Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood - Anastasia Karakasidou

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  • Soldier of Macedon
    Senior Member
    • Sep 2008
    • 13670

    Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood - Anastasia Karakasidou

    Here are some excerpts taken from a book written by Anastasia Karakasidou, a descendant of Turkish-speaking Christians that were settled in the modern Greek state during the 1920's. The author of the book had travelled to some regions in Greek-occupied Macedonia and recorded interviews and events concerning the local "Slavic language" in the region and the people who spoke it, the Macedonians. For her efforts to expose some of the lies of 'Greek' history and society in Greek-occupied Macedonia she had the publishing of her book initially declined and even endured death threats made by Greek nationalists for her apparent treachery against the modern Greek state.

    Those present-day inhabitants of Assiros who are descendants of Guvezna’s Slavic-speakers conceive of and conduct themselves as nothing less than Greek citizens and full-fledged members of the nation of Hellenes; they maintain strong convictions that Macedonia is Greek and some believe that they themselves are the Greek descendants of Alexander the Great. Yet they do not call themselves Macedonians. Some may have considered themselves Macedonians in the past and several referred to their former Slavic language as Macedonian(Makedhonika). Page 22
    So the Macedonians of Gostovo/Guvezna who speak the local Macedonian language are now full-fledged Grkomani, no suprise there, but more interesting, they do not call themselves Macedonians now that they are Grkomani, although they did in the past prior to becoming 'Greeks'. And even still, they (Grkomani) refer to the local language as Macedonian.
    I leave the issue of the cultural or ethnic identity of these migrant settlers open, for while their descendants claimed that they had been Greek, other evidence suggests that they may have been Hellenized Vlachs who spoke Greek………..As one descendant told me:

    Our grandfather’s father came from Trikala. There are Vlachs there. All of them there from the mountains are Vlachs. The Trikaliotes have strange words, they speak differently. From Trikala, they say they are all Vlachs. Our grandfather spoke no Macedonian (Makedhonika). He only spoke Turkish. He had a mill in Balaftsa (Kolhikon). They spoke Macedonian there. Page 50-51
    Even the Vlach Grkomani know the language as Macedonian.
    As a descendant of an old Palehora put it:
    My uncle married a woman from Vissoka (Present-day Ossa). She was a Bulgarian-speaker(voulgharofoni). She spoke Macedonian (Makedhonika). Bulgarian is a different language. She spoke Greek as well. And my mother, my father, and my mother-in-law all spoke Macedonian. It was the custom (ethimo) here. We were used to it. We call the aunt (thia) “tsino” and the water (nero) “voda”. Page 70-71
    Have a look at the level of confusion even a regular Greek has to endure just to ensure he stays within the rules of the anti-Macedonian aspect of 'Hellenism'. She was a "Bulgarian" speaker, she spoke "Macedonian", but "Bulgarian" is a different language The simple explanation here would have been for him to say she speaks Macedonian which is different to Bulgarian...........Nevertheless, at least among all that smoke, a regular Greek still notes that Macedonian and Bulgarian are different languages. I wonder, how many other 'Greeks' speak Macedonian as an 'ethimo'?
    A man from the village of Xiloupolis, raised by his Slavic-speaking grandmother, asserted the he spoke only Macedonian (Makedhonika) until he began Greek primary school. He claimed that his mother had been obliged to go to night school in the 1930’s for Greek language lessons while she was pregnant with him. “The Macedonian language is lost,” he told me. “It has vanished. What a pity.” Other voices, sometimes public, often private, were more militant. One of the few elderly Assiriotes to speak directly about the Macedonian issue maintained that a certain village leader “used to say in the 1930’s that the Macedonian nation (Makedhoniko ethnos) is lost.” “Don’t listen to what the politicians say,” he told me. “They are themselves from Macedonian villages. What do you think the Langadhas area was?” Page 74
    Some familiar stories for much of our Macedonian brethren in the south.

    The last story always stands out as one of the most moving. The author had previously interviewed the old lady Pashkalina, where she was provided her account on certain matters. When the author conducted a follow-up interview, there was a significant change in the story of the old lady, here is the reason why:
    During our conversation, I raised the question that her previous accounts had provoked in my mind. In response, she recounted her story for me once again, only this time with significant alterations in certain details. I asked Paskhalina why her previous accounts had differed from this third version. She replied that all these years she had been afraid to tell the truth, for fear of recriminations. Paskhalina spoke “Bulgarian” when she was growing up in Ambar-Koy. But the “Bulgarian” she spoke, she claimed, is not the same as the Bulgarian spoken by her relatives who now live in Bulgaria. Paskhalina told me that she met a man in Veroia and they spoke the same language. They communicated without any problem. Paskhalina also communicated well with people from Liti……..........Guvezna was called “Gostovo” in “her language”. Paskhalina’s father’s last name in Ambar-Koy was Galtsanoff, but he later adopted a Greek surname. Page 129-30
    Even this poor old lady knew that the language spoken by her relatives who had moved to Bulgaria is not the same as the language she speaks, which can only be Macedonian (Makedonski, Makedonika).
    In the name of the blood and the sun, the dagger and the gun, Christ protect this soldier, a lion and a Macedonian.
  • osiris
    Senior Member
    • Sep 2008
    • 1969

