How to Construct a Nationality

[akritas]

The Turkish defeat in the First Balkan War brought the Ottoman period in the history of Macedonia to an end. Of the geographical area of Macedonia as a whole, Greece received 51%, Serbia 39% and Bulgaria 10%. foreign soil, together with exchanges and deportations, drastically altered the ethnological composition of all these parts of Macedonia, and were particularly noticeable in the Greek section.

The successive defeats of Bulgaria in the First and Second World War led to the growth in Bulgarian Macedonia of a combative Bulgarian Macedonian nationalism. The Comintern attempted to exploit the irridentist trends of this nationalism by adopting the policy of a "unified and independent Macedonia" to form part of a "Balkan Communist Federation ".

In Yugoslav Macedonia, the policy of conversion to Serbian ideals applied by Belgrade produced relatively poor results. In order to escape ill-treatment, part of the population refrained from expressing its pro-Bulgarian disposition, suppressed its Bulgarian names and made use of the politically neutral geographical term Macedones. Other sections of the population chose to incorporate themselves openly into the Serbian national community.

In Greek Macedonia, the remnants of the Slav-speaking population amounted to 100-150,000 after the exchange of populations and were divided into two groups: one fairly large group, which under Turkish rule had thrown in its lot with the Greek national identity, and a smaller group which had adopted the Bulgarian national identity or remain non-aligned.

During the Second World War, the incursion of the Bulgarian army into Yugoslav Macedonia was welcomed by one section of the population as the first step towards the liberation and incorporation into the Bulgarian state for which they longed. A similar phenomenon, though on a much smaller scale, also occurred in Greek Macedonia.

The Yugoslav partisans under Tito soon became aware that at all costs they must break the bonds between the population of Yugoslav Macedonia and Bulgaria. They thus exploited the growing discontent towards the Bulgarian occupying forces among the population: the Bulgarians reacted with cruelty and mass reprisals to the attacks of the partisans. Tito's partisans promised the population that in post-War Yugoslavia the Macedonians- that is, the Slavs of Yugoslav Macedonia-would have rights equal to those enjoyed by all the other nationalities, and even equal to those of the Serbs. They emphasised, however, that the Slavs of Macedonia had no affinities either with the Serbs or with the Bulgarians: they constituted a separate, Macedonian, nationality. The idea of distinct Macedonian nationality was welcomed by a significant proportion of Yugoslav Macedonia. The political and social conditions were ripe for acceptance of the new theory: Bulgaria had been defeated, Tito had succeeded in gaining Stalin's consent to implementation of the new Macedonian policy, and the population was worn out after half a century of Serbian and Bulgarian efforts to impose on it their own national identities.

After the success of the Patriotic Front revolution in Bulgaria (in which the Communist Party of Bulgaria played the leading role) in September 1944, negotiations began between the Communist Parties of Yugoslavia and Bulgaria on the future of Macedonia and of the Balkans as a whole once the War was over. On 2 August 1944 the formation of the "Socialist Republic of Macedonia" was announced at Prohor Pcinjsci Monastery: it was to form part of the new federal Yugoslavia.

In September 1944, a Yugoslav delegation headed by General Tempo and Lazar Kolisevki, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Macedonia, visited Sofia and extracted from the new Bulgarian leadership a promise that the inhabitants of Pirin (Bulgarian Macedonia) would be granted autonomy as a first step towards unification with the federal "Republic of Macedonia " in Tito's Yugoslavia. In April 1945, Tito imposed a federal system on Yugoslavia and installed the governments of the federal states of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Montenegro and Skopje, the last of which was founded on 30 April 1945.

In the meantime, and while the outcome of the civil war which had broken out in Greece remained in the balance, the Yugoslavs exerted ever-increasing pressure on their Bulgarian comrades to have Bulgarian Macedonia ceded to Yugoslavia. By the end of 1946, the Bulgarians' had made specific concessions to Yugoslavia over Macedonia. At its 10th Session in August 1946, the Central Committee of the CPB resolved to work "towards cultural convergence between the inhabitants of Pirin Macedonia and the People's Republic of Macedonia ". This was followed by a sweeping programme of cultural exchanges, while at the same time the inhabitants of Pirin were given the right to chose between the Bulgarian and the "Macedonian" nationality.

