Gotse (Elias Demakis )

The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) exercised a vacillating and often seditious "Macedonian" policy for Macedonia, aligning itself with Comintern's anti-Greek position, undermining its own unity and its leaders credibility. The KKE was compelled to cooperate with Bulgarian autonomists, such as Gotse or Elias Demakis.

Except Gotse Paschal Mitrofsky, Naum Pejov, and others were among the first to transform themselves from Ochrana-Nazis to SNOF communists. Some of Ochrana's methods, besides terrorization, were similar to those of SNOF:

• demand that the Slavomacedonians openly declare their ethnic identity
• proselytize the KKE leaders sympathizing with the Bulgarian dreams and
• plans cooperate, when feasible, with pro-Bulgarian ELAS leaders
  

John Koliopoulos (Plunderes Loyalities, 1999, page 153) mention as about his life:

Last but not least in this galaxy of Slav Macedonian leaders and communist cadres involved in the process of turning 'Bulgars' into 'Macedonians' was Elias Dimakis or Gotse (named after Gotse Deltcev, a hero of the struggle for Macedonia killed in 1903 and claimed first by the Bulgars as Bulgar and afterwards by the founders of the People's Republic of Macedonia as Macedonian). Dimakis was a native of Melas, the Korestia village named after another hero of the same struggle, Pavlos Melas, killed there in October 1904. When he was still a child his family moved to Florina, where he attended the town's Greek elementary school. His father emigrated to the United States but returned after some seven years to Florina and set up as a baker with his son as assistant.

Elias soon became known locally as a thief and served terms of imprisonment, his last being shortly before the war. He is said to have become a communist during the Metaxas dictatorship, when he was imprisoned for his political views but released shortly afterwards after publicly renouncing communism. He was tall, strongly-built and brave. He flirted with local Komitadjis before being co-opted into ELAS and joining SNOF.

After a decision of the Macedonian Bureau of the Communist Party of Greece, and the necessary order from the commander of ELAS 28 Regiment, the 'Vitsi Detachment' was divided in September 1944 into 25 battalions, of which the 2nd became the 'Slav Macedonian Battalion'. As commander of the new unit Kosmas Spanos or Amyntas of Lechovon, a seasoned ELAS commander, was appointed with Gotse as the political commissar. The division was decided on after a sudden increase in the number of men of the initial unit, the result of 'the enlistment lately of a considerable number of men', according to the relevant regimental order.

In November 1944 Gotse made Monastiri his headquarters and worked hard at reorganizing his band, recruiting widely from refugees in Greece. Before very long he had a body of about a thousand men, which he named the "First Aegean Strike Brigade". Gotse himself became the Brigade commander. As his second-in-command he chose Naum Pejov, a veteran of the SNOF and Ochrana ,a native of the village of Gavros, near Kastoria.Pejov had fled to the PRM in June 1944. Dimakis Political Commissar was Mihail Keramiziev, from the same village as Pejov, with Vangel Ajanovski-Oche from the Edessa region as Keramiciev deputy.

The influx of men which made the creation of a new unit necessary was due to the accelerated pace of recruiting 'disarmed' Komitadjis and Okhranite which increased even faster now that the Slav Macedonians of Greece had their own unit to accommodate all the 'misguided' brethren.

Many Bulgarian komitadjides, afraid they might be punished after the war, suddenly became "Macedonians" and joined the Yugoslav partisans, their motivation surely being the desire to dissociate themselves from the crimes they had committed and the treasonous acts perpetrated against their country. Many escaped to Yugoslavia and joined the armed bands of the Bulgarian fascist Vancho Mihailov of IMRO. Some joined the Yugoslav partisans, whose leadership did not care whether they were komitadjides or Ochranists. ELAS make huge mistake as George Papavisas (Claiming Macedonia,2004, page 142) remarks :

It allowed formation of the "Slavomacedonian Battalion," with Gotse as its political commissar, to absorb the komitadjides defecting from the Germans. In less than a month, the battalion doubled its strength, incorporating many German or Bulgarian collaborators. The battalion became the salvation for many desperate individuals attempting to avoid reprisals at war's end: komitadjides, Ochranists, Siavomacedonian adventurers, Bulgarian and Yugoslav agents, and autonomists guided by communists freed from Akronafplia by the Germans, struggling to bury their Bulgarian past.

The journey from Bulgaria to SNOF, to western Macedonia, and then to Yugoslavia was completed. Gotse had assumed four nationalities: Greek, Bulgarian, Slavomacedonian, and finally communist Yugoslavian; were he alive today, he would certainly have been "Macedonian" in FYROM, a direct blood connection to Alexander the Great!

This is the story of a "Bulgarian" that transformed in "Macedonian"

Sources (and recommended for reading):

1. John Koliopoulos, Plundered Loyalties, 1999
2. George Papavizas, Claiming Macedonia,2004
3. Macedonism, FYROM'S Expansionist Designs against Greece after the Interim Accord (1995), 2007
4. Spyridon Sfetas, Autonomist Movements of the Slavophones in 1944, 2002

FYROM in WWII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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





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



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






and continues......




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

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

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

FYROM : Article 179 Tales

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





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

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

What about FYROM ?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To: Parliament of Canada

To the Parliament of Canada,

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

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

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

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

Alexander of Macedon I :

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

sign the petition

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

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

The dispute goes deeper than the use of the name.

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

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

This ideology call as Macedonism.

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

ORIGINS

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

MAIN IDEAS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CONCLUSION

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

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

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

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

sources

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

What’s in a Name? ( UN General Assembly president act as FYROM Minister* )

by Alexandros P. Mallias

09.27.2007

When UN General Assembly president H.E. Dr. Srgjan Kerim, a native of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), introduced on September 25 the president of his home country, Mr. Branko Crvenkovski, he implied that the national interest of FYROM prevails over his duties to the UN body. He therefore addressed Mr. Crvenkovksi as the “President of the Republic of Macedonia.”

Some people may think that what happened in the UN constitutes a minor or isolated incident. Nevertheless, this is not the case—this has deeper roots both on a regional and international level. Challenging UN resolutions and decisions and ignoring commitments undertaken through international agreements, as FYROM has systematically done by violating the US-brokered Interim Accord with Greece, is a bad precedent. This is a violation of the principle of good-neighborly relations and puts sustained regional stability in jeopardy.

To make it clear, Dr. Kerim’s action is in full contravention of Security Council resolutions 817 (1993) and 843 (1993), as well as the recommendations contained therein regarding the provisional name under which this state was unanimously admitted to the United Nations (“the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”).

Dr. Kerim, obviously acting under instructions from his government, has irreparably damaged his standing and credibility as president of the General Assembly. He did not respect the resolutions of the body over which he is presiding nor of the Security Council of the United Nations, the organization he has been called upon to serve.

Such a development also militates against the efforts made by the UN to facilitate the bilateral negotiations entered into by Greece and FYROM through the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy, Mr. Matthew Nimetz, to seek a mutually acceptable solution on the name issue. Following this action by Mr. Kerim, Mr. Nimetz said on September 26 that what happened in the General Assembly demonstrates why a permanent solution is needed. He is continuing his work with the parties on this issue. Furthermore, UN spokeswoman Ms. Marie Okabe stressed that within the United Nations, the Secretary-General and the Secretariat continue to use the name “The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.”

