The War Of Statistics: Traditional Recipes

[Lakonian]

THE WAR OF STATISTICS: TRADITIONAL RECIPES
FOR THE PREPARATION OF THE MACEDONIAN
SALAD

by Iakovos D.Michailidis

Several reports by various International Organisations describing the situation of human
rights in the Balkans have been publicised recently. Such reports on minorities and human
rights hardly constitute a novelty nor are they the exclusive ideological by-product of post-coldwar
diplomacy. They have been in circulation in the past, especially after the Final Act of
Helsinki in 1975, mostly in the form of International Amnesty reports focusing on the situation
of human rights within the domains of the former Eastern Block countries. The fall of the
Soviet Union in the late 1980s led to a re-adjustment of the world order. The protection of
minority rights all over the world became one of the top priorities in this "New Era" probably
less for humanitarian reasons than for diplomatic exigencies. In any case, in this context
N.G.O. (Minority Rights Group, Helsinki Watch etc.) or even the U.S. State Department
reports grew of paramount importance. It has become clear by now that in a rapidly changing
and unstable world reports on minorities strongly influence public opinion and are often used
internationally as the most effective mechanisms to exercise diplomatic pressure.
In the case of the Balkans this interest is obviously related to the on-going diplomatic
crisis which followed the break-up of Yugoslavia. The dispute between Athens and Skopje
over the name "Macedonia" made Greece part of the Yugoslav crisis and attracted the attention
of various organisations. Thus, a considerable part of their reports on the Balkans deals with
the Slav-speaking population of Greece and its course through history. Reports like these
would be indifferent to a historian, had they not directly referred to the demographic picture of
Macedonia in the past as back as far the eve of the Treaty of Bucharest; a Treaty which ended
the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) and interrupted a lengthy diplomatic game, played since 1878 by
Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and the Great Powers, concerning the demise of the Ottoman Empire
and the future of Macedonia. The researcher is amazed at the realisation that estimates of the
number of Slav-speakers in Greece today are not based on modern, official statistics but
constitute a mere revival -a rather clumsy one though- of statistical "games" which were played
long ago.
In this article an attempt will be made to review the current Balkan and European
bibliography through a fresh reading of the already existing statistics and the use of newly
found archival material. Despite what was generally acceptable until now, an effort will be
made to:
(a) show that the basic problem of various statistical analyses referring to Macedonia
from the end of the 19th century to this day is mainly a problem not of numbers but of
terminology (i.e. the naming of various population groups);
(b) correct certain figures that have also acquired specific political content: mainly the
number of Slav-speaking emigrants from Greek Macedonia to Bulgaria during 1912-1919 and
secondly the size of the Slav-speaking population of Western Thrace in the early 1920s.
In general it will be argued that, as a rule, statistics on Macedonia's ethnic composition
presented up until today are unreliable, since they have always been means for achieving
various diplomatic aims.
According to the most moderate of the current reports Slav-speakers in Greece amount to
40,000 people, while the most extreme ones put them roughly at 200,000.2 This huge
divergence is sufficiently explained only if the origins of Macedonian demography are followed
at the time of the Balkan Wars and beyond. The last quarter of the 19th and the first two
decades of the 20th century were marked by an abundance of statistical analyses concerning the
Balkans in general and Macedonia in particular.3 Needless to say the interest for Macedonia
was not purely scientific. The neighbouring Balkan states (Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia) had to
secure and enlarge their ethnic grips by all means available. At a time when the once mighty
Ottoman Empire was expiring, statistics were considered the most effective weapon to support
"ancient national rights" and to prove beyond any doubt the demographic superiority of the
interested parties. Further, they were the most appropriate argument especially designed for
consumption by European diplomats. Armed bands would do the rest...