Tempted by the various incentives offered, most of them chose to be "Macedonians". After a long period of consultation, Tito and Dimitrov, the leaders of Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, met at Bled in Yugoslavia on 2 August 1947 and signed a series of agreements known as the Bled Protocols, by which Bulgaria agreed, in return for certain minor concessions, to recognise the inhabitants of Bulgarian Macedonia (Pirin) as "Macedonians" and to prepare the ground for the incorporation of the Pirin province into the "Socialist Republic of Macedonia". In return, Bulgaria requested only that the so-called "Western districts" which the Serbs had occupied at the end of the First World War be returned.

However, Tito's grandiloquent plans for a "Federation of the South Slavs" under his leadership fell foul of Stalin. The split came in the summer of 1948, and it made nonsense of all Yugoslavia's plans to make Tito the master of the Balkans using the 'Macedonian question' as a lever. In these circumstances, Bulgaria was able to release itself from the concessions it had made over Macedonia. It rejected the theory of the "Macedonian nation" and expelled the political instructors dispatched to Bulgaria by Skopje. Sofia then attempted to exploit the difficulties in which the Yugoslavs found themselves to raise once more the pre-War slogan of a "united and independent Macedonia ".

[akritas]

Smith(Smith, A.D. (1991). National Identity, Greek edition-1999) explains the examples of such symbolic elements as kinship patterns, physical contiguity, religious affiliation, language or dialect forms, tribal affiliation, nationality, phenotypical features, or any combination of these.

In his survey of the field, Smith gave a special focus to the emotional intensity and historical heritage of ethnies. Smith believed that nationalism derives its force from “inner” sources like history and culture.

According to Smith, ethnicity mainly relies on myth, values, memories and symbol where myths are tales that widely believed and therefore it links the present with a communal past. Moreover, through its symbolism, myths unify classes by spreading ethnic culture.

Smith identified six criteria for the formation of the ethnic group as:

1. Ethnic group must have a name in order to developed collective identity.
2. The people in the ethnic group must believe in a common ancestry.
3. Members of the ethnic group must share myths (common historical memories).
4. Ethnic group must feel an attachment to a specific territory.
5. Ethnic group must share same culture that based on language, religion, traditions, customs, laws, architecture, institutions etc.
6. Ethnic group must be aware of their ethnicity. In other words, they must have a sense of their common ethnies.
   

If we summarise all these points, Smith defines ethnic community as:

A named human population with a myth of common ancestry, shared memories and cultural elements, a link with an historic territory or homeland and a measure of solidarity.


and the question to the Slav Macedonists is......

how many from the mentioned criterias have your "Macedonian nationality" ?

[Draco]

Originally Posted by akritas

and the question to the Slav Macedonists is......

how many from the mentioned criterias have your "Macedonian nationality" ?

Nice research Akrita. I know this doesn't compare, but I think this YouTube clip is relevant and funny.

[Vasiliye]

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgd2Nx1HPFo[/YOUTUBE]

[Truth Bearer]

Excellent dvd Vasiliye

[Foti66]

Thanks Vasiliye, that was very funny.

[Truth Bearer]

Gia sou Fotios how are you mate??How's Chicagi going lad?

[Foti66]

Originally Posted by Truth Bearer

Gia sou Fotios how are you mate??How's Chicagi going lad?

Gia sou TB. Things are fine here. Beginning to feel the change in the seasons. I trust you are doing well. You are by far the most active poster on this forum. I enjoy all your posts and find them very informative.

[Truth Bearer]

Thanks mate we can only try and enhance our fellow Hellenes and "xenous" to what Macedonia means to us.....The "xenoi" sadly have no idea and to them what's the big deal it's only a name??!!But that name belongs to Hellenism and to our heritage we can never let our history be distorted by anyone and if the truth upsets some people who are delusional so be it.We have a legacy that's 4000 years old and it's up to us to to hold & enhance the legacy for our future generations of Hellenes.
Foti are you born in Chicago?

[Foti66]

Originally Posted by Truth Bearer

Thanks mate we can only try and enhance our fellow Hellenes and "xenous" to what Macedonia means to us.....The "xenoi" sadly have no idea and to them what's the big deal it's only a name??!!But that name belongs to Hellenism and to our heritage we can never let our history be distorted by anyone and if the truth upsets some people who are delusional so be it.We have a legacy that's 4000 years old and it's up to us to to hold & enhance the legacy for our future generations of Hellenes.
Foti are you born in Chicago?

Serres, Makedonia, Hellas. And you?