The Ethnic and Historical origins of FYROM

[yannis-3]

Originally Posted by Truth Bearer

What is an Austrian??

Hitler was an Austrian and until 1932 wasn’t even German citizen

[masolord]

Originally Posted by Truth Bearer

A Kosovar is of an Albanian or Serbian ethnicity both nationals of the newly created state called Kosova.What is an Austrian??

it doesnt exist !!!
kosvar is invented by the west

TB dont you hate people that invent new names and Ethnicity

[Christov]

Originally Posted by masolord

it doesnt exist !!!
kosvar is invented by the west

TB dont you hate people that invent new names and Ethnicity

[carsal]

There is no reason to insult any Slavomacedonian that enters in this forum.
These people come here to discuss with us. If we start talk to them like animals there is no meaning to maintain this forum.
What we write here are not for us, we already know the truth, we already know that these people are Bulgarians.
It's a chance to have a conversation with them. Thats why forums exist in order to share ideas and talk with other people. By dont do that we just became the same like any barbarian.

[olvios]

They talk for the most part as if they just broke out of an insane asylum for the Criminally obsessed Bulgarians thinking they are Macedonians.The COBM.

[masolord]

Originally Posted by olvios

They talk for the most part as if they just broke out of an insane asylum for the Criminally obsessed Bulgarians thinking they are Macedonians.The COBM.

i see myself as macedonian. does it mean i am sufering from COMB as well??

[olvios]

The degrees of it vary greatly

[BzNzSBoomN]

I found these on Ebay
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"THIS MEDAL CELEBRATES TWO EVENTS PICTURED ON EACH SIDE OF THE MEDAL. ON ONE SIDE, IS PICTURED FAMOUS MACEDONIAN REVOLUTONIST GOTSE DELCHEV AND IN OTHER SIDE IS ANNOUNCED THE BULGARIAN INDEPENDENCE. THE OTHER SIDE CELEBRATES THE BULGARIAN – SERBIAN CONTRACT IN 1904 YEAR WHERE BULGARIA ANNOUNCES THE INDEPENDENCE OF MACEDONIA. THE MEDAL HAS ORIGINAL PATINA AND SOME ERASES AND SORES ON SURFACE. IT HAS A TAB THAT ALLOWES TO HANG THE MEDAL, WHEREVER YOU LIKE. IT HAS ABOUT 3CM DIAMETER. FOR BETTER NOTION, PLEASE LOOK AT THE PICTURES. INTERNATIONAL STANDARD SHIPPING SERVICE IS 6USD. "

[kostas68]

As i was googling,i found a very interesting Hungarian website which contains the diary and the memories of several western diplomats and foreign correspondants in Balkans of known newspapers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.They visited all the Balcan countries and off course Macedonia(including today's FYROM),when it was still under Ottoman rule and later after the Balcan wars and WW1.Thus,they had acquired a very good knowledge about these areas and their populations,nations,e.t.c. and their views are very important.
First of all i must clarify that these men can't be accused as biased in favor of Greece and that's something you can ascertain reading their texts.
One of them was an American diplomat and foreign correspondant of major New York newspapers like the New York Times and New York Herald in the Balkans and central Europe,during the last decade of 19th century and the first ones of the 20th.His name was Stephen Bonsal Jr. (1865-1951) and his view is very interesting.At first,let's take a look in his diary,where he describes a meeting with the known Serb historian Spiridon Gopsevich(one of the first who invented and promoted <Macedonism>)somewhere in today's FYROM territory(he doesn't tell us exactly where,he just mentioned the river Vardar(Axios).The interesting excerpt is in the 3rd paragraph below the date February 10,1919:
http://www.hungarian-history.hu/lib/bonsal/bonsal13.htm
<I did not commit myself, but I did tell him of an incident that occurred years ago when I was engaged in my early linguistic studies on the Vardar. I was walking along the noisy river with Spiridon Gopsevich. the apostle of Pan-Serbism in these parts. We met a poor peasant staggering along the path under a load of wood for his cabin fire. Thinking to do a little spot of propaganda, Gopsevich said: "My good man, what is your nationality?" "Ia sam Bougarin" (I am a Bulgarian), the thoughtless fellow answered. Gopsevich was nettled and blazed out: "My poor fellow! you are mistaken. By the very words that come from your mouth I can see that you are a Serb." I left them to argue it out and went on my bewildered way.>

