Relationships between Greeks and FYROMians in Diaspora

[Melbourne]

Originally Posted by Slayer

Mt honest evaluation of the situation is this. When politics are not mentioned then Greeks and Skops can get on very well.
As orthodox Christians we do have alot more in common then we do with most other nationalities.
I would say though that they have a higher proportion of nationalists per capita the the Greeks do and they are just some realy stupid people.
I remember the conversation Big takis and I had about calling them box/Block heads and all jokes aside, they are realy viewed as stupid people, hence the name they have been given.
Not to say the Greeks are not nationalistic, but we actualy do have more going on in our lives then dreaming about the unfication of something they never owned. Greeks are more likely to be educated, be in politics and hold higher paid jobs then the Skops.
They are seen as an annoyance to us, but it is nothing we can not handle.
The Skops are renowned for living in Big houses, driving some slick or overarted big cars but they also renowned for taking out massive loans to feed their own egos. Their parents are renowned for working at Telstra(Australian phone company), or sydney water (australian water company), earn their average wage and own minimal assetts. Name me one rich or successful Skop in Australia off the top of your head? It is a very hard thing to do.

This is a good post Slayer.

I have grown up in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, the school I attended had a very small amount of Greek students, and a lot more Skopiani.

In my younger days I understood nothing of the issue, what sparked me into wanting to know more about it was when a girl in my class presented a paper on "Occupied Macedonia", she continued on to say that 40% of Greece was Macedonian and so and so on....I thought to myself, what the f..k!

I have a number of friends whose family originates from FYROM, and can tell you this from my observations and research.

1. They hate Greeks far more than they hate Turks
2. I have never felt any hatred from any Turkish person I have met, in fact they have been perfectly friendly and civil
3. The Skopian community in Australia has one of the highest rates of drug use and unemployment
4. They are at the lowest socio-economic demographic in Australia, hence their lack of any intellectual understanding of the Macedonian issue
5. As an example, there are 57,000 registered medical practitioners in Australia, Greeks represent around 1500 (around 3%), there are 14 Skopian doctors in Australia.
6. They do not fail to turn up en masse at soccer games against Greek clubs, wearing and waving verginas
7. They number 81,000 in Australia, compared to some 480,000 Greeks
8. Having attended their political meetings undercover in the past, I am reliably informed that they encourage each other to state to others (Greeks in particular), that they hail from "Aegean Macedonia", when in fact they hail from over the border in FYROM. The reason they do this is so as to overstate their numbers in what they term "occupied lands"
9. Only a small proportion of Skopiani in Australia hail from Greece (10% maximum). Census figues easily verify this...there is also a report from Danforth that comments on this as well.
10. The highest proportion of Skopians in Australia hail from Bitola (Monastiri) and its surrounding villages.

[Slayer]

Originally Posted by Melbourne

This is a good post Slayer.

I have grown up in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, the school I attended had a very small amount of Greek students, and a lot more Skopiani.

In my younger days I understood nothing of the issue, what sparked me into wanting to know more about it was when a girl in my class presented a paper on "Occupied Macedonia", she continued on to say that 40% of Greece was Macedonian and so and so on....I thought to myself, what the f..k!

I have a number of friends whose family originates from FYROM, and can tell you this from my observations and research.

1. They hate Greeks far more than they hate Turks
2. I have never felt any hatred from any Turkish person I have met, in fact they have been perfectly friendly and civil
3. The Skopian community in Australia has one of the highest rates of drug use and unemployment
4. They are at the lowest socio-economic demographic in Australia, hence their lack of any intellectual understanding of the Macedonian issue
5. As an example, there are 57,000 registered medical practitioners in Australia, Greeks represent around 1500 (around 3%), there are 14 Skopian doctors in Australia.
6. They do not fail to turn up en masse at soccer games against Greek clubs, wearing and waving verginas
7. They number 81,000 in Australia, compared to some 480,000 Greeks
8. Having attended their political meetings undercover in the past, I am reliably informed that they encourage each other to state to others (Greeks in particular), that they hail from "Aegean Macedonia", when in fact they hail from over the border in FYROM. The reason they do this is so as to overstate their numbers in what they term "occupied lands"
9. Only a small proportion of Skopiani in Australia hail from Greece (10% maximum). Census figues easily verify this...there is also a report from Danforth that comments on this as well.
10. The highest proportion of Skopians in Australia hail from Bitola (Monastiri) and its surrounding villages.

Excellent work melbourne.

I have been asking this question to myself for a long time, how the hell can the Skops all claim to be from Macedonia Greece?
What does that make the the Skops from the rest of their country.
Let me tell you that alot of Skops get sick about hearing from the "agean" skops like they represent all the Skops.
And finaly the one thing that realy confuses me. the Skops have claimed a surpressed minority in greece that numbers anything between 200,000 to 1,000,000. if that was the case I have yet to come across one Skop from Greece on any forum i have been on. Are you telling me that none of these Skops in greece have computers while the many Macedonians from greece have no problem getting on the net and sharing their experiences with us. Didn`t one jus sign up from Thessaloniki?
My point is their numbers do not, or ever have made sense.