Bulgarians proved to be champions and pioneers in the compilation of statistics. To be
sure, they had good reasons. The firman for the institution of the Exarchate ceded by the
Sublime Port in 1870 made it clear that only if the 2/3 of a community were registered as
followers of the Independent Bulgarian Church, known as the Exarchate, that community
would then be classified as Exarchist (i.e. Bulgarian).4 For the Greeks the task was exactly the
opposite, while Ottoman authorities had to prove that Muslims outnumbered Christians, if
Macedonia was to remain under the rule of the Sultan. The overwhelming majority of early
20th century available statistics is more an estimation based on birth books rather than
constituting a proper census. They present their data by administrative area (Vilayet) and not by
village. Exception to this are the detailed statistics prepared in 1900 by Vasil Kancov,5
Inspector of the Bulgarian elementary schools in Macedonia, and the 1905 official census
ordered by Hilmi Pasha, General Inspector of Macedonia since 1902.6 In any case, before the
Balkan Wars, all statistics were biased and reflected exclusively diplomatic concerns. Their
authors were public servants hardly relevant to the subject they were called to examine. Kancov
and Hilmi Pasha were not really exception to this rule. Kancov deliberately classified all Slavspeakers
as Bulgarians, while Hilmi's census reflected the most turbulent years of the Struggle
for Macedonia (1904-1905), when national affiliations changed whenever bands so demanded.
In spite of the obvious shortcomings, their works, the only detailed statistics available, were
not forgotten.
At the time of World War I two seemingly new statistics dominated the diplomatic scene
representing the Greek and the Slav historical and political approaches respectively. The former
was drawn by Vassilios Colokotronis7, a high ranking official in the Greek Foreign Ministry,
who argued, on the basis of data of the Italian Amadori-Virgilj published in 1908,8 that, on the
eve of the Balkan Wars, 488,484 "Greeks" lived in Greek Macedonia compared to just
115,909 "Slavs". The latter was done by Jordan Ivanoff,9 geographer, historian and
philologist, professor at the University of Sofia, who argued mainly on the basis of Kancov's
statistic, that at that time 329,371 "Bulgarians" and just 236,755 "Greeks" lived in Greek
Macedonia.10
At first sight the gap between the two statistics seems impossible to bridge. A more
careful study, however, reveals that it is nothing but a trick of the eye, a deliberate distortion of
numbers through the use of different terms in order to support specific national causes.
Cololotronis used the inhabitants' "national consciousness" as the most appropriate criterion
for classifying populations. He considered as "Slavs" only the former Exarchist Slav-speakers,
i.e. those who had been converted to the Bulgarian Exarchate in the early years of the 20th
century, and thus were regarded as alien to the Greek nation. In the same manner, Patriarchist
Slav-speakers, i.e. those who had remained firmly attached to the Ecumenical Patriarchate,
were believed to have purely Greek sentiments and were accordingly classified as "Greeks".
Ivanoff, on the other hand, like Kancov before him, preferred the mother tongue as a criterion.
Based on this he considered every inhabitant of the Balkans speaking any Bulgarian dialect as
"Bulgarian".
The methods employed by both were truly brilliant. If the language criterion was to be
employed, Greece obviously would be pushed to the corner. Thus Colokotronis, representing
the Greek interests, picked the "national consciousness", in his attempt to take advantage of the
fact that numerous Slav-speakers had actively participated in the anti-Bulgarian Struggle (1903-
1912). On the other side, Ivanoff rushed to exploit the obvious affinity between Bulgarian and
the local Slav dialect. In this way he expected to easily avoid the question of national
orientation of both "Graecomans", i.e. the Slav-speakers who supported the Greek side, and
"Serbomans", i.e. the Slav-speakers who preferred the Serbs. His statistic was nothing but a
version of Bulgarian irredentism and a desperate academic effort to support the territorial
arrangements for a Greater Bulgaria put forward by the San Stefano Treaty (1878).
In terms of numbers the two statistics are very much alike. Greeks and Bulgarians as an
aggregate were estimated at 604,393 according to Colokotronis and at 566,126 according to
Ivanoff. Even this difference can be explained if two factors are taken into account: (a) the five
year span between the two statistics (1900-1905) and (b) the difficulty to adjust pre-1912
statistics to the new Balkan borders.
Both Ivanoff's and Colokotronis' accounts are the ground on which all later estimates by
Greek and Slav historians have been based. Every demographic survey of Macedonia
appearing in subsequent years, even today, is nothing but addition or subtraction of data
originating from the above two statistics. Formally Ivanoff and Colokotronis were replaced
during the inter-war period by a new generation of analysts. The most important
representatives were Alexandros Pallis and Vladimir Rumenov who were concerned with
population exchanges that took place in Macedonia between 1913 and 1930. At that period
Slav-speakers from Greece emigrated on two different occasions (a) during the Greek army
advance in the Second Balkan War and (b) under a specific term of the Neilly Treaty (1919)
providing for the mutual and voluntary exchange of Greek and Bulgarian populations.