Let's see now some interest excerpts in the chapters about Bulgaria.
http://www.hungarian-history.hu/lib/balkan/balkan.pdf
Page 27:
Like many other Balkan statesmen, Stambouloff had served a stage in
journalism. Representing a Sofia paper, he had followed the Russian army
for a few weeks during the war and had witnessed many interesting incidents
in front of Plevna and during the delay at Shipka pass. Here he had received
an indelible impression of the corruption in the non-combatant
services of the Russian army, the incompetence of many officers in high
command, and the pathetic ignorance of the rank and file.
“Two years before the war(probably the Russo-Turkish war in 1877) began,” he explained time and again, “I thought
that Russia could whip a world in arms. After what I saw in the bogs of the
valley and on the bloodstained heights of Shipka, I came to the conclusion
that, without the Roumanian contingent and the Macedonian volunteers,
the Great White Tsar would have been stopped at Plevna. The conclusion
was forced upon me that Bulgaria would have to stand on her own feet, and
that is why I am now trying to walk alone.”
These <Macedonian> volunteers were off course Bulgarians who helped the Russian army to liberate Bulgaria.

Page 29:
< After some fruitless wanderings and many uncomfortable days and nights,
I came up with the vagrant Prime Minister secluded in the house of one of
his closest political associates within a stone’s throw of the Church of the
Forty Holy Martyrs, theWestminster Abbey and a sacred place of pilgrimage
for all Bulgarians, whether born in the principality or outside its boundaries,
in Thrace or Macedonia.>

So,there were Bulgarians born in Macedonia.

Pages 29-30 :
<After we had discussed the topics of the day, the Bulgarian Prime Minister
came with me to the shrine and, with the aid of local antiquarians, we read
the testament carved on stone of the great Autocrat which the Bulgarians
still regard as the covenant of their far-reaching claims and aspirations. It
runs:
“In the year 1230, I, John Asen II, Tsar and Autocrat of the Bulgarians, the
son of the old Asen, obedient to God in Christ, have built this most worthy
church from its foundations and completely decked it with paintings in
honor of the Forty Holy Martyrs by whose help in the twelfth year of my
reign, when the church had just been painted, I set out to the war in
Roumania and smote the Greek army and took captive the Tsar Theodore
Comnenus with all his nobles.”
“And all lands have I conquered from Adrianople to Durazzo – the Greek,
the Albanian and the Serbian lands. Only the towns around Constantinople
and that city itself did the Franks hold; but these too bowed themselves beneath
the hand of my sovereignty, for they had no other Tsar but me. And I
prolonged their days according to my will as God had so ordained. For
without Him no word prevails and no work is accomplished. To Him be
Honor and Glory forever. Amen.”
“What a truly great man he was,” commented Stambouloff, and his dark
and rather dull features brightened with the glow of patriotic enthusiasm.
“Today I am working to the end that some Bulgarian, some son of our soil,
may come into his patrimony and rule over all our brothers just as did the
Tsar John – eternal glory be to his name.”

The Bulgarian Tsar John Assen II called the lands he conquerd from Adrianople to Durazzo Albanian,Serbian and Greek,no mention about ethnic <Macedonians>.

