Greek people is under occupation.
Merkel Germany, EC, ECB and IMF try to kill the Greek people by force them in internal default. In order to doing this, they kill the Liberal Democracy. As Pr. Krugman remark: "They now looking at a scenario in which Greece is forced into killing levels of austerity to pay its foreign creditors, with no real light at the end of the tunnel.
This is just not going to work."
The earliest Greek newspaper in Thessaloniki was Ermis [Hermes] (1875), owned by the Garbola family of publishers, which circulated from 1881 to 1885 as Pharos tis Makedonias [Beacon of Macedonia]. The Macedonia newspaper first circulated in 1911 - the last year of Ottoman Rule – and is still published to this day. In a time of intense national conflict, both titles chose their name so as to promote their Greek perspective. After 1912, and above all in the interwar years, the daily and periodical press flourished in the new provinces of the Greek state. This publishing explosion was a reflection of the process of social and economic incorporation ofMacedonian territory into the free Greek state, as well as of the intense political processes.
Every Macedonian town and every political grouping that could bear the financial cost wanted to have its own clamouring voice; it is of course no coincidence that an impressive number of publications defined themselves as ‘Macedonian’, precisely so as to give their geographical position, with or without the aid of Alexander and Phillip, the ancient symbols. There were also numerous regular columns and feuilletons under the ‘Macedonian’ name, which dealt with localissues. The choice made by the dailies was followed by several assorted content periodical publications, though mainly literary magazines, which attempted to define the particular nature of their artistic quests through use of the Macedonian name, while also creating a distinct local Greek Macedonian tradition. In the field of books and academic studies, it is almost impossible torecord all the Macedonian titles. Yet, here too, one can discern the geographical use – within the framework of Greek administrative boundaries - on the one hand, and the symbolic use on the other, by reference to the glorious tradition of ancient times and the fighting of recent years.
Click the images to view them in higher resolution.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mr. George Koumoutsakos made the following statement with regard to FYROM’s instituting proceeding before to the International Court of Justice:
“Mr. Gruevski’s government, after having rejected the recent set of ideas put forward by the Personal Envoy of the Secretary-General for the name issue, Ambassador M. Nimetz, today continued his delaying tactics, by instituting proceedings at the International Court of Justice regarding an alleged violation on the part of Greece of article 11 of the 1995 Interim Accord.
It initiated this action, concealing the fact that the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia itself had earlier flagrantly violated a series of fundamental articles/obligations explicitly foreseen in this Accord, but also the fundamental principle of good neighbourly relations.
In the course of the judicial process, we will have the opportunity to submit documents and memos, analyzing Greece’s positions on the undisguised and continuous violations of the Interim Accord by the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
With this action, the government of Skopje once again reaffirms that it is not interested in a swift resolution of the dispute on the issue of the country’s definitive name, as explicitly stipulated in UN Security Council Resolution 845 of 1993.
Greece will participate in this process in a self-confident and determined manner representative of the comprehensiveness, clarity and substance of its arguments.
Irrespective of the abovementioned developments, Greece remains committed to the UN negotiating process aimed at reaching a mutually acceptable solution on the name issue. It further firmly stands by its well-known positions.”
FYROM has filed a motion at the International Court of Justice accusing Greece of breaking a UN agreement when it blocked Skopje’s bid to join NATO in April. FYROM is now arguing that Greece broke that part of the accord when it objected to Skopje’s NATO invitation.
Skopje asks from the International Court of Justice to determine whether or not Greece through its state organs and acclaimed representatives has broken its obligation as stated in article 11 paragraph 1 of the Interim Accord that it would not block Skopje’s membership of international institutions if it applies using its provisional name.
In addition Skopje asks the court to order Greece to do all the necessary steps to fulfill its obligations form the accord.
This the part of the Interim Accord that mention the "International Court of Justice" part.....................
Article 21
1. The Parties shall settle any disputes exclusively by peaceful means in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations. 2. Any difference or dispute that arises between the Parties concerning the interpretation or implementation of this Interim Accord may be submitted by either of them to the International Court of Justice, except for the differences referred to in Article 5, paragraph 1.
Determined to use every possible way to fortify the “Macedonian identity” and to keep the territorial claims against Greece , appeared the FYROM administration which now regulates “expedition” for the requisition of the properties of the so called “Aegeans”.
As it is known, already from July, when was set up issue of “Macedonian minority” in Greece and the returning of the properties to “Aegeans” even directly from the leader of the ultranationlist VMRO and Prime Minister of FYROM Nicholas Gruevski and the confirmation from the FYROM Parliament,has been organized an entire mechanism for the promotion and the support of the requests for properties requisitions.
