Dušan T. Bataković about the FYROMian question

[Vasco]

http://www.rastko.org.yu/istorija/ba...dmont_eng.html


A chapter from "THE BALKAN PIEDMONT SERBIA AND THE YUGOSLAV QUESTION", Paris, 1994


THE MACEDONIAN LABYRINTH



The annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the view of Belgrade and Cetinje, permanently endangered Serbian interests in the Balkans. In order to prevent the further spreading of Austro-Hungarian influence, Serbia needed a Balkan alliance for joint resistance to the Drang nach Osten. Closer ties between Vienna and Sofia would mean the further encirclement of Serbia and it would mark an introduction to the loss of its independence. Initiatives for the creation of a new Balkan alliance - on the model of the alliance from the time of Prince Michael Obrenovic in 1868 - were launched, several times, by Serbia - in 1909 and 1910, and attempts were made to establish close co-operation with Greece and Romania.

Meanwhile, the situation in Macedonia - where the Slav population's national awareness was still not clearly defined - constantly kept deteriorating. By the time the Patriarchate of Pec was abolished in 1766 most of the population in Vardar Macedonia, according to the testimony of foreign writers who had travelled there, felt themselves to be Serbs or ethnically close to the Serbs. The attempts at defining a separate Macedonian individuality, linked to the local tradition, were supported by Bishop Strossmayer who helped, in Zagreb, the publication of Macedonian epic poetry selected by the Miladinov brothers. By supporting their localism, the Croatian bishop wanted the Slavs in Macedonia, dissatisfied because the Church organization was under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and because the services were in the Greek language, to accept, in time, a union with the Roman Catholic church.

Different regions in Slavonic parts of Macedonia spoke different dialects - the western regions a dialect closer to Serbian, and the eastern closer to Bulgarian. The Serbian criteria for determining nationality was the custom of celebrating a slava (the day of the acceptance of Christianity) which foreign and domestic travel writers noticed among the population of northern, central and western Macedonia, while the celebration of the name-day (a custom characteristic of the Bulgarians) was wide-spread in the south-eastern regions (Pirin Macedonia). The dozens of requests for the unification of certain regions with Serbia that were sent to Belgrade during the 19th century also contained the claims that the population of those regions had been Serbian since time immemorial. At the end of the 19th century, from various regions similar petitions were also sent to Sofia. However, the ethnic composition of Macedonia was much more complex: apart from the Slavs who were in a dilemma over whether they belonged to the Bulgarians or the Serbs, there were also many Turks, Islamized Slavs, Tsintsars, Wallachians and Jews.

Bulgarian policy towards Macedonia was simple: it requested the establishment of an autonomous Macedonia within European Turkey, which would then, at an appropriate moment, like Eastern Rumelia in 1885, proclaim its unification with Bulgaria. A powerful weapon in the hands of Bulgarian propaganda was the creation of the Exarchate in 1870, which let Bulgaria handle Church and educational affairs in Macedonia. This was done with the blessing of the Serbian government - it was considered in Belgrade that it was important to introduce a Slavic language instead of Greek in Church services. Among the illiterate population desirous of Slavonic services in the Church and an elementary education, the Exarchate had a great effect. Bulgarian agitators also skilfully eradicated the traces of a Serbian feeling among the Macedonian Slavs - they systematically destroyed old Serbian books and manuscripts, even scratching frescoes with the images of Serbian saints in the numerous monasteries built at the time of Stefan Dusan and his successors in the 14th century. The traditional pilgrimage of Macedonian Slavs to Serbian monasteries in Kosovo completely died out at the end of the 19th century.

Another powerful weapon of Bulgarian propaganda was the IMRO (the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization) which, financed by Sofia, conducted a campaign, and sometime was even engaged in armed clashes with the Turkish authorities, for Macedonia's autonomy. The IMRO was divided into several factions and experienced a number of successive divisions. The Ilinden uprising (1903) which ended in disaster, was an attempt at casting off Turkish oppression by revolutionary methods. The IMRO was in essence, a most useful tool for the goals of the government in Sofia.