The actions of Dr. Kerim and FYROM are a clear indication of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’s lack of respect for international law and international institutions. They are also a blunt violation of the US-brokered Interim Accord

This development clearly shows that the President of the UN General Assembly has put his national interest over that of the United Nations.

Assurances by the authorities in Skopje concerning the use of the name “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” in international organizations are thus unreliable and untrustworthy. FYROM officials ignore their commitments. The responsibility for the consequences of this uncompromising position belongs exclusively and completely to the government in Skopje.

It should be noted that Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Mr. Nicholas Burns, following a meeting in New York with Greece’s Foreign Minister Ms. Dora Bakoyannis on September 24, 2007, stressed that “the time has come for progress on the FYROM name issue…this is our message to Skopje, and the spirit of our meeting today with the foreign minister…We wish to exercise our influence and urge Skopje, as we do with Athens, that the time has come for progress.” We fully concur with this statement.

Many Americans may think this is a minor issue. But the history of the region, not to mention of Europe as a whole, demonstrates that whenever irredentist claims are left unaddressed, the seeds of future conflicts are sown. Europe today is governed by the rule of law; the completion of the European project in the Balkans—and the extension of a zone of peace and prosperity—rest upon the willingness of governments to live up to their international commitments. Obligations are like a tapestry; even pulling on what might appear to outsiders to be a small and insignificant thread can end up unraveling the entire work. We have too much invested in the stability of the region to allow this to happen.

Alexandros P. Mallias is the ambassador of Greece to the United States. He was the first ambassador of Greece to FYROM immediately after the signing of the US-brokered Interim Accord in 1995. He has also served as Director of the Southeastern Europe (Balkan Affairs) Department at the Foreign Ministry in Athens, as Ambassador to Albania and Head of the European Community Monitor Mission Regional Office in Sofia.

The mentioned article was posted in National Interest

*Is not written in the initial post of the article

American and European Hypocrisy

FYROM officials yesterday announced that Canada decide to recognized them with under constitunal name. Officials at the Canadian embassies in FYROM and Greece as the UK and US at the past were not immediately available for comment.

Why you hide Canadians?

The name is one of the most emotive foreign policy issues in Greece. Macedonia is also the name of Greece's northern province, birthplace of Alexander the Great.

As Macedonian Greek I would like to express my humble but proud opinion regarding the issue.

FYROM’s political world is in all likelihood ready to accept a double name formula. This is a formula in which, drawing on the proposals of the ICG, Greece would use a “non-problematical” name and international recognition within the framework of the UN based on the name “Republic of Macedonia.” Twelve years after the signing of the Interim Accord, the government in Skopje seems to believe that it is approaching achievement of a goal very close to the one it had originally set when the name dispute began in 1991. Now, the FYROM side is exploiting the inopportune and ‘unfair’ US recognition of its constitutional name to continue its foot-dragging, and has restricted itself to offering the formula of the ‘double name’—one for Greece and one for the rest of the world—in the knowledge that no Greek politician will accept a solution that puts his country in a position of international ‘apartheid.’

FYROM is monopolistically claiming titles, both geographical and historical. Long ago, in the evil days of Hitler, the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, described Czechoslovakia as 'a far-away country' of whose people 'we know nothing'. The same tragic error might easily be made today concering Macedonia.

How well known is it in the West that there are two Macedonias, separated by a common frontier?

How many know that the northern mini-Macedonia, known officially at the present as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, has a seat at the United Nations, whereas the southern mega-Macedonia does not, because it is not a 'nation- state' but only a province of Greece?

How many have noticed that the acronym FYROM is already relapsing into 'Macedonia' tout court, so that its representative in New York will soon sit behind a tablet simply inscribed 'Macedonia', thus implying that his state alone can rightly claim a Macedonian identity?

This upstart mini-Macedonia is a product of the terrible conflict which is described from many writers like the Professor John Koliopoulos (Plundreed Loualities) or known British officers Chris Woodhouse and Hammond. It did not appear as Macedonia on any map before the Second World War. It is a landlocked area with no natural boundaries. Its population, apart from the usual Balkan minorities, is mainly Slavonic and Albanian.

As 'Macedonia' it was a creation of Tito, to provide a launching-pad from which to invade and take over the real Macedonia in northern Greece. The real Macedonia, on the other hand, has a history of at least three millennia: it was the homeland of Alexander the Great; the first country in Europe to which St Paul was invited to 'come over and help us'; the mainstay of-the Allied defense against Mussolini in 1940, when (as we chose to put it) Britain 'stood alone'; and the birthplace of modern Greece's outstanding Politician, Constantinos Kararnanlis.

From the very beginning of FYROM'S independence, Greece declared it had no claims on FYROM'S territory. Greece's only serious grievance was, and still is, the use by FYROM of the name "Macedonia" and its derivatives.

Europeans and the Americans have not been very helpful on this matter. They never seriously considered the fact that the People's Republic of Macedonia was the only Stalin and Tito achievement that the West declared preservable, though there is no blame for declaring the small enclave viable. The blame is for disregarding facts, brushing aside the available historical data to punish Greece, as if Greece were the instigator of this vexing Balkan event. If history had meant anything to the Europeans and Americans, they should have discouraged Skopje at the outset from using the name "Macedonia." FYROM does not have the right to acquire, by international recognition, an advantage enjoyed by no other state in the world: to use a name which of itself propagandizes territorial aspiratioils."

Cappelli (1997), discussing the Bosnian question, appropriately pointed out that "international recognition by no means necessarily endows a state with legitimacy, especially when the recognition has been granted in such an impetuous manner in the midst of a crisis and if legitimacy is held to have any connection with a common history and a sense of common destiny as characteristics of the state's population, without which no state can survive." Every word of this statement on Bosnia applies to FYROM.

Greek people and specially the Macedonians as the undersigned, asks fYROM to adhere to its UN agreement and stop its schools and others from irredentist teachings, such as that northern Greece should be part of their country. As well, the Greek people l urges fYROM to adhere to UN and EU policy and reach agreement with Greece on a name for their new country – one that does not encourage fYROM irredentism

“Biliteral” recognitions models show that behind the reality is the hypocrisy, a behaviour common among the old West world.

FAQs: What is the rightful name of FYRepublic of Macedonia?

This article is a responce to the nationalist Slavmacedonian Organization UMD article that post here

What is the rightful name of the FYRepublic of Macedonia?

• From the very beginning of FYROM'S independence, Greece declared it had no claims on FYROM'S territory. Greece's only serious grievance was, and still is, the use by FYROM of the name "Macedonia" and its derivatives.
• Greece has already compromises by accepted the name “Macedonia” in the Interim Accord of 1995(former Yugoslavia Republic of Macedonia)
• Skopje must also understand Greece's sensitivity on this issue, because for more than fifty years the name problem has always been used as a pretext to create an independent and united Macedonia, which, if it had been achieved, would have meant the shrinking of Greece's territory and the loss of the precious Macedonian inheritance.
• Slavmacedonians leaders must accept the reality that FYROM'S multiethnic conglomerate population, not really "Macedonian" nut also Albanian, Bulgarians, Serbs and Greeks.
  Slavmacedonians must realize that does not have the right to acquire, by international recognition, an advantage enjoyed by no other state in the world: to use a name which of itself propagandizes territorial aspiratioils

Does the FYRepublic of Macedonia want to absorb a territorial region of Greece?

