By Marcus A. Templar
This year, Greeks
all over the world are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the
liberation of Macedonia
from the Ottoman yoke. It was an
emotional moment for the inhabitants of Thessaloniki
when they saw the “sky blue-white” flag flying over the White Tower land of Alexander
The Greek Army
entered Thessaloniki
in the early hours of Saturday, October 27, 1912 (Old Style). In a moving editorial, the newspaper Makedonia of Thessaloniki in its Sunday, October 28, 1912
edition expressed the feelings of the Macedonian Greek as follows:
With warm tears, tears of
joy that floods the chest of the slave who recovers his freedom, tears of
gratitude that fulfills his existence for his liberator,
we salute the Greek army that entered the resplendent city of the
Thessalonians.
This brilliant trophy of the
heroic and victorious Greek Army demolishes the cornerstone of the Turkish
state from the Greek Macedonia
And now the pulverized
homeland of Aristotle and Alexander [the Great], whose every hill and every
valley, every corner and every span, are soaked in innocent Greek blood and
former and recent lamentations of the martyrs of the Faith and Fatherland,
throws itself free into the warm and
loving arms of Mother Greece.
Thus, the great epic of 1821
continues.[1]
Because it is
important for the Greeks to know what the Macedonian fighters were facing, I am
offering a summary of five chapters of an upcoming book that I am preparing
under the working title MACEDONIA : Land
of Illusions
Introduction
The Seven Slavic
tribes and Bulgarians appeared in the south Balkans in the 6th
century. Despite the centuries-long attempts
of the neighboring Slavic element to slavonize them, Macedonian Greeks remained
Hellenic (Papazoglu 1957, 4 & 333; 1978, 268). The reason for the failure to slavonize the
Macedonian Greeks was that “the Slavs in the purely Greek provinces [of Byzantium ] did not form
large, homogeneous groups, and they were unable to resist the attraction of a
higher cultural environment” (Dvornik 1970, 42).
In the beginning
of 1902, the Greek Prime Minister, Alexander Zaimis, openly admitted, “the
chief threat to Hellenism in Macedonia
came, not from the Ottoman Turks, but from the Bulgarians” (F. R. Bridge 1976, 91). The continuous political and military
involvement of the Great Powers[2]
officially was intended to alleviate the plight of the Christians under Ottoman
misgovernment. In reality, the same
Powers were interested (and still are) in establishing their political and
military outposts in their client states of the region.
As an antidote to
the political antagonism between the Pan-Slavist movement of St. Petersburg,
Russia and the Western Powers, Macedonian Bulgarian intellectuals found
political recourse in Marxism and Anarchism believing that if those
philosophies were implemented and spread, they would liberate not only
themselves from the Ottomans, but also from the supremacy among the Great
Powers.
By the end of the
19th century, the Macedonian Bulgarian idealists created secret
societies bracing their military groups with thugs and brigands who had
re-invented themselves as patriots and liberators while they covertly continued
their old lifestyle and directly threatened the existence of anything Greek.
The Effects of the Slavic
Awakening in the South Balkans
The Slavic
Awakening in the south Balkans gradually appeared at the end of the 18th
century in Bulgaria , Croatia , and later in the 19th
century in Serbia , and Slovenia . The 19th century was an era of
literary upheaval aka literary awakening in Europe . The Pan-Slavic movements of national
awakenings took place in the mid 19th century at the same time the
communist philosophy was spreading. Those
leading various movements, being idealists, used the literary awakening as the
reason for local activities that developed into national liberation movements.
Two events caused
the concept of a Greater Bulgaria, the creation of the Exarchate and the
Preliminary Treaty of San Stefano. The
re-election of Gregorios VI to the Patriarchic throne in 1867 proved
detrimental to the Patriarchate, as well as to Hellenism of Macedonia.[3] The candidate for the patriarchal throne,
Gregorios VI, in order to fulfill his ambition, asked Count Nikolay Ignatyev,
the Russian Ambassador in Constantinople , for
his support in exchange for a few concessions, one of which was the
establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate.
Patriarch
Gregorios VI was quoted as stating to Count Ignatyev, “With my hands I built a
bridge toward the political independence of the Bulgarians”[4] (Ignatyev
dispatch No. 128, May 14, 1867). Patriarch
Gregorios VI probably thought of an autonomous Bulgarian
Church within the territories between the Balkan Mountain range and Danube River
Three years later
(February 27/ March 11, 1870) and after a couple more Bulgarian and Russian proposals,
Sultan Abdülaziz issued a
decree (fırman), which established
the Bulgarian Exarchate standardizing the rules and regulations on the
technical aspects of the Exarchate. The decree offered the Exarchate jurisdiction
over the whole of Bulgaria
north of the Balkan Mountain range (the old Roman Moesia Inferior), plus the
regions of Sofia and Niš. In
addition, the Exarchate received parts of
the upper Struma valley and the dioceses of Plovdiv
(Philippoupolis) and Sliven
(Sēlymnos), under the banner of the autonomous Greek Church.
One man, Stojan Čomakov,
the Russophobe Bulgarian extremist, who was an influential official in the
Ottoman administration, was behind Article X of the decree that established the Exarchate (Sumner 1933, 567,
568). The articles of the decree were
straight forward, except for article X, which stated that the Bulgarian
Exarchate, “the constitution of which was to be settled by subsequent
regulations, but which was to be in effect independent of the Patriarch, and
was to include all dioceses with a purely Bulgarian population and in addition any other districts two-thirds or more of
whose inhabitants so desired.” In
addition, the decree politically
established the Bulgarian ethnicity for the first time (Sumner 1933, II, passim).