Until the beginning of the 20th century Serbia passively and resignedly watched Sofia's campaign aimed at Bulgarianizing Macedonia. The dissatisfaction with the government's passiveness stimulated private circles in Belgrade to found, in 1904, the Chetnik movement which, using Macedonian migrant workers in Serbia and its followers in the regions of Skoplje and western Macedonia, opposed the Bulgarian komitadji and created a Serbian nucleus for the struggle for liberation from Turkish domination (region of Porec). The Chetniks were trained in army camps along the border with the Ottoman Empire, but armed units sent to Macedonia failed to diminish the strongly established Bulgarian influence in southern, central and eastern regions. Parallely with this, the reform action of the Great Powers in Macedonia (1903-1908), which was to ensure the equality of the Christians and the Muslims, produced no tangible results. The Young Turk Revolution in June 1908 eventually ended all the efforts at further reforms by the European powers which aimed at preventing severe national and religious clashes in Old Serbia and Macedonia. The Pan-Ottoman policy of the Young Turks provoked during the following years a growth of ethnic and religous tensions, followed by a renewed persecution of Christians in Old Serbia and Macedonia.(65)

The advocates of unification with Serbia were most numerous in the north-western part of Macedonia, in the region between Kumanovo, Skoplje, Tetovo and Veles, where Serbian units operated (the dialect there was closest to the Serbian language), while the pro-Bulgarians controlled parts of eastern Macedonia up to the Vardar river, in areas where the dialectal differences vis-à-vis the Bulgarian language were not great. Between them an Albanian national movement operated, and it was especially strong in the south-western part of Macedonia, around Gostivar, Kicevo and Debar, where most of the Albanians lived. Greece also joined in the resolution of the Macedonian question through the renewal of the organization Philiki Hetaeria which sent its units, the so-called Andartes, to operate mostly in Greek Macedonia. Serbia considered the Dual Monarchy's desire to create a Great Albania that would spread from the Adriatic Sea to the Vardar river as being especially dangerous, because that state would endanger Serbia's independence from the south. The Albanian revolts (1909-1912) which were partly subsidized by Serbia and Montenegro, in order to avoid complete control over the insurgents by Austria-Hungary, proved such fears to be justified.

The enormous literature on the Macedonian question created great confusion, because Serbian, Turkish, Bulgarian and Greek statistics concerning Macedonia's ethnic composition differed considerably. The estimate of Jovan Cvijic, at the time the top authority on Balkan ethnography, caused stormy disapproval among both the Serbs and the Bulgarians. Noticing the multitude of different customs, traditions and the lack of a firmly founded national identity, Cvijic concluded: "the popular masses of the Macedonian Slavs have no determined national feeling or national awareness, either Serbian or Bulgarian, even though they are quite close to both the Serbs and the Bulgarians", and that, essentially, they are "in the national sense, fluctuating masses of people with an ethnic predisposition to become either Serbs or Bulgarians." (66)

[Grace]

Given that I have read some of his Kosovo writings, I wouldn't trust a word Batakovic said. For that matter ignore Albanian historians in Albanian matters, Serbs and probably Orthodox in Serbian matters and so on.

Montengrins and Serbs "helped" the Albanians only to have it easier to crush them after the Turks had decimated them. Serbs led /helped the Turks to the Albanian positions in Kosovo too. 2-3 years later:

1913: "The thousand and thousands of men, women, children and old people who have been slain or tortured to death, the villages marauded and burnt to the ground, the women and young girls who have been raped, and the countryside plundered, ravaged and swimming in blood can give no answer to this question.

The Serbs came to Albania not as liberators but as exterminators of the Albanian people. The Ambassadors' Conference in London proposed drawing the borders of Albania according to ethnic and religious statistics to be gathered on site by a commission. The Serbs have hastened to prepare the statistics for them with machine guns, rifles and bayonets. They have committed unspeakable atrocities. The shock and outrage produced by these crimes are outdone only by the sense of sorrow that such vile deeds could be committed in Europe, not far from the great centres of western culture, in this twentieth century. Our sorrow is made all the heavier by the fact that, despite the reports which have been cabled home for months now by the journalists of many nations, and despite the impassioned indictment launched to the world by Pierre Loti, nothing has been done to put an end to the killings.