Yes and this seems everywhere. From the books and the writings.Great example is the Brief Historical Summary that Skopje post in the EAPC-Security forum that speak for interritism. Some critical points are

• Skopje talk for civil war forget it to mention that this civil war was between Greeks and the involment of the Tito Regime via the Slavmacedonains of the Vardar region and the SouthWest Macedonia.
• The usage the term Aegean Macedonia. Is a nationalist Macedonian Slav term used to refer to the region of Macedonia in Greece, in the context of a United Macedonia. The origins of the term seem to be rooted in the 1940s but its modern usage is widely considered ambiguous and irredentist.

Do FYROMacedonian textbooks claim that their country should extend into Greece?

The Society of the Macedonian Studies(Etairia Makedonikon Spoudon) publish in July 2007 a book as that has as title ...Macedonism, The Skopjan Imperialism 1944-2006, efesos publisher. In this book you can see many proves that show the Slavmacedonian interritism against Greek History and HERITAGE.

In this first map (8th Grade,2005, page 54) you can see in the Yellow line the ethnotical borders as they imagine the FYROMacedonian nationalists and this include of course the Greek Macedonia(Green part)




In the second map (7th Grade, 2005, page 120) you can see the geographical-ethnotiical borders as they imagine the FYROMacedonian nationalists




Does the FYRepublic of Macedonia promote ‘hostile activity’ against Greece ?

The sudden “epidemic” manifesting itself through the erection of monuments, the renaming of streets, airports, etc., with names of Ancient Greek historical origin is a “hostile activity”



The usage of the Greeks Symbol Vergina Star from the Slavamcedonians officials is a is a “hostile activity”.
Great example is the Slavmacedonian nationalist PM Gruevski and the usage of the Greek symbol

• The brief historical summaries that are post in the FYROMacedonian web sites (Empassies, conferences, summits e.t.c.) are full of unaccuracies, lies and interetism.Great example is the below quote from the FYROMacedonian Embassy London

However, in 1912 and 1913 three Balkan states - Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece, waged the Balkan wars intending to conquer and divide Macedonia between them. The Balkan Wars between Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia ended with the treaty of Bucharest in 1913, with which, in spite of the protests of the ethnic Macedonians, Macedonia was divided into three parts

In that time we didnt have any protest of any "erthnic Macedonian" and not any Unite Macedonia! With this quote FYROM dipute OPEN the present borders by queried the Bucharest Treaty.


What is the Interim Agreement between the FYRepublic of Macedonia and Greece?

Article 7 of the Interim Accord between Greece and FYROM (1995) states the following:“

If either Party believes one or more symbols constituting part of its historic or cultural patrimony is being used by the other Party, it shall bring such alleged use to the attention of the other Party, and the other Party shall take appropriate corrective action or indicate why it does not consider it necessary to do so

For unknown reasons Greek governments show a strange political patience and indigence in the escalate FYROMacedonian hostile activity(symbols, names interritism, ultranationalism e.t.c.) since is known that Interim Accord is ended in 2002.

FYROM want monopolistically to claiming titles, both geographical and historical. If in the future this trend spreads into the economic sector and FYROM seeks exclusive use of derivatives of the Macedonian name in copyright, commercial titles and product names, the name problem could create severe problems—and not just in international relations.


Consequently, Greek people demand:

• The essential, and actual, recognition of Greece’s sovereignty over the entire Greek territory with ACTS and with TALKS. This simply means that Greek Macedonia—from the prefectures of Kastoria and Florina in the west to Drama in the east—cannot be referred to in public documents, maps and school textbooks of neighboring countries as ‘Aegean Macedonia under Greek rule.’ After all, its name is internationally known as ‘Greek Macedonia.’

By the same measure, today’s official place names in Greek Macedonia should be respected.

• Respect for the Greeks’ Macedonian cultural identity and heritage. The erection of a statue to Alexander the Great in Skopje and the rename of Skopje airport in with the name of the Great Greek Historical Leader, as ridiculous as it may seem, would invariably sustain cultural antagonisms.

What might be the Solution ?

The kernel of the problem is that FYROM´s policy has long been based on old agendas, eventually the oldest issue on the national priorities of the states in the region, namely irredentism and great idea aspirations. These were once again exposed recently in slogans over "liberation of Thessaloniki", provocations that aim at formulat-ing a zero sum policy framework in both sides.

130 Members of Congress have so far co-sponsored Resolutions H.356 and S.300, expressing the sense of the Senate / House of Representatives that the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) should stop the utilization of materials that violate provisions of the United Nations-brokered Interim Agreement between the FYROM and Greece regarding ‘‘hostile activities or propaganda’’ and should work with the United Nations and Greece to achieve longstanding United States and United Nations policy goals of finding a mutually-acceptable official name for the FYROM.

Through the cosponsoring of this resolution, and the election of Barack Obama in US Presidency, it is our hope that the United States will be sending the FYROM the clear message that their attempt to rewrite history and steal the cultural heritage of an honorable people is not acceptable behavior.

The Bush administration by recognizing this state as “Macedonia, “ while the name issue was being negotiated under UN has encouraged FYROM to adopt the most obstinate intransigent stance regarding the negotiations. They refuse to discuss any other name than Republic of “Macedonia”, even though according to the Interim Accord in 1995, they agreed that a new name must be found for their country. The Bush administration by recognizing this state as “Macedonia,” has become instrumental into the most horrific revision of history throughout the ages.

The attitudes of Greece and FYROM are radically different and this is something that the international community should take into account. Most people in both states do not want to back down on the name issue. But while Greece’s political leaders have pushed for a reasonable and fair compromise, FYROM’s elected premier has veered in a blatantly nationalist direction. As long as Gruevski plays at being a crusader for nationalist fantasies, he will sink in the political morass. And as he sinks, he will act spasmodically and rather ridiculously. If he keeps this up, no one will take him seriously internationally. The Greek side should show patience. Only if he gets serious can he negotiate a solution, one that will reflect the reality of the region and not harm the interests of either side. Until then, the price that the Slav-Macedonians will pay will be much greater than they think it is today.

Greece has made a rather generous offer by accepting the use of the name Macedonia by FYROM with a geographical prefix that will distinguish it from Greek Macedonia. Practically it has offered Slav Macedonians the raw material to go on with their hostile and aggressive irredentist activities despite the mass objection of the Greek public opinion. This has not been fully appreciated by nationalists in Skopje and mediators.

Greece has called upon FYROM's leadership to act responsibly and show political courage and meet Greece half way. It will be a responsible move on the part of an aspiring candidate, a move that will win them a European future, a future of stability, peace and economic prosperity, based on the principles upon which NATO and the European Union are founded.

What's in a name? Blood, if it's Macedonia

By ANDRÉ GEROLYMATOS

Last month, Liberal MP Lui Temelkovski introduced a private member's bill that called for Canada to recognize the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia as the Republic of Macedonia. This seemingly innocuous bill raised nary an eyebrow in Ottawa. Yet, the name change is a potential source of regional conflict. For 16 years, Canadian governments have stayed clear of Macedonian politics and avoided contributing to such a crisis.

