The Federative Republic Of Skopje And Its Language

[Ptolemy]

B. The argument of territorial and economic unity. -------------------------------------------------------------------
The Slavs of the State of Skopje, lost up till now in the welter of Greeks, Albanians, Vlachs, Turks and Gypsies who, during the Byzantine era and later under Turkish rule composed the population of southern
Servia, never had a trace of national conscience. The struggle for liberation against Ottoman domination left them completely unmoved. The call to freedom trumpeted by the Greeks to all Christian nations of the
Balkan peninsula at the beginning of the 19th century resulted in the liberation of a part of Greek territories


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and the establishment of the modern Greek state, failed to wake them from their sleep. Devoid of national consciousness, devoid of culture and of a tradition of independent statehood, they naturally lacked the
scientific background necessary to the study of the particular political and historical problems of their country. Since the Treaty of San Stephano until recently, the representatives of Slav aggressive nationalism and expansionism in the Balkan peninsula were the Bulgarians. But when in the troubled period of German occupation of the Balkans, during World War II, the Cominform proclaimed Macedonia an independent State, these people took up the ready-made Bulgarian slogans for a united Macedonia and have since been using them blindly and slavishly. Whoever would refute their arguments, must therefore answer the Bulgarians rather than the scholars of Skopje.


According to the Serb geographer, J. Cvijic (15), the Slav Valley of Morava and the Greek Valley of the river Axios constitute a geographical unit. Consequently, so the argument goes, the two should co
nstitute a single -and of course Slav- political entity. This is obviously an untenable theory for how is it possible to set national boundaries by the flow of rivers, or by the orientation of the plains and valleys? Valleys had a decisive influence in shaping national entities only in the stone age when lack of communications resulted unavoidable isolation. It is absurd to argue today that frontiers should be defined
by the unity of rivers, valleys and plains. The whole of the world nowadays forms a geographical and economic unit. The only conceivable boundaries at present are those running along the lines dividing different linguistic and national groups. Besides, modern means of communication have changed these geographical features from dividing lines into links for the exchange of material and cultural goods between different nations and states.


The towns and villages of the Axios valley south of its tributary Erogan (L. Erigonas) , are and have always been -in antiquity and through the Middle Ages and to this day- ethnologically Greek, whereas north of that river they were Illyrian in ancient times, then Greek, and later on predominantly Slavic.
It can clearly be seen that the geographical unity of that valley failed to deterinine its national and political unity in the past; it could much less determine such a unity today. Commercially and economically, the ever Greek valley of the lower Axios is linked with the ports of the Aegean and with the nation
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15. J. Cvijic: La peninsule balkanique (Paris 1918).


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which for thousands of years has inhabited the Aegean coast. The valley of the upper Axios and of Morava is linked with the northern Balkan region and the Danube. It would be interesting to learn from the intellectual and political leaders of the State of Skopje when their people first heard of the existence of the Aegean Sea and what people's glory it was that the Aegean waves cradled ever since, and long before, the beginning of history on the European continent.

[Ptolemy]

C. The argument about the alleged Slavic character of the whole of Macedonia.
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The argument regarding the name ""Macedonian -- Macedonia "", is really only a pretext and is only put forward accessorily. The one argument on which they insist is the ethnological one, namely that Macedonia did not belong to the Hellenic world in antiquity, and that during the Middle Ages it had become thoroughly Slav.


Let us examine these arguments in turn.


1) The Slavs persist in regarding the ancient Macedonians as Thracio-Illyrians, i.e. a race which though Indo-European itself, was however quite distinct from the ancient Hellenes. It is well known that
the ancient Macedonians considered themselves Greeks and what is known of their language conforms entirely with Greek as a centum language, and differs fundamentally from Thracio - Illyrian which is a satem language. Like other Greeks, they chose the Attic dialect as the official language of their State, a circumstance which would have been inconceivable had their previous idiom not been a Greek dialect. While they were constantly at war with the Thracio-Illyrians, they invariably defended the Hellenic world and it was the Greek civilisation and language that they enforced in the Eastern and Mediterranean regions they conquered.
What more should they have done to convince us that they were Greeks? No objective and bona fide historian to-day questions the Greek ethnological character of the ancient Macedonians.
The great linguist P. Kretschmer in his book «Sprache» (p. 87) maintains that the ancient Macedonians were a tribe which broke away from the main body of the Greek nation and settled at an early stage in
the mountainous country which is situated to the north of Thessaly. And the historian 0. Reche in his book «Rasse und Heimat der Indogermanen» : (p.54) writes that the Macedonians followed the Dorians
as the last of successive waves of Hellenic migrations into the Greek peninsula.
The only question to-day is to know to what extent its language received foreign admixtures as a result of the contacts which the ancient Mace-