Pallis, a public servant responsible for the relief of refugees in Macedonia during the
1910s and a member of the Mixed Greek-Bulgarian Committee in charge of the exchange
procedures after 1919, argued that 15,000 "Voulgarizontes" had left the districts of Kilkis and
Goumenissa. With this term he denoted only those Slav-speakers who had in the past been
affiliated with the Exarchic Bulgarian Church. Thus, by 1920 "Voulgarizontes" in Greece had
been reduced to 104,000 people. Moreover, by the end of 1924, 27,000 of them had left
making use of the Neilly Treaty terms. In this way the number of the remaining
"Voulgarizontes" had shrank to 77,000 people.11 In a later study in 1929, i.e. after the Greek
and Bulgarian emigration had been completed and the ethnological composition of Macedonia
had changed utterly, Pallis changed the number of 77,000 "Voulgarizontes" to 82,000
"Bulgarians", probably to match with the 1928 official census.
The same group of people was re-baptised by Pallis once more in the late 1940s. This
time they were called "Slavophones".12 Although in his interwar studies he had clearly argued,
carrying on Colokotronis' tactics, that the "Voulgarizontes" lacked Greek national
consciousness, two decades later, as the Greek Civil War raged and the Macedonian Question
surfaced anew, he apparently succumbed to the temptation to defend in a more substantial way
Greek national rights. I argue that this seemingly innocent act of renaming this group was
actually a deliberate manoeuvre. Since 1919 the term "Slavophones" had been used to refer to
Slav-speakers with a Greek national consciousness or in any case to those who had not openly
been opposed to Hellenism. Consequently, the number of those who had hardly ever been
attached to the Greek state, i.e. those whom Pallis had once called "Voulgarizontes" or
"Bulgarians", was then automatically expected to be lower than the actual 82,000.
Rumenov, also a member of the Mixed Greek-Bulgarian Committee, took his turn by
arguing that 86,582 "Bulgarians" had emigrated from Greece during the 1913-1928. Then he
extracted this number from the 329,371 "Bulgarians" who lived in Macedonia until 1912
(according to Ivanoff's estimate) and concluded that after the completion of the population
exchanges the remaining "Bulgarians" in Greek Macedonia were no fewer than 242,789
people.13
The statistical analyses by Pallis and Rumenov strongly influenced the subsequent Greek
and Slav historiography. Actually they created two schools of writing:
(a) the Greek school, which reproduced Pallis' statistical data, includes studies as George
B.Zotiades', The Macedonian Controversy,14 Dimitris Pentzopoulos', The Balkan
Exchange of Minorities and its Impact upon Greece15 and Evangelos Kofos',
Nationalism and Communism in Macedonia,16 Needless to say the use of the term
"Slavophones" by the above historians reproduced the confusion Pallis had created and
facilitated the use of historic evidences for post-war diplomatic needs.
(b) As far as the latter school, i.e. the Slav, is concerned things turned slightly
different. The reason was the progressive drop of Bulgaria's interest in Greek
Macedonia which inevitably affected the post-war re-writing of national history in that
country. After 1945 the vacuum left by Bulgaria was gradually filled by the Socialist
Republic of Macedonia (S.R.M.). The struggling effort of this Yugoslav federal
republic for the construction a national myth necessitated the renaming of Ivanoff's
"Bulgarians" of Macedonia to simply "Macedonians".17 This "mutation" is actually the
only noticeable difference between the writings of Bulgarian historians and their
colleagues in S.R.M. Both Ivanoff's and Rumenov's data remained untouched ever
after.