The language of the “two-thirds provision” resulted
in an inexorable and poisonous armed
race between the Exarchate Bulgarians and the Patriarchist Greeks because these
were the two main Christian ethnicities in Macedonia with religious and ethnic
identities that did not always coincide and the statistics were inaccurate (Yosmaoğlu
2006, passim). Besides, the example offered by
the Gevgeli District Governor of the Province of Rumeli
Thus, the unintended consequence of a
well-disposed Patriarch would cost thousands of people’s lives and prove
detrimental to Hellenism and to the Patriarchate itself since much of the prestige
and income were connected to the lands of the Exarchate. Patriarch Gregorios VI either discounted or
overlooked the possibility that the Russians could alter the end goal after
obtaining his approval for the establishment of the Exarchate. Ignatyev describes the problem of the Russian
diplomacy as follows:
The
exarchate, even in its most restraint form, offered a national core [to
the Bulgarians], which
would be free to develop later.… My main concern in the question, which I
struggle with, has always been to provide for the Bulgarians without breaking
with the Greek national body, protecting them from the efforts of the [Roman]
Catholic and Protestant propaganda and also keeping them in the orthodoxy and
our influence (Sumner 1933, 569).[5]
Indeed, on the one hand, the Russians
ascertained that the Bulgarians had a window through which they could obtain
more than the Patriarch had wished. It
was a win-win situation for the Russians and the Sultan, since under pressure
from the Pan-Slavists within the Empire and through the Bulgarian diaspora at Odessa , Kishinev , Bucharest , Belgrade , and St. Petersburg the
Russians increased their influence with the Bulgarians. On the other hand, the Sultan achieved his
goal to play the Bulgarians against the Greeks of Macedonia. At first, he divided them and then he fueled
their discord.
By 1895, the Bulgarians claimed 600 to 700
schools with 25,000 to 30,000 pupils and by 1912 seven bishoprics in Macedonia came
under the jurisdiction of the Exarchate (Stavrianos 1963, 98). But according to Greek sources, by the time of
the Balkan Wars (1913) the Vilayet of Thessaloniki, there were 384 Bulgarian schools
educating 17,777 pupils and 571 Greek schools with 32,534 pupils. In the Vilayet of Monastiri (Bitola ) there were 272 Bulgarian schools with
16,089 pupils, and 432 Greek schools with 25,026 pupils. The Serbs had founded schools in the areas of
Kosovo Vilayet especially in Skopje
and Kumanovo (Bechev 2009, 68).
Because of the
failure of the Constantinople Conference (1876 – 1877), two important conventions took place in 1877 between
Russia and Austria-Hungary Budapest on January 15, 1877 and the other in Reichstadt (present-day Zákupy , Czech
Republic Macedonia as
part of package deal with Russia ,
which wanted to have a kindred Slavic outpost in the Aegean . Under the plan, Austria
would have the military control of Bosnia and Herzegovina
and in exchange, Russia
would receive territories lost in the Crimean War, while Bulgaria would
be independent with additional territories of Dobrudja. Macedonia would be autonomous within the Ottoman Empire . At
that time, the territories of Macedonia
included only the Greek region of Macedonia and the area of Pelagonia
(Monastiri/Bitola, Ohrid areas).
The belief that Ignatyev created Macedonism or he is responsible for
bringing the Bulgarian ethnicity into the foreground is false. It is the result of the misinterpretation of
facts. The artificial ethnicity that
Ignatyev was accused of creating was the Bulgarian, not the Macedonian
Bulgarian. “Ignatyev was neither the
creator of Bulgarian nationalism nor the initiator of the struggle for a Bulgarian Church Russia
wanted had come from St. Petersburg
(Sumner 1933, II, 566-7).
Although at
present, the basis for the Serbian literary language is the Northern Ekavian,
until 1878 the literary language of Serbia
was the Eastern Herzegovinian . Istočno-hercegovački or Eastern Herzegovinian
dialect is spoken in eastern Herzegovina ,
NW Montenegro, the Sandzhak of
Novi Pazar or Raška, eastern Bosnia ,
western Bosnia , Serbian
Krajina, and middle Slavonia . A letter from Pope John VIII in AD 873 to St.
Methodius “reveals the policy of the papacy concerning the ancient Illyricum
and the religious situation in the lands forming the cradle of the Serbians,
later called Raška” (Dovrnik 1970,
38). The Serbs “built the city [Raška]
soon after their conversion to Christianity at the end of the ninth century,…
the center of the Serbian state was then not Duclea [Duklja], but Rascia [Raška], where the bishopric
of Ras was the national religious center” (Dovrnik 1970, 254, 257). Porphyrogenitus refers to it as Ράση - Rasi
(De Administrando Imperio, 32, 53).[6]
For historical,
but also for linguistic reasons, Serbia wanted to expand west to Bosnia and Herzegovina
allowing Bulgaria to expand west as well as to the area of the present day the
Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM).
Due to Gorčakov’s Austro-phobia, the Russians accepted the expansion of
the Austro-Hungarian Empire to lands west of the Drina
River (Bosnia
and Herzegovina ) depriving Serbia
from expanding west and giving Serbia
no choice but to expand south. Austro-Hungarian
(Andrássy) and Russian (Gorčakov) machinations regarding Serbia and Bulgaria,
the two Ottoman controlled Slavic peoples of the south Balkans, generated the
Council of Berlin and all its political and social costs, and pushed both
Serbian and Bulgarian nationalism to compete over the same territory.
The Macedonian Bulgarian regionalism developed
out of their resentment of the struggle between Serbian and Bulgarian
nationalisms. Serb politicians and
ethnographers such as Stojan Novaković, Jovan Cvijić, Aleksandar Belić, et al. argued that the inhabitants
of present day FYROM territories spoke dialects that belonged to the
transitional Serbian dialects, i.e. Torlak dialects.[7] Between 1890 and 1900, Bulgarian governments
sponsored ethnographers to draw maps of Macedonia
to include the territories west of Bulgaria that fit their political
and territorial aspirations (Djordjević
1918, 6).