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donians established with the Thracio-Illyrian tribes which they conquered. This we readily admit but will insist that it is irrelevant in a discussion of the Greek character and consciousness of the Macedonian people. In order to support their contentions that ever since the Middle Ages, when they first appeared in the Balkan peninsula, they have never settled on Greek territory, but have only encountered and assimilated Thracio-Illyrian tribes, - for which reason they regard themselves as
the heirs of historical and racial Thracio - Illyrian rights in the Balkans - the Slavs disregard all evidence of the Greekness of the ancient Macedonians.
They further refuse to admit the universally accepted fact that the Macedonians as an undoubtedlyGreek-speaking group - at least from the 5th century onwards - gradually hellenised the majority of Thracio-Illyrians in the Balkan peninsula, with the result during the Alexandrian, Roman and Byzantine eras, the Balkan was a Greek peninsula; a fact which is amply illustrated by the Greek inscriptions preserved in those regions.
On the basis of these inscriptions, the Czech historian Cj. Jirecek (16), traced the well-known line which bears his name. The Jirecek line marking the limits of the Hellenic civilisation and language in the Balkans at least up to the 7th century A.D. runs from the mouth of the river Skumbi on the Adriatic sea through Skopje and Serdika (contemporary Sofia) and eastward along the Aemos range to the Black sea.


According to Jirecek who was neither a Greek nor a Philhellene, but a Slav who respected historical truth, the whole area of the present State of Skopje belonged to the sphere of Greek language and culture - at least down to the 7th century A. D. that is when the presence of the Slavs in the Greek peninsula first made itself felt.


It was Greeks, then, both linguistically and culturally, not Thracio-Illyrians that the Slavs met in the Balkans, and Greeks that they strove to assimilate as the large number of Greek words in their language shows. The Slavs did not come into contact with Thracio-Illyrians, firstly because the latter had disappeared a long time before; secondly, because the Slav languages in theBalkan peninsula have not preserved any Thracio-Illyrian elements as they certainly would have, if the Thracio-Illyrian language had been alive at the time when the Slavs invaded the Balkans. By contrast, Slav languages
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16. C. J. Jirecek: Die Romanen in den Stadten Dalmatiens wAhrend des Mittelalters l,13.


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have several Hellenic admixtures which are proof that the only people whom the Slavs encountered in the Balkans were Greeks.


2) The Slavs insist on exaggerating both the duration and the importance of the consequences of the Slavic occupation of Greek Macedonia during the Middle Ages by Serb and Bulgarian rulers.
The Slavs first entered the Balkans as inercenaries of the Avars, during the 6th century A.D. It was only after the defeat of the Avars in Constantinople that they began to settle sporadically as peaceful
peasants south of the Danube. These sporadic and peaceful settlements continued in the 7th and 8th centuries. That the Byzantine empire, then at the height of its power, tolerated these Slav settlements on the southern bank of the Danube is in itself proof of the fact that the Slav immigrants were numerically
few and in their quality as peaceful peasants presented no threat to the safety of the State. Thessaloniki, the great metropolis of Macedonian Greekdom, «towered over the Slavs as a great military and civilising power armed with the sword and the gospel » as Rambaud (17 ) writes epigrammatically.
The Serbs who undoubtedly had more Illyrian blood in their veins, were relatively less war-like people who «ever submitted to the rule of neighbourly powers» as the historical writer Choniatis(18) says. So long as Byzantium was powerful, it had nothing to fear from them. It was only with the decline of the Byzantine Empire under the Angeli, that the Serb leader Stepan Nemania (1331-1355) and his dynasty were able to found a viable Serb State, to conquer Kastoria and Serrai in 1345 and to occupy J annina and Thessaly (1348). That Stephan Nemania proclaimed himself Czar of the Serbs and the Greeks can be taken as evidence of the fact that in the middle of the 14th century, Macedonia south of Servia was Greek. For otherwise who could be Stepan Nemania's Greek subjects? Greek inscriptions in Western Macedonia (19) during that period abundantly show that even under Serb occupation the dominant language was Greek and that the Greek element continued to predominate as a race in Macedonia.
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17. Rambaud: L' empire grec an Xe siecle , p. 235.
18. N. Choniatis: History, p. 23, 4 (Bonn): «Soon afterwards, he (the Emperor loannis Komnenos conducted a military campaign against the nation of Trivalloi Or Serbs, as they are called by some) because they
had committed crimes and had not respected the truce; and after they came to grips he defeated them completely and subdued them: these people were unfit for war, wherefore they were always subdued by neighbouring powers "".
19. Gelzer: Byzantinische Inschriften aus Westmakedonien (Athen, Mitteilungen, 27, 431).


