What was the Ilinden ?

[Spartan]

What the most important issue this article brings up, is that their was NO SUCH THING as an "Ethnic Macedonian" in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. This ethnicity was created as Misirkov states "due to the appropriate historical circumstances..."!

This hardcore evidence has been ignored like the plague for 2 days now on the Network54 Mak forum.

They know this is the "straw that broke the camels back"!

This dismisses outright their claims of continuity from the Ancient Macedonians.

This shows that it most likely was Tito who created the "Ethnic" Macedonian.

This also supports that their ancestry and their former ethnic identity(slavic side) was Bulgarian and Serbian depending on the part of Skopja they originate from.


So please spread this information on all the Mak sites as well as all the Greek sites so we can put a big hurt on their claims! This is the strongest evidence yet!

[Istor]

Ethnicit never was created before 1944. No Slav intellectuals ever thought that they were Macedonians by nation. Misirkov himself clearly stated that he was Bulgarian. "we are more Bulgarian than Bulgarians in Bulgarian" said he.

An autonomous Macedonia was just a step for incorporating Macedonia in Bulgaria, just like Eastern Roumelia.

[Spartan]

Very good points Istor. I hope this helps you more with your site!

[Tsontos]

Originally Posted by Istor

Ethnicit never was created before 1944. No Slav intellectuals ever thought that they were Macedonians by nation. Misirkov himself clearly stated that he was Bulgarian. "we are more Bulgarian than Bulgarians in Bulgarian" said he.

An autonomous Macedonia was just a step for incorporating Macedonia in Bulgaria, just like Eastern Roumelia.

LATHOS KANETE RE PAIDIA!!!! O 'MAKEDONISMOS' DEN 3EKINISE TO 1945

To say that Macedonism hadnt taken an ethnic form before 1945 is just plain wrong. Those Macedonists who favoured the seperation of conscience and independence from Bulgaria were definatley a minority but be sure that they existed!!! Albeit artificial and in the extreme minority, the idea of a macedonian nation goes back into the last 19th century. As an ideology It gained in strength as a reaction to Serb/ Yugoslav rule from 1913-1941 and then when the far left, balkan commitern assemblies formally adopted it in the 1930s. 1945 was when it found a way to survive and come to fruition under the communists.

PREPEI NA 3ERETE TON EXTHRON SAS

There are many accounts of Macedonists distingushing themselves from Bulgarians. Misikrov is an interesting case through which my point is epitomised. In his early writings he was clearly a Macedonist, and later abandoned this ideology and began pro-Bulgarian. The VMRO was made up of pro-Bulgarians, autonomists and Macedonists. These Macedonists were pulled back and forth between their Bulgarian heritage and their ideology they had adopted. Just look at the correspondence between Goce Delchev and another VMRO member:

Letter from Nikola Karev to Goce Delchev

Dear G(otze)

... In Krushevo and Bitola the night blocades appear almost every day, and a lot of affairs throw people in jail. We shouldn't wait anymore, Goce. It is time for us to stand up and fight. We shouldn't wait for freedom from Greeks, neither from Bulgarians, but we Macedonians should fight for our Macedonia, ... As i am concerned, nobody can take away my courage and my patriotism. I am proud to report to you, that all our men are prepared to fight, with guns in their hands.

N(ikola) `


--



Text of a response letter of Delcev to Nikola Maleshevski

"Sofia, 01.05.1899,

Kolyo (Nikola),

I have received all letters which were sent by or through you. May the dissents and cleavages not frighten you. It is really a pity, but what can we possibly do when we ourselves are Bulgarians and all suffer from the same disease! If this disease had not existed in our forefathers who passed it on to us, we wouldn't have fallen under the ugly sceptre of the Turkish sultans...

Ill say it again. Na 3erete ton exthron sas kala. He are a few quotes to illustrate what Im saying.

"Certain Macedonists distinguish themselves from Bulgarians for other reasons as well, mainly that they are pure Slavs and that the Bulgarian are Tartars and god knows what else" [Makedonja newspaper, January 18, 1871]

of course there were differing degrees of Macedonism given it was a new ideology

The unsigned author of the editorial of the journal A vt onomna Makedoni 1903, states:


“When they say to us that we should protect the oppressed Macedonians, we should gladly do so. We are here delighted to recall that Alexander the Great, that tsar of the universe, bore witness to the virtues of the Slavic tribe when he said that the Slavs had heroic hearts and hence deserved to bear the great name Slavs, that is slavni [glorious]. Before his death this man who has endowed us so greatly said that he cursed anyone who would ever speak ill of the Slavs. In recognition of their military abilities he bequeathed to them all the lands from the Adriatic to the ocean of eternal ice. Besides, he besought his heavenly patrons to protect them from ill fortune and always aid the twelve princes, descendants of his twelve friends. Now, if the Macedonians are in a situation to stop their extermination with their own hands and improve their destiny, then the Bulgarians, Serbs, Montenegrins and other Slavs are bound to help their brothers in blood and faith, those who are born of ‘majka doina’ [nursing mother] (Macedonia), from where, too, the most famous principles and luminaries have originated.”

