Modern historians on the origins of the Slavs of the Macedonia and Vardar

[Ptolemy]

A letter from Dimiter Miladinov1 (in Ohrid) to Victor Grigorovich2 (in Vienna) about the search for Bulgarian folk songs and relics in Macedonia

February 25th, 1846


I have not received a single line since your departure. In the meantime my efforts concerning OUR Bulgarian language and the Bulgarian (folk) songs, in compliance with your recommendations are unsurpassed. I have not for one moment ceased to fulfill the pledge which I made to you, Sir, because the Bulgarians are spontaneously striving for the truth. But I hope you will excuse my delay up till now, which is due to the difficulty I had in selecting the best songs and also in my work on the grammar. I hope that, on another convenient occasion, after I have collected more songs and finished the grammar, I will be able to send them to you. Please write where and through whom it would be safe to send them to you (as you so ardently wish).

We are completely convinced, by assurances of the villagers of Glavinitsa, that the stone inscriptions for which we have been looking will also be found. I will study them next spring. It would be wonderful and desirable if, with your assistance, we could ask the Government for the holy relics of Saint Clement of Ohrid, verified by the Great Church of Christ, as you yourself witnessed with your own eye, and requested on your own initiative. And the steps taken before the authorities here concerning the holy relics in question will do much to bring you praise and to confer benefit upon our newly-opened school.

I am writing you this letter on the instructions of the notables in Ohrid. Looking forward to an immediate reply in Greek through the same bearer, I greet you with the deepest esteem and respect.

Братя Миладинови, Преписка, София (The Miladinov Brothers, Correspondence), Sofia, 1964, p. 15; the original is in Greek.


1 Dimiter Miladinov (1810-1862), born in Strouga, an eminent figure of the Bulgarian Revival and an active fighter for public education of the Bulgarians and for their spiritual and political awakening; he taught in Strouga, Ohrid, Koukoush and Prilep, where he introduced the Bulgarian language into the schools, where Greek had previously been the medium of instruction. Falsely accused by the Greek bishop of Ohrid, he was sent to prison in Constantinople where he died
2 Victor Ivanovich Grigorovich (1815-1876), Russian slavicist. In 1844-1847 traveled throughout the Bulgarian lands, including Macedonia and collected ethnographic and folklore material

II. The National Revival Period 1

[Ptolemy]

The origin of the Macedonian dispute the south-east half of Slav Macedonia where the population was most nearly Bulgarian

The New Macedonian Question (St. Antony's) by James Pettifer, page 12

Where an overaching identity existed among Slavs in Macedonia, it was a Bulgarian one UNTIL at least the 1860s. The cultural impetus for a seperated Macedonian identity would only emerge LATER

Outcast Europe BY Tom Gallagher, page 47

[Ptolemy]

..descendant of Samuil, collected an army and took the chief Bulgarian town, Skopje, and soon came to dominate Thrace, Epirus and Macedonia

A Concise History of Bulgaria (Cambridge Concise Histories) by R. J. Crampton, page 23

Among the Bulgarians of Prilep, after the ceremony in church is over, one of the brothers entertains his relatives..

Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Part 4 by James Hastings, page 79

[Euklid]

Ti na pei kaneis gia sena re Ptolemee.

To mpravo ligo einai.

[Ptolemy]

The town of Monastir, capital of the vilayet of Monsastir, lies just about half way between Bulgarian and Greek territory. North, the majority of Macedonians are Bulgar, south the majority are Hellenes. The villages meet, cross, and mix in the Monastir vilayet. The reason, therefore, we hear so much about disturbances at Monastir is not because the Turks there are more wicked than Turks elsewhere, but because there is a persistent feud between Greek and Bulgarian political religionists.
.....
Monastir is an undistinguished, motley sort of town of some 60,000 nhabitants, 14,000 of them Greek, 10,000 of them Bulgarian, four or five thousand Albanian, two or three thousand Jew, and the rest Turk.

"Pictures From The Balkans" by John Foster Fraser (published in 1906), chapter 20.

But who are the Macedonians? You will find Bulgarians and Turks who call themselves Macedonians, you find Greek Macedonians, there are Servian Macedonians, and it is possible to find Roumanian Macedonians. You will NOT, however, find a single Christian Macedonian who is not a Servian, a Bulgarian, a Greek, or a Roumanian. They all curse the Turk, and they love Macedonia. But it is Greek Macedonia, or Bulgarian Macedonia, and their eyes flame with passion, whilst their fingers seek the triggers of their guns

"Pictures From The Balkans" by John Foster Fraser (published in 1906), PAGE 5

They visited the Bulgarian villages, levied contributions, and stored arms, so that on an appointed day there might be a rising against the Turk, and Bulgarian Macedonians be liberated from their oppressors for ever. Naturally they were greeted as heroes;

"Pictures From The Balkans" by John Foster Fraser (published in 1906), PAGE 8

i have some hope that in years to come the inhabitants will think less of their Turkish, Bulgarian or Greek Origin and a great deal more with the fact that they are all Macedonians.