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The half brother of Stepan Uresi III, Symeon Uresi, a Palaeologue on his mother's side, became the independent ruler of Epirus, Thessaly and southern Macedonia, with Trikala as his capital and Greeks as his
subjects. Greek was the established language and in this official documents were written. But John Uresi, Symeon's son, became a monk by the name of Ioasaf in Mount Athos and Meteora and the Serb occupation of the above mentioned Greek regions, lasted for a decade only. The other Serb ruler John Uglesi, local governor of Eastern Macedonia with Serrai as his capital, is known to have broken away from the Serb State, separated his church from the Serb Patriarchate of Pec, and joined it to the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The Greek Byzantine civilisation and the compact Greek population of the country under their rule, always exerted an irresistible assimilating influence on the Serb princes.


The only thing that the Serbs achieved as a result of their temporary
expansion in Greek Byzantine territories, was to undermine the power of
the Byzantine Empire, when it was fighting the Turks in Asia Minor.
Thus, in contributing to its downfall, they also brought about their
own subjugation which was complete by 1371, their territories having
been conquered by the Turks while some parts of Byzantium, then the
only Christian bulwark in the Balkans, still resisted destruction.


It should, however, be noted that though the short-lived territorial expansion into Greek regions was not only useless from the point of view of the history of Christendom and Civilisation, but even prejudiced the common cause of Christianity in the face of the conquering fury of Turkish Islam, though by undermining the defensive strength of Byzantium, (the only power that stood between their own civilisation and Asian barbarism), precipitated their own enslavement, the Slavs during their invasions of Greek territories were never as blood-thirsty, cruel and destructive to Greek populations (20) as were the Bulgarians.


The Bulgarians were by heredity and tradition a nation of nomads, to whom productive economy was unknown. Thus it often happened that as soon as the loot taken through pillage of Greek villages was consumed, their country was again stricken by famine, and famine urged them on to new incursions. Pillage, cruelty and abduction of Greeks to the north of the Aemos range where the Bulgarians established a
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20. K. Amantos: Istorikai sxeseis Ellhnwn, Servwn, kai Bougarwn, Athens 1949 p. 68.


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base, were common in the Balkan regions of the Byzantine state during the period of the old Bulgarian State since it was established by Asparuch in 679 A.D. until under Basil II it became once more a Byzantine province.


In 977 Samuel, the son of Count Nicolaus, contrived by bringing together all the Boyars that were discontented against the Bulgarian ruler Peter, to create a small State in Northern Macedonia. From there he invaded Thessaly, and faithful to Bulgarian practice, he deported the Greek inhabitants of Larissa to Prespa and Ochris. His rule over purely Greek countries, however was very short, for his activities, brought against him the wrath of the Byzantines and accelerated his death and the downfall of his country at the sword of Basil II in 1014.


After this, Bulgaria again became a Byzantine province and remained so until 1186. Ochris, Samuel's capital, was restored as a centre of Greek civilisation, as is shown by the famous inscriptions of the church of St. Achillius on the island of Prespa. The country south of Aemos remained ethnologically and linguistically Greek throughout the Middle Ages. The Bulgarian predominance there had merely the character of robber incursions, undertaken only when the Byzantine empire, engaged in a life or death struggle on other fronts, left its rear uncovered.


The present Slavophone population of southern Bulgaria is descended from Greeks who, as a result of the legendary Bulgarian cruelty, were slowly assimilated, and from north Bulgarian settlers who proceeded
southwards during the years of Turkish occupation when the whole of the Balkan peninsula was open to population movements. It was during Ottoman rule that small scale infiltrations of Slavs occurred in Greek Macedonia with a result that a few unimportant Slavophone villages were founded, villages, which the Bulgarians to-day cite in support of their expansionist claims as if they constituted the ancient cradle of their nationality.


The Bulgarians have nothing to show to prove that they made a contribution, either during the Byzantine era, or during the Turkish occupation, to the civilisation of the country whose nationals they have tried for centuries, by sword and fire to drive out of their ancient homesteads. After their conversion to Christianity, the Bulgarians modelled their language on Greek and acquired a literature by translating the works of Greek writers. They learnt from the Greeks the art of urban living and inhabited exclusively Greek towns, where by assimilating the willing and cruelly persecuting the unwilling, they succeeded in enforcing their nationality. In these towns the Bulgarians now display the works produced by Greek hands with the


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Greek sense of beauty as works of their own alleged ancient civilisation.