    #2
    During our conversation, I raised the question that her previous accounts had provoked in my mind. In response, she recounted her story for me once again, only this time with significant alterations in certain details. I asked Paskhalina why her previous accounts had differed from this third version. She replied that all these years she had been afraid to tell the truth, for fear of recriminations. Paskhalina spoke “Bulgarian” when she was growing up in Ambar-Koy. But the “Bulgarian” she spoke, she claimed, is not the same as the Bulgarian spoken by her relatives who now live in Bulgaria. Paskhalina told me that she met a man in Veroia and they spoke the same language. They communicated without any problem. Paskhalina also communicated well with people from Liti……..........Guvezna was called “Gostovo” in “her language”. Paskhalina’s father’s last name in Ambar-Koy was Galtsanoff, but he later adopted a Greek surname. Page
    reading the book a few years ago, this was the passage that struck me most, proof of the fear that many macedonians felt in occupied macedonia.

    Comment

    • Bratot
      Senior Member
      • Sep 2008
      • 2855

      #4
      The purpose of the media is not to make you to think that the name must be changed, but to get you into debate - what name would suit us! - Bratot

      Comment

      • Risto the Great
        Senior Member
        • Sep 2008
        • 15658

        #5
        "The refugees created the national homogeneity of our country"
        If this is indeed the case, then it can logically be deduced the national homogeneity only ever potentially existed from the 1930's onwards. In reality, the 1960's ... enough time to wash away the Turkisms from public consumption.

        But I do take into account the Metropolitan's statement about "IF Greece exists today as a homogeneous ethnos". He would have been reminded of the real Macedonian identity very often in Lerin.
        Risto the Great
        MACEDONIA:ANHEDONIA
        "Holding my breath for the revolution."

        Hey, I wrote a bestseller. Check it out: www.ren-shen.com

        Comment

        • Soldier of Macedon
          Senior Member
          • Sep 2008
          • 13670

          #6
          Interesting period, Todor Alexandrov himself and thus surely many other Macedonians envisioned the end the Greek state around the same time. What a shame we lost him to a traitor's bullet, he was the last great leader of VMRO where the dream was still very much alive and real. That Grkoman bishop is right, were it not for the Asian-turn-Hellene refugees of the 20's, Greek-occupied Macedonia would not have been (artificially) "Greek" and so easy to control, furthermore, with WWII only about a decade or so away, all things were possible.
          In the name of the blood and the sun, the dagger and the gun, Christ protect this soldier, a lion and a Macedonian.

          Comment

          • Risto the Great
            Senior Member
            • Sep 2008
            • 15658

            #7
            I think I have a solution to this name debate.
            Greeks who have an unhealthy fascination with Macedonia and wish to call themselves as such, should say "Macedonians1923". The 1923 identifier should be used as it refers to the date the Treaty of Lausanne was signed which allowed the migration of christians from Turkey into Greece. These immigrants are the ones who self-describe as Macedonians (apparently) and form the majority of the region nowadays. So the identifier is appropriate.

            We Macedonians will simply continue to call ourselves Macedonian.
            Risto the Great
            MACEDONIA:ANHEDONIA
            "Holding my breath for the revolution."

            Hey, I wrote a bestseller. Check it out: www.ren-shen.com

            Comment

            • Pelister
              Senior Member
              • Sep 2008
              • 2742

              #8
              Macedonians1923? That could be an ingenius idea, but I have reservations about anyone else using the name Macedonian, to describe themselves.

              I love this study by Karakasidou.

              I wish there were just a few more like it, of that quality. These kinds of studies are very important.

              Comment

              • Bij
                Member
                • Oct 2009
                • 905

                #9
                Sorry for the bump, but wanted to include this quote from the book

                pg 83, second paragraph

                "American missionaries working in Bulgaria in the 1850s created the first standardized Bulgarian script, choosing to base the national language on the dialect of Thrace and eastern Macedonia rather than on that spoken in the regions of northern Bulgaria. Until the work of such American missionaries, memories of an ecclesiastical past in Bulgaria had been preserved in large part only by Slavonic monks. The American Board of Missionaries, with their network of locally posted missionaries, intentionally or not assisted nascent Bulgarian national elites to forge a different picture of the past.