Vasil Kunčov, one
of the enlisted inventive ethnographers, created a map of a new Macedonia , never
before imagined, allegedly inhabited mostly by Bulgarians. Considering that only a few westerners visited
Macedonia at that time, Bulgaria , assisted by Russia , was free to assert that the
majority of the Macedonians were Bulgarians when in fact they were a medley of
races and nationalities. Ottoman
statistics tied to military taxation were unreliable since most Patriarchist
households registered only one male per household while children and female
residents were completely missing from the equation. That was not true with the Exarchist
households, which were ethnically Bulgarian (Carnegie Report 1914, 28; Yosmaoğlu
2006, passim).
The new map of Macedonia included the Vilayets of Monastiri, Thessaloniki , and the south region of the Vilayet of
Kosovo, and in general the Torlak speaking areas of Serbia . The sole purpose of such effort was the
annexation of the territories northwest, west, and south of Bulgaria , i.e.
the restoration of the Second Bulgarian Empire.
The annexation of Eastern Rumelia boosted Bulgaria’s hope for more territorial
additions thinking that since the Great Powers had tolerated and went along
with the annexation of Eastern Rumelia, Bulgaria had an excellent chance to do
the same with other territories. The subsequent
lands that Bulgaria had on
its annexation list were Thrace ,
Dobrudja, Bosilegrad and Tsaribrod.
The Birth and Development
of the IMRO
In Thessaloniki
on October 23, 1893, inspired by the Carbonari secret revolutionary societies
of early 19th-century Italy, a group of Bulgarian intellectuals ranging from
simple idealists to socialists, revolutionary socialists, and anarchists formed
a secret society under the name Bulgarian
Macedonian Revolutionary Committee (BMRC).[8] Members of the organization could be “any Bulgarian, irrespective
of gender, who is
not compromised by something
wicked” (Lazarov et al. 1993, 218).
The organization
had espoused narodnik socialism
advocating the spreading of political propaganda among the peasants and through
them to the masses in hope that they would bring their awakening and consequently
revolt against the oppressors and upgrade their standard of living, but always
within the socialist sphere. These
political emissaries oftentimes accompanied their message with threats, harassment,
or actual murder.
The political
actions of the organization were based on a dual program which included a
popular revolt against the Ottoman misrule, and after the autonomy or
independence had been accomplished, a social revolution against the propertied
and bourgeois classes of Macedonia
would take place with the help of the brigands of the BRMC. The result would have been the establishment
of a “Social Democracy of Macedonia,” i.e. a People’s Republic. It would happen 14 years before the Russian
Revolution. While Russian politicians
disliked the narodniki, the Bulgarian
political elite considered them as political allies.
The patriotic
sentiment among Bulgarians was high, doing whatever possible to bring the
Bulgarian borders to those of the Treaty of San Stefano and the Exarchate. In 1895, one of the secret societies,
"The Macedo-Adrianople Committee," addressed a letter to the Great
Powers, supposedly representing all inhabitants of Macedonia, advocating
"an autonomous Macedonia, with its capital at Salonika [Thessaloniki], to
be placed under a Governor-General of the predominant ethnicity" (Miller
2009, 444). Since Sofia
had already placed the plan of changing the borders of Macedonia to
its liking, the term “predominant ethnicity” was a self-fulfilling prophesy.
In the beginning
of the 20th century, not only did the leadership of the BMRC
considered themselves Bulgarians, so did all the Slavic-speaking inhabitants of
Macedonia; however, within the Bulgarian domain they thought themselves as
Macedonians. It must be noted that most
of the leadership and membership of the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople
Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) were born and reared in Macedonia proper, i.e. the Greek region of Macedonia plus
the area of Pelagonia in the present day FYROM.
Krste Petkov
Misirkov, designated by the Socialist Yugoslavia as the father of Macedonism, explained the rationale behind the chosen
term Macedonian Slavs (Misirkov 1974,
159). He used “Macedonians” only when
the topic explicitly concerned the Macedonian Bulgarians. He also used “Macedonian Slavs.” Misirkov oftentimes mentioned passim that all other nationalities
living in Macedonia
used an identical geographic designator, “Macedonian,” with or without their
own ethnic designator. Nikola Karev declared
himself Macedonian, in the same manner.
In 1903 in Sofia , Bulgaria
In his interview
with the Greek newspaper, Akropolis,
Nikola Karev identified his ethnicity as Bulgarian, but then he said that he
was a Macedonian (Utrinski vesnik,
July 22, 2000, Archive No 329). Mrs. Elefterija Vambakovska of the Institute of National
History
The adoption of a
new identity was deemed necessary. One
reason was that the new identity was to be used effectively in order to start
the agitation among the Slavic populations of the region of Macedonia in
order to set the foundation of a separate Slavic ethnicity other than
Bulgarian. In addition, by separating
their own ethnicity from that of the Bulgarians of the Principality and calling
themselves Macedonians, they hoped
that all nationalities of Macedonia
would rally behind the movement, but they also hoped that the Great Powers
would bite the bait and support the plight of the “Macedonians.”
Characteristic of
the political reaction to the Macedonian Bulgarian thinking abroad was the response
of Rostkovski, the Russian Consulate in Monastiri (Bitola ), who often said,
"The Bulgarians think they are the only people in the world with brains,
and that all others are fools. Whom do
they hope to deceive with their articles in Pravo
and other papers saying that the Macedonians want Macedonia for the Macedonians? We know very well what they want!” (Misirkov 1974), 44).
The developed
regionalism of the IMRO had been commensurate with its members’ political
affiliation to socialism and anarchism. The political aims of the organization were
also different from those of the Principality’s. The implementation of their political
ideology, along with their desire for the liberation of Macedonia from
bondage, boosted their regionalism, which translated into a new identity, the Macedonian Slav.