The one and only contribution by the Bulgarians to the fates of the Balkan was that by robbery, pillage, abduction, criminal acts of cruelty and horror of which the Byzantine historical writer Nikita Choniati wrote that they were such "" as the ear had never heard, and the eye had never seen before "", they impeded the civilising mission of the mediaeval Greek nation, undermined the strength of the sole defender of
Christendom in the East and hastened its fall under the onslaught of the Asian conqueror. The Bulgarians themselves were first subdued by the Turks in 1393, 60 years before the capture of Constantinople.

[Ptolemy]

D. The argument about the nationality of the inhabitants of Greek Macedonia to-day.


The claim on Greek Macedonia advanced by the Slavs of Skopie rests not only on an over-estimation of the Slav cultural and demographic factor, but also on summary dismissal of the present Greek ethno-logical element arid on distortion of recent historical facts. These views find expression in Hristo Antonovski's new book,""Egejska Makedonija"" (Skopje, year of publication not mentioned) which is full of historical inaccuracies. It is well-known that the part of Macedonia which is now contained in the kingdom of Greece is inhabited by 2.000.000 people. (Census 1951 ). Of these, only 80.000 are bilingual Greeks. Those who had a Slav conscience departed fcom Grecec either under the Treaty of Neuilly, 1919) (21) or after the end of the guerilla war in 1949. Seeing that no serious claim could rest on a linguistic minority of this size in a country with so compact a Greek population, Antonovski decided to raise the number of Slavophones to 250.000. He distributes
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21. H. Morgenthau: "I Was Sent to Athens", page 304 writes: "" The turks and the Bulgarians...........all left for their respective countries and left Macedonia purely Greek"". Swire: ""Bulgarian conspiracy"" (London 1939) p.31 writes:""The Bulgarians emigrated from Macedonia voluntarily. They were not forced to do so. Bulgarians claims were cancelled and Macedonia became a Greek province"".


Busch Zantner writes: ""Unterdem Vorwande volkspolitische Gesichtspunkte zu vertreten, kann heute Bulgarian auf Sud-Mazedonien keinen Anspruch mehr erheben"".

S.K. Macartney writes: ""National States and National Minority"" (London 1934) p.439: ""Southern Macedonia is constanly inhabited by true
Greeks"". (See :Ch. Naltsas ref.p.522). For statistics about the percentage of Greek population in Macedonia before 1912 see the book by Ch. K. Sotiropoulos: Apantisis pros Vorran (Athens 1962) pp.17.ff.

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them by regions in the following proportions, as compared with the Greek-speaking population. Kastoria ~72%, Kailaria -32 %, Edessa -54,8 %, Serrai -13 %, Salonica -27,6%. But as even with this gross over-estimation the Greek majority in""Aegean Macedonia"" remains overwhelming, Antonovski excludes from the Greek population the large number of Greek refugees who arrived from Asia Minor and settled in Macedonia, in 1923 under the Lausanne population exchange Treaty. He claims that they are not Greeks, but Karamanlides, pure Turks (tsisti Turtsi) (22 ) whom Turkey sent to Greece on the occasion of the exchange of populations because being Christian Orthodox they did not
have a Turkish conscience. Turkey, according to Antonovski, wanted to be rid of them for that reason and at the same time because they might furnish Greece a pretext to claim on their behalf the Turkish territories they inhabited. Even the Pontian refugees, who are exlusively Greek-speaking and universally known to be the true descendants of the ancient lonian settlers of the Black sea, he calls Lazoi.
He assigns them as well as the refugees from Caucasus, who were themselves Pontian settlers, Turkish nationality. A hundred thousand of
these refugees who settled in Greek Macedonia he describes as Armenian. He even discovered some Kurds among them! It is hard to choose between his ignorance of historical facts and his impudence. For never since the Turks established their rule in Asia Minor, and by means of cruel persecution and oppression converted to Islam the majority of its Christian Greek population, never once did it happen that a Turk decided to become a Christian; that he exchanged his position of religious~ economic and political power for subjection; that
he chose to become a slave at a time when people born Christians gave up their religion for Islam because they were able no longer to suffer
oppression and tyranny. But assuming that notwithstanding all this a Turk decided to take this step, how could he ever survive since death
was the certain penalty for rejection of the dominant religion? Death was even meted out to those Christians whose conversion to Islam
did not go beyond the surface if it were ever discovered that they practised Christianity stealthily (the well-known Crypto-Christians ).
(23). It is a shame in the face of the verv science which they are trying for the first time to establish in their country that the Slavs of Skopje, though themselves Christians, have no scrup-
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22. Hr. Antonovski: Egejska Makedonija p. 42.
23. N. P. Andriotis: Kryptochristianikh filologia (Thessaloniki, 1953), N.Milioris: Oi Kryptoxristianoi (Athens 1962).