The Provocation planning
A specialist prosecutor undertook to collect the requests of the concerned,accompanied by all these elements which could be used as titles of ownership,while a special service of ” immigration” undertook to modulate a specific form of a document for the easiness of the concerned people.
This enterprise is flanked by a team of jurists who target to operate on the Greek courts as well as on the European court. It is characteristic that according to informal information roughly 8.000 individuals have already mobilized for the submission of applications invoking Greek titles of property or even Ottoman titles or simply testimonies.
Indicative it is that a team of 500 “Aegeans” has calculated its claims for fortunes in the region of Thessalonica at 1 billion Euros, while an other who already has deposited an application to the Committee claims from Greece compensation of 176 millions Euros for fortune that his grandfather had acquired in the region of Thessalonica.
The demanding of fortunes does not, of course, have only an economic dimension, as this could be faced in any court. However, the specific way that FYROM move that procedure is the vehicle for the factual projection of the issue of “Macedonian minority” in Greece (of which a big part lives “banished” in Skopje) and of course in the second phase, the legalisation of territorial claims, via the demand for historical re-correction and reunification of “three slices of Macedonia”.
The standardized printed form which the FYROM side now has, is titled as “Real estates and other claims” and it will contain the recording of all properties’ financial elements.
Particular interest have two questions in which applicants are called to answer, the first is about the “conditions under which the fortunes were lost” and the other to whom today the fortune belongs with recommended answer the “Greek state”. As for the nationality of the applicant in the supplemented model that is distributed, the answer is of course “Makedonsko” and the name is “Georgios Donis”.
Of course the FYROM Provocation planning focus not only in the Slavmacedonians but also in the Albanian Chams and Turkish Macedonians what ever that means.
From the document are not absent, of course, and the comical elements, and that’s because it is included provision in order to be declared if the house that is claimed had oven, if it existed a barn with threshing machine, how many domestic animals, cows, sheeps, mules, pigs, chickens etc. had been belonging to their property and even how man kilos wheat or goods of household consider that they were lost
The Aim of the FYROM provocation
FYROM’s irredentist policy towards Greece from 1944 to the present, a policy that is in flagrant breach of the Interim Agreement signed by the two parties in 1995 expressly calling on them to put an end to any mutual expressions of irredentism. The pseudo-irredentist propaganda of Skopje, by which it essentially disputes Greece’s sovereignty over the northern part of the country, will be promoted with a barrage of advertisements on the American media, and with the publication of law suits by so called “Aegean Macedonians” against the Greek state as wrote Mihalis Ignatiou in Ethnos Newspaper article.
'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
The historical dogma, taking shape in FYROM, backtracks the origins of this modern Slavmacedonians—the Makedonci— a full millennium to include the ancient Macedonians (5th century BC). This revisionist historical dogma, is not limited to encroaching upon the identity of a Hellenic people of the classical times.
It aims at expanding the boundaries of the historical “taktovina” (fatherland) of the “Makedonci” to include wide regions of Greece and Bulgaria.It is well known, that for decades the classrooms and school textbooks of history in FYROM have been adorned with maps portraying Macedonia’s “geographic and ethnic”, i.e. Slavic boundaries extending all the way to Mount Olympus and Chalkidiki, in Greek Macedonia as well as to the Pirin district of Bulgaria.
FYROM main headings were, are and will be...
Renaming Greek Macedonia as ‘Aegean Macedonia’, and representing it as terra irredenta, as an integral part of FYROM.
Claiming the existence of an oppressed ‘Macedonian minority’ within Greece.
Appropriating emblems and symbols, and the Greek cultural legacy in general (with Ancient Macedonia as the focal point).
As long as FYROM plays at being a crusader for nationalist fantasies, it will sink in the political morass. And as FYROM sinks, it will act spasmodically and rather ridiculously. This problem does not only concern Greece, against which Gruevski now makes various unfounded but dangerous claims, but Bulgaria also and the entire region. Europe and the US should not only discourage FYROM officials, but are obliged to stop these , now that it is still early.
Another source from 1903 describing the races of Macedonia.
Greek, Bulgarians, Turks, Albanians.