The regionalism
furthermore was deemed necessary because under the name Macedonian Slavs, the Slav speakers who lived in Macedonia could
disassociate from those Bulgarians of the Principality. Misirkov had explicitly argued against such
practice as being deceptive (Misirkov 1974, 36-85 passim). The event that
boosted the argument of the Macedonian Bulgarians to differentiate themselves
from those of the Principality was the adoption by Bulgaria of the Eastern Bulgarian
dialect as the basis for the literary language of the Principality at the end
of the 19th century.
The objective of the IMRO leadership of an
autonomous and eventually independent Macedonia would be noble if their
ultimate motives were noble. The IMRO leadership
realized that it would be an uphill battle to topple a well-established and
diplomatically recognized Bulgarian Principality’s polity. In addition, the IMRO realized that it would
also be an impossible task to attempt to institute a second Bulgarian state
under the banner of social democracy. At
the beginning of the 20th century, at a time that social democracy,
revolutionary or not, was under careful scrutiny of European regimes, a social democratic
Macedonia would be struck down before it started for fear of spreading to Europe
threatening regime changes. The French
Commune government in the spring of 1871 was too close and the Russian revolt
of 1905 served as a warning.
At that time, two
other revolutionary factions appeared, the Macedonian
Supreme Committee in Sofia and a Thessaloniki based
smaller group of conservatives, the Bulgarian
Secret Revolutionary Brotherhood. By
1902, the latter was incorporated into the IMRO, and its members proved very
significant in the decision-making of the organization. They are the ones that pushed the Ilinden
Uprising, although they did not participate in it. They later became the core of the IMRO
right-wing faction under Sarafov. In
1907, a communist IMRO member, Todor Panica, at the order of Jane Sandanski, assassinated
almost all IMRO’s right wing leadership.
Boris Sarafov,
one of the Supremist (Verhovists) leaders, had visited almost all European
Capitals and launched a marketing campaign for his cause. He gave interviews for the Bulgarian Committee,
and paid off a great number of the European mass media. In addition, he established the Balkan Committee in London , which in fact was a Bulgarian
committee strongly advocating pro-Bulgarian views. This Balkan Committee was managed by the
Buxton brothers and included some influential staunch supporters such as Henry
Noel Brailsford, Morgan Philips Price, and the
correspondent of the Times of London, James David Bourchier. The Balkan
Committee sent its English representatives to various locations of Macedonia to encourage
and assist the Bulgarian members of the IMRO.
Simultaneously, the representatives of the Balkan Committee in the Balkans were in continuous communication
through the English Consuls. Because of the
great influence that the leadership of the Balkan
Committee had in the English governments, it succeeded in appointing
Bulgarophiles as consuls in the Balkans (Karavagelis 1958, 23-27; Dakin 1966,
150-1). Even when foreign humanitarian
aid was sent and distributed by missionaries such as Lady Thompson, the British
and Foreign Bible Society, and others after the Ilinden Uprising, the aid was
distributed only to the Exarchists in collaboration with the Bulgarian komitadis
(Karavagelis 1958, 26; Dakin 1966, 157 fn 35).
The Myth of Liberation: 1903 -
The “People’s Republic of Krushevo”
On St. Elijah Day
of Configuration (July 20/August 2, 1903) in the town of Krushevo , the IMRO staged a revolt declaring
independence from the Ottoman yoke. The
instrument of independence is known as the Manifesto or Proclamation of
Krushevo and it was directed toward the Turkish population of the area. It must be noted that the president of the
ephemeral Republic of Krushevo, Nikola Karev, Kirov’s cousin, was a well-known member
of the Bulgarian Workers’ Social Democratic Party, i.e. communist (Brown 2003,
190, 209; Gawrych 1986, 308).
In 1924, Nikola
Kirov-Majski published a book and a theatrical play, Ilinden, and in the second act, second scene of the play, the
character of the “teacher” reads the manifesto to Nikola Karev, the President
of the Krushevo Republic Skopje promotes as original is in conflict with what Kirov states in his book published in 1935, which in fact
is Kirov ’s
diary, of the 10 day Ilinden Uprising, versus the book published in 1924, which
was the basis for a theatrical play.
According to
Kirov-Majski, on July 24, 1903, Taško
P. Hristov, a parliamentarian, took the original document to the Turkish
village of Adalci
Concerning the
events of the Uprising, the Bulgarian komitadjis killed innocent Greeks, burned
and pillaged only Greek houses, and in general destroyed only Greek properties
(Ballas 1962, 37-66; Naltsas 1958, 18-22).
The Ottomans rushed an Army of nine Infantry Battalions, three Cavalry
Companies, 18 artillery pieces (four Mountain and 14 Field guns), in order to
crush the revolt by looting and burning the Greek households that the
Bulgarians did not have a chance to burn, and killing innocent civilians[9] (Naltsas
1962,55; Greek Consul Dispatch 1903/ No 604).
Over and above the regular forces, the başıbozuk, an irregular force, the Grey Wolves of the period, came
to Krushevo in order to aid the ungodly work of the Ottoman Army (Naltsas 1962,
55).
The toll of
destruction inflicted by the Bulgarian revolutionaries and the incoming Turkish
Army was 366 houses and 203 shops, all belonging to Greeks and Greek speaking
Vlachs. In total, 41 innocent Greek
civilians were murdered with many more missing.
Some were murdered outside the town as they tried to escape and others
less fortunate were buried alive by their captors. The names of the victims are enumerated in
the Greek Consul’s dispatch.