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les about distorting history - even creating a university in their capital for that purpose-and about reviling that section of Greek Christendom which amidst tortures and under the cruellest yoke known to history, in preserving their Greek conscience have also managed to preserve the religion of Christ for centuries, and finally breathe the air of national and religious liberty on free Greek soil.
The Slavs of Skopje must know that many of their own fellow countrymen were compelled by Turkish oppression to embrace Islam. There
are in that country today, as there are also in Bulgaria, many hundred thousand Mahommedan Slavs. But can they point to a single Christian Slav who had been a Turk and was converted to Christianity during the Ottoman rule? They insist that the Moslems of their country are Slav converts to Islam; they moan over the alleged fact that the Turks of Greek Macedonia who went to Turkey in consequence of the exchange of populations were in fact islamised Slavs (24) and their evacuation reduced the Slav element in the country;
Why then do they refuse to accept the historically proven fact that a considerable number of Moslems in Asia Minor, Macedonia and Thrace
were Greeks whom Turkish tyranny forced to embrace Islam but who to this day retain their Greek language?
Such are the Ophites of Pontus, the Vallaades of Macedonia and the so-called Turco-Cretans. The original Turks were of Mongolian race,
whilst all the Turks of Asia Minor and Europe to-day are white. Whence can these white Turks claim descent except from Christians,
i.e., from Byzantine Greeks! And if it is admitted that white Turks are descended from Greeks, by what logic is it possible to argue that Greek-speaking Christians of Turkey are Turks, indeed pure Turks "tsisti turtsi " as the scholars of Skopje maintain?
But what can one expect from a science which has no tradition to respect and which from the very first was made to the measure of
political expediency?
In order to explain away the lack of any considerable Slavophone minority in Greek Macedonia, Hristo Antonovski does not hesitate to use
the most preposterous arguments. He seriously maintains, for instance, that after the liberation of Greek Macedonia, the Slavophones were
decimated by Spanish influenza, as though this essentially epidemic disease had a special preference for Slavs, and avoided Greeks. And he goes on to say (p.55) that in Greek Macedonia to-day malaria, tuberculosis, psoriasis and eye diseases run havoc
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24. K. Amantos : Makedonika p.65

[Ptolemy]

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on the population, as if Greek medicine, the oldest in the whole of Europe and second to none in the Near East in modern times, had anything to learn from the newly founded university' of Skopje.

Those among the few Vlachophones of Greek Macedonia who are oriented towards Greek education and Greek civilization, he calls Grecomani, i.e. Grecomaniacs. A name clearly implying a silent protest against the people who failed to foresee that in the middle of the 20th century a new State would rise in Skopje whose civilisation and glory would at once overshadow the oldest civilisation in the Greek peninsula.

It is impossible to read such arguments without amusement and wonder at the degree of objectivity shown by the scholars of Skopje. The terms in which they couch their arguments are also characteristic.

According to Antonovski some Vlachs fell (Propadnale) under Greek influence, others gained (Dobile) a Slavic conscience. (25).
It is probable that the Vlachs are latinised Greeks. But let us suppose that they are not, and that they' came from Dacia during the Byzantine era. The fact that they loved and admired, or even just showed respect for the culture and the civilisation of the people in whose midst they had come to live, is considered as a fall, as a decline! Adoption of Slav culture on the other hand, a culture which was
non-existant - and that is precisely why the Slavs became «Grecomani» during the Byzantine period or under the Turkish rule -is regarded as a gain!

Antonovski (p. 36) describes in sinister terms the migration of 700.000 peasants from the border regions to the urban centers during the recent guerilla war. The writer knows of course, though he is careful not to admit it, that those peasants had nothing in common with the Slavophone minority and that this mass migration, so costly to the Greek nation as a whole, was made necessary in order to safeguard those
peasants from imprisonment and the danger of being taken as hostages, or of seeing their children abducted by the Communist guerillas who were dissolved as soon as Yugoslavia ceased to tolerate them.

From the way in which Antonovski distorts recent events it is possible to surmise what treatment our ancient history receives at his hands. The name « Macedonia», he writes in the beginning of his book, appears in ancient times as that of the State of Macedonia. He conceals its Greek derivation from the Homeric adjective ""Mace-dnos"" (tall) from Macos (length) he thinks his readers had better not know any-
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25. Hr. Antonovski reff. p. 44.