A courageous people full of character is being crucified before the eyes of the world and Europe, civilized Christian Europe, remains silent!

Tens of thousands of defenceless people are being massacred, women are being raped, old people and children strangled, hundreds of villages burnt to the ground, priests slaughtered.

And Europe remains silent!

Serbia and Montenegro have set out to conquer a foreign country. But in that land live a freedom-loving, brave people who despite centuries of servitude have not yet become accustomed to bearing a foreign yoke. The solution is obvious. The Albanians must be exterminated!

A crazed and savage soldateska has turned this solution into a gruesome reality.

Countless villages have been razed to the ground, countless individuals have been butchered. Where once the humble cottages of poor Albanians stood, there is nothing left but smoke and ashes. A whole people is perishing on Calvary cross, and Europe remains silent!

http://www.albanianhistory.net/en/te.../AH1913_1.html

[kostas68]

Originally Posted by Grace

Given that I have read some of his Kosovo writings, I wouldn't trust a word Batakovic said. For that matter ignore Albanian historians in Albanian matters, Serbs and probably Orthodox in Serbian matters and so on.

And why should we consider as unbiased a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian empire?Sorry,Grace,but we all know the relations between Austro-Hungarian empire and Serbia.I'm not trying to defend anyone,i'm just pointing what is obvious:I don't doubt whether those slaughters of the Albanians really happened but i don't think this person is the most reliable witness.It's like a Serbian quotes as evidence the testimony of a Russian.

[Grace]

Originally Posted by kostas68

And why should we consider as unbiased a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian empire?Sorry,Grace,but we all know the relations between Austro-Hungarian empire and Serbia.I'm not trying to defend anyone,i'm just pointing what is obvious:I don't doubt whether those slaughters of the Albanians really happened but i don't think this person is the most reliable witness.It's like a Serbian quotes as evidence the testimony of a Russian.

fair enough. Edith Durham:

Then came the Balkan wars of 1912-13. By their cunning policy the Serbs had cruelly tricked the Albanians. They had separated them from the Turks and used them to drive the Turks from Kosovo. Far from fulfilling their promises to help the Albanians to liberty, the Serb and Montenegrin armies fell upon them with ferocity. The Albanians were trapped and unable to obtain ammunition from either side.

The Serbs ruthlessly massacred wholesale. In Montenegro, at the inn dinner table I heard a Serb officer boast how his men had slaughtered men, women and children of the Luma tribe. “You must kill the women,” he said, “they breed men” and laughed till he choked over his beer. The Montenegrins cut off the lips and noses of prisoners and the dead and showed them as trophies, and burnt and looted. They boasted that when they took Scutari they would cut the throats of its inhabitants. The sad news came that Janina had fallen.

http://www.albanianhistory.net/en/texts20_1/AH1941.html

Carnegie Commission: http://books.google.com/books?id=OTW...9WKvydZQq2JmOw

More here: http://books.google.com/books?id=fEp...QHCpAn_7g8ESdw

[Grace]

"The Albanians found themselves in a peculiarly difficult
position. They wished to defend their own
lands, but they had no desire to fight for the Turks.
The Turks mistrusted them because of their recent
revolts, and would not supply them with either arms
or ammunition, and they possessed but small supplies.
They decided to remain neutral, and for the most
part resisted only when attacked, and hoped, by proclaiming
their neutrality and hoisting the Albanian
flag, to obtain European recognition.

But they were
invaded by three of the Balkan armies.
The second Balkan War, during which the Balkan
allies fought one another for the plunder, soon followed.
The Carnegie Commission of Inquiry has
sufficiently described the horrors and atrocities committed
by these self-styled "liberators" on the populations
they purported to set free.

Italy and Austria, both having interests in the Adriatic,
protested against the entire dismemberment of
Albania, and called on Europe to recognize her independence,
as did also very emphatically we Albanians.
And on January i, 1913, the Ambassadors of the
Great Powers at the Conference of London decided
upon creating Albania a neutral and independent
State. But the Great Powers — not for the first time
in their history — came under the malign influence of
Imperial Russia, who intervened and insisted upon
the cession of much Albanian land.