Page 154 :
“In the war-racked peninsula,” I continued, “we are confronted with racial
and cultural differences and above all by religious animosities and rivalries,
and as Bacon said long ago in his book on the vicissitudes that afflict humanity:
“The greatest of these is the vicissitude of sects. The Bulgars still
dream of the day of the great Czar Simeon, the Serbs hark back to the spacious empire of Stephen Dushan,and the Albanians are quite confident that
the blueprints of Scanderbeg are not outmoded. Unfortunately also the
churches are not very helpful to the peace-talker, although, of course, their
intentions are of the best. The members of the Greek Church look to the Patriarch in Stamboul, the Bulgars are beholden to their Exarch, while the
Croats and the Slovenes look to Rome for spiritual guidance; and this, as it
filters through to the mountain folk,is not always of a conciliatory character.”

Here are mentioned all the Slavic people in Balkans,except one.Guess who and why!


Another foreign correspondant was the French Henry Pozzi(1879-1946).For nearly thirty years, Pozzi was a member of the French and English intelligence services in the Balkans and Central Europe. For ten years following that,he worked as a foreign correspondent of the Paris newspaper <Le Temps>.
Now let's see the memories of Henry Pozzi and what he says about Macedonia and <Macedonians>.His use of the term <Macedonians> is at first confusing and a Scopian could believe that he describes ethnic <Macedonians>,but reading the whole text we can later find that he considers conspicuously these <Macedonian> refugees undoubtfully as Bulgarians who had just a strong regionalistic feeling due to their homesickness for their lost homeland.