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thing about it, so he only says that it comes from the same root "mak" as the Latin Magnus. In other words he begins from the very first page of his book with a falsification of facts. He does not say of what nationality these ancient Macedonians were and what language they spoke, for if he said it, he would be forced to admit that they were a Hellenic tribe and spoke a Hellenic dialect, or, at any rate did so from the 5th century B.C. when the Attic dialect became the official language in Macedonia and was spread by the Macedonians through the ancient world together with Greek civilisation; and that Greek has remained their language through the Roman and Byzantine ages, through the period of Turkish rule to this day. For if he admitted this truth, what sense would there be in the subsequent pages of his book where Macedonia is represented as a kind of common property with Slavs, Albanians, Vlachs and even Thracio-Illyrians moving freely about and Greeks conspicuously absent?

How could he create the impression that this mixture of peoples just waited for the year of grace 1944 in order to let their national Macedonia heritage materialise?

In the distortion of history the Slavs of Skopje have proved themselves worthy disciples of the Bulgarians. It was «Bulgarian science» which seriously put forward the view that the Bulgarians were the oldest inhabitants of the Balkan peninsula; that they came from India, that they founded the oracle of Delphi, that Alexander the Great was a Bulgarian, that Paul the Apostle preached the gospel to Bulgarians and that Justinian, the Byzantine Emperor was a Slav etc. (26).

In their books, Antonovski and Lape present photographs of walls, temples, castles and other historical monuments of the Greek Macedonian
cities. (27). They fail to explain that in building these monuments not a stone was contributed by Slavs, that the walls were constructed for the express purpose of defending those cities against the attacks and pillages of the Slavs, that the murals in those churches portray the victories of Greece against Slavs and Saints assisting the Greeks in their defensive wars against the Slav attacks. Of the history of those towns that well-meaning Antonovski has nothing more to say than what is related with the insignificant and transitory presence of Slavs. Of Thessaloniki, for instance, he knows only that the first press was established there during the Turkish occupation, as well as the first Slav
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26. St. Kyriakidis: ""The Northern Ethnological Boundaries of Hellenism"" (Thessaloniki, 1955) pp. 13 ff.
27. Hr. Antonovski ref. pp. 8, 12, 40, 56, 64, Ljuben Lape: ""Odbrami Tsetva za istorijata na makedonskiot narod "" (Skopje 1952) pp. 16, 19, 41 42, 57, 67.

[Ptolemy]

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school in 1869 and the first and last Slavic gymnasium in 1880 in addition to the fact that the town served as headquarters for the
BMPO---Komitadji. Of the monasteries of Mount Athos he knows that they possess manuscripts that are invaluable for Balkan history, but in what language these documents are written he does not feel it incumbent upon him to say.

The struggles which the Greeks of Macedonia fought in order to defend themselves against the threat of extermination by Panslavism, Antonovski will not regard as national struggles. He describes them as the result of the activities of Turkish Government Agents. In other words he denies the Greeks of Macedonia both national feeling and the desire to survive the danger of national annihilation.

Speaking of the economic life of Greek Macedonia under the Turkish rule, Antonovski uses corrupt Slav versions of the original Greek place-names in order to create the impression that he is referring to Slav territories; he speaks for instance of Soloun, instead of Thessaloniki, of Kostur, instead of Kastoria, of Voden, instead of Edessa and so on. Furthermore, he can think of no other contributors to the industrial and commercial development of Macedonia, except the Slavs, The Tsindzars and the Turks. No mention is made of the Greeks, although Greek predominance on the economic scene in the area is universally known.
He is blissfully innocent of the mass execution of Greek Macedonians by Bulgarian Komitadji and chooses to ignore the fact that they deliberately murdered Turks in the proximity of Greek villages in order to provoke the wrath of Turkish authorities against the Greek population.

He is also unaware that during the Balkan wars and during the two World Wars, the Bulgarians, proceeded with the wholesale murder of Greeks, the taking of men as hostages and the devastation of Greek villages. He knows nothing of all these atrocities, for the result was
precisely what the Slavs desired. His humanitarian sentiment is only moved by the thought that the separation of Greek Macedonia from Serb and Bulgarian Macedonia deprived the former of the many economic advantages which it enjoyed under the Turkish rule when the whole of the Balkan peninsula formed a single economic unit.

