Macedonia means Greece
The Odysseus
MACEDONIA MEANS GREECE
1) What ancient historians wrote
Polybios
"In the past you rivaled the Achaians and the kinsmen Macedonians and their
ruler, Philip, about the hegemony and glory, but now that the freedom of the
Hellenes is at stake at a war against an alien people (Romans), ...but now
if you invite them do not you see that you invite them against your ownself
and the whole of Hellas. ...And does it worth to ally with the barbarians
against the Epeirotans, the Achaians, the Akarnanians, the Boiotians, the
Thessalians, almost all the Hellenes with the exception of the Aitolians who
are a wicked nation... So Lakedaimonians it is good to remember your
ancestors, ... be afraid of the Romans... and do ally yourselves with the
Achaians and Macedonians. And if the most influential amongst yourselves
oppose that then stay neutral and do not side with the unjust.
(Polybios 9.37.7-39.7; Speech of Lykiskos, the representative of Akarnania)
"How highly should we honour the Macedonians, who for the greater part of
their lives never cease from fighting with the barbarians for the sake of
the security of Hellas? For who is not aware that Hellas would have
constantly stood in the greater danger, had we not been fenced by the
Macedonians and the honorable ambition of their kings?"
(The Histories of Polybios, IX, 35, 2)
Herodotos
"Now that the men of this family are Hellenes, sprung from Perdiccas, as
they themselves affirm, is a thing which I can declare on my own knowledge,
and which I will hereafter make plainly evident. That they are so has been
already adjudged by those who manage the Pan-Hellenic contest at Olympia"
(Herodotus, The Histories 8.43)
"Tell your king who sent you how his Hellenic viceroy of Macedonia has
received you hospitably... "
(Herodotus V, 20, 4)
"Now that these descendants of Perdiccas are Hellenes, as they themselves
say, I myself chance to know"
(Herodotus V, 22, 1)
Thoukididis
"The country by the sea which is now called Macedonia... Alexander, the
father of Perdiccas, and his forefathers, who were originally Temenidae from
Argos"
(Thucididis 99,3)
"In all there were about three thousand Hellenic heavy infantry, accompanied
by all the Macedonian cavalry with the Chalcidians, near one thousand
strong, besides an immense crowd of barbarians."
(Thukididis 4.124)
Arrian
"He sent to Athens three hundred Persian panoplies to be set up to Athena in
the acropolis; he ordered this inscription to be attache
😛Alexander son of
Philip and the Hellenes, except the Lacedaemonians, set up these spoils from
the barbarians dwelling in Asia",
(Arrian I, 16, 7)
"Your ancestors invaded Macedonia and the rest of Hellas and did us great
harm, though we had done them no prior injury;... I have been appointed
hegemon of the Greeks... "
(Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander II, 14, 4)
Aeschines
....at the congress of the Lakedaimonian allies and the rest of the
Hellenes, in which Amyntas, the father of Philip, being entitled to a seat,
was represented by a delegate whose vote was absolutely under his control,
he joined the rest of the Hellenes in voting..."
(Aeschines, On the Embassy 32)
Plutarchos
"But he said, `If I were not Alexandros, I should be Diogenes'; that is to
say: `If it were not my purpose to combine barbarian things with things
Hellenic, to traverse and civilize every every continent, to search out the
uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the boiunds of Macedonia to the
farthest Ocean, and to diseminate and shower the blessings of the Hellenic
justice and peace over every nation, I should not be content to sit quietly
in the luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the frugality of Diogenes.
But as things are, forgive me Diogenes, that I imitate Herakles, and emulate
Perseus, and follow in the footsteps of Dionysos, the divine author and
progenitor of my family, and desire that victorius Hellenes should dance
again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage
mountain tribes beyond the Kaukasos...' "
(Plutarchos, On the Fortune of Alexander, 332 a-b)
"Yet through Alexander, Bactria and the Caucasus learned to revere the gods
of the Hellenes ... Alexander established more than seventy cities among
savage tribes, and sowed all Asia with Hellenic magistracies ... Egypt would
not have its Alexandria, nor Mesopotamia its Seleucia, nor Sogdiana its
Prophthasia, nor India its Bucephalia, nor the Caucasus a Hellenic city, for
by the founding of cities in these places savagery was extinguished and the
worse element, gaining familiarity with the better, changed under its
influence.'
(Plutarchos Moralia. On the Fortune of Alexander, I, 328D, 329A)
"When he (Alexander the Great) arrived at Ilion he sacrificed to Athena and
offered libations to the Heroes."
(Plutarchos, Alexander 15)
Isokratis
"It is your privilege, as one who has been blessed with untrammeled freedom,
to consider all Hellas your fatherland, as did the founder of your race."
(Isokratis, To Philip 127)
Pausanias
"They say that these were the tribes collected by Amphiktyon himself in the
Hellenic Assembly: ... the Macedonians joined and the entire Phocian race
... In my day there were thirty members: six each from Nikopolis, Macedonia
and Thessaly ... "
(Pausanias Phokis VIII, 2 & 4)
Diodorus of Sicily
"Such was the end of Philip ... He had ruled 24 years. He is known to fame
as one who with but the slenderest resources to support his claim to a
throne won for himself the greatest empire among the Hellenes, while the
growth of his position was not due so much to his prowess in arms as to his
adroitness and cordiality in diplomacy."
(Diodoros of Sicily 16.95.1-2)
"Along with lavish display of every sort, Philip included in the procession
statues of the twelve Gods wrought with great artistry and adorned with a
dazzling show of wealth to strike awe to the beholder, and along with these
was conducted a thirteenth statue, suitable for a god, that of Philip
himself, so that the king exhibited himself enthroned among the twelve Gods.
Every seat in the theater was taken when Philip appeared wearing a white
cloak and by his express orders his bodyguard held away from him and
followed only at a distance, since he wanted to show publicly that he was
protected by the goodwill of all the Hellenes, and had no need of a guard of
spearmen."
(Diodoros of Sicily 16.92.5-93.2)
"After this Alexandros left Dareios's mother, his daughters,and his son in
Susa, providing them with persons to teach them the hellenic dialect,..."
(Diodoros of Sicily 17.67.1)
"Alexandros observed that his soldiers were exhausted with their constant
campaigns. ...The hooves of the horses had been worn thin by steady
marching. The arms and armour were wearing out, and the Hellenic clothing
was quite gone. They had to clothe themselves in materials of the
barbarians,..."
(Diodoros of Sicily 17.94.1-2)
Titus Livius
"Aetolians, Acarnanians, Macedonians, men of the same language"
(T. Livius XXXI,29, 15)
2) Historical Evidence of the Greekness of Macedonia
All the historical sources are agreed on the location of Macedonia: it lay
between the Aegean Sea and the Mounts Cambounia, Pieria and Olympus to the
south, lakes Ochrid and Prespa and Mounts Bambouna, Skomion (Rila Planina)
and Rhodopon to the north, the river Nestos to the east and the Grammos and
Pindus ranges to the west.
The inhabitants of this area (Macedonians) were one of the most ancient
Greek tribes. Their closest relatives were the Thessalians and particularly
the Magnesians, with whom they shared Aeolian ancestry. The language they
spoke was among the oldest forms of Greek, and it had affinities with the
Aeolian, Arcado-Cypriot and Mycenean dialects. The religion of the
Madeconians was that of the other Greeks, and their myths and traditions
were those found throughout the Greek world (Wells, The Outline of History,
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Glimpses of World History).
King Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great - to whom Skopje
is currently attempting to attribute a 'Slavomacedonian' (sic) identity -
acted not simply as Greeks but as Panhellenic leaders in the sense that they
embodied the old idea of the formation of a united Greek state with the
amalgamation of the Greek city-states. As Johann Gustav Droysen - among
other scholars - points out in his History of Alexander the Great, both
Philip and Alexander "brought to the peoples of Asia and implanted in them
not the Macedonian culture, which had no independent standing, but the Greek
culture".