It describes the Greeks as the most ancient race of Macedonia number 350,000, 500,000 Bulgarians, and 3/4’s of all Muslims are Turkish. As usual for the frustration of Skopjan Propagandists, no independent Makedonskian group listed. The finding is from Chicagogeorge
The 16-pointed star "Sun of Vergina" as also named discovered in recent excavations as the symbol of the royal Macedonian dynasty of ancient Greece, and which is now being claimed as their own by the FYROM Slavmacedonians, was widely used in Attica during the classical period, long before its adoption by the Macedonian royal house.
The star, identical with the one decorating the larnax discovered in the tomb of Philip II of Macedonia, father of Alexander the Great, at Vergina in Northern Greece, has been found as one of the elements of decoration on at least four temples of the classical era, including two on the Acropolis of Athens.
The 16-ray star as it was designed on the golden larnaka that contained Philippos' remains. That appearance of the 16-ray star is possibly the only appearance on ancient findings.
With great surprise I read the article [1] by the Slav-Macedonian Risto Stefov (Chris Stefou) which attacked my response to a previous article of his, particularly in regards to the Carnegie Commission Report[2].The Slav-Macedonian writer calls me as "anti-Macedonian internet warrior propagandist" and then attempts to justify this accusation by once again making use of historical revisionism [3]. Disregarding some of the tangents gone off on by Mr. Stefov, I will attempt here to respond to some of the relevant claims.
I will begin my analysis with the term "Macedonian" and its meaning: A Macedonian according to several sources[4][5]is a native or inhabitant of the (Ancient or Modern) Macedonian region. I was born in Thessaloniki and my family's origin can be traced from that city, as well as Eastern Macedonia 150 years ago.
So am I Macedonian according Risto Stefov's historical revisionism process?
According to the known English dictionaries I am. How can I then be accused of being "anti-Macedonian"?
I'll try to explain to you why Mr. Stefov has denied the fact that a Macedonian in our modern era is also a Greek, a Bulgarian, an Albanian and anyone that lived in the region known as Macedonia.
Also, Mr. Stefov said that he knows "exactly what the Carnegie Commission report said and can show us a dozen more reports that say: 'No ethnic Macedonians existed anywhere in geographic Macedonia'". Yet, he avoids answering the question completely. Why didn't the Carnegie Commission report make any remark or in any way mention the so-called "Macedonian" nation, ethnicity or language? Why does this same report describe the Slavic population of Macedonia as Bulgarians, rather than "ethnic Macedonians"?
Of course I do not deny that the Slav-Macedonian national identity begins in the nineteenth century. However, why did most Slav-Macedonians describe themselves as Bulgarians from 1870 to 1943?
Why do many still today identify as Bulgarians, having resisted being transformed into "Macedonians" by the dictatorial powers of a communist state for 75 years?
A.D. Smith wrote that "ethnic communities or 'ethnies' are constituted, not by lines of physical descent, but by the sense of continuity, shared memory and collective destiny, i.e. by lines of cultural affinity embodied in myths, memories, symbols and values retained by a given cultural unit of population."Stefov attempts to establish a link between the Slavonic nation FYROM with the famous ancient Greek tribe, the Macedonians. Many writers mention that the modern FYROM Macedonians are Slavs[7][8] and have no connection whatsoever with the ancient Macedonians, who were Greeks and became world-famous in the fourth century BC under Alexander The Great whose conquests of the East began the Hellenistic Age.
Historian and Professor Eugene Borza who is credited as "Macedonian specialist" by the American Philological Association, and who has completed 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 Slav)s or Romans as some Slav-Macedonists claim. In his article Macedonia Redux [9] Borza explains:"Modern Slavs, both Bulgarians and Macedonians, cannot establish a link with antiquity, as the Slavs entered the Balkans centuries after the demise of the ancient Macedonian kingdom".
Slav-Macedonism is the political idea prevailing in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) which utilises historical revisionism to establish links between an ethnic group that formed in the 20th century - ethnic 'Macedonians' - and historical events and figures of the 19th century and Middle Ages. For example, Bulgarian Tsar Samuil, despite the overwhelming evidence, is portrayed as a "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. Unfortunately for extremist Macedonists like Stefov, history bears witness to the fact that in the early 1940s the Bulgarian inhabitants of Vardar Macedonia were transformed into "Macedonians" for political reasons by communist dictators (Tito, Stalin, and Dimitrov) and infamous communist organizations (Comintern and the Balkan Communist Federation )[10,11]. REFERENCES
[1]- Modern Greeks like to Bend the truth to suit their Agenda, American chronicle (http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/78874)
[2]- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, report of the international commission, to inquire into the causes and conduct of the Balkan wars, 1914[3]- http://www.macedoniaontheweb.com/for...-his-lies.html
[4]- http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Macedonian
[5]- http://www.thefreedictionary.com/macedonian6]-
[6]-A.D.Smith 1991, National Identity, pages 21 and 29.