Despite the fact
that the vast majority of the victims (and their properties) were Greeks and
Greek speaking Vlachs (Ballas 1962, 37-66; Naltsas 1958, 18-22; Greek Consul Dispatch 1903/ No 604), the
FYROM historiography has re-baptized the victims Vlachs, Albanians, and
“Macedonians” (Kirov 1935, passim;
Brown 2003, 17, 79, 81-82, 96, 225).
Thus, if the
FYROM historiographers call the Greek victims “Macedonians,” their contention
that the ancient Macedonians were not ethnically Greeks is invalid. If on the other hand, the historiographers
call the Bulgarian villains “Macedonians,” they admit guilt and responsibility
for the atrocities of the “liberators” of Krushevo during the life of their
ephemeral republic. The Preamble of the
current komitadji state, the FYROM, draws its legitimacy from the Republic of Krushevo
But how is it
possible for the villains and the victims of the Ilinden Uprising to belong to
the same ethnic group? Which ethnicity
does the FYROM government honor in the Krushevo Memorial? Looking at the names of the honorees, one
cannot but conclude that the government of the FYROM honors the villains, the
Bulgarian bandit-rebels, the thugs, and the criminal elements re-naming them
“Macedonians” who killed innocent civilians and destroyed their properties.
The behavior and
reaction of the Greek political elite between 1878 and 1904 was at best
inexcusable. To this effect was Pavlos
Melas’ message to Bishop Karavangelis “I have read your report [to the
appropriate people] at the Ministry [of Foreign Affairs]. These people here are asleep. What can I do?” [10] (Karavagelis
1958, 17). The importance of Macedonia was remarked by Pavlos Melas to George
Sourlas, the director of schools at Nymphaion, "Macedonia
is the lung of Greece ;
without it the rest of Greece
would be condemned to death" (Dakin 1966, 2n).
Indifference, negligence, procrastination,
and sketchiness employed by the Greek political elite and the bureaucrats of the Greek Ministry
of Foreign Affairs (MFA) only impeded the work of the Greek resistance against
the Bulgarians in Macedonia Macedonia
While the
Bulgarian komitadjis were well funded by the Bulgarian government and were well
armed and trained by Bulgarian officers, the Macedonian Greeks had nothing of
the kind. The Macedonian Greeks
requested funding, training, and moral support from the leadership of Greece and the
Patriarchate and the only response they received was “patience” (Karavangelis
1958, 15).
What makes the
matter worse is the fact that the weapons the komitadjis used to murder Greeks
were bought in Greek markets and military warehouses of the Kingdom of Greece Macedonia
by Greek mule drivers or αγωγιάτες (Naltsas
1958, 12; Ballas 1962, 40). On at least
one occasion, one of the chief komitadjis, Vasil Tsakalarov, went in person to Athens to buy weapons (Karavagelis
1958, 12).
That Macedonia
remained ethnically, socially, ecclesiastically, and linguistically Greek is
because of the determination, devotion to Hellenism, and patriotism of its own
sons and daughters and their brave Cretan brethren who came to their assistance,
not because of the current Greek political elite. Only when individuals and organizations
exerted pressure on the consequent Greek governments did Greece start
supporting the struggle for survival of the Macedonian Greeks (Naltsas 1958,
13; Dakin 1966, 46/fn16, 35/fn34, 142, 173, 179/fn 118-119, etc.).
The IMRO made political
bedfellows with the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), aka Young Turks,
whom they assisted in their revolution of 1908.
During the WWI, members of the IMRO fought as part of Bulgaria ’s 11th
Infantry Division demonstrating their brutality that surpassed even the cruelty
of the başıbozuk forces. They exhibited similar
brutality against their internal and external foes, whether as part of a power
struggle or a mere antagonism, turning the constant assassinations into a war
of extermination which lasted about 40 years.
Other members participated in terrorist activities killing
indiscriminately the same citizens they theoretically defended and destroying
properties of the same people they purportedly protected. During WWI, the IMRO as an organization seems
to have faded away. In fact, its
leadership was as a chameleon constantly modifying its doctrine and means of
delivery, but not its goal.
In the 1920’s, the IMRO established itself as such a
formidable force in Bulgaria that it effectively controlled the region of Pirin
becoming a state within the state in the strategic southwest corner of
Bulgaria. The organization used their
controlling district as their staging area for raids against Serbia and Greece . Under pressure, Bulgaria ’s
Prime Minister Stamboliyski signed the Niš
Agreement on March 23, 1923 under which Bulgaria
would undertake the obligation to stop the IMRO from raiding Serbian lands in
exchange for Serbia ’s
support of Bulgaria ’s claim over
Western Thrace at the expense of Greece .
As already mentioned, the IMRO became
known for its brutality. To understand
the brutality of the IMRO bandits, one has to know that in Bulgaria Macedonia ’s
autonomy, the IMRO participated in the
coup d’état against Stamboliyski and his legally elected government. The latter’s stance on the maintenance of Macedonia ’s
status quo was unbearable to IMRO’s leadership.
Soon after the coup and Stamboliyski’s return to civilian life (June 14, 1923), IMRO agents captured him and his
brother at their farm in Slavovica, near Pazardžik. In an indication of their wrath, the
assassins tortured him and his brother, cut off his right hand that signed the Niš Agreement, stabbed him 60 times, and decapitated both before
burying them (Jelavich 1984, 2, 170).