Her voice was
dominant at the Conference. Albania emerged free
but badly mutilated. Regions populated by compact
masses of Albanians, numbering in all some million
and a half souls, were annexed to the Kingdoms of
Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece, all of whom had
previously violated Albania's neutrality and occupied
her territory.

The Great Powers created Albania as an independent
neutral State and took it under their protection.
They decided that they would aid and guide its first
steps. But all they did was to appoint an International
Commission of Control, which did almost nothing
and kept none of its promises, and to appoint a
Prince without giving him any assistance.

Before Albania had time even to organize gendarmerie,
the Greeks attacked and occupied a large part of
South Albania, and the Commission looked on and
took no steps, while Greek irregular bands and troops
armed with artillery burnt and pillaged the villages
and massacred the inhabitants. Between Tepeleni
and Koritza three hundred villages were burnt. And
in order to force the population either to starve or
emigrate, the Greeks burnt even the standing crops
in the fields. The Albanians, who had no artillery
and were poorly armed, fought bravely, and for a
time were victorious; but the Greeks were reinforced
by further troops, and the Albanians were forced to
withdraw. Thousands of starving refugees crowded
to Valona in the last stages of misery. But the International
Commission, beyond supplying a little bread,
took no steps.

While Albania, already plundered and devastated
in the war of 1913, was struggling against Greek
aggression and foreign intrigue and propaganda, the
present world-war broke out. "

1920: International Conciliation By Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, American Association for International Conciliation, Carnegie Endowment for

http://books.google.com/books?id=tLY...rbia#PPA768,M1

[kostas68]

Originally Posted by Grace

"The Albanians found themselves in a peculiarly difficult
position. They wished to defend their own
lands, but they had no desire to fight for the Turks.
The Turks mistrusted them because of their recent
revolts, and would not supply them with either arms
or ammunition, and they possessed but small supplies.
They decided to remain neutral, and for the most
part resisted only when attacked, and hoped, by proclaiming
their neutrality and hoisting the Albanian
flag, to obtain European recognition.

But they were
invaded by three of the Balkan armies.
The second Balkan War, during which the Balkan
allies fought one another for the plunder, soon followed.
The Carnegie Commission of Inquiry has
sufficiently described the horrors and atrocities committed
by these self-styled "liberators" on the populations
they purported to set free.

Italy and Austria, both having interests in the Adriatic,
protested against the entire dismemberment of
Albania, and called on Europe to recognize her independence,
as did also very emphatically we Albanians.
And on January i, 1913, the Ambassadors of the
Great Powers at the Conference of London decided
upon creating Albania a neutral and independent
State. But the Great Powers — not for the first time
in their history — came under the malign influence of
Imperial Russia, who intervened and insisted upon
the cession of much Albanian land.

Her voice was
dominant at the Conference. Albania emerged free
but badly mutilated. Regions populated by compact
masses of Albanians, numbering in all some million
and a half souls, were annexed to the Kingdoms of
Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece, all of whom had
previously violated Albania's neutrality and occupied
her territory.

The Great Powers created Albania as an independent
neutral State and took it under their protection.
They decided that they would aid and guide its first
steps. But all they did was to appoint an International
Commission of Control, which did almost nothing
and kept none of its promises, and to appoint a
Prince without giving him any assistance.

Before Albania had time even to organize gendarmerie,
the Greeks attacked and occupied a large part of
South Albania, and the Commission looked on and
took no steps, while Greek irregular bands and troops
armed with artillery burnt and pillaged the villages
and massacred the inhabitants. Between Tepeleni
and Koritza three hundred villages were burnt. And
in order to force the population either to starve or
emigrate, the Greeks burnt even the standing crops
in the fields. The Albanians, who had no artillery
and were poorly armed, fought bravely, and for a
time were victorious; but the Greeks were reinforced
by further troops, and the Albanians were forced to
withdraw. Thousands of starving refugees crowded
to Valona in the last stages of misery. But the International
Commission, beyond supplying a little bread,
took no steps.