[Ptolemy]

Excerpts from "Out of the Balkans" by Jason C. Mavrovitis (memoirs):

In 1893 a subversive movement named the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (I.M.R.O.) sprang into existence in Resna, Macedonia, just north of Lake Ohrid. Its stated purpose was to represent all the peoples of Macedonia in their struggle against the abusive and intolerable conditions imposed by the Ottoman Empire. In practice it became an anti-Greek, anti-Turkish, exarchist guerilla organization that enlisted Bulgarians and Bulgarian dominated villages into its membership. In reaction the patriarchist grecomanes(*) organized and, in their attempt to protect the Greeks of Macedonia from the Slavs, cooperated with the Turkish authorities in discovering and destroying comatidjedes.


(*) Greeks who supported Patriarchal control of the church in Macedonia.


Kastoria was the center of the Macedonian-Greek nationalist movement in the region of southern Macedonian; from just south of Kastoria, north to Lake
Ohrid and immediately to the Lake's east, the city of Monastir. From Monastir north Serbian and Bulgarian centers of national movements organized their irregular forces against each other, and against the Greeks and the Turks.

When people fight long enough and desperately enough; when they experience personal loss and cleanse blood from the bodies of fathers and mothers, and sons and daughters, and bury them; when they stand and watch their homes and villages and churches burn to the ground, and their fields and orchards and vineyards devastated, their capacity for reason, and decency and compassion and mercy is lost. Vengeance becomes the reason to live. Some stories told of atrocities are true; many are rumors embellished and made greater in number. Rumors of obscene cruelty on the part of the others become accepted fact; myths become history; and retribution in kind sanctioned. The unimaginable becomes reality. In Macedonia and Thrace, the unimaginable was then and in recent times is reality.

In his book "Pictures from the Balkans", John Fraser wrote31)

The town of Monastir [. . .] lies just about half way between Bulgarian and Greek territory. North, the majority of MACEDONIANS are BULGAR, south
the majority are HELLENES.

[. . .] Monastir is an ordinary Turkish European town, even to the attempt at a garden where the richer Turks and Bulgars and Greeks come and sit at
little tables and drink beer and listen to a string band composed of girls from Vienna. [. . .] Everybody is jolly. Murder is so commonplace that it
arouses no shudder. In the night the little bark of a pistol, a shriek, a clatter of feet. "Hello! Somebody killed!" That's all. . . .

In Kazantzakis' book Zorba the Greek, Zorba who was a Greek Macedonian, tells his young "boss"32)

Then I picked up my rifle and off I went! I went to the mountains as a comitadji. One day, at dusk, I came to a Bulgarian village and hide in a
stable. It was the very house of a priest, a ferocious, pitiless Bulgarian comatidji. At night he'd take off his cassock, put on shepherd's clothes,
pick up his rifle and go over into the neighboring Greek villages. He came back before dawn, trickling with mud and blood, and hurried to church to
conduct mass for the faithful. A few days before this, he had killed a Greek schoolmaster asleep in his bed. So I went to the priest's stable and waited.
Towards nightfall the priest came into the stable to feed the animals. I threw myself on him and cut his throat like a sheep. I lopped off his ears
and stuck them in my pocket. I was making a collection of Bulgar ears, you see [. . .]

Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek, 224-25. Note that Zorba uses the Bulgarian term for guerilla fighter, comitandji (alternate spelling).


http://members.tripod.com/~dimobetch...ts/ilinden.htm

" Considering the critical and terrible situation that the Bulgarian population of the Bitola Vilayet found itself in and following the ravages
and cruelties done by the Turkish troops and irregulars, ... considering the fact that everything BULGARIAN runs the risk of perishing and
disappearing without a trace because of violence, hunger, and the upcoming misery, the Head Quarters finds it to be its obligation to draw the
attention of the respected Bulgarian government to the pernicious consequences vis-a-vis the BULGARIAN NATION, in case the latter does not
fulfill its duty towards its brethren of race here in an imposing fashIon which is necessary by virtue of the present ordeal for the COMMON BULGARIAN FATHERLAND...


...Being in command of our people's movement, we appeal to you on behalf of the enslaved Bulgarian to help him in the most effective way - by waging
war. We believe that the response of the people in free Bulgaria will be the same.


... No bulgarian school is opened, neither will it be opened... Nobody thinks of education when he is outlawed by the state because he bears the
name BULGAR...

Waiting for your patriotic intervention, we are pleased to inform you that we have in our disposition the armed forces we have spared by now.

The Head Quarters of the Ilinden Uprising"


Damian GRUEV, Boris SARAFOV, Atanas LOZANTCHEV

This memorandum was handed to Dr.Kozhuharov, the Bulgarian consul in Bitola,


and transmitted by him to the government in Sofia with report N441 from September 17th, 1903. "

[akritas]

One from that amazing sources regarding Illinden as Presented in European Diplomatic Correspondence

E.g.