"Pictures From The Balkans" by John Foster Fraser (published in 1906), PAGE 17

There was petty persecution; Bulgarian Christians crossed from Macedonia into Bulgaria proper and told their tales of woe. Then followed raids by armed bands of Bulgarians into Turkey. In time associations were formed in Bulgaria and secret committees in Macedonia to aid the Bulgarian cause. In time came a congress and the formation of the " High Committee," having for its object the securing of political autonomy for Macedonia, and pledged, in order to secure it, to take any action " which may be dictated by circumstances." The consequence was that peaceful Bulgarians in Macedonia were forced into the revolutionary movement, compelled to secrete arms, made to contribute to the maintenance of the "bands," and were put to death if they reported to the Turks, or were massacred by the Turks because they were revolutionaries. However oppressive the Turks had been, however zealous were good Bulgarians to save their fellow - countrymen and co- religionists in Macedonia from oppression, the revolutionary movement, as it is in Macedonia to-day, is the outcome of terror and murder.

"Pictures From The Balkans" by John Foster Fraser (published in 1906), PAGE 179

[nsminc]

Amazing work bro!

[akritas]

The Bulgarians fall into two divisions, the Black Bulgarians and the Gaugauz.--The latter came from the Dobrudzha between 1804 and 1812, the former are subdivided in

1. Black Bulgarians and Macedonians and
2. Black Bulgarians of Rumanyo origin.The former came in 1830, the latter at the same time with the Gaugauz.

The Gaugauz speak Turkish and write in the Romanyo Alphabete
The Black Bulgarians speak --those of Macedonian origin writing in Greek , those of the Romanyo countries in Slavonic characters.

The Nationalities of Europe, Robert Gordon Latham ,1863, Colonists in Russia,page 360

[Ptolemy]

"The general estimate is that between forty and fifty United thousand Bulgars (from Bulgaria and Macedonia) have come to this country, including those in Canada. Their principal centre was here in Granite City, an outlying suburb of St. Louis, but during the last year the majority of the 10,000 who were here have migrated westward. At present there are less than a thousand here. About 10,000 are now working on the railroad lines in Montana, the two Dakotas, Iowa and Minnesota. The belief is they will return here in autumn, but my own impression is, there will never again be 10,000 of them in Granite City.
" Other important centres are Seattle, Butte, Montana, Chicago, Indianapolis and Steelton, Pennsylvania; but they are too shifting a people to make estimates of their numbers in those centres of any value.
"I hope you are not making any racial distinctions between Bulgars and Macedonians. I believe the Bulgars who have come from Macedonia are registered on Ellis Island as Macedonians, which is bound to be confusing and inaccurate, for Macedonians may include Greeks, Vlachs, and even Turks. The distinction between the Bulgars from Bulgaria and those from Macedonia is PURELY political. Many of those who are registered as Greeks are so in church affiliation only, being Slavic by race and tongue.
"The majority (I should say about 80 per cent) of the Bulgars in this country are from Macedonia, and nearly all are from one small districtin Monastir vilayet; Kostur, or Castoria.

Their reasons for coming are fundamentally economic, but the immediate causes are the revolution of 1904, when half the people in Monastir were rendered homeless by the burning of their villages, and the continued persecution of the Greek Church since then, which closed Greece to them as a market for their labor. Not five per cent of the Bulgars in this country came before four years ago.

"Our Slavic Fellow Citizens" By Emily Greene Balch pp 274-275

[Ptolemy]

It is very interesting to compare together the different inhabitants of European Turkey, such as the Servians, the Bulgarians, the Wallachians, the Greeks, and the Albanians. The Servians and Bulgarians may be said to be nearly the same people, and appear to be more numerous than the Greeks;

The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal: exhibiting a view of the Progressive discoveries.." Published 1838
by A. and C. Black - Original from the New York Public Library - p.240

[Ptolemy]

The language of these various populations divides itself into two principal idioms: each of these into three where the difference is less. Of the Southern dialect are the Slovaks, the Serbs and Bulgarians; of the Northern, the Bohemians, Poles, and Russians.

Vacation Tourists and Notes of Travel in 1860 By Francis Galton Published 1861 Macmillan and co. Original from the University of Michigan, page 108