While Albania, already plundered and devastated
in the war of 1913, was struggling against Greek
aggression and foreign intrigue and propaganda, the
present world-war broke out. "

1920: International Conciliation By Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, American Association for International Conciliation, Carnegie Endowment for

http://books.google.com/books?id=tLY...rbia#PPA768,M1

Where did you get this?This link doesn't work,there isn't any preview of the book available.Are you sure this text is written by the Carnegie commission and not from an Albanian website?

[Kiril Evangelovski]

Originally Posted by kostas68

Where did you get this?This link doesn't work,there isn't any preview of the book available.Are you sure this text is written by the Carnegie commission and not from an Albanian website?

If you download the PDF you will see it has nothing to do with the Carnegie Commission (a particularly anti-Greek body due to its membership to boot). And the text is by a certain Mehmed Bey Konitza, one of the "foremost nationalist leaders" according to the text itself! (page 50). There is another pro-Albanian piece in the same book and lo-and-behold one titled "Northern Epirus and the principle of Nationality" by (I guess) a Greek named N.J. Cassavetes.

But of course Grace does not possess the intellectual integrity to keep the story straight.

[kostas68]

Originally Posted by Kiril Evangelovski

If you download the PDF you will see it has nothing to do with the Carnegie Commission (a particularly anti-Greek body due to its membership to boot). And the text is by a certain Mehmed Bey Konitza, one of the "foremost nationalist leaders" according to the text itself! (page 50). There is another pro-Albanian piece in the same book and lo-and-behold one titled "Northern Epirus and the principle of Nationality" by (I guess) a Greek named N.J. Cassavetes.

But of course Grace does not possess the intellectual integrity to keep the story straight.

So the text isn't actually a report written by the Carnegie Commission but by an Albanian.Thanks for the clarification.

[Grace]

Ops, my bad on the Greek part. I googled for it because Carnegie gad cited many of the Serb niceties in one and pasted without scrolling all the way the way, apparently it has letter. I thought it was the report. FYI. Tolstoy witnessed them too and as soon as I find, I'll post it.
http://books.google.com/books?id=IJ2...sult#PPA341,M1

^ see a condensed version of the Serb niceties, ignore any author bias, just see the citations.

Sorry about the confusion: Greece came to 'liberate' Southern Albania, I mean Vorio Epirus, and of course eventually "deal" with the non-Orthodox. Do you still have those documents you made illiterate peasants sign "wanting to unit with Greece" .

The Turkish Government prohibited the printing and teaching of the
Albanian language under most severe penalties. Turkish schools were
established for the Moslem Albanians, and every effort made to bring
up the children to believe they were Turks. In South Albania, where
the Christians belong to the Orthodox Church, the Greeks were
encouraged to found schools and work a Greek propaganda. The Turks
hoped thus to prevent the rise of a strong national Albanian party.
The Greek Patriarch went so far as to threaten with excommunication
any Orthodox Albanian who should use the "accursed language" in
church or school. http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenb...9669/19669.htm

Does Carnegie have a Greek bias? Well, did Greeks do any bad things during the war against non-Orthodox civilians during that war (not neccesarily in Albania)?

[Grace]

From Edith Durham; On Serbs:

The Serbs fell on the Gostivar
district, burning the villages with petroleum, and throwing such
people as could not escape, back into the flames with their
bayonets. An urgent appeal for bandages and medicaments came from
Elbasan, into which refugees were pouring. Our naval force was not
allowed to supply any, but I begged two cases of stores from the
Italian consulate and started across country to Elbasan to the
horror of the International control, who had the idea that
travelling in Albania was dangerous. As I soon got beyond their
zone they could not interfere. At Tirana and at Elbasan I found
thousands of destitute creatures pouring in, footsore and exhausted.
Their accounts of Serb brutality up-country was amply confirmed by a
letter of a Serb in the Radnitchke Novina (see Carnegie Report): "My
dear friend," writes a Serb soldier, "appalling things are going on.
I am terrified of them. . . . I dare not tell you morer but I may
say Ljuma (an Albanian tribe) no longer exists. There is nothing but
corpses and ashes." A Franciscan, who went there, told me of the
bodies of the poor little bayoneted babies. "There are villages of
100, 150, 200 houses where there is literally not a single man. We
collect them in parties of forty to fifty and bayonet them to the
last one," The paper says it cannot publish the details, "they are
too heart-rending."