He would have us believe that a new prosperity awaits the people of Greek Macedonia if only their region were united with the Slav Macedonias to the north. But even if this were true, is national freedom, the highest good in life, to be bargained against economic advantages? Yet we Greeks continue to take these people seriously and to fear


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in our discussions with them, lest we should advance an argument not strictly in accordance with historical evidence. They are people who, in the name of Communism, have abandoned as bourgeois superstition all respect for what we regard as sacred, for
historical truth and national justice.
Their creed is contained in the principles propounded by Lenin in 1919: «It will be essential for us to have recourse to any stratagems. We shall not hesitate to use falsehood. By deceit, illegality and craft we will ensure the corcealment of truth... so long as capitalism survives we cannot live in peace. In the end one side or other will triumph.. but until that happens, the important thing is to learn to be deceitful and flexible». (28)
One might wonder whether it is worthwhile to attach so much importance to proving the incorrectness of a book, even if it is one of bad faith. The answer is that Antonovski's book is not the only one of its kind for several others have been published with the self-same
objective of furthering expansionist aims by distorting the judgment of people with historical untruth.
I am not competent to deal with the political aspect of the threat which the State of Skopje presents to Greek Macedonia, I will refer the reader to an excellent book on this subject by A.A. Kyrou: «Our Balkan Neighbours» (Athens 1962) and will restrict myself to quoting a few passages which show, beyond any doubt, the official attitude of that country on the subject with which we are concerned.
Prime Minister Lazar Kolisefsky declared in 1945 that «the unification of the whole of Macedonia within the limits of Tito's Yugoslavia was amongst the objectives of the Popular front of Macedonia from the very first day of its creation»(28a). Tito's close and trusted collahorator, Mosha Pijade, made it clear at the Paris Peace Conference where he acted as leader of the Yugoslav delegation that «it is our intention to bring up the question of Aegean Macedonia... It is time that this lamentable question (the Macedonian problem) were solved in a way which would allow these peoples (of Greek, and Bulgarian Macedonia) to unite and enjoy in national unity the freedom and independence which only citizens of the people's Macedonian republic of the Yugoslavian Federation enjoy to-day.(28b )Kolisefsky's collaborator D. Vlachof, said
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28. Ch. Naltsas: To Makedonikon Zitima k.l.p. p. 527

28a. For the political aspect of the menace from the State of Skopje today against Greek Macedonia see A.A. Kyrou: "Oi Balkanikoi geitones mas" (Athens 1962) pp. 202 ff. and Ch. K. Sotiropoulos ref pp. 41 ff.

28b. See A.A. ½roo ref. pp.202 ff.


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in 1946 :«We declare emphatically that Greece has absolutely no right on the Aegean Macedonia... the Macedonian nation is fighting for its unification with the Macedonian People's Republic which constitutes an inseparable part of the federation of popular republics "".
It is D. Vlachof's contention, in other words, that two million Greeks of Macedonia strive for unification with the State of Skopje, a thing that has surely never entered their minds and the mention of which they would repudiate with indignation. Leaving aside national pride and dignity what sort of state would emerge from this plan for unification: a Greek or a Slav State and on what national languages, and on what culture would that State be founded, on the Greek majority element, or on the Slavo -Turco - Albano - Gipsy minority?. It is enough to mention but the latest work of Lazar Kolisefski, Prime Minister of the State of Skopje, «La question Nationale Macedoniemie» (Beograd, 1959) to show to what extent the official Government has adopted and taken upon itself to propagate those views.
All historical, linguistic and demographic facts are lightly waved aside by the statement «nous sommes des communistes, des marxistes, et non des pragma tistes... Les Cominunistes yougoslaves ont toujours puise' leur force... dans le fait qu'ils ont pose' des objectifs
politiques concordant profondement avec les aspirations des peuples, avec les lois objectives du developpement social et national» (p. 10) In other words ""DO not talk to us about reason and historical truth"". «It may well be» he writes (p. 11)....... «that many of our ancestors considered themselves Bulgarians, Serbs or Greeks. There is no need for us to conceal the fact or to be ashamed of it. We cannot,
for the sake of a bourgeois method of history-writing, determine history on the basis of one piece of fact or another taken separately, when such facts contradict the combined whole of objective historical laws and their results», which is as much as to say: «We have established a state, we have named it Macedonia, whatever is not in conformity with this fact is mere vain talk.»

[akritas]

very good thread perseas,
a article that must read from all

[Ptolemy]

Some more infos:

European ethnographs and linguists until the Congress of Berlin usually regarded the language of the Slavic population of Macedonia as Bulgarian. French scholars A. Boue in 1840 and G. Lejean in 1861, Germans A. Griesebach in 1841, J. Hahn in 1858 and 1863, A. Petermann in 1869 and H. Kiepert in 1876, Slovak Safarik in 1842 and the Czechs J. Erben in 1868 and F. Brodaska in 1869, Englishmen Wyld in 1877 and G. M. Mackenzie and A.P. Irby in 1863, Serbians Davidovitch in 1848, Desjardins in 1853 and S. Verkovic in 1860, Russians V. Grigorovich in 1848, V. Makushev and M.F. Mirkovitch in 1867, as well as Austrian K. Sax in 1878 published ethnography or linguistic books, or travel notes, which defined the Slavic population of Macedonia as Bulgarian.