Henry Pozzi; 1935:
Excerpts from Black Hand over Europe; 1935 op. cit.
III. THE BULGARIAN SCENE: II. The Macedonian Question
In the heart of the Balkan peninsula, stretching from Lake Orchrida, which
washes the Albanian frontiers, to Drima on the Aegean Sea; from Salonika
to Mount Shar north of Skopje, lies Macedonia, a beautiful country nearly
three times as large as Belgium and inhabited by two and a half million
people who possess the same language, the same culture, and with few exceptions,the same religion. Of this people, seventy per cent, are pure
Bulgars.Behind this country lie twenty centuries of tumultuous and tragic history,Rome, the Barbarians, the Crusades, Venice, the Ottoman, Alexander and the Empire of the Old World. On of the most powerful efforts for liberty of
the Turks; always crushed, always regenerated, up to the victory of the Balkan Allies in 1912.A first distribution of Macedonian lands between Belgrade
and Athens after the first Bulgar defeat in 1913. A second in 1918 after the World War and the second Bulgar defeat.Today, a heavier servitude than the old one rests upon Macedonia,because the new master are stronger than the Turks,and more violent,and Europe,this time, supports and approves them. Five to six hundred thousand Macedonians (an entire people) have sought refuge in Bulgaria since the of their country by Greece and Serbia.
Those who were able to leave have left, since the peace of July 1913, and
since the Armistice of October 1918, rather than suffer foreign domination.
All the intellectuals, all the teachers, all those whom their antecedents or
their relations rendered undesirable or suspect, have been expelled since
the installation of the conquerors. Thousands more, before the frontiers
closed, fled and abandoned all their property, often leaving behind them all
or a part of their family.Of the same blood, the same language, the same traditions as the Bulgars,they have been received by them as brothers.
Finally, the Greek authorities expelled thousands of Macedonian families
en bloc after the disaster of Smyrna, in order to install the Hellenic population
of Asia Minor on their lands and in their homes, which they had confiscated
without indemnity. The outcasts of Macedonia were shepherded by
the Bulgarian Government, with the aid of the League of Nations, towards
Bourgas, on the Black Sea and towards Dobroudja.There they transformed what was before only broken stones and swamps into a flourishing country. Nothing distinguishes these Bulgars of Macedonia from the Bulgars of Bulgaria in the midst of whom they live. They are neighbors in the same villages, a number of them have won high social positions,some have become ministers, even Presidents of the Bulgarian Council.Yet all have remained Macedonian. They look incessantly towards their beloved Fatherland, towards the obscure hamlets, the little white-and-rose cities of the frontier. There they were born and there most of them lived for so long that, if the barriers were removed tomorrow, every one of them would return to his native land.
“But your fields, the lands which the Government of Sofia have given to
you and which your children and you have worked for fifteen years,” I
asked a Macedonian labourer near Belica, “would you abandon them?”
“My lands?” he replied. “They are over yonder in Macedonia. They are
waiting for me. I hope to live long enough to return and sit on the stone
bench which my father had placed under the apricot-trees before the door.
He, also, is waiting for me.”
Five hundred thousand Macedonians in Bulgaria, where they are at home,
where they have married, where they have nothing to fear from anyone,
still think and speak as this old peasant of Belica.Fifteen hundred thousand Macedonians, in the annexed land under Greek or Serbian domination, live and have their children in the hope of this return,and in the expectation of it.
What a tremendous pressure is here! What a colossal weight of desire waiting
only for the right moment to take shape in action.
Soon after the annexation, attempts were made to “Hellenise” or
“Serbianise” the Macedonians who remained in their country, and when
they attempted their first gestures of revolt, they had the breath knocked
out of them by the crushing violence of their new masters. The gendarmes,
the prison, the certainty that they had no chance of help from anyone, has
taught them in the past fifteen years to walk straight along the road indicated
to them. They have become docile, respectful, obedient. They have
learned to smile through their tears.I have seen them, and the memory of the decay into which these free men have fallen makes my blood boil still.
The Macedonians in Bulgaria are waiting also. But they are free, and for
fifteen years they have pursued an obstinate dream that they will liberate
their lost brothers. All the resources they have are consecrated to this task.
There is not one among them, wherever the hazard of exile has placed him,
who does not belong to a society, an association, a group of some sort destined to keep up among its members, and especially among the youth, the
sentiment of national solidarity and the cult of a native land momentarily