How to Create an Artificial Political Ethnogenesis
In pursuing their
goal for an autonomous and eventually independent Macedonia
under the IMRO, its leadership negotiated
with Comintern in Vienna . On May 6, 1924, the IMRO came to an agreement
under which the USSR would
assist them in the creation of a Balkan Federation uniting all parts of Macedonia in exchange for the IMRO’s services of
destabilizing Bulgaria , Greece , and Serbia . The Agreement of the two parties was
published in the Vienna
newsletter La Federation Balkanique on
July 15, 1924 (Stavrianos 1942, 46). In Vienna , after some internal
dissention, the left wing leadership of the IMRO founded a purely communist
organization, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (United) (IMRO-U)
as a subsidiary of the Bulgarian Communist Party (Bechev 2009, xxx). The founder and first leader of the Bulgarian
Communist Party, Dimitar Blagoev, modified the idea of a Balkan Federation on a
socialist basis, i.e. a gradual rapprochement of existing pro-communist regimes
(Stavrianos 1942, 35). Dimitar Vlahov, being
himself a communist, pursued the same line as well. During the same period, the two prominent
right wing leaders of the IMRO, Protogerov and Aleksandrov, were assassinated
leaving Mihajlov as the only right wing leader.
In the meantime, in 1922 Bulgarian émigrés from Greek
Macedonia affiliated with the IMRO organized the pro-Bulgarian Macedonian Political Organization (MPO)
(re-baptized in 1952 as the Macedonian
Patriotic Organization) in Pennsylvania , Ohio , Indiana , Michigan , and Illinois
and they contributed large sums of money
to the IMRO. The MPO directed all
resources to educating their American-born descendants “in spirit of the
Macedonian aspiration which is the liberation of Macedonia ” (Roucek 1971, 157). They were and still are followers of the
Mihailov doctrine, which according to the Skopje Academician, Ivan Katardjiev,
stood for the establishment of an independent Macedonian state, which meant a
Macedonian state of the Bulgarians in Macedonia .
In the 1930s, under pressure from the Greek and
Serbian governments and the threat of war with Greece , the Bulgarian Prime
Minister, General Kimon Georgiev, grasped the nettle and destroyed IMRO’s stronghold
in the area of Pirin and captured more than 300 leaders of the IMRO and
armaments that could fully equip an infantry division.
The IMRO understood
that all other ethnic groups living in Macedonia, i.e. Greeks, Jews, Albanians,
Vlachs, Turks, etc. could unconsciously be used as pawns in IMRO’s plans since,
as socialists, the IMRO had embraced equality and fraternity, and what was left
was liberty which they advocated. It is
what the slogans “Autonomous Macedonia” and “Macedonia for the Macedonians” were
all about (Atanasoff 1944, 104). Article
I of the IMRO Constitution stated, “The purpose of the Macedonian Revolutionary
Committee is to gain complete political autonomy for Macedonia ” (Roucek 1971, 151). But while equality and fraternity meant for the
IMRO the Bulgarization of all Macedonian nationalities, for the Young Turks it meant
the Turkification of the same (E. H. W. 1945, 511).
IMRO-U’s determination,
constant political maneuvering, continuous political lobbying, and unholy but appropriate
alliances led to the decision of the Central Committee of the Comintern to ensue,
in support of their fellow communists, the recognition of a third Slavic ethnic
group in the south Balkans in addition to the already existing Serbs and Bulgarians. Subsequently, the birth of the “Macedonian
Slav” nation took place on January 11, 1934 (Vlahov 1970, 357; Bechev 2009,
xxx-xxxi). To that effect, Stalin’s understanding
of the national and colonial question, his definitions of nation and
colonialism along with the political subservience of the Socialist Worker’s
Party of Greece (SWPG), aka, Communist Party of Greece (CPG), were essential
(Stalin 1913 and 1934; Stavridis 1953).
Joseph Stalin, a
Marxist, and the Bolsheviks' expert on nationhood considered that all colonies
and dependent territories have the right to separate completely from the State
with which they are connected and to form an independent State; in the same way,
the possibility of territorial annexations is ruled out (Stalin 1934, passim).
Per Stalin, a nation is not racial, nor is it tribal, but a historically
constituted community of people. Since
nations are autonomous unions of persons regardless of their ethnic background,
ethnicity is not essentially connected with territory (Stalin 1913, passim).
Subsequently, the fact that Macedonia ’s population was
ethnically heterogeneous did not matter.
The separate “Macedonian” ethnicity that the communists saw in the
beginning of the 20th century “was faithful to Marxist theories on
nationhood, as a product of the advent of capitalism to Macedonia [sic] in the
19th century rather a primordial fact” (Bechev 2009, 235). Therefore, the IMRO believed that Macedonia and Thrace ought to be aided by the
communists in their effort towards independence (Laski 1968, 218).
Nikolaos
Sargologos, the representative of the SWPG, voted for the resolution that
recognized the “Macedonian Slav” ethnicity without the authorization of the
Central Committee of the SWPG (Stavridis 1953, 178). That put the Greek Communists in a very
difficult position because such a vote strengthened the Bulgarian Communist
Party while it weakened the Greek. The
Yugoslav delegation, realizing that such a recognition went against the
interests of their national party, voted against it. Besides, important members of the
Central Committee such as Yannis Kordatos, Thomas Apostolidis, Lefteris
Stavridis, et al. strongly disagreed with Sargologos’ vote (Stavridis 1953,
180-183). Knowing the consequences, Sargologos, instead
of returning to Athens , pocketed US$7,500 that
the Comintern gave him for his support of the SWPG and emigrated with his
German wife to Chicago , Illinois
Just before WWII
and after the Maček - Cvetković Agreement, Macedonists wanted to renegotiate
the borders of their Banate by splitting their “Macedonia” from the rest of
Vardar Banovina while inserting the recognition of their “ancient Macedonian”
ancestry. The objections of the Serb
classicist, Nikola Vulić, that the addition into the history of “ancient
Macedonian” ancestry was dishonest and deceiving, since a Slavic nation has no
ancient Macedonian Greek ancestry, were to no avail (Katardjiev 1986, 376-377).