Not long ago, the Balkans conjured images of mass killings, terror and armies of refugees after Yugoslavia's disintegration. The wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo gave us the term "ethnic cleansing," as organized killing symptomatic of the Second World War returned to Europe. Remarkably, the Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia managed to quietly separate in 1991 and, for the most part, avoided the bloodshed that swept the other republics. In fact, the only crimes against humanity were committed against history by weapons of cultural destruction and historical parody, a circumstance not exclusive to the Balkans.

According to some voices from Skopje, all Slav citizens are descendents of Alexander the Great and of the ancient Macedonians - everyone, of course, with the exception of as much as 40 per cent of the population that is Albanian. Airports, schools, buildings and bridges are named after Alexander, Philip or other historical figures whose names provide an instant link with antiquity. The Greeks, however, do not like the hijacking of what they believe is their monopoly of classical Greece and its symbols. The Bulgarians are disenchanted with the notion of a Macedonian identity that is not Bulgarian, and the Albanian minority still feels excluded.

During Tito's heyday, the Macedonian republic constituted a small part of the federation, a reminder of the brief flirtation with a greater Yugoslavia that would have encompassed western Bulgaria and Greece's northern province of Macedonia. To this end, Tito armed and trained Greek Communist insurgents who waged a destructive civil war in Greece from 1946 to 1949. Concurrently, he stocked the fires of a distinct Macedonian nationalism that would serve as a fig leaf for the Yugoslav dictator's Balkan ambitions. The idea was that, under the label of pan-Macedonia, the Yugoslavs could absorb parts of Greece and Bulgaria.

Tito's dream never became a reality because Stalin would not countenance a rival Communist strongman in southeastern Europe. As a result, the Macedonian republic was left to languish in obscurity - the dream of a greater Macedonia was confined to history books, maps and storytelling. The Greeks occasionally protested, but the United States and NATO were far too content with Tito's anti-Soviet policies to take it seriously.

But, despite the outward appearance of a prosperous and multicultural Yugoslavia, the forces of extreme nationalism lay just under the surface. In fact, one reason why Yugoslavia began to unravel in the 1980s was because it could not reconcile Serbian predominance and the latent nationalism of the constituent republics. Regional identities supplanted federalism and common sense. Overnight, Slobodan Milosevic set in motion the process for a greater Serbia that, inevitably, led to civil war

Despite their common ancestry, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and Bosnians had different memories of the past and saw themselves as distinct peoples. The Macedonian problem, to some degree, is not only a mirror image of Yugoslav religious and cultural divisions but also complicated by the Albanian factor. The Slav extremist's insistence on a single ethnic Macedonian identity within a unitary state will further alienate the Albanians and encourage them to seek separation.

This potential new Balkan crisis will also be fuelled by granting independence to Kosovo, a move that will act as a magnet for Albanians in the Macedonian republic. In the ensuing civil war, the Yugoslav horrors of the 1990s will once again plague the region.

This is not to say that a private member's bill in the House of Commons will be the catalyst for a new Balkan conflict. But if it succeeds, it will cast Canadian foreign policy alongside that of the U.S. and Britain, whose short-sighted advocacy of Kosovo independence could trigger another crisis. Ultimately, it would be a very high price to pay for the few votes the bill would generate.

The solution to the Macedonian issue is not facile arguments over who is related to Alexander the Great or what the republic's name is, but rather the admission of this small state into the European Union.

source
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/freeheadlines/LAC/20070716/COMACE16/comment/Comment

The Arnaiz-Villena controversy

The Arnaiz-Villena controversyAn often-cited study from 2001 by Arnaiz-Villena et al.[1] which maps 28 world population based on the HLA DRB1 locus, concluded that "the reason why Greeks did not show a close relatedness with all the other Mediterraneans analyzed was their genetic relationship with sub-Saharan ethnic groups now residing in Ethiopia, Sudan, and West Africa (Burkina Faso)." Later that year, the same data was used in another study by the same author published in a different journal.[2]

This second paper dealt specifically with the relatedness of Palestinians and Israelis and was subsequently "deleted from the scientific literature" because, according to the editor-in-chief Nicole Suciu-Foca, it "confounded the elegant analysis of the historic basis of the people of the Mediterranean Basin with a political viewpoint representing only one side of a complex political and historical issue".[3]

Erica Klarreich's report on the controversy further quotes Sucio-Foca as saying that the reaction against the paper was so severe that "We would have had mass resignations and the journal would have been destroyed if this paper were allowed to remain." [4] The controversy was further reported on in numerous locations including The Observer.[5]

Shortly after this, three respected geneticists, Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Alberto Piazza and Neil Risch, argued that the scientific limitations of Arnaiz-Villena's methodology.[6]

They stated that "
USING RESULTS FROM THE ANALYSIS OF A SINGLE MARKER, PARTICULARLY ONE LIKELY TO HAVE UNDERGONE SELECTION, FOR THE PURPOSE OF RECONSTRUCTING GENEALOGIES IS UNRELIABLE AND UNACCEPTABLE PRACTICE IN POPULATION GENETICS.",

making specific allusion to the findings on Greeks (among others) as

"ANOMALOUS RESULTS, WHICH CONTRADICT HISTORY, GEOGRAPHY, ANTHROPOLOGY AND ALL PRIOR POPULATION-GENETIC STUDIES OF THESE GROUPS."No multiple-marker analysis has ever duplicated Arnaiz-Villena's results.

In The History and Geography of Human Genes (Princeton, 1994), Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi and Piazza grouped Greeks with other European and Mediterranean populations based on 120 loci (view MDS plot[7). Then, Ayub et al. 2003[8] did the same thing using 182 loci (view dendrogram[9).

THE DISPUTED DATA CONTINUES TO BE CITED ALL OVER THE INTERNET, MOSTLY BY WHITE SUPREMACISTS, AFROCENTRISTS AND MACEDONISM NATIONALISTS WHO HAVE POLITICAL MOTIVATIONS TO RELATE MODERN OR ANCIENT GREEKS TO BLACK AFRICANS. HOWEVER, IT'S NO LONGER REFERENCED BY POPULATION GENETICISTS IN CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH, MAINLY DUE TO THE CRITICISM OF CAVALLI-SFORZA ET AL.


Footnotes
1. Arnaiz-Villena et al.
2. Abstract
3. Human Immunology, Vol: 62, Issue: 10, October, 2001, pp1063
4. Nature
5. The Observer
6. Nature
7. MDS plot
8. Ayub et al. 2003
9. dendrogram

The Invention of the 'History of the Macedonian Nation', and the Real Descent of the Macedonians:

Those who produce the propaganda issued in Skopje attach great importance to the ex post facto construction of the history of the 'Macedonian nation'. The 'National History Institute of the Macedonian People' was founded in Skopje in December 1948. The historians of Skopje focused their attention on proving that a separate 'Macedonian' nation existed regardless of whether or not it had ever given any sign of life in the past.