Austrian doctor J. Muller published travel notes in 1844 where he regarded the Slavic population of Macedonia as Serbian.

The region was further identified as predominantly Greek by French F. Bianconi in 1877 and by Englishman E. Stanford in 1877. Stanford maintained that the urban population of Macedonia was entirely Greek, whereas the peasantry was of mixed, Bulgarian-Greek origin and had Greek consciousness but had not yet mastered the Greek language.

Serbian propaganda

Spiridon Gopcevic (also known as Leo Brenner) published in 1889 the ethnographic research Macedonia and Old Serbia, which defined more than three-quarters of the Macedonian population as Serbian. The population of Kosovo and northern Albania was identified as Serbian or Albanian of Serbian origin and the Greeks along the Aliakmon as Greeks of Serbian origin.

The work of Gopcevic was further developed by two Serbian scholars, geographer Jovan Cvijic and linguist Aleksandar Belic . Less extreme than Gopcevic, Cvijic and Belic claimed only the Slavs of northern Macedonia were Serbian whereas those of southern Macedonia were identified as "Macedonian Slavs", an amorphous Slavic mass that was neither Bulgarian, nor Serbian but could turn out either Bulgarian or Serbian if the respective people were to rule the region. The only Slavs in Macedonia which were referred to as Bulgarian were those living along the Strymon and Nestos rivers, i.e. present-day Pirin Macedonia and parts of northeastern Greece. Cviic further argued that the name Bugari (Bulgarians) used by the Slavic population of Macedonia to refer to themselves actually meant only ‘rayah’ – peasant Christians – and in no case affiliations to the Bulgarian ethnicity.

The Serbian propaganda effort in Macedonia was led chiefly on the educational front. The number of Serbian schools in Macedonia and Kosovo rose from only a handful of before 1878 to 178 with 321 teachers and 7,200 pupils at the turn of the 20th century. The Society of Saint Sava in Belgrade gave study scholarships to talented Macedonians, usually turning them into staunch supporters of the Serbian cause after the end of their education. Serbia was also successful in launching armed guerilla groups, mainly in northern Macedonia, which clashed with pro-Bulgarian IMRO. Despite the enormous financial support from Serbia the Serbian cause in Macedonia never made a significant success outside the northern districts of Tetovo, Skopje and Kumanovo where the local dialect had certain similarities with Serbian.

Statistical data

The 1911 edition of the Encylopaedia Britannica gave the following statistical estimates about the population of Macedonia:

* Bulgarians (described in encyclopaedia as "Slavs, the bulk of which is regarded by almost all independent sources as Bulgarians", a statement referring to the controversy between Bulgaria and Serbia as to the national affinities of the Slavs of Macedonia): ca. 1,150,000, whereof, 1,000,000 Orthodox and 150,000 Muslims (the so-called Pomaks)
* Turks: ca. 500,000 (Muslims)
* Greeks: ca. 250,000, whereof ca. 240,000 Orthodox and 14,000 Muslims
* Albanians: ca. 120,000, whereof 10,000 Orthodox and 110,000 Muslims
* Vlachs: ca. 90,000 Orthodox and 3,000 Muslims
* Jews: ca. 75,000
* Roma: ca. 50,000, whereof 35,000 Orthodox and 15,000 Muslims

In total 1,300,000 Christians (almost exclusively Orthodox), 800,000 Muslims, 75,000 Jews, a total population of ca. 2,200,000 for the whole of Macedonia.

It needs to be taken into account that a substantial part of the Bulgarian population in southern Macedonia regarded itself as Greek and a smaller percentage, mostly in northern Macedonia, as Serbian. All Muslims (except the Albanians) tended to view themselves and were viewed as Turks, irrespective of their mother tongue. Most Vlachs and orthodox Albanians regarded themselves as Greeks.

[akritas]

I want also to add a photograph that show from whom created this language. The commission that established in November 1944 in order to create the alpahvete first and of course all the history of the laguage that clearly said from the Proffessor Adriotis.





Left to right:
Vasil Ilioski, Hristo Zografov, Krum Toshev, Dare Djambas, Venko Markovski, Mirko Pavlovski, Mihail Petrushevski, Hristo Prodanov, Georgi Kiselinov, Georgi Shoptraianov, Iovan Kostov.

[nsminc]

That's a great pic Akritas.

[admin]

excellent article perseas...