In subsequent periods, and especially after the appearance in the Balkans of
the Slavs and Bulgars (6th and 7th centuries AD), the geographical area of
Macedonia as defined above continued to be the bulwark and bastion of the
Greek race, just as it had been in antiquity. Polybius calls Macedonia "the
advanced line of defence" and pays tribute to the Macedonians for fighting
the barbarians ('non-Greeks') to preserve the security of the (other)
Greeks" (Polybious, Historiae, Leipzig 1898.). This view is reiterated for
the Byzantine period by the French historian Paul Lemerle in his classic
work Philippe et la Macedoine Orientale (Paris, 1945).
No mention is made of 'Macedonia' or 'Macedonians' as a distinct
ethnological group in any official text of either the recent or the more
distant past. Neither the Treaty of Berlin, for example, nor the Treaty of
San Stefano which was revoked by it make any reference to such concepts. The
official Turkish census of 1905 gives figures for the populations of Greeks,
Bulgarians and "quasi-Bulgarians" in the vilayets of Thessaloniki and
Monastir, where the Greeks were in the majority, but contains no reference
to 'Macedonians'-for the simple reason that none of those questioned stated
such descent.
E.M. Cousinery, who served as French consul in Thessaloniki, informs us in
his Voyage dans la Macedoine (Paris, 1851) that "the Bulgarians" (as the
Slav-speakers were called at that time) "never penetrated into the forests
below Mt. Vermion, where the population remained Greek". The German
geographer Leonard D. Schultze, writing of the same area in his Macedonien
Landschafts und Kulturbilder (Jena, 1927) observes that in terms of
language, tradition, cultural affinities, national will and religion the
inhabitants of Macedonia are "as genuinely Greek as their brothers to the
south". Both these authors repeat, in different ways, what Lord Salisbury,
representing Britain at the Congress of Berlin, said at the session of 19
June 1878: "Macedonia and Thrace are as Greek as Crete".
The fact that a small percentage of the population of this area also speaks
a language which is fundamentally Bulgarian (though containing numerous loan
words from Slav, Greek, Vlach and Albanian) is no proof of Slav or Bulgarian
origins. As demonstrated in the recent past with the forcible removal to
Greece of Greeks from Asia Minor who spoke not a word of the Greek language,
the linguistic criterion, taken in isolation, is of no value whatever.
It is also characteristic that among the freedom-fighters of the 'Macedonian
Struggle' (1904-190
😎there were many who spoke the local tongue but were
fully Greek in terms of national consciousness. Their names-Kotas, Dalipis,
Kyrou, Gonos and others-are still remembered. The Russian historian E.
Goloubinsti (Brief History of the Orthodox Churces of Bulgaria, Serbia and
Romania, Moscow 1871) wrote of these Greeks who were not Greek speakers that
"they had relentless hate and profound contempt for everything Bulgarian or
Slav".
After the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, the area occupied by ancient Macedonia
was divided up, 51% of it becoming Greek territory, 38,32% going to
Yugoslavia and 10,11% passing into Bulgarian hands. This brought about a
territorial status in which, with the voluntary exchange of populations
under bilateral agreements (the Treaty of Neuilly, 1919, which provided for
the voluntary exchange of populations between Greece and Bulgaria, and that
of 1926 known as the 'Kafantaris-Moloff agreement') and the settling of
Greeks from Turkey in the Greek part of Macedonia, the population of that
area became purely Greek even though some of the inhabitants were bilingual.
In other words, Greek Macedonia became an entirely homogeneous part of the
Greek State. This became even more the case in the post-Occupation period
(1945-1949), when almost all the bilingual inhabitants of the area whose
national consciousness was not Greek moved to neighbouring states, and to
Yugoslavia in particular, where their quasi-Greek or quasi-Bulgarian
nationalities were mutated into the 'Macedonian' - that is, Slav-Macedonian
- nationality.
The emergence of this state of affairs was preceded by a number of violent
incidents, such as the Ilinden rising, during which the Bulgarians were
alleged to have revolted against the Turks on 2 August 1903 in the town of
Krushevo, near Monastir, where the population was overwhelmingly Greek. In
fact, however, the Bulgarians rose in revolt against the Greek population,
whom they attempted to exterminate-with the co-operation of the
Turks-without significantly harming the other inhabitants of the town
(Douglas Dakin, The Greek Struggle in Macedonia 1897-1915, Thessaloniki
1966).
Until the year 1914, the concepts of "Macedonia" as a Slav state and of "the
Macedonian race" as a separate nationality were completely unknown. The part
of Macedonia which was incorporated into Serbia, like that which became
Bulgarian, was a narrow strip of territory along the Greek border, and it
amounted to a very small proportion of Serbia as a whole. Skopje, which
today claims to be the capital of what it calls "the Republic of Macedonia",
in fact lies a considerable distance outside Macedonia. The "People' s
Republic of Macedonia" later renamed "Socialist Republic of Macedonia", was
founded at the end of the German Occupation as a deliberate political
attempt intended - with the conceding of the Skopja and Tetova districts,
which had never belonged to Macedonia in any sense - to state the presence
of a Serbian population in the thinly-populated part of Macedonia beyond the
Greek frontiers (where the inhabitants were Serbs, Greeks, Greek Vlachs,
quasi-Turkish Muslims and Bulgarians), or, at least, of a Slav-speaking
population with a language of their own and a shifting national
consciousness. The founding of the People's Republic of Macedonia was thus
intended to lead, in the long term, to the re-constitution of a 'Macedonian'
state-though this time under a Slav mantle and with the aim of giving
Yugoslavia an outlet on the Aegean.
Conflicts between National Movements in the 19th Century
During the l9th century, as the Balkan peoples - one after the
other-acquired the nuclei around which their nation-states would be built,
their national ideologies coincided in areas where there were mixed
populations and where there were also overlapping national claims.
One of the areas in which these problems manifested themselves in
particularly acute form was Macedonia. In the l9th century, this part of the
world was the place where four mutually conflicting national ideologies-the
Greek, the Bulgarian, the Serbian and the Albanian-came up against one
another. As a result, it was inevitable that the national identity of the
inhabitants of the area should be one of the fundamental factors in the
promotion of each side's claims.
Leaving aside the Muslims, who made up approximately 1/3 of the total
population, it was at this time extremely difficult to determine the
national identity of the Christian population groups. Until the mid-19th
century, the bulk of the rural population remained faithful to the
Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which was the guardian of the
Greek language, the Greek Byzantine tradition and even of historical memory.
This factor reinforced an automatic tendency towards Greek culture on the
part of the population groups which did not speak Greek: in other words,
those which spoke Slav languages, Vlach or Albanian. However, in the
hinterland and particularly in the Slav-speaking areas of central and north
Macedonia, the Greek national ideology advanced slowly and new influences
began to penetrate the region. The antagonism between the Greek and
Bulgarian churches, which became much more acute after the foundation of the
Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870, caused sharp clashes between Greeks and
Bulgarians in the parts of Macedonia which they shared.
The Greek-Bulgarian Conflict
The Greek national ideology attached particular importance to the Classical
Greek past of Macedonia and, naturally enough, stressed the period and
achievements of Alexander the Great. At about this time, a pamphlet telling
the story of Alexander's life and emphasising the continuity of the Greek
nation was printed in the local Slav dialect (though in the Greek alphabet)
and placed on the curriculum in schools in areas still under Turkish
control. Attention was also paid to cultivating and disseminating the
tradition of the Byzantine Empire. The two multi national empires, that of
Alexander and that of Byzantium, provided forceful arguments for believing
that despite their differences of language and custom the various population
groups would choose to identify themselves with Greek culture against a
background of broader state formations. Indeed, Rigas Pherraios had
envisaged something of this nature with his Balkan Federation.
The Bulgarian national ideology, on its part, attempted to graft the
cultural tradition of Bulgaria on to the Slav-speaking population of
Macedonia. There was one major obstacle to this: the fact that a
considerable proportion of the Slav speaking population, particularly in the
central and southern regions, had retained a flourishing Greek historical
tradition. The Bulgarians soon realised that the factor of history militated
against the dissemination of the Bulgarian national ideology, and for that
reason they turned their attention to other mechanisms by which national
consciousness can be moulded.