Those historians included Kriste Pitoski, Alexander Trayanovski, Risto Poplazakov and Ian Katardziev, together with the politician Dimitar Vlahov. Their argument consisted of the claim that there had been a 'Macedon ian' people of Slav descent who lived in the area of Macedonia in the 7th century AD.

"After a period of importance in the Middle Ages" (this, of course, is the Empire of Tsar Samuel, who was a Bulgarian and certainly not a 'Macedonian') "the Macedonian people were enslaved by the Bulgarians and latterly by the Turks". In the particular case of Samuel, the argument from Skopje is that he was a 'Macedonian Slav', that since he was the leader of a Macedonian state he was therefore a 'Macedonian', and that consequently the state he founded was 'the first Macedonian state'.

The historical truth of the matter is that Samuel was a Bulgarian Tsar, not a Macedonian. Consequently, the state he founded was Bulgarian. That is why the Byzantine Emperor Basil II, who crushed Samuel and his state, is known as Basil the Bulgar-Slayer and not Basil the Macedonian-Slayer.

According to A. Vasiliev, "Basil's war against the Bulgarians was a very cruel one, as a result of which he was called 'the Bulgar-slayer"'. And M. Levtchenko says that "Basil acquired the name 'Bulgur-slayer because of his exploits and cruelty in war. By 1018 he had finished with Bulgaria."

An inscription dating from 1017 has been found at Monastir: it refers to John, the nephew of Samuel, "Bulgarian by race".

The 'Macedonian' historians of Yugoslavia have been careful enough to avoid the trap of claiming that they are the continuation of the ancient Macedonians. However, they have indulged in theories of various other kinds, identifying the Macedonians with the ancient Illyrians, or tracing their ancestry back to some separate indigenous tribe a sort of mixture of Illyrians and Thracians.

As a result, the Greek influence which can be seen everywhere in Macedonia has to be interpreted as imported from the Greek colonies of Chalkidike, while the Macedonian kings and their stock are described as 'Hellenising apostates' and the population is Macedonian rather than Greek. However, the historians of Skopje are aware of the need for their 'Macedonian' nation to acquire some bonds with antiquity. They thus invented the theory that the invasion of the Slavs (a thousand years after the golden age of Macedon) resulted in the extermination of a part of the indigenous population and inevitable intermarriage with the survivors. Under this oversimplified version of the process by which nations are born, the Slavs who established themselves in Macedonia 'married into' the last traces of the ancient Macedonians so as to provide the Yugoslavs with 20th century 'Macedonians'.

source
Macedonians in Canada

Why Macedonian Slavs Stealing the Greek Macedonian History?

Historian and Professor Eugene Borza who is credited as "Macedonian specialist" by the American Philological Association, and who have done extensive studies regarding the ethnicity of the ancient Macedonians, had also presented in-depth analysis that the ancient Macedonians were not "Slavs" or mixture of Slavs and Romans as Macedonian Slavonic position claim.. In his Macedonia Redux Borza writes:

The Macedonian kingdom was absorbed into the Roman Empire, never to recover its independence. During medieval and modem times, Macedonia was known as a Balkan region inhabited by ethnic Greeks, Albanians, Vlachs, Serbs, Bulgarians, Jews, and Turks.

Without a common national entity and distinguished historical path, as a nation, the present fYROMacedonia was part of Serbia since 1912 with the name of VARDARSKA and with Skopje as its capital. In 1929, following an administrative reorganization of the "Kingdom of Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia", which consisted of 33 Districts (Oblasti), the "Kingdom of South-Slavia" (Yugoslavia) was created, with 9 Administrative Districts (Banobina) and a 10th one, independent, the Administrative District of Belgrade. The boundaries of the 9 Districts where set with geophysical criterias, in a way that they did not disturb any ethnological elements. Due to the inborn ethnological problem of the entire Dominion, which was composed of a mosaic of nationalities, the reformation law had foreseen the non existence, for each of the administrative districts, of common ethnographic elements, which could incubate future moves for independence. Thus, the present lack of ethnological homogeneity of the state of fYROM, is the result of diligent work and not incidental. The non existence of homogeneity is due to this prudence.Loring Danforth point out:

The history of the construction of a macedonian national identity does not begin with alexander the great in the fourth century b.c. or with saints cyril and methodius in the ninth century a.d., as Macedonian nationalist historians often claim. nor does it begin with tito and the establishment of the people's republic of macedonia in 1944 as greek nationalist historians would have us believe. It begins in the nineteenth century with the first expressions of macedonian ethnic nationalism on the part of a small number of intellectuals in places like thessaloniki, belgrade, sophia, and st.petersburg. this period marks the beginning of the process of "imagining" a macedonian national community, the beginning of the construction of a macedonian national identity and culture"

The fYROMacedonian historiography basing her “stealing process” via the Historical revisionism.Historical revisionism is the attempt to change commonly held ideas about the past. In its legitimate form (see historical revisionism) it is the reexamination of historical facts, with an eye towards updating historical narratives with newly discovered, more accurate, or less biased information, acknowledging that history of an event, as it has been traditionally told, may not be entirely accurate.Historical revisionism can be used as a label to describe the views of self-taught historians who publish articles that deliberately misrepresent and manipulate historical evidence.

This process identified from the Bulgarian historians as Macedonisn. Macedonism is the political idea prevalent in the Republic of Macedonia advocates revising history in order to project an ethnic group that formed in the 20th century - ethnic Macedonians - in the context of the 19th century and even in the middle ages. For example, Bulgarian Tsar Samuil is denied the Bulgarian nature of his kingdom, despite overwhelming evidence supporting it, and is defined as a "Slavic" or "Macedonian" king. Further attempts are made to deny the Hellenic nature of the ancient kingdom of Macedon and to seek connections between present day ethnic Macedonians and the Ancient Macedonians.What are the aims of the Macedonists after the creation of the Macedonian Slav State ? Maria Nystazopoulou Pelekidou writes:

Their first aim was to cut off every link between the so-called "Macedonians" and the Bulgarians, as a well as the Serbs, and to convince the people that they belonged to a separate Slavic nation, the "Macedonian" one

The second aim was to eliminate Greek character of Macedonia and Macedonian history; and this would be achieved by minimizing the Greek presence in this region and misinterpreting or falsifying their role, specifically the cultural and intellectual contribution of Hellenism, the orthodox Greek clergy and Greek schools.

The third aim was to search for, fabricate and project the historical development of the so-called "Macedonian people", so as to prove the separate national identity of the "Macedonians", as well as their cohesion and continuity from ancient times until today.

The fourth aim was to create a Great Idea, which would bring awareness to the masses. So the historians of Skopje started declaring that Macedonia, as a whole, was a Slavic country both in its historical tradition and its ethnic composition. For this reason, it had to be united and form a unified state.

That is exactly why the Macedonian Slavs claim that the ancient Macedonians "were Slavs" or Mix, so that if in ancient times there was a non Greek tribe (Macedonians) living in Macedonia, then that land therefore is non Greek and therefore with the Slavonic invasion in 6th cent these Slavs didn’t find any Greek presence. They exterminated a large number of the indigenous population and assimilated the rest. Thus, within a few years Macedonia became Slavic. Because these indigenous populations were Illyrian and not Greek, the Slavs who settled in Macedonia were united with that non-Greek element and thus acquired ancient roots, irrespective of any Greek presence. In this way, Skopje claims for itself not only the history but also the achievements of the civilization connected to this region.