Following the example set by President Dimitar Vlahov,18 historians in S.R.M.,
professionals and amateurs alike, have argued that in 1930 the "Macedonians" in Greek
Macedonia were still as many as 260-280,000.19 This tactic can be easily explained: since 60-
80,000 Macedonians are estimated by the same authors to have fled to the Communist
countries after the end of the Greek Civil War, S.R.M. might still claim a 200,000 strong
"Macedonian minority" in Greece.20
It was almost impossible for Europeans to escape from this labyrinth of data created by
Balkans diplomats and academics. In 1913 the Carnegie Committee appointed to investigate the
crimes committed during the Balkan Wars tended to adopt Professor Ivanoff's statistics, while
in the interwar period, in 1926, the League of Nations accepted without any reservation the
Greek views as presented by Pallis. In the 1950s Professor Wilkinson was the first to dispute
the authority of all past demographic statistics on Macedonia and partly revealed the hidden
political intentions. Another critical approach was presented in 1993 by Vemund Aarbakke but
it was limited only to pre-1912 statistics.21 However, these critics have only superficially
affected modern European analysts.22 Most of them today reproduce, probably out of
ignorance, the Slavic school. This is a tendency which has also been espoused by all NGOs
which have presented reports on Greek Macedonia during the previous four years.
Despite such odds it is still possible to have a more accurate estimate of the Slavspeaking
population of the region identified today as Greek Macedonia on the eve of the Balkan
Wars without completely disregarding the above views. Colocotronis is the only writer who
gives a specific number for Slav-speaking Exarchists in Macedonia: 115,909 in all. D. Michef,
Secretary of the Bulgarian Exarchate, better known as D.M.Brancoff, on the other hand,
provides us with a figure for Slav-speaking Patriarchists: 145,936.23 Since both writers had
good reasons to present their opponents' demographic strength as limited as possible, it is
reasonable to argue that Slav-speakers, Exarchists and Patriarchists together, in Macedonia
around 1905 must have been at least 260,000.24 This figure is also supported by an 1912
unofficial and unpublished census found in the papers of the first Greek Governor-General of
Macedonia, Stefanos Dragoumis.25
The following step is to calculate the number of Slavophone emigrants who left Greek
Macedonia, chiefly from the central and eastern parts, during the Balkan wars. According to
Pallis, departures from the regions of Kilkis and Goumenissa (Central Macedonia) were as
many as 15,000 but no figures are available for western and eastern regions. Even though any
attempt to precisely estimate their number is by definition impossible, since the exodus took
place amidst violent war battles and not according to any plan, departures seem to have
exceeded 15,000, perhaps as many as 35,000-40,000 people, as archival sources indicate.26
Most of them came from eastern and central provinces of Greek Macedonia, 20,000 from the
former27 and 13,000-14,000 people from the latter,28 where the Bulgarian Exarchate had had its
most committed followers, and to a lesser, almost insignificant, extent from western Greek
Macedonia (1.604 refugees).29
The above observations allow us to presume that the total number of Slav-speakers in
Greek Macedonia in the early 1920s must have been roughly 220,000 people. In fact, this
argument is enhanced by certain confidential inter-war statistics recently found at the Historical
Archive of the Greek Foreign Ministry. These documents shed some light on the dim
demographic scenery of Greek Macedonia and allow us to form a more complete picture. In
early 1923 the Governor-General of Macedonia, Achilleas Lambros, conducted an ethnological
survey of this region.30 According to Lambros, the statistical data came (a) from the official
Greek census of 1920, (b) from another census conducted at about the same time on behalf of
the Foreign Ministry and (c) from information derived from various local officials. This
information, however, concerned only western and central Macedonia. Data regarding eastern
Macedonia were collected from other sources: i.e. from statistics prepared by the General Staff
of the Greek Army for the district of Serres31 and similar ethnological researches conducted by
the Governor-General of Thrace for the districts of Drama and Kavala.32 On the basis of all
these sources it has been calculated that Slav-speakers in Greek Macedonia at the early 1920s,
i.e. before the Neilly Treaty, were 215,567 people: 57,359 of them were considered former
Patriarchists and 158,208 former Exarchists.