The first such mechanism which they exploited was that of linguistic
affinity. Subsequently, the Bulgarians attempted to manipulate popular
indignation over the social oppression exerted by the area's Ottoman rulers.
Their aim was to provoke a popular uprising which, suitably handled, might
turn into a Bulgarian national movement. In parallel, the Bulgarians
fomented a confrontation between the rural population and the Greek clergy,
launching a violent attack on what they called the 'spiritual slavery' of
the Ecumenical Patriarchate. With the help of the Bulgarian State, Bulgarian
schools began to spring up in the towns and villages of Macedonia. The basic
aim of these schools was to inspire in the pupils pride in the medieval
history of Bulgaria and particularly in the empire of Tsar Samuel, whose
capital was at Ochrid. The Bulgarian historical armoury was not, of course,
sufficient to eliminate the Greek cultural and historical heritage in
Macedonia, and for that reason a system of forging historical truth by
appropriating historical events and personalities was adopted. The Greek
missionaries Cyril and Methodius were thus presented as Bulgarians, while
their apostolic and civilising work among the Slavs was deemed to be a
'political and cultural achievement on the part of the Bulgarians'. Even
Alexander the Great, who occupied so important a place in the hearts and
minds of the people of Macedonia, was portrayed in popular texts of the time
as being of Bulgarian descent. This is closely related to the nature of
Skopje's current propaganda target, which is to portray Alexander the Great
as a 'Skopjian'.
The Serbs, Romanians and Vlachs were late in appearing on the scene in
Macedonia. However, they, too, saw it as expedient to enlist the aid of the
memory of a Serbian presence in Macedonia in the Middle Ages-regardless of
the fact that from the chronological point of view this presence was
confined to the period of Tsar Dusan and his successors (14th century).
Romanians and Vlachs
A further problem was the appearance among the Vlachs of Macedonia of the
Romanian national ideology in the last two decades of the l9th century. Of
all the non Greek-speaking population groups in Macedonia, the Vlachs had
given the most whole-hearted support to the Greek national ideology. They
were a living example of how a non Greek-speaking population could be fully
incorporated into the Greek national movement. During the War of
Independence of 1821 a similar phenomenon had been observed in the case of
the Christian Albanian-speakers (the 'Arvanites'), who identified themselves
completely with the Greek national cause. However, in the late 1860s the
Romanian national ideology began to penetrate some Vlach communities, and
its impact was still stronger after Romania gained its independence in 1877.
The Romanian 'enlighteners' pointed to the common Latin origin of the
Romanian and Vlach languages and also attempted to exploit the historical
factor, inventing theories about a common historical origin for the Vlachs
of the southern Balkans and the Romanians of the Danubian areas. These
efforts had very limited-though far from negligible-results. One of the
fundamental reasons why the Romanians failed to win the majority of the
Vlachs over to their cause was undoubtedly the fact that for many centuries
the Vlachs had identified themselves with the Greeks by whose side they
lived and had taken active part in all the struggles of the Greek nation for
its liberation. This living memory could not be substituted by historical
references to the Roman period.
A further central problem which arose during the l9th century was that of
whether the Slav-speakers of Macedonia were Bulgarians or belonged to a
separate Slav group. At that time, the term 'Macedonians' was very widely
used, sometimes in a regional and geographical sense and sometimes
culturally. When the Serbians realised that they could not pass the
Slav-speakers of Macedonian of as true Serbs, they chose to put forward the
theory of the existence of a separate Slav-Macedonian people which differed
from the Bulgarians but had affinities with the Slavs. At a later date, some
of the revolutionaries who emerged from the ranks of the Bulgarian national
movement began to promote the idea of an autonomous 'Macedonian' state which
would be independent even of Bulgaria. They took as their slogan "Macedonia
for the Macedonians", but in effect this was only a tactical maneuver.
Although the leaders of this movement appeared to be supporting the creation
of an independent Macedonia, they made no attempt to interfere with the
Bulgarian historical identity of the Slavs of Macedonia, thus demonstrating
that in fact they continued to be attached to the Bulgarian national
identity. The only difference was that their political aim was autonomy and
not union.
The 'Macedonian Struggle'
After the foundation of the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870, clashes between
Greeks and Bulgarians began in Macedonia. The main aim of the Greek side was
to prevent the Bulgarian attempt to gain control of the Slav-speaking
populations who lived in the area between a
Kastoria-Ptolemaida-Yannitsa-Zichni (Serres) line to the north and a
Ochrid-Perpeles-Stromnitsa-Meleniko-Nevrokopi line to the south. The Greek
defeat in the war of 1897 allowed the Bulgarians to compel a large part of
the Slav-speaking population in this area to embrace Bulgarian ideals. This
resulted in the Ilinden rising on the feast day of the Prophet Elijah in
1903, a revolt which was crushed by the Turkish army.
The rising led, in turn, to the sacking of many Greek villages and towns,
including Krushevo. The looting and the persecution of Greek populations put
the Greek on to a war footing, and 1904 saw the beginning of the Greek armed
rising known as the Macedonian Struggle, which was to last until 1908.
Throughout the Macedonian Struggle armed bands of volunteers from the free
Greek state (from Crete, Epirus, Thessaly and many parts of the Greek world
which were as yet unredeemed), fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with the local
inhabitants, were able to prevent any extension of Bulgarian activities and
to preserve the Greek character of southern and central Macedonia. In many
cases, the Greek units consisted principally of Slav and Vlach-speaking
guerrillas fighting for the Greek cause. This preference for the Greek
national ideal caused the Bulgarians to call them 'Grecomani'-that is,
fanatical Greeks. The descendants of these freedom fighters still live in
the Monastir district.
The armed Macedonian Struggle was broken off in July 1908, because of the
Young Turk Revolt. When the Young Turks overthrew the feudal regime of the
Sultan, they issued a general amnesty and also promised all the
nationalities equal civil rights.
The Macedonian Struggle, which began under the most adverse circumstances
and lasted four whole years, was an unqualified triumph for the Greeks. One
reason for this was that the Struggle attracted Greeks from the free state,
from Crete and from other enslaved areas, who fought side-by-side with the
Macedonians. A second, and equally serious, reason for the success was that
the Greeks were fighting in an area inhabited by a fraternally-related
population with the same ideals and the same dedication to the Ecumenical
Patriarchate and the Greek national idea, regardless of the fact that the
Greek language was not always spoken.
How to Construct a Nationality
The Turkish defeat in the First Balkan War brought the Ottoman period in the
history of Macedonia to an end. Of the geographical area of Macedonia as a
whole, Greece received 51%, Serbia 39% and Bulgaria 10%. The mass exodus of
populations which found themselves living on foreign soil, together with
exchanges and deportations, drastically altered the ethnological composition
of all these parts of Macedonia, and were particularly noticeable in the
Greek section.
The successive defeats of Bulgaria in the First and Second World War led to
the growth in Bulgarian Macedonia of a combative Bulgarian Macedonian
nationalism. The Comintern attempted to exploit the irridentist trends of
this nationalism by adopting the policy of a "unified and independent
Macedonia" to form part of a "Balkan Communist Federation ".
In Yugoslav Macedonia, the policy of conversion to Serbian ideals applied by
Belgrade produced relatively poor results. In order to escape ill-treatment,
part of the population refrained from expressing its pro-Bulgarian
disposition, suppressed its Bulgarian names and made use of the politically
neutral geographical term Macedones. Other sections of the population chose
to incorporate themselves openly into the Serbian national community.
In Greek Macedonia, the remnants of the Slav-speaking population amounted to
100-150,000 after the exchange of populations and were divided into two
groups: one fairly large group, which under Turkish rule had thrown in its
lot with the Greek national identity, and a smaller group which had adopted
the Bulgarian national identity or remain non-aligned.