lost.
These organizations have their form in associations of Macedonian
women; student associations; organizations for the assistance of old people,
orphans, sick; associations for propaganda abroad; all form a network
that lets nothing pass between its meshes.
Not a Macedonian in Bulgaria! Not a Macedonian in foreign countries!
That is the national slogan. And the apex of this organization is a handful of
menworking in broad daylight with legalmethods and means; the Macedonian
National Committee, which commands its energies, centralizes its resources,
and directs its activities.In the shadow, beside the National Committee, but absolutely distinct from it, absolutely foreign to its work and actions, is another group of men, directed by other chiefs of the ORIM. We shall meet with it again.The Macedonian question has existed for half a century. The desire for Macedonian liberty has become a burning obsession. This determination for liberty cost the Turks their possessions in Europe. Initial cause of the two Balkan wars, it was in order to liberate Macedonia that Bulgaria prepared the coalition in 1912, and it was in order to seize her from the victorious Bulgars, that the Serbs and the Greeks, in turn, joined against her in 1913. Macedonia was indirectly, but certainly, at the origin of the WorldWar. A hot spot, indeed!Since the peace of 1918 the question of Macedonia has become like a worm in the brain of Yugoslavia. To pretend to preduce the Macedonian question,as the propagandists of Belgrade try, to the proportion of an absurd struggle between a great modern state and a few handfuls of bandits, is an absurdity.A latent insurrection which has lasted fifteen years and which will surely excite a new European conflagration unless things change drastically, merits more than two or three thousand lines of trite nonsense in certain recent news stories.Whence comes the danger?
From the Macedonians themselves? From legal organizations such as the
National Committee, or extra-legal as the ORIM? Not at all!
The peril comes from the fact that the Serbs have annexed, thanks to
France’s support, territories and populations which they have declared Serb
when they were, and intended to remain, Bulgarian. They have been able to
subject them, but they have not been able to assimilate them, and Macedonia,always ready for the insurrection, weighs upon Serbian politics like a ball and chain.
In order to free themselves from this impediment, the Pan-Serb directors of
Belgrade have decided to use the activity of the Macedonian nationalist organizations as an excuse for attacking Bulgaria. The Pan-Serbs have calculated in this way that they would kill two birds with one stone, and that they would compel the Macedonians to renounce all hope of liberation by destroying their support in Bulgaria. By destroying Bulgarian independence,
also, they would reach Salonika and the Aegean.Pan-Serbism has been working with all its force for several years to carry out this design. The violent campaign conducted by the Pan-Serb Press Bureau
in France within the last few years, by means of books and newspapers,
and by faked documents has had no other object than to prepare
French opinion for a Bulgaro-Yugoslav conflict.History has shown them the need for this. In June 1914, assured of the support of Russia (whose Pan-Slav party, directed by Sazonov, pushed them to action), the Pan-Serbs risked their all. French public opinion accepted the denials of the Serb Government that it had organized the double assassination
at Sarajevo. It was because of the Serbs, and in order to defend their
rights, that France went to war.Today, since the publication of the debates which ended in the condemnation of the assassins of the Austrian Archduke, it is no longer possible to deny that these men acted at the formal instigation of certain Serbian officials.The Provision of money, arms, forged passports, and guides for crossing the frontier as far as in order to ascertain the most favorable spot for the attack, the act of Gavrilo Princip and the Tchabrinovitch, has all been shown to be the work of men depending directly on the Government of Belgrade.
France must not be duped by another Sarajevo staged to save the Yugoslav
dictatorship.
....................
During my visit to Bulgaria I took the opportunity of visiting Dr.
Stanicheff, the President of the Macedonian National Committee.
I have rarely encountered a more engaging personality than this “revolutionary.”
Little over fifty years of age, tall, with steel-grey hair, clear of eye,
a long, fine face lengthened still more by a pointed beard, he has incarnated
the determined strength of his people. I saw him last on a fine morning of
August 1932, at the Committee, in Alexandra the First Street in Sofia, a few
steps from the National Bank.
Dr. Stanicheff greeted me cordially and asked my business. My answer was
a follows: “I have come to the Balkans to investigate by myself, in my own
manner, where and how I please. I do not want to be a machine for registering
the voices of those whose opinions I like. I want to be a photographer