61 The American Consul Pericles Lazzaro to the Consulate General and the Embassy
Thessaloniki, September 10th, 1903
[NAUSA, roll 2, vol.1 from July 5, 1902 to February 2, 1910, ff.26r-29r, inclosed in Nos 605 XI].

The case of Kruchevo is typical, because it shows that the tactics of the B[ulgarians] consist in compromising Greek towns, and that the Turks have neither learnt anything, not forgotten any of their old tricks.

Reports show that about 35 Bulg[arian] and Greek villages have been plundered and burned by the T[urkish] troops in the Monastir Vilayet since the recent outbreak. The number of T[urkish] villages treated likewise by the B[ulgarian]s is about 20. Many hundreds of bodies are lying unburied all over the country. Smilevo has had the same fate with Kruchevo, and there also no difference was made between those who had remained loyal to the Gov[ernment] and those who were in sympathy with the rebels.

On Aug. 26th 400 reb[el]s entered the Graeco-Wallachian town of Neveska, near Klissura (Exisou station) on their way they came across a detachment of 150 soldiers, of these 20 only succeeded in escaping, the others, it seems, were killed by the reb[el]s. After ransoming the town the B[ulgarian]s fortified themselves in the stone barracks which are outside Neveska. Four battalions of troops having arrived the next day from Kastoria and Florina, the reb[el]s retreated with hardly any losses, as far as I can make out.

http://www.macedonian-heritage.gr/Of...ts/events.html

[Hellas7]

The 1911 Encyclopedia states in the "Towns" section of Macedonia, that Krushevo was mainly a Vlach inhabited town.


Here are TWO ethnographical maps in which I underlined the city of Krushevo, both the Serbian and Bulgarian maps acknowledge that the populations of this city was VLACH.


http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/341...an19142br1.jpg

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/334...bs19143fa5.jpg


The mighty "Macedonian" uprising was actually not carried out by "Ethnic Macedonians" but by VLACHS who were generally HELLENIZED-Vlachs.

[Tchakalaroff]

Hi everyone, I'm new in this forum, I come from th revolutionary city of Bitola (Monastir) and would like to discuss history with you.. But with a friendly and peacefull tone

Ok, let me start:

Why was Kote Hristov (or how you reffer to him - Kottas Christos) murdered by Karavangelis?

Can anyone tell me that?
Because if you can't I can explain that..

[Orphic_Hymn]

Originally Posted by Tchakalaroff

Hi everyone, I'm new in this forum, I come from th revolutionary city of Bitola (Monastir) and would like to discuss history with you.. But with a friendly and peacefull tone

Ok, let me start:

Why was Kote Hristov (or how you reffer to him - Kottas Christos) murdered by Karavangelis?

Can anyone tell me that?
Because if you can't I can explain that..

Welcome to the forum.
Now since you want to discuss historic issues in a friendly and peacefull manner. The first step would be to actually discuss based on historic facts and not fallacies.

Kapetan Kottas was caught by Ottomans in 1904 and hung in the 'Al Pazar' square of Monastiri on Sep. 1905.
So your suggestion of Karavaggelis killing him is an outrageous fallacy.

[Tchakalaroff]

Originally Posted by Orphic_Hymn

Welcome to the forum.
Now since you want to discuss historic issues in a friendly and peacefull manner. The first step would be to actually discuss based on historic facts and not fallacies.

Kapetan Kottas was caught by Ottomans in 1904 and hung in the 'Al Pazar' square of Monastiri on Sep. 1905.
So your suggestion of Karavaggelis killing him is an outrageous fallacy.

Thanks Orphic for greeting me
Nice being here in your beautifull forum..

You know, I read a lot of history books, and I'm familiar with a lot of facts..
For example I know that we are not related with the ancient macedonians..
We are Slavs that came feom Russia in the 6th centiry and took this land from you.... on this I agree with you...

But about Kote, you must read the memoirs of Pavlos Melas (I have read
both the "Macedonian Struggle" by Karavangelis and the memoirs of Melas)
in the memoires it was written that when Kote was accompagning the greek andarts from Creet to the Monastir villages, he was telling that: "constantly talking that they are neither greeks nor bulgarians, but "makdontsi". In order to find out how does Kote feel and is he reallydevoted to the greek cause, Germanos Karavangelis asked him if he wants to help them likvidate Mitre Vlaot from konomladi...

Kote answered: "No, I wont.. Mitre is a friend of mine...." after that Karavngelis betraded him to the turks (he had very very good connections with them - as we all now)...

The turks gave him a chance: "do you like to lead a turkish army unit against the komitadzhis?"... Kote answered: "go to hell all of you"... And he was hung....

Kote is a very interesting figure... but I think that he is neither a hero for you neither for us..
In 1902 (after being bought bt greek commeetee), he still communicated with iankov (a varchovist leutanant from Zagorichani)...

It wasn't important to him if he works for the VMORO, or for Karavangelis...
The important thing for him was the control of his village Rulia.. Nothing else..