During the Second World War, the incursion of the Bulgarian army into
Yugoslav Macedonia was welcomed by one section of the population as the
first step towards the liberation and incorporation into the Bulgarian state
for which they longed. A similar phenomenon, though on a much smaller scale,
also occurred in Greek Macedonia.
The Yugoslav partisans under Tito soon became aware that at all costs they
must break the bonds between the population of Yugoslav Macedonia and
Bulgaria. They thus exploited the growing discontent towards the Bulgarian
occupying forces among the population: the Bulgarians reacted with cruelty
and mass reprisals to the attacks of the partisans. Tito's partisans
promised the population that in post-War Yugoslavia the Macedonians- that
is, the Slavs of Yugoslav Macedonia-would have rights equal to those enjoyed
by all the other nationalities, and even equal to those of the Serbs. They
emphasised, however, that the Slavs of Macedonia had no affinities either
with the Serbs or with the Bulgarians: they constituted a separate,
Macedonian, nationality. The idea of distinct Macedonian nationality was
welcomed by a significant proportion of Yugoslav Macedonia. The political
and social conditions were ripe for acceptance of the new theory: Bulgaria
had been defeated, Tito had succeeded in gaining Stalin's consent to
implementation of the new Macedonian policy, and the population was worn out
after half a century of Serbian and Bulgarian efforts to impose on it their
own national identities.
After the success of the Patriotic Front revolution in Bulgaria (in which
the Communist Party of Bulgaria played the leading role) in September 1944,
negotiations began between the Communist Parties of Yugoslavia and Bulgaria
on the future of Macedonia and of the Balkans as a whole once the War was
over. On 2 August 1944 the formation of the "Socialist Republic of
Macedonia" was announced at Prohor Pcinjsci Monastery: it was to form part
of the new federal Yugoslavia.
In September 1944, a Yugoslav delegation headed by General Tempo and Lazar
Kolisevki, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Macedonia, visited
Sofia and extracted from the new Bulgarian leadership a promise that the
inhabitants of Pirin (Bulgarian Macedonia) would be granted autonomy as a
first step towards unification with the federal "Republic of Macedonia " in
Tito's Yugoslavia. In April 1945, Tito imposed a federal system on
Yugoslavia and installed the governments of the federal states of Serbia,
Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Montenegro and Skopje, the last of which was
founded on 30 April 1945.
In the meantime, and while the outcome of the civil war which had broken out
in Greece remained in the balance, the Yugoslavs exerted ever-increasing
pressure on their Bulgarian comrades to have Bulgarian Macedonia ceded to
Yugoslavia. By the end of 1946, the Bulgarians' had made specific
concessions to Yugoslavia over Macedonia. At its 10th Session in August
1946, the Central Committee of the CPB resolved to work "towards cultural
convergence between the inhabitants of Pirin Macedonia and the People's
Republic of Macedonia ". This was followed by a sweeping programme of
cultural exchanges, while at the same time the inhabitants of Pirin were
given the right to chose between the Bulgarian and the "Macedonian"
nationality.
Tempted by the various incentives offered, most of them chose to be
"Macedonians". After a long period of consultation, Tito and Dimitrov, the
leaders of Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, met at Bled in Yugoslavia on 2 August
1947 and signed a series of agreements known as the Bled Protocols, by which
Bulgaria agreed, in return for certain minor concessions, to recognise the
inhabitants of Bulgarian Macedonia (Pirin) as "Macedonians" and to prepare
the ground for the incorporation of the Pirin province into the "Socialist
Republic of Macedonia". In return, Bulgaria requested only that the
so-called "Western districts" which the Serbs had occupied at the end of the
First World War be returned.
However, Tito's grandiloquent plans for a "Federation of the South Slavs"
under his leadership fell foul of Stalin. The split came in the summer of
1948, and it made nonsense of all Yugoslavia's plans to make Tito the master
of the Balkans using the 'Macedonian question' as a lever. In these
circumstances, Bulgaria was able to release itself from the concessions it
had made over Macedonia. It rejected the theory of the "Macedonian nation"
and expelled the political instructors dispatched to Bulgaria by Skopje.
Sofia then attempted to exploit the difficulties in which the Yugoslavs
found themselves to raise once more the pre-War slogan of a "united and
independent Macedonia ". SKOPJE'S THEORETICAL SLEIGHT OF HAND.
1. Cyril and Methodius, the "Patrons Saints of Europe"
It is historically proven fact- and one which is accepted by Slav
historians- that the Slavs settled in the Balkans in the 6th century AD and
that their cultural history begins in the 10th century AD. The cultural
history of the Slavs was founded by two Greek monks from Thessaloniki, Cyril
and Methodius, who taught the Slavs the Cyrillic script and initiated them
into Orthodox Christianity. It is a matter of common knowledge that the
Byzantine Greek achievements in science, the arts and letters constitute the
main and central part of the infrastructure of Slav cultural history.
However, some Slav historians argue that these two Greek monks were actually
"Slavs", and Skopje has advanced an even stranger and less accurate theory:
that since Cyril and Methodius were from Thessaloniki, they were "Macedonian
Slavs" and that, consequently, as their descendants (!), they have the
honour of having "enlightened" their fellow-Slavs.
A serious blow to the credibility of these theories was struck by Pope John
Paul II (himself a Slav), who on 31 December 1980 issued an official
apostolic encyclical (Egrigiae Virtutis), to the Catholic Church as a whole
and sent a private letter to the President of the Hellenic Republic
proclaiming Cyril and Methodius, "our brother Greeks, born in Thessaloniki",
patron saints of Europe. The Pope reiterated this proclamation in an address
delivered on 14 February 1981 in the church of San Clemente, Rome.
There is no shortage of Slav politicians and historians who accept that
Cyril and Methodius were Greek: They include the Czech Byzantologist F.
Dvornik, the Serbian historians of early Serbian literature P. Popovich, Dj
Sh. Radovich and Dj. Trijunovich, and the Slovenian Professor B. Grajeneurer
of the University of Ljubljana.
One characteristic example of this can be found in the History of Early Slav
Literature (Belgrade, 1980) by professor V. Bagdanovich, a Serb, who writes:
"Cyril and Methodius were born in Thessaloniki and were of Greek not Slav.
descent".
The Greekness of the Slav-Speakers
Various sets of Statistics saw the light of day during the period of intense
Greek Bulgarian conflict concerning the ethnological composition of the
Macedonian population. The numerical data given fluctuate wildly, since the
sets of statistics were based on different criteria and were designed to
serve the national ambitions of those who compiled them.
When it was ruled by the Ottoman Empire, Macedonia was divided
administratively into two vilayets of Thessaloniki and Monastir. The general
inspector of vilayets had his headquarters in Thessaloniki, and in the
run-up to the Balkan Wars this post was held by Hilmi Pasha. His census of
1904 must be a close approximation to the real situation; it gives the
following proportions of Greeks and Bulgarians:
Greeks Bulgarians Vilayet of Thessaloniki 373,227 207,317
Vilayet of Monastir 261,283 178,412
Total 634,510 385,729
In an interview with the French writer Paillares, Hilmi Pasha had the
following to say about the Slav-speakers: "My view, and the view of my
government, is that these people are Greeks. We classify our subjects
according to the churches and schools they frequent. Unless violent pressure
is applied to them, these people call themselves Greeks" (L' improglio
Macedonien, Paris 1907, pp. 50-51.).
As early as 1871, the Russian author Golonbinski wrote that "these so called
Greeks display towards anything Bulgarian or Slav a more relentless hatred
and more profound contempt than even real Greeks would have done". And in
memorandum which the inhabitants of the Monastir area sent to the French
government in 1903, they expressed the point more eloquently than any
traveller could do :"We speak Greek, Bulgarian and Albanian; that does not
make any of us the less Greek, nor do we permit to call our Greekness into
question".