Source
1-Eugene Borza, “Macedonian Redux”
2-Loring Danforth, “The Macedonia Conflict”
3-Maria Nystazopoulou Pelekidou, “The Macedonian Question”
4-Historical Revisionism, wikipedia

Kalo Taxidi Amalia

Greek bloggers are mourning the loss of one of their own, a young Greek cancer patient whose adventures through the Greek medical system touched thousands, and are dedicating June 1 to her memory.

Amalia Kalyvinou, who died last week at the age of 30, had attracted many to her Internet Weblog with her stories about incompetent and corrupt doctors who failed to diagnose her for years or took financial advantage of her despair."Goodbye Amalia.

Greeks must think about how they tolerate this disgrace and never speak up," one anonymous blogger wrote.

Her ordeal appeared to have touched a nerve with many Greeks, long dissatisfied with their public medical care, and daily newspapers published news of Amalia's death on their front page on Tuesday.

Doctors in Athens pledged yesterday to look into accusations of malpractice and corruption made against their colleagues by a dying 30-year-old cancer sufferer who publicized her plight by keeping a popular online diary, or blog.It was revealed that Amalia Kalyvinou died on Friday, prompting more than 900 bloggers to log onto her site over the past few days to post messages of condolence.

Greek bloggers have also decided to dedicate Friday, June 1, as a day in honor of the philosophy student.

Kalyvinou used her blog over the last two years to detail the problems in the health system as she underwent treatment for cancer.

The address of the 30-year-old’s blog, fakellaki.blogspot.com, gives an indication of the type of problems she encountered.

Fakellaki, or small envelope, refers to the bribes that patients are sometimes obliged to give doctors so they can obtain preferential treatment.

Kalyvinou made a point of naming the doctors she thought had been professional as well as those she considered to be corrupt.

The head of the Athens Medical Association (ISA), Sotiris Rigakis, told Kathimerini that his organization will look into the claims of malpractice but admitted that it will be difficult to bring anyone before ISA’s disciplinary committee without hard evidence.“Unsubstantiated claims are an obstacle to our actions,” said Rigakis. “Nevertheless, ISA condemns doctors who take bribes.

If some people are not happy with their pay, they should challenge this through legal means, not by demanding money from patients.”A recent independent study revealed that 36 percent of patients admit to having bribed a doctor.

It is estimated that Greeks spend almost 200 million euros a year on bribing doctors.In a post on her blog two months ago during a break from chemotherapy, Kalyvinou said that she had come across “illogical bureaucracy” and doctors who “exploited” her financially.

She also complained of having been treated in dirty hospitals andbeing forced to queue for hours to have her health book stamped at IKA social security fund offices.

ΚΑΛΟ ΤΑΞΙΔΙ ΑΜΑΛΙΑ!!!

http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSL2968726320070529 http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_politics_100041_30/05/2007_83897 http://fakellaki.blogspot.com/

Pan-Macedonian to nationalist UMD

The Panmacedonian Federation of Australia deplores the thoroughly racist, historically inaccurate Advertisement appearing in “The Australian” newspaper on 23 May 2007 by various “Macedonian” community organisations. That advertisement seems calculated to incite racial hatred and raises the spectre of irredentism, attitudes that are completely un-Australian. Certainly the claims made in the advertisement are not shared by the majority of Australians whose origins stem from the geographic region of Macedonia, and it is ironic that this advertisement was published in the context of a visit to Australia by the Macedonian Prime Minister of Greece, Mr Kostas Karamanlis.

In the advertisement, it is claimed that Greece “seized Southern Macedonia.” The implication is of course that this territory rightfully belongs to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. In subtly calling for a ‘revision’ of borders, the advertisement’s sponsors conveniently neglect to mention that the geographical region of Macedonia was awarded to Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Albania after the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 by the international community, on ethno-linguistic lines. At no stage was there any consideration of a “Macedonian” ethnic identity by any of these nations or the international communities, simply because that ‘identity’ did not exist at that time. In an age of consensus and peace, why are the so-called “peaceful Macedonians” advocating a revision of borders set in 1913?

Much ink is further spilled in attempting to convince the reader that the human rights of “Macedonians” are not protected in Greece. Nothing could be further from the truth. Greek local government officials have fostered a spirit of cross-border co-operation with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) and cultural exchanges are common. Much aid is sent by Greece to FYROM. A political party known as Rainbow-Vinozhito, which openly claims that there are tens of thousands of ethnic “Macedonians” living in Greek territory is permitted freely to take part in the Greek electoral process, despite not being able to advance any evidence to back its claims.

The sponsors of the advertisement can advance no evidence for their claim that “Macedonians” are being denied the right to study their own language and promulgate their culture in Greece. Indeed, their claim that Greek citizens have their land confiscated for doing so is fallacious and defamatory, considering that there is no such mechanism allowed for in Greek law.

Perhaps the sponsors of the advertisement could explain why, in ‘democratic’ FYROM, the local primate of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Archbishop Jovan, has been incarcerated, for refusing to adopt a ‘Macedonian’ identity?
Could they also explain why the Greek, Albanian, Vlach and Roma minorities in that country have no right to education, religious instruction in their mother tongue?
Could they explain why it is that so many members of ethnic minorities in that country have had their names forcibly changed so as to appear more ‘Macedonian?’
The FYROM government’s record on Human Rights is a sordid one, even to the extent where its persecution of its local Helsinki Committee for Human Rights President Mrs Mirjana Najcevska caused the intervention of several international organizations.

Finally, we ask why it is that the sponsors of the advertisement insist upon a culturally exclusivist and racist definition of the word Macedonian.
According to them, a Macedonian is a person who speaks the official language of FYROM and identifies himself as ascribing to an identity set out by its government.
According to them, the many Albanians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Roma, Serbs and Turks who reside in the wider geographical region and have done so for the same amount of time, do not have the right to identify with their homelands, or to call themselves Macedonian.
Adopting this logic would be akin to a non-native minority in this state denying others the right to call themselves Victorian.

The Panmacedonian Federation of Australia, being a federation of various Macedonian organizations, condemns the malicious and false allegations in the advertisement and commits itself to supporting the cohesive, peaceful and tolerant fabric of Australian society. Sadly this is not achieved by name-calling, calling for the revision of borders and denying other peoples’ right to self-identification. It applauds the Australian Government’s current position on the naming of FYROM as the only sensible and viable solution, until such time as the government of FYROM and the people who identify culturally with that republic, understand that they cannot use rcial criteria to deny others the right to identify themselves as Macedonians.

Yours faithfully,

Dimitris Minas

PANMACEDONIAN FEDERATION OF AUSTRALIA

'Aegean Macedonia' - an irredentist term

'Aegean Macedonia' is a Slav Macedonian irredentist term used to refer to the region of Macedonia in Greece, in the context of a 'United Macedonia'. The origins of the term seem to be rooted in the 1940s but its modern usage is widely considered ambiguous and irredentist. The term has occasionally appeared on maps circulated in the former Yugolsav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), which envisioned Greek Macedonia (referred to as "Aegean Macedonia") as part of a "Greater Macedonia", and is regarded as a challenge of of the legitimacy of Greek sovereignity over the area.[1]

The origin of the geographical terminology is arguable. A similar term was used in 1944 to describe a unit fighting in the Second World War called the "First Aegean Macedonian Brigade" [2], although there is no evidence that this is the first usage of the term "Aegean Macedonia".