                Dr. Elias Riggs, for example, crossed "European Turkey" in the late 1840s and in 1847 compiled a Bulgarian grammar primer. According to Tsanoff (1919:ix), it had been the American missionaries who had discovered (or, we might say, helped to invent) the Bulgarian nation. They published some of the first books in Bulgarian, and in 1864 began putting out the first monthly magazine in the region written in Bulgarian."

                Comment

                • Soldier of Macedon
                  Senior Member
                  • Sep 2008
                  • 13670

                  #10
                  Thanks for that Bij. It is interesting to note how the Bulgarians could never accept this literary language that was a half-way between Macedonian and Bulgarian dialects, several of them ridiculed the language used by Macedonian writers from the 19th century such as the Miladinov brothers and co. They didn't even know who they were themselves at the time yet their descendants today are crystal clear about their Khanic origins, pitiful to say the least.

                  It seems that most of our neighbours had some sort of a 'sponsor' in the great powers, and all achieved their statehood with such help. Whereas us Macedonians, lacking such support, lacking a state, still held our own and kept our identity.
                  In the name of the blood and the sun, the dagger and the gun, Christ protect this soldier, a lion and a Macedonian.

                  Comment

                  • Bij
                    Member
                    • Oct 2009
                    • 905

                    #11
                    Well it's also interesting because we are often accused of using the Bulgarian language. In fact, it seems to be the other way around

                    and SoM you bring up a valid point, since Greeks needed a Bavarian to forge them a national identity, and the bulgars needed yanks, who does Macedonia have to thank for this? Surely not Tito since he was on the scene a few centuries too late from all the information we have been able to gather in recent years.

                    Comment

                    • Bill77
                      Senior Member
                      • Oct 2009
                      • 4545

                      #12
                      3min in to this documentary, Anastasia talks about what she whent through. Infact the whole doco is worth watching. And i ask this, why is it that each time i hear Nationalism in Greece, the Greek orthadox church pops up some where in footage or discusion?



                      Nationalism Threatens Democracy - Greece

                      July 1994
                      A militant and dangerous nationalism is sweeping Greece. Radical Greeks want their country to take back land that has been independent for centuries. Those who urge restraint are branded traitors. A Greek academic is threatened with death by rape for daring to acknowledge the state of Macedonia. A right-wing newspaper details graphic tortures to punish her for speaking out. Relations with Albania worsen as the Church stirs up a movement to merge southern Albania with Greece. A prominent author warns that Greek insecurity could bring war and turmoil.

                      Produced by ABC Australia
                      Distributed by Journeyman Pictures

                      YouTube - Nationalism Threatens Democracy - Greece
                      http://www.macedoniantruth.org/forum/showthread.php?p=120873#post120873

                      Comment

                      • Daskalot
                        Senior Member
                        • Sep 2008
                        • 4345

                        #13
                        This is a very good thread that needs some more attention.
                        Macedonian Truth Organisation

                        Comment

                        • TrueMacedonian
                          Senior Member
                          • Jan 2009
                          • 3810

                          #14
                          Originally posted by Daskalot View Post
                          This is a very good thread that needs some more attention.
                          Indeed it is. Here's more from 'Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood':

                          "Local residents used proper (though equally unspecified) nouns that referred to national groups such as Ellines (Greeks), Servyi (Serbs), Tourkyi (Turks), and Voulgharyi (Bulgarians). Some, however, especially those whose families came from Gnoina/Palehora, used the term Makedhones (Macedonians) in reference to the Slavic-speaking population of the area prior to 1913. But those who did so insisted unequivocally that such people had a sort of commonality which marked them as somehow different from others. When pressed to clarify such distinctions, Assiriotes overwhelmingly insisted that the local Slavic-speakers had spoken a language similar to yet distinct from Bulgarian. Yet nonetheless, most still referred to them and to the Slavic-speakers in general as "Bulgarians" (Voulgharyi) or "Bulgarian-speakers" (Voulgharophonyi), two broad and politicized labels that date to the ideological and military conflict between Greece and Bulgaria over Macedonia at the turn of the century." (1997: 106)
                          Slayer Of The Modern "greek" Myth!!!

                          Comment

                          • damian
                            Banned
                            • Jun 2012
                            • 191

                            #15
                            Originally posted by Risto the Great View Post
                            I think I have a solution to this name debate.
                            Greeks who have an unhealthy fascination with Macedonia and wish to call themselves as such, should say "Macedonians1923". The 1923 identifier should be used as it refers to the date the Treaty of Lausanne was signed which allowed the migration of christians from Turkey into Greece. These immigrants are the ones who self-describe as Macedonians (apparently) and form the majority of the region nowadays. So the identifier is appropriate.

                            We Macedonians will simply continue to call ourselves Macedonian.
                            To argue there were never Greeks in Macedonia before 1922 is ridiculous nonsense. There are alot of hypocrites on this forum.

                            Comment

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