Further proof of the Greekness of the Slav-speakers-and of the inhabitants
of the area in general - is to be found in the educational organisation of
the Greeks of Macedonia. In the Monastir area there were 284 Greek schools,
of which the town of Monastir alone had a secondary school, a teacher
training school, a girls' school, a boys' school, a seminary, an 'urban
academy' and 14 primary schools. In Krusheno there was a junior secondary
school, a girls' high school, a boy's high school, four primary school and a
nursery school. They were primary school, girls' schools, institutes of
advanced education and nursery schools in Megarovo, Trnavo, Milosista,
Nizopoli, Gopesi, Upper and Lower Belista, Brusnik, Lahci, Bukovo,
Stromnita, Gevgeli and Meleniko. In some cases, the Greeks may have lost
their language as a result of living in close proximity with members of
other races, but they never lost their sense of nationality. Greek education
kept that sense alive even when it was delivered in Slav or Vlach.
The area which was incorporated into Greece after the Balkan Wars included
the greater part of the vilayets of the Thessaloniki and Monastir. Over the
next ten to fifteen years (to 1925), tremendous shifts of population took
place and radically altered the ethnological composition of the area. During
the period of wartime (1912-1919), scores of thousands of Bulgarians left
the area, a trend which continued with the departure of 53,000 Bulgarians by
virtue of the agreement for the voluntary exchange of populations between
Greece and Bulgaria. Only the Slav-speakers of western Macedonia remaine
😛
the majority of this population was Greek in terms of national consciousness
and had chosen of their own free will to stay in Greece.
The League of Nations produced the following statistics for Greek Macedonia
in 1926, when the exchange of populations between Greece had also been
complete
😛
Greeks 1,341,000 88%
Muslims 2,000 0.1%
Bulgarians 77,000 5.1%
Miscellaneous (mostly Jews) 91,000 6.0%
Total 1,511,000
In 1924, within the framework of the League Nations, Greece and Bulgaria
signed a protocol (known as the "Kalfoff- Politis protocol") by which Greece
recognised as Bulgarian the Slav-speaking population which had remained on
its territory. However, there was such an outcry in Greece (while at the
same time Serbia reacted by abrogating the Greek- Serbian Treaty of Alliance
of 1913) that the Greek Parliament refused to ratify the protocol and the
League of Nations released Greece from the obligations which it had
undertaken.
Alexander's name is Greek. The word "Alexandros" is produced from the prefix
alex(
😛rotector) and the word andros(=man) meaning "he who protects men".
The
prefix "alex" can be found in many Greek words today (alexiptoto
😛arachute,
alexisfairo=bulletproof - all these words have the meaning of protection).
Philip's name is also Greek. It is produced from the prefix Philo(=friendly
to
something) and the word ippos(=horse) meaning the man who is friendly to
horses.
The prefix "philo" and the word "ippos" are also found in many words of
Greek
origin today (philosophy,philology, hippodrome,hippocampus).
The Slavic propaganda insists that ancient Macedonians did not have Greek
names or (in some cases) that only the royal family had Greek names. Here is
a list of names of ordinary Macedonian people,mentioned in history, which
proves once again the falsity of the Slavic arguments.
Ifestionas - Alexander's closest friend
Aristotelis - Famous phiosopher, born in Stageira
Hermias - Philosopher
Anaksarxos - Philosopher
Kalisthenis - Philosopher
Marsias - Writer
Zoilos - Writer
Zeuxis - Painter from Heraclea
Leocharis - Sculptor
Lysippos - Sculptor
Deinokratis - He helped Alexander to create Alexandria in Egypt
Antipatros - Historian
Aristokritos - Actor
Thessalos - Actor, friend of Alexander's
Philotas - Another friend of Alexander's
Argeos - Rival of king Philippos
Pausanias - The man who killed king Philippos
Kassandros - Army general, founded the city of Thessaloniki
Ptolemeos - Army general
Antigonos - Army general
Selefkos - Army general
Arrianos - Cavalary commander
Nearchos - Navy commander
Neoptolemos - Arrmy officer
Python - Army officer
Hippostratos - Army officer
Kleitos - Army officer
Permenion - Army officer
Attalos - Army officer
Aristoboulos - Army officer
Kleitarxos - Army officer
Polycratis - Soldier
Bolon - Soldier
Koinos - Soldier
Xenokratis
Deukalos
Arrhideos
Charidimos
Parmenion
Antiochos
Krateros
Kalas
Perseas
Meleagros
Arpalos
Eumenis
Lyssimachos
Leonatos
Assandros
Memmon
and yes the above names are greek also
Now.....Let's try to decipher
informacii = information
istorijata - history or in Greek Istoria, from the Greek Histor = Knowing,
also
look up Herodotus, the father of History
Main Entry: his•to•ry
Etymology: Latin historia, from Greek, inquiry, history, from histOr, istOr
knowing, learned; akin to Greek eidenai to know
Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
kulturata - culture, or Koultoura
politikata - politics, from the Greek polis - city, politis - citizen
Main Entry: pol•i•tics
Etymology: Greek politika, from neuter plural of politikos political
Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
Makedonija - Makedonia
"The name of the ancient Macedonians is derived from Macedon, who was the
grandchild of Deukalion, the father of all Greeks. This we may infer from
Hesiod's genealogy. It may be proven that Macedonians spoke Greek since
Macedon,
the ancestor of Macedonians, was a brother of Magnes, the ancestor of
Thessalians, who spoke Greek." (Nicholas Hammond, 1993)
The archaeological discoveries form the Macedonian land are the stongest
proof
that ancient Macedonia was part of the Greek civilization. All the ancient
monuments and inscriptions use the Greek alphabet. Furthermore there is a
large
number of discoveries in Asia in the route of Alexander the Great. All these
monuments, discovered in Pakistan, Kuweit, India and many more countries,
prove
that Alexanders quest was Greek.
but the below makes even greater sense!
President Mr. Kiro Gligorov:
"We are Slavs who came to this area in the sixth century ... we are not
descendants of the ancient Macedonians."
(from the Foreign Information Service Daily Report, Eastern Europe, February
26,
1992, p. 35. )
"We are Macedonians but we are Slav Macedonians. That's who we are! We have
no
connection to Alexander the Greek and his Macedonia. The ancient Macedonians
no
longer exist, they had disappeared from history long time ago. Our ancestors
came here in the 5th and 6th century (A.D)."
(from the Toronto Star newspaper, March 15, 1992)
The following questions arise immediately
Why do you call yourselves Macedonians then?
Why do you use ancient Macedonian symbols if they don't belong to you?
The historic truth is that the Slavs descented into the region not before
the
6th century long after ancient Macedonia was homogenized with the rest of
Greece. They don't have any historical cultural or linguistic ties with
ancient
Macedonia. There is no historic or archaeological evidence connecting them
with
ancient Macedonia.
Now consider the above REAL INFORMATION
Comments
voted again!
v
voted again!
+1
Admins just being the dirty goldwhores they usually are, taking this article down and leaving flausinos and the rest mindless bulgarians in sofia or skopje to spam with insults every day.
Didn't even bother to read. WTF is this? Measuring RL dicks again? : )
Oh, I forgot...Unsub : )
v Bravo!
re-voted!
V
The Republic of Macedonia and the Republic of Greece had good diplomatic and neighborly relations in the past, although certain Greek people regarded the Macedonian state a thorn in their flesh and occasionally some extreme blabbermouth could be heard uttering epithets like "the State of Skopje" or the "Skopje cancer." However, ever since the Republic of Macedonia requested international recognition, Greece has been flooded with an unprecedented powerful campaign, in which, regretfully; science has also been involved. Scientists with a nationalistic inclination have been engaged and politicians with extreme nationalistic views have been competing in displaying their 'unique' patriotism and at the same time casting aspersions on the country which they have chosen to call "Skopje" or the "Republic invented by the Comintern." There are even some who demand that guns should be turned towards and used against 'the little state' - as they mockingly call the Republic of Macedonia. Their aim is to prove that the name of Macedonia is an exclusive Greek property, that there has never existed a Macedonian nation, that the recognition of Macedonia will destabilize the Balkans, etc.