It is ironic that during the Macedonian Struggle the Bulgarian komitadjis did not recognize the
Greek character of Macedonia
even though it was inhabited by the descendants of Alexander’s the Great
Macedonians. At the instructions of
Imperial Russia and its Pan-Slavists, the Bulgarians refused to recognize the
birthright of the Macedonian Greeks to their own land (Ballas 1962, 47). Andrija Radović’s indications of the
linguistic sacrifices of the Croats in the name of a South Slavic union were
also ineffective. In Radović’s opinion,
what the Macedonists wanted was
ethnocentric and wrong (Katardjiev 1986,
381-382).
While Vulić built
his arguments on ancient history, Radović, a staunch unionist of Serbia and Montenegro ,
based his assertion on the compromise that the Croatian “Illyrian Movement”
successfully advocated for the name of a united South Slavic state (Yugoslavia ). The Croats had accepted the Štokavian / -ije
dialect as their own language instead of the Zagreb Kajkavian, choosing a
unifying factor over a divisive one, while the Macedonists favored the opposite. [11] Later in 1944, with the Yugoslavian Communist
Party in power, the Macedonists did
exactly what they had wanted to do in 1939.
The People’s Republic of “Macedonia ” within the Yugoslav
federation was a fact.
Marxism was the
basis for the establishment of the Socialist Yugoslavia as interpreted by Aleksandar
Rankovic and later by Edvard Kardelj. Although
Tito was blamed that created a new philosophy, he clarified,
Titoism
as a separate ideological line does not exist .... To put it as an
ideology would be stupid .... it is simply that we have
added nothing to Marxist-Leninist doctrine. We
have only applied that doctrine in consonance
with our situation. Since there is nothing new, there is
no new ideology. Should Titoism become an ideological line, we would
become revisionists; we would have renounced Marxism.
We are Marxists; I am a Marxist, and therefore I
cannot
be a Titoist (Dedijer 1953:432).
With the exception
of Greece ,
the outcome of WWII gave the communist parties of the Balkans the opportunity to
set the foundations of the Balkan federation, oscillating between the socialist
and communist understanding of such federation.
The difference is that in the socialist view the territories of each
country would remain the same forming a gradual rapprochement of existing
communist regimes. In the communist
view, Macedonia
would form a new country and the remaining territories of each country would
form a new country, the Balkan Soviet
Socialist Federation. The last one
would include Greece , but
with borders in Thessaly .
During the Greek civil
war, former members of the IMRO fought in units known as the Slavo-Macedonian
National Liberation Movement, aka SNOF, having Bulgarian commanding officers
and political commissars or politruk
as part of the Greek communist units of ELAS-EAM (Mazower
2000, 49–50). They were
responsible for the kidnapping of about 28,000 Greek children from all over Greece
as documented in the U.S. Congress (HR 514/1950) and the UN (UNGA Resolutions
193/1948 and 288/1949).
Upon defeat of
the communist forces, the members of SNOF, while leaving Greece for Yugoslavia , intimidated the
Slavophone population telling them that when the Greek Army comes to their
area, they would kill them all. Those
who believed them left with their families for Yugoslavia . But not all the Slavophones fell for the
communist trap. Those Slavophones who
stayed back were rewarded the same protection that all citizens of Greece
enjoyed.
Conclusion
God
helps those who help themselves. Σὺν Ἀθηνᾷ καὶ σὺ χεῖρα κίνει.[12]
One hundred years
have passed since Macedonia
returned to Mother Greece. The
Macedonian Struggle of Greece continues against the descendants of the
komitadjis. More than one hundred years
later the aims of the modern komitadjis are the same, to bring Macedonia under
their control.
In the past, politicians
and diplomats have used deceptive arguments in order to exploit unsuspecting
Clergy as their tool to their machinations at the expense of national interests. If politicians were sure about the
earnestness of their intentions, they should make their case directly to the Greek
people. In
the year 2012, the danger to Greece
still does not come from Turkey ,
but from the descendants of the Bulgarian komitadjis.
At present, the
same countries, which in the mid 19th century created the problem
known as the Macedonian Question for
their own political reasons, are offering their services to solve the problem
by implementing their past failed foreign policies. Support on the name issue offered to the
FYROM by political parties and individuals should not surprise anyone. They follow Stalin’s prescription.
While the EU and
NATO pressure Greece to compromise with Skopje on the name issue, Skopje has
launched a deceptive all out political and media attack utilizing its modern Sarafovs
i.e. the United “Macedonian” Diaspora
(UMD) winning the hearts and minds of foreign journalists (paying them, as
well), governments (lobbying and donating money to politicians’ campaigns), and
the common folk. They work as the Narodniki had done more a century ago
following Marxism to the T.
The modern Narodniki give precious time and
advantage to the FYROM, which hopes that even if the country is forced to compromise
on its name, the most valuable assets that communism, i.e. Marxism through
Edvard Kardelj, provided to them, the so-called ethnic identity that did not
exist before 1934 and language, unheard of before 1944, would not be touched. In Skopje ’s
prevailing opinion, the ethnic identity of a Slavic nation as “Macedonian” is the
threshold to future territorial claims in spite of any present agreement on the
country’s name. “The standardization of
the Macedonian[sic] language, the creation of an autocephalous Macedonian [sic]
Orthodox Church and the new interpretations of history reinforced” the “Macedonian”
identity (Lampe and Mazower 2004, 112). The
Macedonian Struggle is here to stay,
regardless of how modern politicians see it.
Endnotes
[1] Κυριακή, ΚΗ’ [28]
Οκτωβρίου 1912.
Με θερμά δάκρυα, δάκρυα της
χαράς εκείνης, πού πλυμηρεί τα στήθη δούλου ανακτώντος την ελευθερίαν του, και
δάκρυα της ευγνωμοσύνης εκείνης που κατακλήζει όλην του την ύπαρξιν, δια τον
ελευθερωτήν του, χαιρετίζομεν τον ελληνικόν στρατόν εξερχόμενον εις την
περίλαμπρον των Θεσσαλονικέων πόλιν.