During the Greek Civil War, in 1947 the Greek Ministry of Press and Information published a book, I Enandion tis Ellados Epivoulis ("Designs on Greece"), namely of documents and speeches on the ongoing Macedonian issue, many translations from Yugoslav officials. It reports Josip Broz Tito using the term 'Aegean Macedonia' on the 11th October, 1945 in the build up to the Greek Civil War; the original document is archived in ‘GFM A/24581/G2/1945’. For Athens in 1947, the “new term, Aegean Macedonia”, (also “Pirin Macedonia”), was introduced by Yugoslavs. Contextually, this observation indicates this was part of the Yugoslav offensive against Greece, laying claim to Greek Macedonia, but Athens does not seem to take issue with the term itself . The 1945 date concurs with Bulgarian sources.

Tito's war time representative to Macedonia, General Tempo (Svetozar Vukmanovic), is credited with promoting the usage of the new regional names of the Macedonian region for irredentist purposes. Indeed, Tsola Dragoiocheva, in her Memoirs, 'Pobadata', Sofia 1979, writes that, "Under pressure from Tempo, the Yugoslav Macedonian Headquarters issued a Manifesto in October 1943, for the slogan about a 'united Macedonia', which began to crop up in Communist Party of Yugoslavia documents. Hitherto, the Yugolsav party leadership only had designs on Vardar Macedonia." Tempo himself wrote [3] that, "The slogan about a united Macedonia first appeared in the Manifesto of the Headquarters of the National Liberation Army of Macedonia, at the beginning of October 1943. There had been no mention of it earlier in any document either in Yugoslavia or in Macedonia". Tempo also attacked the Greek Communist Party (KKE) because it, "only recognises the Macedonian people of Aegean Macedonia a right to equality in the framework of the Greek State" [4]. The ideological context was always 'anti bourgeois-democratic parties' and in line with communist ideology.

In 1946, the Belgrade newspaper Borba, (August 26, 1946) published an article under the title "Aegean Macedonia", it was also published in Skopje’s Nova Makedonija with a map of Yugoslav territorial claims against Greece. A month later, on September 22, the Premier of the People's Republic of Macedonia, Dimitar Vlahov [speech in Nova Makedonija, on September 26, 1946] announced, "We openly declare that Greece has no rights whatsoever over Aegean Macedonia...". Vlahov then went on to publish, "The Problems of Aegean Macedonia", Belgrade, June 1947.

By 1950, the term 'Aegean Macedonians' had been officially adopted by the Slav Macedonian political separatists in Skopje [5][6] who began publishing their own organ, ‘The Voice of the Aegeans’; it is later found amongst militant diaspora communities. [7].

The Slav Macedonians in Greece seemed relieved to be acknowledged as Slavomacedonians. A native of the region, former exile and local historian, Pavlos Koufis, says in Laografika Florinas kai Kastorias (Folklore of Florina and Kastoria) [8], that,

“[During its Panhellenic Meeting in September 1942, the KKE mentioned that it recognises the equality of the ethnic minorities in Greece] the KKE recognised that the Slavophone population was ethnic minority of Slavomacedonians]. This was a term, which the inhabitants of the region accepted with relief. [Because] Slavomacedonians = Slavs+Macedoninas. The first section of the term determined their origin and classified them in the great family of the Slav peoples.”

The name "Aegean Macedonia" is considered by the Greeks as ambiguous and offensive. On one hand it contains a reference to a geographical area they consider historically Greek (the Aegean), but, as expressed above, there is also the experience that it is used by irredentist organizations in FYROM and beyond who support a United Macedonia, contrary to the desires of the people living in the area.

Writing in 1953, Lazar Mojsov seems surprised that the Greeks find the term "Aegean Macedonia" insulting, and uses it frequently, noting that "...Politis (former Greek minister of external affairs) didn't miss the opportunity to attack even the very term "Aegean Macedonia", stating that it was "coined by the communist propagandists" [9].

The term is currently used by some scholars, mostly contextualised, along with the sister terms Vardar Macedonia (describing the part of Macedonia in which the FYROM inhabits) and Pirin Macedonia (describing the part of Macedonia in which the Blagoevgrad province of Bulgaria inhabits). The term is used more frequently by Slav Macedonians and can have irredentist connotations, in relation to the concept of United Macedonia.

References

1. "The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World", Loring M. Danforth, p. 37
2. Autonomist Movements of the Slavophones in 1944, Spyridon Sfetas, Balkan Studies, 36/2 (1995), 297-317.
3. Struggle for the Balkans,London: Merlin 1980
4. How and why the people's Liberation struggle of Greece met with defeat (O narodnou revolucijiu u Grckoj), Manchester: Merlin Press, 1985, original 1949
5. International Organization, Vol. 1, No. 3, (Sep., 1947), pp.494-508. Appointed under the Security Council resolution of December 19, 1946, the "Commission of Investigation Concerning Greek Frontier Incidents" on May 27, 1947 submitted a report, to the Security Council.The general conclusion of the UN Commission as about Macedonia issue, was that Yugoslav and Bulgarian Governments themselves revived and promoted a separatist movement among the Slav minorities in Macedonia.In making this finding, the Commission pointed out that some 20,000 Greek citizens had fled to Yugoslavia and some 5,000 to Bulgaria — most of them Slavs — and that the treatment of this group by Greek officials had "provided fertile breeding ground for separatist movements." In Yugoslavia, Macedonian separatism was the special goal of an organization called the NOF (National Labor Front) which had its headquarters in Skopje and Monastirion(Bitola).
6. These separatists were born in Greece and in 1949 fled to Tito’s Communist ‘Socialist Republic of Macedonia’ and who years before (during Greece’s occupation by the Axis in 1941-1944) had openly expressed pro-Bulgarian sentiments and affiliations and enthusiastically collaborated with the Bulgarian allies of the Nazis, and the infamous Bulgarian Ohrana Police Battalions –operating in Both Macedonia and Thrace. Those very people (especially in Western Macedonia) in the aftermath of the Axis (including Bulgarian) defeat in 1944 and in order to avoid the dire consequences of their treason and collaboration decided, literally overnight, to make a drastic and highly opportunistic change of their political affiliations and national consciousness.
7. Some of this material is quoted from, E. Kofos, Nationalism and Communism in Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Institute of Balkan Studies, 1964
8. 'Laografika Florinas kai Kastorias', Athens, 1996, probably published by the author
9. Лазо Мојсов, Околу прашањето на македонското национално малцинство во Грција, ИНИ, Скопје, 1954)

Last chance for FYROM solution

The open wound that is Greece’s issue with the name of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia has been festering for 16 years, but it seems there might be just one last chance to resolve it, namely within the context of FYROM’s fervent desire to join NATO at the next summit in 2008.Assuming, of course, that the mistakes of the past are not repeated.As with the Cyprus issue, things have deteriorated since the early days of the problem, but there appears to be some, albeit faint hope for a compromise.

