The Macedonian Affair - Part 2

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 descent".

2. When Maps Reveal the Truth

The attempts made by Skopje to provide evidence for its allegations by the use of forged maps are familiar to all. However, no matter how hard one may try, one will find no maps printed anywhere in the world before 1944 which show the word "Macedonia" in any country other than Greece. In 1944, the first maps published by the Yugoslavs showed southern Serbia as the "Socialist Republic of Macedonia ". This map was later reprinted, with the words 'Socialist Republic of' omitted and the word "Macedonia" deleted from Greece: as a result, those using the map would form the opinion that "Macedonia" lay only within Yugoslavia and that therefore there was a "Macedonian nation" which, of course, would speak its own language.

The groundlessness of Skopje's contentions concerning the alleged existence of a "nation of Macedonians" is proved by the following ethnographic maps:

a. The ethnographic map of nationalities in Macedonia in the period 1912-1926 published in the New Cambridge Modern History (1970).

b. The ethnographic map of Kieport (Berlin 1818).

c. The ethnographic map produced by the Italian Amendore Virgili in 1908, and based on the Turkish census carried out by Hilmi Pasha.

d. The Stanford map.

None of these maps, or any other published before the Second World War, makes any reference to a "Macedonian nation", for the simple reason that no such thing existed before the Yugoslav Communist Party invented it.

During the period of rule by the Ottoman Empire (after 1529), the Turks implemented their own system of division, as can be seen from the ethnographic map of 1908 based on the census conducted by Hilmi Pasha in 1904. This map makes no reference to Macedonia, because the area was divided into "sancaks" and "vilayets" (the Vilayets of Monastir and Thessaloniki).

A map dating from as far back as 1350 shows the realm of King Stepan Dusan of Serbia, who referred to it as the "Kingdom of Serbs and Greeks". Stepan Dusan divided his kingdom into two parts, the northern (stretching as far as Skopje), which he bestowed on his son, and the southern (Greek), which he kept for himself. If there was any such thing as a "Macedonian nation" he would surely have called his realm the "kingdom of Serbs and Macedonians" or the "kingdom of Serbs, Greeks and Macedonians".

The "kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians" was set up after the First World War. Once again, had there been any Macedonians, it would have borne the title of "kingdom of Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and Macedonians ".

In 1824, a New Historical Map of Greece was published at Baltimore by E.Z. Coal. In the legend, the publisher describes Macedonia as a part of mainland Greece. and marks its northern border as lying beyond the town of Monastir.

3. 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" (8).

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" (9). 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" (10).

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 remained: 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 completed:

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.

4. First Attempts to Document a Non- Existent Nation by 'Scholarly' Means

Although socio-economic conditions at the end of the Second World War were favourable to the experiment of causing the national mutation of the population, it was far from certain that the entire population of Yugoslav Macedonia would welcome its new national identity. For as long as there were no supports upon which the edifice of the new nationality could be erected - or until such supports could be invented- its future was highly dubious. Foundations, then, had to be found quickly, and they ought to be strong.

The first task of those who were moulding the new "nationality" was to find and establish a name for it. They settled for the easy way out: t name of the area. Yet this name was common to all the population groups living in all three parts of Macedonia: the Greeks called themselves Makedones, the Slavic groups used the term Makedontsi, and the Vlachs styled themselves Macedoneni.

There is no doubt that apart from its geographical meaning the term "Macedonia" carries with it a lengthy historical and cultural heritage which could not be ignored. Initially, it was seen as inadvisable to link the new nationality with the ancient Greek Macedonians. Efforts focused principally on the appropriation by the new nationality of the Bulgarian presence in Macedonian history. Everything Bulgarian automatically became 'Macedonian'. Wherever possible, the same process was applied to evidence of the Serbian and Greek presence in Macedonia. Those in charge of building the new nationality gave the impression that they would not be satisfied merely with success in the experiment of national mutation. After succeeding in constructing the "Macedonian" nationality, they would then - by usucapion- acquire the right to assign to the new nationality everyone and everything that had ever had Macedonian roots.

The events of the late 1940s - that is, the beginning and the end of the Civil War in Greece-led the Yugoslav leadership to abandon its policy of territorial expansion in Macedonia. But the policy of historical and cultural expansion to further the ends of the new "Macedonian" nationality was not abandoned: rather, it was made broader and more "scholarly". Naturally enough, this provoked angry criticism from, and controversy with, Bulgarian and Greek historians.

This controversy gave rise to a "Macedonian Question" of a new kind, but one which was not simply a dispute between university teachers. For the Yugoslavs, a reinterpretation of the history of Macedonia was an essential requirement if the construction and survival of the new nationality was to be possible. For the Bulgarians, resistance and reaction to such a policy meant blocking any further eradication of the Bulgarian element in the historical past of the Slavs of Macedonia, and it also raised a barrier to the spread of the 'Macedonian nation' theory among the population of Bulgarian Macedonia. For the Greeks, a critique of the Yugoslavian position was a justified defence against designs on the Greek historical heritage in Macedonia, as well as a reaction to the attempt to appropriate and monopolise a historic Greek name.

5. Taskovski Cooks the Historical Books

According to the historians of Skopje, the Slavs of Macedonia were not, in the early 19th century, in a position to emulate the process of national awakening which occurred among their Greek, Serb and Bulgarian neighbours. Their elevation from the status of a people ("narod") to that of a nation ('nacia') was impossible for reasons which were primarily economic. Since capital was in the hands of the Jews, the Greeks, the Vlachs and the Armenians, no Slav-Macedonian bourgeois class capable of giving impetus to Slav-Macedonian nationalism emerged. A second reason was the absence of any particular medieval tradition which could inspire national self-awareness and national revival. The third and last reason was the presence of the national liberation movements of the Greeks, Serbs and Bulgarians in Macedonia. The Slav- Macedonians joined these movements, and so - according to the historians of Skopje- identified themselves with one national formation or the other.

According to one of the foremost theorists of the 'national regeneration' of the 'Slav-Macedonian people', Dragan Taskovski, the Slav inhabitants of Macedonia like their Greek neighbours- were profoundly impressed by the majesty of ancient Macedonia and the Macedonian name. As the Greeks had aldo done, the Slavs adopted the Macedonian name so as to state their geographical origins. In the 19th century atmosphere of fervent nationalism, the Slavs of Macedonia could not bear to look on with indifference as the use of the name changed. They loved their country, Taskovski says, and its history, and if they could achieve some degree of identification with the ancient Macedonians, the Slavs of Macedonia would acquire a measure of moral and perhaps political superiority over the Bulgarians and the Greeks. Still following Taskovski's line of argument, the Greek nationalists exploited the historic Greek connection of the Macedonian name in order to prove that the Slav-speaking inhabitants of Macedonia, who called themselves Macedonians ('Makedonski') were in fact Greek. And so, Taskovski concludes, many Slavs ceased to call themselves Macedonians so as to avoid being identified with the Greeks, adopting the Bulgarian name and presenting themselves as Bulgarians.

The historical sleight of hand is an attempt to explain why it should be that the Slav - speaking inhabitants of Macedonia developed a Greek or Bulgarian national consciousness during the 19th century. They were unable to embrace a Macedonian national ideology since - as Taskovski has to admit- there was no such thing at the time.

The text above is from a paperback "THE MACEDONIAN AFFAIR" published by the Institute of International and Strategic Studies in Athens, Greece, before 1995.

for: http://www.macedonianforums.com

info@macedonian.com.au