The purpose of this article, therefore, is to try and show the world community the absurdity of the Greek campaign against our country, bringing to light at least a fragment of the historical truth about Macedonia and the Macedonians, both those living in the Republic of Macedonia and those in Greece.
As a start let us look at the name of Macedonia. Modern Greece constantly turns to ancient Greek mythology to justify their theory. According to one source, the land was named Macedonia after Macedon, the son of Zeus and Thia; ...
a second version claims that the name was derived from Macedon, one of the ten sons of the god Aeolus; a third version says that Macedon was the son of someone called Likaon, and according to a fourth one, Macedon was the son of the Egyptian god Osiris. Which of these four versions can we trust? Ulrich Wilken, a German historian, states that the Greek adherence to old myths is an attempt to justify their present views, i.e. lacking proofs of the Greek thesis, they resort to mythology, legends and tradition.
Furthermore, since the Greek people do not really believe in the mythical origin of the name of Macedonia, a new explanation is being forced; namely that the root of the name, mak- is of Doric origin and means 'long' or 'tall' and its derivatives, Makednos or Makedanos, mean 'tall people'. These interpretation have been attributed to Herodotus, the Father of History, as Greek scholars call him. The aim here is to link the Macedonian with the Dorian people, the latter being claimed to be one of the Macedonian tribes. However, when it comes to proving the Doric origin of the Macedonians, or vice versa, Herodotus has no arguments to offer and therefore turns to traditions. This view is also supported by Prof D. Pantermalis, an archeologist, who wrote the following in the Greek newspaper Neos kosmos of 14th November 1988, published in Melbourne, Australia: "We have mentioned earlier a tradition which claims the Dorians to have been descended from the Makedons or Makednos. Herodotus must have come by this information either through evidence he himself had collected in some of the Doric towns or through the story of an ancient epic by Aegimius..."
Furthermore, Prof. D. Pantermalis also gave an interview published in Neos kosmos of 28th February 1991. Asked why foreign scholars were reserved over the question, the archeologist answere😛 "There are certain matters which require further clarification, and unfortunately certain interpretations in the past well as today have been wrongly based on such unclarified matters. Thus, for example, ancient texts often speak about the Macedonians and the Greeks, as two separate nations and we ought to differentiate between them. I would also add a more recent example: we speak of the Greeks and the Cypriots." Needless to say, this is only a superficial example, since, when we speak a Macedonian we do not mean a Greek from Macedonia, but one descended from Macedonia by origin and by nationality.
The Greek historian, D. Kanatsulis, disagrees with the interpretations given by Prof. Pantermalis. In his History of Macedonia until Constantine the Great published in Salonica in 1964, on page 67 D. Kanatsulis writes that the Dorian and the Macedonian were two different peoples, although both appear on territory of Macedonia at almost the same time. On page 12 of this publication we rea😛 "On the descent of the Illyrians and some other peoples in the 12th and 11th centuries BC, the Dorians were forced to move further south and majority of them settled on the Pelloponnesos whereas the Macedonians stayed in Western Macedonia."
D. Kanatsulis emphasizes that the Macedonians had a strong feeling of constituting a separate ethnic group not only during the time of the independent Macedonian state, but also during the Roman era. "The Macedonians," he says, were primarily citizens of the state and only after that members of the municipality where they were born or where they lived. Thus, in the official documents in which all names were entered, the personal name was followed by the nationality - Macedonian, and then came the birthplace or the place of residence, for example: a Macedonian from Aegea, a Macedonian from Edessa, etc." (page 82).
Similarly ancient Macedonian historians and writers, though writing in the common language (a blend of ancient Greek and the local Macedonian when signing their names always added that they were Macedonian language); as, for example: Chrisogonis from Edessa, a Macedonian; Adaios the Macedonian; Antipatris the Macedonian. (Prof Photis Petsas: A Journey in Northern Greece, Elinikos voras, February 1976). Not one of them wrote that he was a Hellene.
Now, back to the name of Macedonia. Looking at Ilios, a Greek encyclopedia periodical, on page 801 we find the chapter entitled 'The History of Macedonia'. Its third Paragraph begins with the words: "The Macedonians or Macedons inhabited this territory and called it Macedonia...," which confirms that before the arrival of the Macedonians the territory had had other names (Imatia, Aeordea, Almopia and perhaps others) and that the Macedonian newcomers named it Macedonia. Another archeologist, Prof Photis Petsas, gives even a more detailed account: "Macedonia was so named after the Macedonian People in the year 700 BC, who used to inhabit the territory to the west of the Vermion Mountains. What interests us today;" says Prof Petsas, "is that the Macedonians gave their own name to the land, calling it Macedonia, and expanded it in the south to Mount Olympus, in the west to the Pindus Mountain, in the east to ...
river Nestos (the Mesta) and to the Erigon in the north." (Prof Photis Petsas: Macedonia and the Macedonians..., Elinikos voras, 12th February 197😎.
The ancient Greek man of letters, Isocrates, claims that there were no grounds for the identification of Ancient Macedonia with Ancient Greece, nor the Ancient Macedonians with the Ancient Greeks. In his book Filip (pp l07-10😎, Isocrates places Macedonia outside the boundaries of Greece and considers the Macedonians non-Greek tribesmen. Both ancient and contemporary geographers and historians, such as Eforos, Pseudoskilaks, Dionisios Kalifondas, Dikearhos, Athineos and others, state that the northern boundaries of Greece begin at the Amvrakis Bay in the west and go to the Peneos River in the east (Makedonia, an anthology, Athens, 1982, p.50). In this connection, the modern Greek scholar J. Kaleris writes: "In the middle of the 5th century BC, the name Macedonia was given to the land spreading from Lake Lychnida in the west, the Strymon River in the east and to the Erigon and Vardar Rivers in the north (The Language of the Macedonians, an anthology, Athens, 1992). According to historians and geographers mentioned above, the territories north of a line Amvrakis Bay to the River Peneos were inhabited by the Macedonian people (same Anthology, p. 122). The ancient geographer, Ptolemy, gives an even more precise description of the boundaries of Macedonia, saying that in the north they reached the Sar (Skardos) Mountains, in the north-east the Pirin (Orbilos) Mountains and in the south the Peneos River.
If these are the recognized boundaries of Macedonia, then how could that encompassed by the Mountains of Kajmakcalan, Kozuf, Belasica and Sar be denied the name Macedonia, even though, under the Treaty of Bucharest, a part of Macedonia was allotted to Greece?
Referring to this problem, the Honorary President of the Communist Party of Greece, Harilaos Florianis, says in an interview: "Are we trying to say that 39% of the geographical territory of Macedonia is 'Skopje'? Isn't that, in fact, a section of the territory of Macedonia?" (Rizospastis, 2nd September, 1992).
Certain Greek scholars lacking a critical eye and disregarding historical arguments, consider the ancient Macedonians as Greeks and their language a Greek dialect. However, anyone looking at the facts with an open mind will realize that this is far from being true. Authentic evidence shows that the ancient Greeks regarded the Macedonian people as barbarians and Macedonia a barbaric land. This is also what the two coryphaei of Greek history, Thucydides and Demosthenes thought of ancient Macedonians. As a matter of fact, the ancient Greeks considered all non-Greek people barbarian and their land barbaric. Thus in his third Philippic, Demosthenes states: "Ay, and you know this also, that the wrongs which the Greeks suffered from the Lacedaemonians or from us, they suffered at all events at the hands of true-born sons of Greece, and they might have been regarded as the acts of a legitimate son, born to great possessions, who should be guilty of some fault or error in the management of his estate: so far he would deserve blame and reproach, yet it could not be said that it was not one of the blood, not the lawful heir who was acting thus. But if some slave or superstitious bastard had wasted and squandered what he had no right to, heavens! How much more monstrous and exasperating all would have called it! Yet they have no such qualms about Philip and his present conduct, though he is not only no Greek, nor related to the Greeks, but not even a barbarian from any place that can be named with honor, but a pestilent knave from Macedonia, whence it was never yet possible to buy a decent slave ..." (Demosthene Crationes, IX, p.26, and Istorija diplomatije, vol.1, p.49
The modern Greek scholar, Karagatsis, makes his contribution to the clarification of the question whether the ancient Macedonians were Greek or not. The master work of this respected author, History of the Greek People, 1952, raised a great commotion in the camp of the nationalistically oriented intellectuals of Greece. Karagatsis, however, disregarded the burden of tradition and mythology and claimed that reality was different (p. 314). "It is the King of the Macedonians," he says, "who is the hegemon of the Greeks. The Congress is summoned by the hegemon, but is never chaired by him, because the hegemon is not Greek." (p. 340).