[7]- Igor Diakonoff, The Paths of History, page 229
[8]- Elisabeth Barker, "Macedonia, its place in Balkan power politics, page 10
[9]- The Eye Expanded Life and the Arts in Greco-Roman Antiquity, page 255[
10]-Palmer and King, Yugolsav Communism and the Macedonian Question, page 199.
[11]-Loring Danforth,The Macedonian Conflict, page 66.
I could never completed this article without the extence help and support of the macedoniaontheweb members.
This map created from the French A.Synvet. Synvet at this time was professor of the Ottoman Lyceum in Constantinople (present day Istanbul)
This map created from the worldknown English geographer Edward Stanford. Both maps located in the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle at the capital of Greek Macedonia.
During times of crisis, from times immemorial, humans have sought to activate the traditionalistic qualities in form of “mythos” that serves as a building material for the new “ethos”, the least being contemporary to action in crisis.
In order to investigate the patterns of the Pseudomacedonian ideology, it is important to study the FYROMian economical and sociological background.
As of late 2008, the evidence of diachronic collapse of the pillars of society is multiplying itself at an ever exponential rate. Economical policies of Gruevski: defiscalization and patronage of private institutions for higher learning, for some time has a stabilizing role in local economy. The latter, however is virtually untouched by any substantial foreign investment.
The core ideology of the leading political party among Slavs in FYROM – The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary (VMRO-DPMNE) is mirrored from the Western dichotomy of Conservatism, traditionalism and economic libertarianism, thus replacing the early to mid-1990’s role of ethnic socialism and rigidly folkloresque symbolism. Today VMRO-DPMNE consolidated itself a Demo-Christian party, with slight minarchistic tendencies in economy, but with stronger points of consolidation regarding the imported and applied ideology of “Macedonism” in every aspect of individual and social life, with a strongly anti-individualistic, collectivist stance.
Chief task of VMRO-DPMNE in recent months and years is creation of consistent nationalist myth, something which, in case of normal development of Post-Communist culture, would have a justification as a basis for spiritual reconstruction of the young Balkan nation. However the process today represents an eclectic formulation which conceptually integrates the imaginary space of the “Macedonian people”, which is the 19th century definition of “Geographic Macedonia”, its history and its cultures into a distinct “Slavomacedonian” high culture, based on Ancient Macedon as a cornerstone of the projected national history. This nationalist ideology is best described as “Pseudomacedonism”, something that according to Ex-Minister Denko Maleski (now a proffesor in Skoplje) was imported by marginal groups and individuals from outside.
The ideology of Pseudomacedonism is based on faulty historiographic premises, the key of which are:
The distinct character of the Slavomacedonians, based on superior historical base and formed as preserved cultural lineage from the earliest consolidation of ancient Macedonians. Consequently, the spirit of exceptionalism developed, whose adherents believe in inferiority of all neighboring countries based on fictionalized narratives of their genesis that contain anthropological features deemed dysfunctional.
Segregation from Bulgarians, meaning usurpation of the Bulgarian history and “Macedonisation” of any historical retrospective and nurture of chauvinism towards Bulgarian ethnic and lingistic characteristic, regardless of the very great similarity among both national vernaculars.
Labeling as “Macedonian” the entire sum of cultural heritage in opposition to the fact that historical sources do not label the local Slavic-speaking population as such.
The rise of Pseudomacedonian symbolism in recent years obviously represents low-complexity psychological operation whose authors seek to solidify the collectivist ethos.
Major events in the “Macedonist” propaganda are:
The renaming of the Skopje and Ohrid airports “Alexander the Great” and “St. Paul”, respectively.
Decoration of the surroundings of Government’s offices with Hellenistic and Roman statues, creating highly visible symbolic links with claimed antiquity.
The staged and much-ridiculed visit of a delegation of Pakistani tribal leaders, mythically linked with the soldiers of Alexander the Great, presented to the public in FYROM as “part of our people”.
Erection of statues of Alexander the Great in Prilep, to be followed with a monument of Phillip II in Bitola/Monastir and a giant, 50 ft. statue of Alexander the Great in Skopje
The painfully absurd proposition held by MANU (“Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts”) from 2006 onwards that the famous epigraphic monument , the “Rosetta Stone” produced in Ptolemaic Egypt contains a text written in language almost identical to the current standardized Bulgarian idiom of FYROM.
