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The British Foreign Office and Macedonian National Identity, 1918-1941
by Andrew Rossos, Slavic Review, vol. 53, number 2, Summer 1994
EXCERPTS
Consequently, until World War II, unlike the other nationalisms in the Balkans or in eastern Europe more generally, Macedonian nationalism developed with-out the aid of legal political, church, educational or cultural institutions. Macedonian movements not only lacked any legal infrastructure, they also were without the international sympathy, cultural aid and, most importantly, benefits of open and direct diplomatic and military support accorded other Balkan nationalisms. Indeed, for an entire century Macedonian nationalism, illegal at home and illegitimate internationally, waged a precarious struggle for survival against overwhelming odds: in appearance against the Turks and the Ottoman Empire before 1913 but in actual fact, both before and after that date, against the three expansionist Balkan states and their respective patrons among the Great Powers.
For the victorious allies, especially Great Britain and France, this meant putting the Macedonian problem finally to rest. It also meant that the allies could satisfy two of their clients which were pillars of the new order in south-eastern Europe: the Kingdom of Greece and the former Kingdom of Serbia
Greece, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria all sought to destroy all signs of Macedonianism through forced deportation, so-called voluntary exchanges of populations and internal transfers of the Macedonian populations. They also implemented policies of colonization, social and economic discrimination, and forced denationalization and assimilation based on total control of the edu-cational systems and of cultural and intellectual life as a whole.
These policies were particularly pursued with great determination in Yugoslavia and Greece. Though he approved of these policies, C. L. Blakeney, British Vice-Consul at Belgrade, wrote in 1930:
It is very well for the outsider to say that the only way the Serb could achieve this [control of Vardar Macedonia] was by terrorism and the free and general use of the big stick. This may be true, as a matter of fact one could say that it is true ...On the other hand, however, it must be admitted that the Serb had no other choice ... He had not only to deal with the brigands but also with a population who regarded him as an invader and unwelcome foreigner and from whom he had and could expect no assistance
Ten years later, on the eve of Yugoslavia's collapse during the Second World War, it was obvious that the Serbian policies in Macedonia had failed. R.I. Campbell, British minister at Belgrade, now denounced them to Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary:
Since the occupation by Serbia in 1913 of the Macedonian districts, the Government has carried out in this area, with greater or lesser severity, a policy of suppression and assimilation. In the years following the Great War land was taken away from the inhabitants and given to Serbian colonists. Macedonians were compelled to change their names and the Government did little or nothing to assist the economic development of the country
Athens made a concerted effort to eradicate any reminders of the centuries old Slav presence in Aegean Macedonia by replacing Slav Macedonian personal names and surnames, as well as place names, etc., by Greek. This policy reached its most extreme and tragic dimensions during the late 1930s under the dictatorship of General Metaxas when use of the Macedonian language was prohibited even in the privacy of the home to a people who knew Greek scarcely or not at all, and who in fact could not communicate properly in any other language but their own.
In 1944 Captain P.H. Evans, an agent of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) who spent eight months in western Aegean Macedonia as a British Liaison Officer (BLO) and station commander, condemned the Greek policies in a lengthy report for the Foreign Office. He described the attitude "even of educated GREEKS towards the SLAV minority" as "usually stupid, uninformed and brutal to a degree that makes one despair of any understanding ever being created between the two people." However, he also left no doubt that the Greek government's policies had failed: It is predominantly a SLAV region not a GREEK one. The language of the home, and usually also of the fields, the village Street, and the market is MACEDONIAN, a SLAV language... The place names as given on the map are GREEK...; but the names which are mostly used - - - are - - - all Slav names. The GREEK ones are merely a bit of varnish put on by Metaxas... GREEK is regarded as almost a foreign language and the GREEKS are distrusted as something alien, even if not, in the full sense of the word, as foreigners. The obvious fact, almost too obvious to be stated, that the region is SLAV by nature and not GREEK cannot be overemphasized
Sofia continued its traditional attitude towards all Macedonians, acting as their patron but claiming them to be Bulgarians. To a certain extent it left the Macedonians to do what they wanted; unlike Athens and Belgrade, it tolerated, or felt compelled to tolerate, the free use of the name "Macedonia" and an active Macedonian political and cultural life In its annual report on Bulgaria for 1922, the British Legation at Sofia referred to the Pirin region as "the autonomous kingdom of Macedonia" and stressed that "Bulgarian sovereignty over the district - - - is purely nominal and, such as it is, is resented by the irredentist Macedonian element no less strongly than is that of the Serb-Croat-Slovene Government over the adjacent area within their frontier."