who chooses his viewpoint and his personages for himself. I want to operate
the camera and develop the negatives myself. I have NO other mission
than to ‘photograph’ things and people at the right angle and under a good
light, and to present them to the public without retouching.”
My host with a sign of his head showed his appreciation of my attitude.
“The Macedonian question,” I asked. “Will you explain to me as if I knew
nothing about it. I have read all the books that your friends have written
about it. All the replies from Belgrade and Athens, also. If I have made an
opinion, I want to forget. Give me yours.”
I still hear the laughter of Dr. Stanicheff:
“My opinion?” he said. “It is the opinion of a man with a Serbian price on
his head? But you know it in advance! It is very simple. There is no Macedonian
problem!”
I startled. Everyone from one end to the other of the Balkans has given me
the same answer! “There is no Macedonian question” was just what Dr.
Radovanovitch said to me in Belgrade not eight days before.
Dr. Stanicheff continued. “The word ‘problem’ stands for a very doubtful,
controversial thing. Whereas the Macedonian question is clearness itself.
To men of good faith it possesses the accuracy of a geometrical or algebraic
theorem.
“The vast majority of Macedonians are Bulgars, at least in the proportion
of four to one. They are Bulgars by origin, by custom, and by language.
And all the geographers, all the philologists, be they German, Russian,
English, French or Swiss, are all of the same opinion. Not fifty years ago
all the Serb specialists said so too.
“The celebrated orientalist and historian, Louis Leger, professor at the
College of France, whom the savants of the entire world recognized as
their master in all Slav questions, wrote in 1917 in Le Panslavisme et
l’Interet francais: ‘Macedonia is almost entirely peopled with Bulgars in
spite of the affirmations to the contrary of the Serbs and the Greeks whose
pretensions cannot prevail against the precise declarations of independent
ethnologists, such as Lejean, Kiepert, Rittich, Grigorovitch, Helferding
and MacKenzie. It was only when Serbia lost Bosnia and Herzegovina by
the treaty of Berlin that certain statesmen had the idea of seeking a compensation on the Macedonian side and claiming the existence of Serbs in this country, which is solely peopled with Bulgars.”
“M. Ludovic Naudeau, former war correspondent of the Journal in the
Balkans, declared on 7th February, 1927, to the Comite National d’etudes
sociales et politiques de Paris: ‘Before the War, when one traveled about
Macedonia, one encountered Bulgars, and not Serbs. Now Macedonia today
has been baptised Serb.’”
“It is not necessary to be a great savant in order to substantiate our claims.
We do not need to rummage in archives, to compare phonetics and to follow the migrations of races across the ages. It suffices to see, one beside the
other, a Bulgar from Bulgaria and a Macedonian from Geuvgueli, from
Veles or from Skopje. Try it yourself.”
“The Serbs say the Macedonians are Serbs, Serbs torn from Serbia by the
Ottoman conquest, five centuries ago,” I told him.
“The Serbs said that to you, did they? Naturally! The unfortunate part of it
is that they waited to make this magnificent discovery until they had need
of pretext to justify their political designs on Macedonia, and that up to
then there was not a single Serb to deny the exclusively Bulgarian character
of Macedonia.”
“Today, thanks to your Frenchmen who won the War for them, the Serbs
have achieved their ends. They are installed in Macedonia. And they have
made haste to declare solemnly, peremptorily, to theworld that all the population of Macedonia are purely and undisputably Serb.As for the five hundred thousand Macedonians refuged in Bulgaria since 1913, the Serbian
statistics soon reduced them to a few tens of thousands of Bulgar immigrants
returned to their country of origin.”
“Why this lie, which is so clumsy that it has become an insult even to those
who use it? Thousands of Europeans of all nationalities who have come to
Bulgaria in the past fifteen years have been able to verify with their own
eyes the presence of Macedonian refugees and to give an account of their
numbers.”
“Why the Serbs find themselves bound to deny the evidence, you know as
well as I. They have done it to avoid the application in Macedonia of the
stipulations of the treaty of Saint-Germain which organized the protection
of ethnic minorities in the annexed territories. In order to accomplish this it
was necessary to make the Great Powers admit that the Macedonians were
not Bulgars (to whom the special statutes of the treaty were applicable) but
Serbs subject to all the laws of Serbia. It was also necessary, consequently,
to deny the existence of the immense Macedonian emigration into Bulgaria.”
“The move has succeeded perfectly, thanks to the support lent by certain of
your statesmen to the men of Belgrade. Not one of the Macedonian requests
for frontier revision has ever been examined by the League of Nations.
When they arrive at Geneva Belgrade says: ‘No!’ France supports
her, all the friends of France say ‘Amen!’ and the trick is done.”