[Melbourne]

Originally Posted by Slayer

Excellent work melbourne.

I have been asking this question to myself for a long time, how the hell can the Skops all claim to be from Macedonia Greece?
What does that make the the Skops from the rest of their country.
Let me tell you that alot of Skops get sick about hearing from the "agean" skops like they represent all the Skops.
And finaly the one thing that realy confuses me. the Skops have claimed a surpressed minority in greece that numbers anything between 200,000 to 1,000,000. if that was the case I have yet to come across one Skop from Greece on any forum i have been on. Are you telling me that none of these Skops in greece have computers while the many Macedonians from greece have no problem getting on the net and sharing their experiences with us. Didn`t one jus sign up from Thessaloniki?
My point is their numbers do not, or ever have made sense.

Well this is the excerpt from Danforth's book regarding people from Greece identifying as "Macedonian".

Census data on the Macedonian community of Australia are extremely unreliable for several reasons. Until recently Australian census forms asked people simply to list "country of origin" for themselves and their parents. People who identified themselves as Macedonians, therefore, appeared in the Australian census data as "Bulgarian-born," "Yugoslav-born," or "Greek-born." In the 1986 census people were asked for the first time to state their "ancestry," defined in an information booklet accompanying the census forms as "the ethnic or national group from which you are descended." At this time 42,000 people in Australia listed their ancestry as Macedonian. 21,000 of them were born in Yugolsavia, 4,000 of them were born in Greece, while the rest of them were born in Australian. Almost half of the people of Macedonian ancestry in Australia lived in Victoria, the vast majority o! f them in Melbourne. According to the 1986 census there were 46,000 people in Australia who spoke Macedonian at home, 21,000 of whom lived in Melbourne.[14]

The Macedonian community of Melbourne is similar to its Greek counterpart in many ways. It is, however, significantly smaller in size. There are only 4 Macedonian churches in Melbourne; Macedonian is taught at only five primary schools, six high schools and at none of the universities in Melbourne; and there are no private ethnic schools run by the Macedonian community. Furthermore, because it has a much smaller educated and professional elite than the Greek community, and because there is no Macedonian consulate to support its activities, the Macedonian community of Melbourne plays a much less influential role in the cultural and political life of the city.

While the Greek community is divided in many ways, the Macedonian community is even more divided. The major division in the Macedonian community is that between immigrants from Yugoslav (or Vardar) Macedonia and immigrants from Greek (or Aegean) Macedonia. Because many Aegean Macedonians arrived in Australia in the 1950s, while the largest number of of Vardar Macedonians emigrated to Australia in the late 1960s, the Aegean Macedonian community is better established in Melbourne -- its members speak better English and have enjoyed more upwardly mobility. In addition, the two communities have different geographical centers. The majority of Aegean Macedonians in Melbourne live in the northern suburbs of Preston, Thomastown, Lalor, and Epping, while the Vardar Macedonians of Melbourne are concentrated in the western suburbs of Footscray, Sunshine, Altona and Keilor.[15]

This description of the Greek and the Macedonian communities of Australia has been presented as an account two dichotomous and mutually exclusive national groups -- Greeks and Macedonians. Such an account, however, replicates and perpetuates the hegemonic constructions of both Australian multicultural discourse and Balkan nationalist discourse. In doing so it obscures the fact that there exists a group of people from the region of Florina and from other areas of northern Greece, who speak both Greek and Macedonian, who share one common regional or ethnic identity, that of "local Macedonians," but who have been divided into two hostile factions, each of which has adopted a different national identity. These are the people whose lives have been most dramatically affected by the recent politicization of the Macedonian Question. Individual villages and families have been split, with one villager, one brother, identifying as a! Greek, the other as a Macedonian.

In many cases the choices made and the postions taken in the present have parallels in the past. There are also, of course, many cases where new choices are made and new identities constructed. Some migrants to Melbourne who identify themselves as Greeks have seen their children grow up and come to identify themselves as Macedonians.

There are many factors that influence the process of identity formation as it takes place among immigrants from Florina to Australia. Balkan history, village politics, family situation, and individual biography all play important parts in this complex process. People may identify themselves as Greeks for a variety of reasons. They may come from a village that supported the Patriarch in the early twentieth century or a family that supported the Greek government during the Civil War. They may come from a wealthy family or have grown up in the city of Florina itself, or they may simply have been the youngest child in the family and grown up speaking Greek in the home because their older brothers and sisters had already started school. They may have left Greece as adults, having been fully socialized into Greek national society as a result of completing high school or serving in the military. Alternatively they may be involved in a pro! fession that can be practiced more readily in the Greek community of Melbourne with its large private educational system and its well-established professional and business elite. They may also have married into a family with strong sense of Greek national identity. Finally, they may be afraid that if they publicly identify themselves as Macedonians, they may not be able to return to Greece or that their relatives still living in Greece may be harassed by Greek government officials. One person, for example, refused to discuss the Macedonian issue with me, saying "It's too political, too dangerous. I don't want to talk. The people in the Pan-Macedonian Association might find out what I said, and I'd get in trouble."