More importantly still, the Macedonians, both in the large emigration in Bulgaria and at home, rejected the partition of their land and the settlement based upon it. As the British Legation at Sofia warned: "the Governments of Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, if not that of Greece, are faced with practically an identical problem in the pacification and control of a district overlapping both the frontiers inhabited by a pop-ulation hostile to both Governments for different reasons and determined on strengthening the hands of the opposition parties in each country."
Disturbing to London were calls for open resistance to foreign rule. Early in 1922 W.A.F. Erskine, the minister in Sofia, drew Lord Curzon's attention to an anonymous article in the newspaper Makedonija, purportedly from a Macedonian professor at the University of Sofia, which exhortedthe Macedonians to follow the example of the Irish, who after a bitter struggle lasting through centuries, have succeeded in gaining their autonomy. "Their country is today free. Ours, too, will be free if we remain faithful to our own traditions of struggle and if we take as our example the lives of people, who, like the Irish, have "never despaired of the force of right."
To be sure, organized Macedonian activity in Aegean and Vardar Macedonia, which had declined after the bloody suppression of the Ilinden uprising of 1903 and the repeated partitions of 1912-1918, came to a virtual standstill immediately after World War I. Virtually the entire Exarchist educated elite, most Macedonian activists from Aegean Macedonia and large numbers from Vardar Macedonia had been forced to emigrate and now sought refuge in Bulgaria Furthermore, the remaining Macedonian population in Aegean Macedonia, overwhelmingly rural and lacking an educated elite, found itself after the Greek-Turkish War (1919-1922) a minority in its own land as a result of the Greek government's settlement there of large numbers of Greek and other Christian refugees from Asia Minor by the mid-1920s IMRO had emerged as a terrorist organization. It virtually ruled Pirin Macedonia and was a state within the state of Bulgaria, pursuing its own self-saving ends by relying on Bulgarian reaction and Italian fascism, and allowing itself to be used by both. However, officially and very conspicuously-it promulgated the aims and the slogans of the older movement: "united autonomous or independent Macedonia" and "Macedonia for the Macedonians." IMRO conducted repeated, so-called "Komitaji," armed raids and incursions into Vardar and, to a lesser extent, into Aegean Macedonia until the military coup in Sofia of May 1934 when the new regime liquidated the organization.
More than anything else, it succeeded in maintaining the Macedonian question on the international scene and, as champion of Macedonia and the Macedonians, it continued to enjoy considerable support throughout most of the 1920s
As Erskine reported from Sofia: "The program of the Communists, therefore, at the instigation of Moscow, was modified to a form of cooperation with the Macedonian revolutionaries - - - to stir up trouble generally - - - and to pave the way for a revolution by creating disorder." Commenting on the election in Yugoslavia, the British minister at Sofia, R. Peel, stressed that although Serbian troops had resorted to the worst excesses in order to terrorize the inhabitants into voting for government lists, "…a large proportion of communist deputies were returned from Macedonia." Clearly, the communist vote was, in effect, a Macedonian protest against foreign rule. This cooperation between communists and Macedonians, dating from the end of World War I, intensified in the late 1920s and early 1930s, when the Balkan communist parties, after long and heated debates, officially recognized Macedonia as a distinct Slav nation with its own language, history and territory. The Comintern followed suit in 1934 and thus supplied the first formal international recognition of Macedonian nationalism.
