casus foederis to the participants. Greek policy is an act of defense of the status quo, not a hostile act against FYROM. I am afraid there is an inherent inability, related to populism, that prevents political leadership in Skopje to realize who the real danger is to the country´s survival. Under this spectrum the name issue is not related to the political survival of the country but to the megaloma-nia of a certain political milieu. The issue is not a question of race purity but of acknowledging that the mistakes and impasses of the past can teach us a lot about our common future.
notes
[1] "Tito´s New Issue", The New York Times, July 10, 1945
[2] "Yugoslavs Eye Salonica, Macedonia and Klagenfurt. Also Objectives--Soviet Helps to Build Up Tito's Army", The New York Times, November 17, 1946.
[3] "Sofia, Belgrade asked for Policy; American on U.N. Commission Wants Reply to Charges of Interference With Greece", The New York Times, March 16, 1947.
[4] "U.S. Report for Balkan Mission Indicts Yugoslavia and Bulgaria; Summary of U.N. Inquiry Evidence Points to Intervention in Greece -- Set-Up of Permanent Bor-der Board Likely", The New York Times, April 22, 1947.
[5] "Slav Macedonians Join Greek Rebels; Balkan Communist Radio Says Bulgarian, Albanian Reds Will Take Active Role", The New York Times, March 31, 1949.
[6] See George Voskopoulos, Greece, Common Foreign and Security Policy and the European Union: Interaction Within and Between a Zone of Peace and a Zone of Turmoil as an Explanatory Factor, PhD Thesis, Exeter University (UK), Centre for European Studies, 2001.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)