Increased recent usage of the term “Macedonia” by officials in domestic context without observing the unwritten rule for more than a decade to use the qualifier “Republic of”.
All of these examples of irredentist behavior by official Skoplje have a function to create a parallel universe of symbolism that sets a border between FYROM on one and Bulgaria and Serbia on another hand. The virtual creation of illustrious ancestry, rooted in antiquity provides a reference base for identity politics which seek to isolate FYROM from the currents of global academic centers.
The deficit of practical means for cultural production in the sphere of identity politics, coupled with the fact that the only alternative to “Ancient Macedonian” identity is the history of South Slavic medieval period together with the Ottoman era which shows strong Bulgarian and also to a certain level, Serbian character is one of the factor that the “continuity theory” rises almost unchallenged. For quite a time, any offer of different, truthful perspective is likely to cause great hardships for authors in minimum and consequently, no academic opposition which would challenge the dogmatic nature of the fabricated “Macedonian” identity.
The gigantic structure of historical revisionism in FYROM showed the weakness of historiography that is still based on obsolete and didactic Marxist theories sustained by a network of mostly senior academics. Sensationalism found its logical outlet in a society where the very identity is permanently challenged by historiographies of neighbors and other countries as well. The strong Graecophobia, latent for two centuries, was chief determinant for articulation of the Pseudomacedonian nationalism. In this sense, reliance on instant answers provided by the great number of amateur historians which produce fake narratives of local history, proved itself superior vis-a-vis the autodidactic approach that provides intellectual gratification only after long research, an enterprise which is technically beyond the means of the general population.
It remains to be seen where the designers of the Pseudomacedonian ideology will continue to fool the people for an extended period of time with local and isolated historiographical, anthropological and linguistic theories of the recent several years, the absurdity of which needs no further explanation. While the hope lies in the new generation of more responsible members of the intellectual class, the current conditions in education is unlikely to nurture such emergence. It is possible that following eventual higher, tectonic disturbances of the status quo, the young Balkan nation’s leadership will retreat from the loudly articulated pseudoscientific positions held today.
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 shallalways find professors at Oxford to justify it". So it is no wonder that inSkopie and elsewhere the Belgrade government should have found learnedcollaborators who fell for their line. I think that under the circumstancesprevailing one should not judge them and their zealous efforts too harshly.
But it is deplorable that scholars abroad with solid academic reputationsand achievements, who are not exposed to the pressures of the intellectual under totalitarian regimes, should also swallow this latest Belgrade baithook, 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 hislinguistic 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 academiclinguist. 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 difficultfor 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 culturalworkers 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 theseattempts to deny the Bulgarian character of the Slavic idiom spoken in Macedonia? Here I cannot go into the details of the linguistic 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 furnishthis 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 booksto 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.
(Prof. Heinrich A.Stammler , IMRO - Union of The Macedonian Brotherhoods in
Bulgaria, Sofia, 1991)
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 Southern 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.
First of all please allow me to express my sincerest 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.
I would like to express my warmest felicitations as about your win in the Presidential elections. US foreign 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 international behavior 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.
You said that "It's been a long time coming, but tonight... change has come to America"
As Macedonian native the first that concerns me is the FYROM Name Dispute, a country north of Greece that wishes to be called Macedonia. In this dispute, Greece has made every single effort to meet the other side half way. It is obvious that the Greek political elite -despite the opposition of the majority of the Greek people- 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. As Senator you have signed the Senate Resolution SR-300 which calls on the FYROM to stop its propaganda against Greece and to diligently negotiate a mutually acceptable name that would provide long and lasting peace in the Balkans.
Irredentist behavior towards Greece has been taught in FYROM classrooms and showed in the face of Greeks for nearly two decades now in every spot of our world. Greece has a legitimate argument when it says this sort of behavior threatens peace and the often tenuous security situation in the Balkans. The Bush administrationʼs recognition of FYROM as ʽMacedoniaʼ in 2004 (2 days after the presidential election) has put the USA in the untenable position of effectively supporting FYROMʼs irredentism against the north of Greece, an American traditional ally. FYROMʼs irredentist aims were made clear by its recent rejection of Macedonian names that describe only territory within their borders – Northern Macedonia or Upper Macedonia – and by its Prime Ministerʼs recent appearance at a ceremony standing before a map showing northern Greece annexed.
Constructiveness 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 inspiration.
Mr President we like to see from you Presidential actions that based in your words as Senator and Presidential Candidate.
FYROM Slavmacedonians(leadership and people) need to understand 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.
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.