“For the League of Nations there are no Macedonians; hence there can be
no Macedonian question! And today fifty thousand Serb soldiers, gendarmes
and irregulars, fourteen years after the so-called return of Macedonia
to her pretended country, occupy our country and impose upon her a
regime which you will be able to judge when you have seen it.”
“They told you at Belgrade that the violence and the abuses which we denounce exist only in our imagination and that Serbian Macedonia lies satisfied and happy under the administration of Belgrade? Naturally! Well,
since you count on leaving shortly for Macedonia you will be able to judge
for yourself – at least to the extent which they will permit you to do so.
Over there you will see who lies, we or Belgrade. Don’t try to be discreet
with me. For us you will never be too outspoken. In the battle which we are
waging alone, against all, for the liberty and the life of our people, there is
one weapon which we never employ: the lie.”
“When you come back from over there, on the condition, however, that you
have been able to see behind the curtain, you will think as I do! There you
will see a horror that exceeds all imagination. You will find a whole people
crushed without pity, tortured cruelly, assassinated by the most abominable
means.”
“Let us forget about that, my dear Doctor,” I interrupted him. “The Serbs
have replied to all of the accusations made against them by your friends by
categorically denying them. You pretend that they lie. They declare that it
is you and your friends who lie. Well, I shall see for myself! Let us come
back for a little while ago. How do you expect Belgrade, after fourteen
years of uninterrupted Serb occupation, to consent, with a good will and
without being constrained by force, to give up Macedonia? The independence
of Macedonia? The hypothesis of the Dantzig corridor to Germany.”
“I know it!” agreed Dr. Stanicheff. “Today it is impossible. Toomany interests
are leagued against right, our right. To give satisfaction to Macedonia
would be to open the door to a general revision of all the peace treaties. Unless France, without whom they cannot live, compels them to do so, they
will never consent. So we must learn to wait. We know that a day will come
when our legitimate aspirations will be satisfied. We shall be patient. We
have waited for such a long time that we can wait still longer.”
“But what do we demand today? Only that the Government of Belgrade
gives to our miserable annexed compatriots, loyally and without reservations,
all the rights and all the liberties which they agreed to give them by
the treaty of Saint-Germain. That, in other words, it stops treating them like
outlaws. Nothing more!”
“If Belgrade did that, loyally and without reservations, if property, honor,
and individual liberty were guaranteed in Macedonia as they are in all civilized
countries, all conflict between Yugoslavia and us would cease. Our
refugees would return to their old homesteads. They would agree to be Yugoslav subjects – which does not mean Serbs!”
“And Belgrade knows all this very well. They know we are ready to admit
Macedonia as a sister nation with Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia, all going to
form a Yugoslav Federation in which all its members would have equal
rights – with a common army, common diplomacy, public finance and Parliament.
This Federation, these United States of the Balkans, would form
that Union of all the Southern Slavs of which the Serbs dream.”
“And the ORIM,my dear Doctor?” I asked. “What are you going to do with
the ORIM in all these fine projects?”
“What program and what intentions do you attribute to the ?” he asked in
reply. “The men who direct the ORIM think as do those who direct the National Committee. Many times they have publicly declared that they were
ready to lay down their arms if Belgrade would cease to maltreat the annexed
Macedonians and give them the legal guarantees and the liberties to
which they have a right. The ORIM added, however, that until then they
would continue the struggle.”
“Unfortunately, I admit, we are still a long way from this solution of justice
and good sense! The Serb administration is nowhere near abandoning the
methods of violence which have raised all the Macedonians up against her.
She will not modify her methods. She will even aggravate them and, besides,
look what is happening in Croatia.”
“Doctor,” I said, “confess that your organization does all it can to exasperate
the Serbs. Three months ago at Nisch two bombs killed or crippled
twenty people. Amonth ago at Chtip a gendarmerie was burned; not fifteen
days ago the train I was on was dynamited in the station at Geuvgueli.”
Dr. Stanicheff looked straight into my eyes.
“If you knew me better,” he said, “you would know how horrible such violence
is to me. But there are cases where violence is just, where violence
becomes a sacred duty. They reproach our revolutionary organizations for
reprisals against the Serb administrators and police, their terrorist attacks in
annexed Macedonia, but they say nothing of their deeds which have inspired
our attacks.”