People from Florina may identify as Macedonians for a variety of reasons as well. They may come from a village that supported the Exarch in the early twentieth century or a family that supported the communists during the Civil War. They may have been born in a small, poor village inhabited exclusively by local Macedonians, or they may have been the oldest child in the family and grown up speaking Macedonian with their parents and grandparents. Alternatively, they may have left Greece for Australia at a very young age and may not have been fully socialized into Greek national society, but only into the "local" society of their family and village. People who left Greece after the Civil War, settled in Yugoslavia or some other Eastern European country, and then emigrated to Australia from there, are almost certain to have adopted a Macedonian national identity. People who remained in Greece, but who experienced harassment an! d persecution at the hands of the Greek government in the years following the Civil War, may also have developed a Macedonian identity. Finally, people who marry into a family with a strong Macedonian identity or who have no relatives still living in Greece are likely to develop a Macedonian identity as well.

Some local Macedonians from Florina living in Australia have adopted a third stance with regard to the question of national identity. They attempt to maintain a neutral stance in the conflict between Greeks and Macedonians by refusing to identify themselves publicly with either one of the two mutually exclusive national groups. In many cases they want to preserve the unity of their village organizations which provide them with their primary sense of identity; in some cases they may value both national cultures and not want to restrict themselves by identifying themselves exclusively with either one. Finally, they may be genuinely unable to choose either one of the two mutually exclusive national categories to identify themselves with. On several occasions people who had adopted this third position refused to discuss the Macedonian issue with me. When I asked a man I met at a village picnic if he were a Greek dr a Macedonian, he sai! d "I can't talk. I can't say anything. [16] Then he gestured to the people dancing a "local" dance on the cricket field in front of us and said 'These are my people; this is my village. That's all I can say.

Since the local Macedonians of the Florina region were generally poor farmers from small villages, they emigrated to Australia in large numbers. like other immigrants from Greece, Yugoslavia, and southern Europe more generally, they often settled in jhe cities of Perth, Adelaide, Sydney, and Melbourne. Those who arrived in Melbourne in the 1950s. settled in the inner city suburbs of Northcote, Richmond, and Fitzroy only to move out to the northern suburbs of Preston, Thomastown, Lalor, and Epping in the 1960s and 1970s.

The institutions founded by the early local Macedonian immigrants from Florina to Melbourne testify to the divisions in their community that have been created in large part by the different national ideologies that have competed for their loyalty over the past century. This is particularly true in the case of the church, the institution that lies at the center of many southern and eastern European diaspora communities. In 1950 a group of immigrants from Florina, who identified themselves as Macedonians and who opposed communism, founded a "Macedonian Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius' in affiliation with the Bulgarian Orthodox Church of North and South America and Australia (which at that time was independent of the Holy Synod in Sofia). Years later, however, after the reconciliation of the diaspora church and the Holy Synod in Sofia, a priest from Bulgaria was sent to Melbourne who insisted that the Church of Saints Cyril ! and Methodius was a Bulgarian Church and that its members were all Bulgarians. In 1985 the trustees of the church, who identified themselves as Macedonians, renounced the jurisdiction of the Bulgarian Orthodox Chruch and attempted to gain control of the church. The Supreme Court of Victoria, however, ruled against them, and the Macedonian community soon abandoned what had now become a Bulgarian church.

Another group of immigrants from Florina who also identified themselves as Macedonians, but who supported communism, founded the Macedonian Orthodox Church of St. George in 1959, which eventually became afffliated with the Macedonian Orthodox Church in the Republic of Macedonia in the former Yugoslavia. This church is now one of the most powerful institutions in the Macedonian community of Melbourne and in all of
Australia. Finally, in 1967, a third group of immigrants from Florina, a group who identified themselves as Greeks, established a Greek Orthodox Church of Sts. Cyril and Methodius. Thus the tripartite division of Macedonia among Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Greece is replicated in the different affiliations of the churches founded by immigrants from Florina who settled in Melbourne.

Rough estimates suggest that there may be 27,000 people from the district of Florina who are now living in Australia.16 According to a survey conducted by Hill (1989:125) there are over 10,000 people in Melbourne whose families come from a group of 14 villages in the Florina area which have large and active village associations in Melbourne. In addition, immigrants from the city of Florina itself and from about ten other villages in the region have also settled in Melbourne. It is quite possible, therefore, that there are as many as 15,000 people from the Florina area who are living in Melbourne heavily concentrated in the northern suburbs of the city.

[Makedonia25]

Great post Melbourne! Good stuff! :thumbs:

[Torontezos]

As communities, the FYROMians and Greeks don't get along very well here.
I personally have a very close friend who's family is from Bitola, but the man is an intellect and claims that he is a Slav-Macedonian by geography only.

He does not claim any connection to the ancient Macedonians, and does not believe that Greek Macedonia should be united with FYROM.

Too bad there are not more like him...