Many circles in Greece turned against Karagatsis. Thus Stefanos Hrisos, a critic, states the following in his article in the Salonica newspaper Makedonia: "I believe that it is a moral obligation of every Greek, particularly those in Northern Greece, to raise his voice and demand that this book by Karagatsis should not leave the boundaries of Greece or be translated into other languages, and, if possible, be withdrawn from the shops. We might have expected such bad language from our neighbors but never from a Greek writer..."
Last year, during the heavy Greek-wide campaign against the international recognition of the Republic of Macedonia, a collection entitled The Language of the Macedonians was published, which comprised contributions by distinguished university professors, the purpose of which was to boost the Greek thesis that the ancient Macedonians were Greek people and spoke the Greek language. However, even in such a publication one finds concessions that the Macedonians in fact spoke a language different from the Greek.
Ana Panaiotou, for example, in the article 'The Language of Captions in Macedonia', says that "the Macedonians communicated among themselves in the Koine (common) language; the use of the Macedonian dialect was shrinking and became limited to conversations within a family or within small tribal circles. The last extant records on the Macedonian dialect," Panaiotou continues, "date from the first century BC" This author also informs us that the oldest facts on the Macedonian language date from the fifth century BC With the arrival of Alexander the Great that language stopped being the means of communication. "People used this language," Panaiotou says, "at moments of anger or great excitement and when only Macedonians were present" (p. 187). To support her statement, Ana Panaiotou turns to Plutarch, who claims that while killing Cleitus, at a moment of great distress, Alexander the Great "cried out in the Macedonian language" (Plutarch, Vii parallili, chapter 'Alexander the Great' - eighth installment in the periodical Ilios, 20th March 1954).
Ana Panaiotou also draws attention to the example of Eumenes, an officer in Alexander's army. He himself was not Macedonian, but once, after an illness, when walking among his Macedonian soldiers, he greeted them in the Macedonian language. She also mentions that Queen Cleopatra had lessons in Macedonian. In the same collected edition, Prof. J. Kaleris says that "the Macedonian language was often used with the purpose of winning the trust of the Macedonian people." In the periodical Mesiniaka, J. Kordatos, a historian and sociologist, undeniably declares that the ancient Macedonians spoke a language different from Greek.
Blinded by their fanaticism, the Greek nationalists categorically deny the Macedonians of today the right to bear that name; instead, they suggest names like Dardanians, Sclavins and the like. when the ancient Macedonian people arrived on the Balkan Peninsula, according to accepted sources, they retained their old name. This, however, was not the case with the modern Macedonians; when they settled in Macedonia in the 5th and 6th centuries AD, they still bore their tribal names - Sagudats, Rinhins, Smolyans, Brsyaks, etc. Gradually and spontaneously, these tribes took on the name of the region they had inhabited or, perhaps, of the people living there, who began to become assimilated with the newcomer Slavs, Pechenese, Kumans and others. Many Byzantine chronicle writers, such as Georgios Monahos, Leon the Dean, Ivan the Geometrician, Ana Comnena and Georgios Kedrinos mention the Macedo-nian Slavs. Even Emperor Constantine himself writes about the Macedonian people (Makedones); Leon the Dean refers to them as the ton Makedonon; Nikiforos Vrionos speaks of one Vasilios Kurtina as the anir Makedon; Ana Comnena says that someone called Tornik is a Makedon, etc. (Stjepan Antoljak, Samoilovata drzava, Skopje, 1969, pp 78-80).
Despite the frequent conquests first by Byzantium, then by the Bulgar and the Serb Kingdoms and finally by the Ottoman Empire, the name Macedonian persisted in use. Thus the European traveler Bertrand de la Brokier wrote in 1432 that the Macedonian people were the predominant population of Macedonia, differentiating them from the Greeks, the Bulgars and the Serbs .
Similarly, the Venetian marine officer, Angiolello, who traveled via Macedonia on his way to Constantinople, regarded the Macedonians as different from the Greek people. In his diary Angiolello wrote: "On 14th August, the Great Master dropped anchor off the coast of Mount Athos, a mountain on which there are many monasteries and Christian monks, some of them Greek, others Macedonian or Vlach." He, then, goes on to say: "Both Greek and Macedonian people live there..." (K Merdzhios, Mnimia makedonikis istorias). Furthermore, the Regulations and the Constitution of the Razlog and the Kresna Uprisings in 1876 and 1878, as well as the documents of the interim government of Macedonia of 1880, clearly define the nationality of the Macedonian people. Terms like Macedonian Uprising, Macedonian army, Macedonian people leave no doubt as to the national denomination of the Macedonian people.
Greece manifested territorial aspirations towards Macedonia soon after it became an independent state. Various societies, such as the Association for the Promotion of Greek Literacy and, later, the armed gangs operating in Macedonia and fighting the so-called Macedonian war, had a sole purpose of converting the Macedonian population into Greek and if reeducation did not produce the expected results, they resorted to using arms. In this connection, Joannis Kordatos has written the following: "Bulgaria and Greece, as well as Serbia, sent soldiers to Macedonia in order to change the national affinity of the local population..."
"A large percentage of the farmers in Macedonia," Kordatos continues, "spoke a Slavonic dialect, using a lot of Greek and Turkish words; however, the essence of the dialect was Slavonic. The Slavo-Macedonian dialect was the dominant language in many areas in Macedonia. In a survey which Blunt, the British consul in Salonica, conducted in 1888 and printed in the following year in the English Blue Book, we find that the Greeks constituted the majority in the coastal belt, in Ber, Lagadin, Ser and Zihnen. But the inland areas of Macedonia were inhabited by Slavophones..."
"The wide masses of Macedonia," says Kordatos, "were oppressed not only by the pashas, beys and agas, but also by the local rich people and the Greek high church officials. Therefore, the majority of the Slavophone Macedonians decided to rise against the Turkish tyranny and the injustice of the Metropolitans, and in an autonomous and independent Macedonia to build political and national equality..." (loannis Kordatos, Istoria tis neas Ellados, vol.5, Athens 1955, pp. 41A2).
Two other Greeks, whose patriotism cannot be doubted, give evidence of how widely this Slavonic dialect (as Kordatos calls the Macedonian language) was spoken.
The highly respectable periodical Makedonika, the publication of the Society of Macedonian Studies in Salonica, in volume 3 of 1976, pp. 114-145, carries the report of Dimitrios Soros, chief Greek school inspector in the Salonica area in 1906, which contains the names of the villages in this area where Macedonian was the predominant language. Outside the walls of Salonica the population speaks a Slavo-Macedonian language, the 'so-called Bulgarian dialect'." Using the term 'so-called Bulgarian dialect', the inspector undoubtedly points out that this language is distinct from Bulgarian, though people accepted the term without giving its meaning a second thought.
In his longer article 'The Epopee from 1912 to 1913', the Greek academician Spiros Melas expresses his astonishment that the Macedonian population did not extend a welcome to the Greek army when it marched through Macedonia, pretending to be 'the liberator' during the Balkan Wars. The 'poor' people had anticipated the kind of liberty planned for them. This is how S. Melas describes the reception the army met with: "Occasionally, all of a sudden a village woman would step out and start swearing in her own difficult Macedonian language..."