Το λαμπρόν τούτο τρόπαιον του
γεναίου και νικηφόρου ελληνικού στρατού κατακρυμνήζει απο της ελληνικής
Μακεδονίας τον ακρογωνιαίον λίθον του Τουρικού κράτους. Του κράτους εκείνου, το οποίον, ως τα
βασίλεια των αρχαίων τεράτων ιδρύετο επί στρώματος οστέων. Του κράτους εκείνου, το οποίον κατήντησε
συνώνυμον πάσης βαρβαρότητος και φρηκαλεώτητος.
Του κράτους εκείνου, το οποίον
κρατούν εις την μίαν χείρα τον δαυλόν του εμπρησμού και εις άλλην το
φάσγανον του δολοφόνου, έκαιε και εσφάγιαζε την ζωήν και την τιμήν μας, την
πίστην και τον εθνισμόν μας, τα ιερά και τα όσιά μας.
Και τώρα η κονιορτοποιημένη
πατρίς του Αριστοτέλους και του Αλεξάνδρου, της οποίας κάθε λόφος και κάθε
κοιλάς, κάθε γωνία και κάθε σπιθαμή, είνε ποτισμένη με αθώον ελληνικόν αίμα,
και έναυλος και εναγχος από τάς οιμωγάς μαρτύρων της Πίστεως και της Πατρίδος,
ελευθέρα πλέον ριπτεται εις την θερμήν, την στοργικήναγκάλην της Μητρός
Ελλάδος.
Ούτω συνεχίζεται η μεγάλη
εποποιία του 21.
[2] In the
19th and early 20th century in Europe, Great Powers were
the UK , Germany , Austria-Hungary ,
France , and Russia . The Ottoman Empire
had declined as a Great Power.
[3]
Patriarch Gregorios VI was elected for the first time on September 26, 1835,
but the Sultan dismissed him on February 20, 1840. He was re-elected for the second time on
February 10, 1867 in order to resign on June 10, 1871.
[4] “Je
bâtis de mes mains, un pont à l' indépendance politique des Bulgares.”
[5] "L'exarchat, même dans sa forme la plus
restrainte, offrait un noyau national qu'on serait libre de développer
ultérieurement."… " Ma principale préoccupation dans la question, qui
se débattait, a toujours ete de procurer aux bulgares, sans rompre avec les
grecs, un corps national en les préservant des efforts de la propagande
catholique et protestante et en les conservant aussi à l'orthodoxie et a notre
influence."
[6] This area is called Old Serbia by
Serbs. It includes the territory,
which was the heart of medieval Serbia ,
i.e. Raška (Sandžak), Kosovo and Metohija and the present day FYROM (except
Pelagonia, which is Macedonia ). Sometimes Old Serbia includes Montenegro .
[7] Torlak
dialects (Krašovački, Svrljiš, Lužnički, Vranje, Prizren, Kumanovo Trŭn (Breznik), Belogradčik), are
transitional between Serbian and Bulgarian).
Of them, Bulgarians consider as Bulgarian those dialects that were
spoken inside the borders of Bulgaria
before 1918, namely the dialects around Belogradčik, western of Berkovica,
around Caribrod, Trŭn, Breznik, and Bosilegrad, known as Belogradčik-Trŭn
dialect. On the other, Serbian dialects
are considered those spoken west of the previously mentioned ones around
Knjaževac, Pirot, Leskovac, and Vranje.
Some linguist argue that the Torlak dialects constitute a separate
Slavic linguistic group. The dialect of Skopje is positioned
between Prizren and Kumanovo dialects.
[8] The BMRC
changed a number of names before winding up with the name IMRO.
[9] The names of the victims, their destroyed properties,
their allegiance and other details are recorded in the report of the Greek
Consul in Monastiri (Bitola
[10] «Διάβασα τήν ἐκθεσί σου στο ὑπουργεῖο. Μά ἐδῶ κοιμοῦνται. Τί νά σοῦ κάνω ἐγώ;»
[11] What
Radović meant was that the Croats had adopted the Slavonian Ijekavian
sub-dialect of the Što dialect as
their literary language giving up the “Kaj proper” dialect, which is spoken in
the areas between Zagreb and Hungary . Croats living in South Slovenia and western Croatia speak the south Slovenian Kaj
whereas the Dalmatian Ikavian is spoken in Dalmatia, northwestern Herzegovina , and central Bosnia . The Ča dialects (Ča – jekav, Ča – ikav, Ča -
ikavo-ekavian, Ča – ekav, Što - Čakavian – Ikavian) are spoken in Istria and
the islands of the Adriatic Sea .
[12] Ἀνὴρ πλούσιος Ἀθηναῖος μεθ' ἑτέρων τινῶν ἔπλει. Καὶ δὴ χειμῶνος σφοδροῦ γενομένου καὶ τῆς νηὸς περιτραπείσης,
οἱ μὲν λοιποὶ πάντες διενήχοντο, ὁ δὲ Ἀθηναῖος παρ' ἕκαστα τὴν Ἀθηνᾶν
ἐπικαλούμενος μυρία ἐπηγγέλλετο, εἰ περισωθείη. Εἷς δέ τις τῶν συν νεναυαγηκότων
παρανηχόμενος ἔφη πρὸς αὐτόν· Σὺν Ἀθηνᾷ καὶ σὺ χεῖρα κίνει.
(Αἲσωπος - Ἀνήρ Ναυαγός).
A
wealthy Athenian sailed with
others. And after
severe weather struck, and after
the ship was overthrown everyone else swam trying
to save themselves, the wealthy man kept praying to Athena. He was promising myriad things to Athena once
he was saved asking for Athena’s intervention.
One of the shipwrecked men went next to him and
said: Along with prayers to Athena move your hands.
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