A few years later, in 1925, i.e. when the population exchange had been completed,
Governors-General of Macedonia and Thrace conducted fresh ethnological statistics33
According to these the number of Slav-speakers in Greek Macedonia had decreased to
162,506, of whom 76,098 were considered "former Patriarchists" and 86,408 "former
Exarchists". Such a division does not necessarily imply that the former had a Greek national
consciousness and the latter had not. The term "Patriarchist" did not necessarily mean "of
Greek consciousness" nor the term "Exarchist" always identify with the term "Bulgarian
minded". Peasants' identity could easily change, either due to opportunism or pressure, as
circumstances demanded. In any case, the transition from the religious groups of the early 20th
century to the interwar national states was not a smooth process at all.34
Demographical problems in Thrace are not as complex as in the case of Macedonia. This
region was under Bulgarian Command from 1913 until May 1919, when the Entente Powers
took over the administration. Just a year later, on May 1920, the region was finally signed over
to Greece. A month before leaving, the French Allied Command of Western Thrace conducted
an ethnological survey. The results were never published officially thus causing a lengthy
dispute between Greek and Bulgarian historians.35 The dispute that continued for many years
due to the Bulgarian aspirations to this territory ended just in 1978, when the Bulgarian
historian Boin Bozinov dug up from the French archives the official statistic and had it
published, eventually justifying Greek views: "Greek" inhabitants were 56,114 and
"Bulgarian" 54,092.36
The withdrawal of the French army led to a massive emigration of Slav-speakers from
Western Thrace. It is estimated that about 32,000 Slav-speakers in all left Western Thrace
between the withdrawal of the French army and the establishment of Greek rule.37 Thus, it
appears that, at the time when Greece annexed Western Thrace, about 22,000-24,000 Slavspeakers
were still living in this territory. This is also confirmed by an unpublished confidential
report according to which Slav-speakers in Western Thrace were 22,800 in all.38 At the end of
1923 though, i.e. when the Neilly Treaty was implemented in Thrace as well, Slav-speakers
had been reduced to roughly 20,000. This was due to the emigration of 2,500 individuals to
Bulgaria,39 a movement instigated by fear and insecurity following the selective deportations
conducted during 1923 by the Greek administration. Emigration escalated after the enforcement
of the Neilly Treaty in Western Thrace in October 1923.40 Despite Bulgarian counter
arguments,41 the statistical data from the League of Nations leave no room for disagreements.42
At the end of 1925 the area had been completely evacuated from the Slav-speaking
population.43
The above touring through the inter-war statistical labyrinth was an attempt to show that
figures were nothing more than a weapon in the diplomatic arsenal. High ranking public
servants, bureaucrats, and clergymen from both sides tried to convince the international
community that Macedonia rightfully belonged to "them" rather than to the "others". In this
effort they did not hesitate to use statistical data selectively, to distort terms and "play" with
numbers accordingly. Of all these methods employed it was the choice of terms which chiefly
determined the course of the Macedonian Question. The name of the peaceful, rural and
pastoral masses of the Macedonian countryside became an apple of discord. Different versions,
such as "Patriarchists and Exarchists", "Greeks and Slavs", "Bulgarians", "Bulgarisants", and
"Schismatics" reflect nothing more but the agony of the rival Balkan states in search of national
minorities or majorities in Macedonia. However, it was the same "genius" strategic trick, the
selective use of terms, that in the long run became their "soft spot". Old terms were not always
appropriate as the diplomatic setting in the Balkans changed rapidly. Moreover, archival
evidence as it gradually became available to diplomats and historians, made clear that
something was wrong with published data. This sense fed back to feelings of insecurity and
unjustifiable secrecy but also a strong desire to "reveal" historical "scandals" and cause public
embarrassment.
Not surprisingly, Slav-Macedonians in F.Y.R.O.M. after 1944 followed exactly the
same path previously trodden by Greeks and Bulgarians. But instead of adding something new
to the recipe of the salad, they preferred to warm up the same ingredients: i.e. the early 20th
century and inter-war Bulgarian statistics with the exception of course, that "Bulgarians" were
mutated overnight into "Macedonians". This paper is not to question the right of selfdetermination
nor to make a case for the on-going diplomatic dispute between Athens and
Skopje. But it can not fail to observe that the old recipe has recently tempted International
Organisations as well. The use of such over-used data for diplomatic purposes without proper
historical knowledge is an extremely awkward coincidence: at the very moment that historical
research has eventually clarified the complicated and artificial means employed in the past to
mix-up the Macedonian salad, International Organisations re-address the same problem using
outdated and mostly wrong terms and figures. In this way they unfortunately legitimise the
exploitation of history to meet modern diplomatic and humanitarian concerns.


Map of Bulgaria after the 1878 treaty