"Then," Melas goes on, "our soldiers would surround her and offering her money would demand bread, wine, brandy or oil. But what we invariably got in return was a stereotype word like the one the first Slavophone villager, his head bent down, whom we had met outside the village of Negus, had addressed to us. All the way to the outskirts of Salonica and further on, to the town of Lerin, wherever we went we heard the same melancholic answer to all our demands: No, we don't have any!" (Spiros Melas, 'The Epopee from 1912 to 1913', published in installments in the newspaper Acropolis in 1952).
Similar descriptions can be found in the book The War between Greece and Turkey and the Macedonian Expedition by Stratos Ktenaveas. On pages 145-148 we rea😛 "The farmers from around Salonica locked up their doors. Holding their money in their hands, the soldiers kept asking for bread, salt, flour and onions. 'No' was the answer. It sounded like a slogan - 'No, there's nothing here'."
"In vain," continues Ktenaveas, "did the soldiers of all branches visit the houses all day long; all doors were locked up and the women answered from behind them: 'We don't have anything'!"
These poor farmers still remembered the atrocities the Greek armed gangs (the andarti) had committed in Zelenic, Lerin, Zagoricani and Kostur, atrocities which made even the infamous Turkish police force shiver.
Speaking about the composition of the population in the Aegean part of Macedonia prior to its Greek annexation, the Greek expert economist A. Aegidis states: "At the time when Greek sovereignty was established over Macedonia, it was estimated that 57,4% of its population were 'foreign elements' and that the Greeks constituted 42.6% of the inhabitants, which is probably exaggerated because in the survey of 1912, for obvious reasons, many inhabitants of Macedonia were entered as Greeks, even though they did not hold themselves as such... It should not be forgotten," Aegidis continues, "that the minority that 'weighed the heaviest on the ethnologic scales of Macedonia' was the Slavophone population." (A. Aegidis, I Ellas horis prosfiges, Athens 1930, pp. 168-169).
At the Balkan conference in Athens in 1928, in the presence of representatives from all the Balkan countries, the Greek Prime Minister, Fleutherios Venizelos, was asked by a Bulgarian journalist about the situation of the Slavonic minority in Greece. His answer sounded like mockery: "If that population demands schools in their own language, I'll be the first in Greece to see to it that they get them." Similarly, when asked about the rights of the Macedonian minority in Greece, Andreadis, the Greek delegate in the League of Nations, answere😛 "The Slavonic minority in Greece will be given all rights the moment they ask for them." How insincere the Prime Minister and the Greek diplomat were can be seen in the case of the Abecedar (Primer).
Pressed by the League of Nations and obliged by the Sevres Treaty of 1920, the Greek government allowed the publication of a Primer for the Macedonian children in Greece. The Primer was reviewed by Nikolaos Zarifis, a Greek Balkanologist, as follows: "Here is a primer for the Slavophones, which has been carefully and conscientiously written by the specialists Papazahariou, Sayaktsis and Lazarou. Despite the difficulties encountered during its preparation, this useful manual has a considerable scientific value... What we have before us," N. Zarifis says, "is a primer entitled Abecedar, meant for use in the schools that are to be opened in Greek Macedonia and Western Thrace for the needs of the Slavophone population. This primer will be used to teach the children of the Slavophones in Greece. It was written in the Macedonian dialect [underlined by the author] and printed in the Latin alphabet," (Article by Nikolaos Zarifis in the newspaper Elleutheron vima, of 19th October 1925).
Immediately after its publication, the primer was sent to the western part of Aegean Macedonia. However, it never got into the hands of the people it had been intended for. And it was the police units of F. Venizelos and no one else that saw to that. In the period between the two Wars, the Greek governments implemented a double policy towards the Macedonian people in Greece. On the one hand, pressed by the League of Nations, Greece showed a readiness to recognize the minority rights of the Macedonians, and on the other, through terror and psychological pressure on the Macedonian people, they intended to force them to emigrate from the country. The bloody event in the village of Trlis near Ser in 1929, which was also investigated by the Carnegie Commission, was not an isolated case of terror. In addition, constant attempts were made to assimilate and denationalize the Macedonian population. Leaders in this campaign were the newspapers Eleutheros logos (see the issue of 2nd January 1927), Embo
"It has been 18 years since the liberation of Macedonia. In this period we have had many governments from various parties, but we have not seen a systematic state policy with respect to the national question, so extremely important for the Psychological and linguistic assimilation of those who speak a foreign dialect, particularly the Slavophone inhabitants of Macedonia... In the 'foreign language' areas nothing has really changed with respect to the language since the liberation of Macedonia. These areas have remained faithful to their dialect and to customs alien to the Greek. I even dare say that the people of certain Macedonian areas have reinforced their earlier national feeling instead of losing it..."
What Deputy Vasilios Vizas demanded of the Parliament was put into practice by the dictator Ioannis Metaxas, Greek Prime Minister from 1936 to 1941, in whose period about 6,000 Macedonians, together with the communists, were fined, harassed or sent to the islands simply because they spoke the Macedonian language. This genocide of the Macedonian people in Greece was condemned even by some right-wingers, such as Sotirios Kodzhamanis, General D. Zafiropoulos and the journalist Polis Ioannidis. On one occasion, S. Kodzhamanis wrote: "Swearing at old men and women in the street or dragging them through police stations solely because they do not speak Greek can be done only in an unjust regime, which transfers the responsibility for the current situation from the history and the state to innocent individuals." (Sotirios Kodzhamanis, National questions, Salonica 1954, p.40).
In his longer article The Mystery of Goche, Polis Ioannidis wrote: "These people are stricken by poverty and they have been spurned since the moment they were born...
n the period between the two Wars the only hope the Macedonian people in Greece had for the preservation of their national identity and for the realization of their basic national rights as a minority came from the Greek Communist Party. Between 1924 and 1935, the latter supported the idea of self-determination of the Macedonian people in Greece as well as for the independence and unity of Macedonia and Thrace, which later changed into a demand for "national equality for the minorities within the Greek state".
Speaking in favor of the demands of the Macedonian people in Greece, the leader of the parliamentary group of the Communist Party, Stelios Sklavenas, declared at the Parliamentary sitting of 25th April 1936: "Another problem which the Government keeps ignoring in its declarations is the question of giving the minorities in Greece rights equal to those of the native Greek population. This refers in the first place to the Macedonian people. Anyone who has traveled through Macedonia must have felt the specific pressure exerted on the Macedonians. They have been strictly forbidden to have their own schools, speak their own language or practice their own customs. As a result, the people are getting organized and ready to fight for their rights, in which we can't but support them. The winning countries in the Great War and the League of Nations sanctioned the right for the self-determination of oppressed nations. And we also grant this right to the Macedonian people...
General Metaxas established his dictatorship on 4th August 1936. One of the first things he did was to retaliate against deputy Stelios Sklavenas for his speech in Parliament in support of the Macedonian cause, by sending him to the dungeons of Manyadakis, chief of the Security police, where he was virtually subjected to inquisition.
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As a conclusion to what has so far been said about the Greek denial of the admission of the Republic of Macedonia into the international institutions, the Greek claim to the exclusive right to the name of Macedonia and their non-recognition of the Macedonian minority in Greece, we would like to draw the attention of the reader to the visionary ideas and words of the former leader of the Left Liberals in Greece, Ioannis Sofianopoulos. As early as 1927, when the Greek Parliament debated minority rights in the country; this man of virtue anticipated future events.
"By what means can we tame the spirits and eradicate the hatred?" he wonders and then adds: "There are three essential elements. a real protection of the minorities, which would forbid any forced emigration, education of the new generation in schools, and good traffic connections with all Balkan countries... Everybody should understand," Sofianopoulos concludes, "that we cannot endlessly change the family name suffixes -opoulos into -opovich, then into -opov, or in the reverse direction, and that the mind should be free and the will of the individual fully respected." (Ioannis Sofianopoulos, Pos ida tin Valkaniki, Athens 1927, p.204).