“Tell me how your public opinion would have received the following facts
if they had taken place in Alsace-Lorraine during the German occupation?
I cite them to you among a thousand others – and I could cite worse...”
“At Souchitza, which is a hamlet between Skopje and Veles, four women,
Raina Nalzev, Miyana Paneva, Victoria Andreeva and Vassa Mitreva, who
refused to reveal where their husbands had fled, were whipped until they
bled by Serb gendarmes who then poured petrol on their armpits and loins
and set them on fire.
“At the village of Debrevo, a young girl of sixteen, Kostadine Miladin
Tatcheva, was declared guilty of having hummed a Bulgarian song. She
was stripped naked, strapped to a bench, given sixty blows of a club on her
back, and thenwas violated by the chief of the detachment and his six men.
“At Katchanik, the peasant Eftine Athanassof, suspected of having sheltered
agents of the ORIM, was clubbed to death with rifle-stocks after having
been crucified by the irregulars of the Serb White Hand. His neighbor
in agony, Manassi Antoff, had thorns buried under the nails of his hands
and feet by his executioners.
“At Yastermnik, by the order in the presence of the Chief of the State Police,
Jika Lazitch (the manwho is today Minister of the Interior of Yugoslavia)
three peasants, Kostadin Demianoff, Ivan Angeloff and Georgui
Stoicheff, and three peasant women Llinka Ivantcheva, Mita Dimitrieva
and Mirsa Valinove, all of whom were denounced for having given refuge
to revolutionists, were whipped to death before all the village. The women
were first outraged in a dreadful fashion.6
“These abominations,” went on Dr. Stanicheff, “against which nothing protects our unfortunate compatriots, make it impossible to find a peaceful solution in Macedonia.
“Since the Serbs have occupied her, Macedonia has become a hell. Hundreds
of homes and farms, entire villages, under the pretext of punishing
their inhabitants because of their alleged sympathies for revolutionary organisations,have been burned by gendarmes or Serb irregulars. All our
cemeteries have been profaned, all the monuments to our dead have been
destroyed, all the riches of our churches, of our libraries, of our monasteries
have been stolen. Innumerable women and young girls have been sullied;
countless Macedonians have been tortured, beaten, imprisoned and put to
death without trial. Our priests have been insulted, and our teachers too:
our children have no longer the right to bear their names unless it has a Serb
termination. An entire people has been deprived of the right to think, to
speak or to pray, other than as their masters wish. They can no longer come
and go, even from village to village, without permission; they can no longer
go out in the evening after certain hours, they are crushed by taxes have
no justice, have no recourse against the pleasure or the crimes of administrators and police to whom they are subjected.
“That is the Macedonian question, sir. The agony of a martyred people who
yet do not wish to die.
“Imagine a man who has succeeded in finding a refuge in Bulgaria after
weeks of hiding himself in the mountains, and who learns that his wife has
served as a plaything, before all the terrified neighbors, for the police come
to search her home. Imagine the feelings of the father whose daughter has
been treated as a prostitute. Imagine the feelings of a brother whose dishonored sister has drowned herself in despair. Do you dare call their vengeance assassination?
“The Carnegie Commission, which included besides the Belgian Minister
Vandervelde, two Frenchmen, M. d’Estournelles de Constant and M. Justin
Godart, published a report on the Macedonian atrocities that is more overwhelming than any of our accusations.”
“I defy you, sir, to find a single copy of their report. Belgrade has somehow
succeeded in making them vanish.”
You can read all this in the link below,from 319-332 pages
http://www.hungarian-history.hu/lib/balkan/balkan.pdf

[kostas68]

I gathered the views of some modern historians about the history and the origin of FYROM's <Macedonians> :

1)<Europe since 1945,an Encyclopedia> by Bernard A. Cook

2)<Jugoslavism,histories of a failed idea 1918-1992> by Dejan Djokic

3)<Political parties of Eastern Europe> by Januzs Bugajski

4)<Politics,power and the struggle for democracy in South-East Europe> by Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott

5)<Who are the Macedonians> by Hugh Poulton

6) <The Macedonian conflict,ethnic nationalism in a transnational world> by Loring M. Danforth

7)<The 3 Yugoslavias> by Sabrina P. Ramet

8)<The national question in Yougoslavia> by Ivo Banac

9)<Das mazedonisches jahrhundert> by Stefan Troebst


10)<Macedonia,warlords and rebels in Balkan> by John Phillips

11)The history of the Balkan peninsula,the Eastern Europe collection by Ferdinand Shevill

12)<Studies on Ottoman social and political history> by Kemal H. Karpat

13)<A concise history of Bulgaria> by R.J. Crampton

14)<Ideologies and national identities> by John Lampe and Mark Mazower



15)<The past in question> by Keith Brown,where we can read a record of the Ilinden uprise in the Greek-Vlach town of Krushevo