Athens has let it be known that it will block FYROM’s accession to NATO unless it receives satisfaction in its dispute centering on the neighboring country’s use of the name “Macedonia,” a name by which the US has officially recognized the Balkan state.

However, the Greek-American lobby has persuaded Congress to add mention of the term “FYROM” in the reference to “Macedonia” in legislation on the next enlargement of NATO, signed by President George W. Bush just a few days ago.

Skopje strongly protested the move, fearing backpedaling by the US and seeing it as the first step in a move to coerce it over its use of the name.

Any solution will be a painful compromise. Those who are hoping for a national triumph will be disappointed. Any such hopes were lost back in 1993 when maximalist claims stirred up patriotic fervor in the form of mass rallies around the world – from Thessaloniki to Washington – which merely resulted in a deadlock.

The international community was not convinced, not because of any conspiracy against Hellenism, but because Greece’s objection to the use of the name “Macedonia” was seen as irrational.

In 1993, moderate voices in favor of a combined name such as “Nova Makedonia,” as a more feasible and realistic compromise, simply fell on deaf ears.Back then, members of the New Democracy government, as well as PASOK leader Andreas Papandreou, left Prime Minister Constantine Mitsotakis no scope for negotiation.

Even the latter’s suggestion of “Slavomacedonia” raised cries of “treason,” an insulting accusation that is all too easily bandied about in Greece. Yet it was those maximalist patriotic slogans that led to the “Republic of Macedonia.”

If we are presented with one more opportunity to resolve the FYROM issue, it would be wise this time to avoid divisive excesses. For we might end up with something even more objectionable than the “Republic of Macedonia” which we are faced with today.

http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_columns_4680884_13/04/2007_82278

The critical five years: 1945-50

[ Greece and The Macedonian Question,Etairia Makedonikon Spoudon]

Nonetheless the Slavo-Macedonians, with the backing of the newly- formed Tito regime in Yugoslavia, kept up their efforts. Just a few days after the Varkiza agreement, Slavo-Macedonian èmigrès from Greece formed an organisation named NOF (National Liberation Front) in Skopje, and sent armed guerrilla bands back to the border areas of Greek Macedonia. The activities of these bands attracted the criticism of the KKE, since they were in conflict with the terms of the Varkiza agreement and gave the government forces an excuse for applying severe measures to suppress them.

However, when the Civil War began in 1946, the Slavo-Macedonians, returned to Greek Macedonia in great numbers and joined the Greek Communist movement, while still retaining their own organisation, the NOF. To judge from the various collections of documents and memoirs which have been published in Skopje, the Slavo-Macedonians — that is, the part of the Slavic-speaking population whose national consciousness was Slavic — were fighting what they saw at this time as a "national liberation struggle for the Macedonians of the Aegean" in order to win their national rights. These rights were none other than the policy which Yugoslavia was officially pursuing at this time and which was intended to incorporate the Macedonian territories of both Greek and Bulgarian Macedonia into the Socialist Republic of Macedonia.

In the meantime, and while the outcome of the civil war in Greece still hung in the balance, the Yugoslavs exerted unbearable pressure on their Bulgarian comrades in order to blackmail them into ceding Bulgarian Macedonia to Yugoslavia. In the end, by the Bled accords of 1947, Dimitrov agreed, in return for minor concessions, to acknowledge the inhabitants of Bulgarian Macedonia (Pirin) as "Macedonians" and to pave the way for the incorporation of the province of Pirin into the Socialist Republic of Macedonia. The incorporation of Greek Macedonia would await the outcome of the civil war.

The split between Stalin and Tito, which occurred suddenly in the summer of 1948, upset all the Yugoslav calculations about playing a leading role in the Balkans using the Macedonian question as the central lever. Bulgaria seized the opportunity to release itself from the concessions it had made over the Macedonian question. It repudiated the theory of the "Macedonian nation" and drove the commissars from Skopje off its territory. It then attempted to exploit the difficulties which the Yugoslavs were facing in order to advance once more the pre-war slogan of an "independent and united Macedonia ". This slogan also served to increase the more general political pressure which the Soviet Union was at that time exerting on Tito.

The Moscow-Belgrade split, however, also had dramatic repercussions for Greek Macedonia. The leadership of the KKE judged it to be expedient to fall into line with the Soviet Union in attacking Tito and at the same time adopt its new policy towards Macedonia. Thus, by decision of the 5th Plenum of the Central Committee, in January 1949, the KKE revived the old pro-Bulgarian slogan of the "independent and united Macedonia" in the framework of a future Balkan Communist Federation.

This shift of policy had grave consequences for the course of military operations, since the Yugoslavs, in order to protect their own rear, closed the border with Greece, which until that time had been the main channel through which supplies had flowed to the Communist forces in Greece. Some of the NOF supporters fled to Yugoslav Macedonia, where they settled. Later, when the armed conflict ended in August 1949, the remaining masses of NOF supporters followed the other Greek political refugees into exile in the countries of Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union.

The final outcome of those five tragic years was that those Slavic- speakers who had originally joined forces with the Bulgarians during the occupation and later identified with Skopje's Slavo-Macedonians left Greece. This was the last exodus from Greek Macedonia of people who felt themselves to be Slavs or had pro-Slav sentiments. Certainly, in the maelstrom of the fighting and the events of the time injustices must have been done, and consequently there later occurred a kind of selective repatriation of Slavic-speakers with Greek national consciousness. Those Slavic-speak­ ers with Greek national consciousness who had been fighting to keep Greece free and Macedonia Greek ever since the Macedonian Straggle remained in Greece . It was these frontier fighters who, even in the most difficult times, refused to become instruments of the Bulgarians' occupation forces or of Tito's SNOF and NOF. Yugoslavia , faced with the nightmarish prospect of a Soviet invasion, sought support in the West, which opened up the way for the normalisation of relations with Greece and the signing, in 1954, of a tripartite Balkan pact of defensive alliance, of which Turkey also was a member.

The new circumstances led Yugoslavia to drop the territorial demands it had been putting forward and to restrict itself to formal claims for the recognition of "Macedonian" minorities. These claims were, however, to­ tally insubstantiated, since the objective conditions to justify them no longer existed. The KKE, on its part, soon realised the enormous political cost of the decision taken by the 5th Plenum and reversed it with a theoretical position involving "the equality of the Slavo-Macedonians". However, since the Slavo-Macedonians concerned were no longer in Greece , this position gradually lost force and was officially abandoned with the categorical statement by General Secretary Harilaos Florakis in Thessaloniki in September 1988 that "for the KKE, there is no Macedonian minority in Greece".

Lastly, Bulgaria too dropped the slogan of a united Macedonia after the death of Stalin in 1953. After a considerable amount of vacillation — directly connected to the state of Soviet-Yugoslav relations at any given time — Bulgaria also adopted the position that there is no "Macedonian nation" and that consequently there can be no "Macedonian" minority in Bulgaria.

As a conclusion, after the upheavals of the period 1940-50, the three sections of Macedonia went over to licking their wounds and have since followed, peacefully, the political, economic and social development of the countries to which they belong.