"That same day Mr. Lamb told me that the inhabitants of three Moslem
villages, Nenati, Mercati, and Konispoli, recently burnt by the
Greeks, had sent to beg help, and asked me if I would go and
investigate."


"At the house of Dom Nikola Kaciorri, a plucky little Catholic
priest, I found an Orthodox Albanian priest from Meljani, near
Leskoviki, who told how the Greeks had burnt his village and ordered
all those who belonged to the Orthodox Church to come along with
them, using force to make them, and falling on those who refused.
They had driven a number along before them, including his wife and
children, whom he could not rescue. He told how the Greeks had given
the inhabitants of Odrichan permission to return to it, and had then
fallen on them and slaughtered them. Mr. Lamb ascertained that this
man's wife and children were alive, but the Greeks refused to give
them up."

"The Greeks brought some Greeks from America and
presented them to Cambon, and, it is believed, to Sir Edward Grey
also, saying that they were "Epirotes." The Greek society in Paris
was a strong one, and pushed them. Cambon, in November, advised them
to form an independent government, which was done, as we have shown.
Mr. Lamb (now Sir Harry) told me that at Corfu he told Zographos to
his face that most of his "Epirotes" were Cretans, and that the mere
fact that a Greek ex-minister of Foreign Affairs was running this
"independent government" and trying to dictate terms, was enough in
itself to "give the whole show away," but for the fact that certain
Powers were determined not to see.

The Albanians in the defence of their land had been much hampered by
shortage of ammunition, though quantities had been sent from
Durazzo. It never reached Koritza, for Essad, who was Minister of
War, diverted if for his own purposes. He was in league with the
Serbo-Greek combine, and did not mean the Albanians of the South to
win. He was hated by all the South for his conduct when commanding
gendarmerie in Janina, and also for betraying Scutari. He knew that
a victory for the South meant ruin for him."

"Members of this Commission told of the amazing series of
tricks by which Greek agents had tried to hoodwink them. Wherever
the Greeks had a school they dragged out a cartload of little
children bidden to sing or shout in Greek. They tried to steer the
Commission away from places which knew no Greek, and in one place
actually shut up the women in a house for they could speak nothing
but Albanian. Greek soldiers, while pretending to tell people not to
make a noise, threatened them with punishment if they did not shout
for Greece. They even imported Greeks, and dumped them on the path
of the Commission. And ordered people, under threat of flogging, to
paint their houses blue and white--the Greek colours. But they
overacted the part so badly that in many cases they succeeded only
in disgusting the Commissioners."

"These hastened to make another
grab at the land, and sent Zographos, formerly Greek Minister for
Foreign Affairs, and a gang of Greek officials to South Albania to
claim it as Greek, and appoint themselves as the "Provisional
Government of Epirus." A Greek colonel was made War Minister to this
so-called government, and a Greek member of Parliament, Karapanos,
was its Minister for Foreign Affairs. An American called Duncan, who
had a Greek wife and went about dressed mainly in bath towels,
collected much money, incited the people to resist Wied, armed them,
and urged them to a fratricidal war. The Greek Government denied all
connection with this "provisional government," just as the Serb
Government has always denied responsibility for and knowledge of the
deeds of the Black Hand."

"The Greeks, furious at being beaten out of Koritza, avenged
themselves on their retreat by committing outrages and burning
villages. The Albanians drove back the Greeks to Argyrokastro, and
would have chased them over the border had not the Greek General
Papoulias come to the aid of his compatriots with large
reinforcements and artillery. The Greek Government still "knew
nothing" about the actions of its officers.

It is to be hoped that a future League of Nations will be in
readiness to investigate at once similar occurrences, and that
"ignorance" on the part of a government shall not be accepted as
innocence without full inquiry. In this case the Albanians had no
tribunal before which to present their case. The invading Greeks
burnt and sacked numbers of villages, and destroyed the town of
Leskoviki, committing at the same time terrible atrocities."
http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenb...9669/19669.htm

FYI: You, lead by the Greek Church are still trying to do the same old tricks down south. Good luck!