For some time following World War I, London refused to consider the unrest in Macedonia and, hence, the revival of the Macedonian question. A lengthy memorandum, "The Macedonian Question and Komitaji Activity," prepared by the Central Department of the Foreign Office in 1925, maintained that "While amongst the Slav intellectuals there is violent partisanship, probably the majority of Slavs - - - do not care to what nationality they belong." DJ. Footman, the vice consul at Skopje, echoed a similar sentiment when he wrote, "I believe that 80 percent of the population merely desire a firm, just and enlightened Administration, and regard Nationalism as of minor importance." If there was a problem, the explanation for it could be found in Bulgaria:
London blamed Sofia not only for tolerating, but for encouraging and sponsoring an organized Macedonian movement, revolutionary organizations and armed bands on its own territory
O.C. Harvey of the Foreign Office after a visit to Yugoslav and Greek Macedonia in April 1926: "Although the peasants are said to be doing well, the towns are dying from lack of trade. And wherever else the Serb is spending his money, he does not seem to be spending it in Macedonia. Yet this country is perhaps really the biggest problem for the Serbs."
Or, as R.A. Gallop, third secretary in the legation in Belgrade, put it: "What discontent there is comes from economic causes and the Government must seek palliatives. This of course will take time and cost money, but to my mind the key to the Macedonian question is now this: a prosperous Macedonia will be a contented one."
But most reports to London singled out the administration as the root cause for discontent in Macedonia. The new rulers had forced on the Macedonians their own, that is foreign, administrative and legal codes ''without regard to local conditions or requirements." Their manner of administration was considered even worse: it was described as invariably harsh, brutal, arbitrary and totally corrupt. As Colonel Corfe wrote: "One of the Macedonian's chief grievances is against the Greek Gendarmerie and during our tour we saw many examples of the arrogant and unsatisfactory methods of the Gendarmerie, who comandeer from the peasants whatever food they want…One visits few villages where some of the inhabitants are not in Greek prisons, without trial…"DJ. Footman described the Serbian officials in Vardar Macedonia as poorly qualified, underpaid, arbitrary and corrupt. "
Although this authoritative statement of the Foreign Office acknowledged the existence and the seriousness of the Macedonian problem, the underlying assumption was that, once the economic and administrative causes for grievance were allayed, it would be finally resolved. But while the Foreign Office endeavored to avoid dealing with the national dimension and implications of the problem until as late as 1930, by the mid-1920s its position was already being questioned and challenged by Foreign Office officials in the Balkans, and was becoming untenable. It was difficult to reconcile the use of three different terms-Slavophone Greeks, Old Serbians and Bulgarians-when referring to a people who called themselves Makedonci and spoke Macedonian or dialects of it.
The British could maintain their position only as long as relations between Athens and Belgrade remained friendly; and a crisis in Greek-Yugoslav relations in the mid-1920s provoked a heated debate over the national identity of the Macedonians -Although unwillingly, the Foreign Office was also drawn into this debate and was forced to consider: "Who are the Macedonian Slavs?"
Ironically, the crisis in Greek-Yugoslav relations was sparked by the conclusion of the abortive Greek-Bulgarian Minorities Protocol of 1924, which "connoted the recognition on the part of Greece that the Slavophone inhabitants of Greek Macedonia were of Bulgarian race." This infuriated the Serbs and the Belgrade government broke off its alliance with Greece on 7 November 1924; it also launched a press and a diplomatic campaign that Greece protect the rights of what it called the "Serbian minority" in Aegean MacedoniaColonel Corfe had written in 1923 that the Macedonians of Aegean Macedonia, and incidentally in the other two parts, were fearful of state officials and had nothing to say in their presence:
But in the evenings in their own houses or when we had given the officials the slip, we encouraged them to speak to us. Then we in-variably heard the same story as "Bad administration. They want to force us to become Greeks, in language, in religion, in sentiment, in every way. We have served in the Greek army and we have fought for them: now they insult us by calling us 'damned Bulgars"' … To my question "What do you want? an autonomous Macedonia or a Macedonia under Bulgaria?" the answer was generally the same: "We want good administration. We are Macedonians, not Greeks or Bulgars…We want to be left in peace."
The Greek-Serbian crisis, however, forced the Foreign Office to concentrate its attention, as never before, on the national identity of the Macedonian Slavs and, indeed, on the question: who are the Macedonians? On 30 June 1925, DJ. Footman, the British vice consul at Skopje, the administrative center of Vardar Macedonia, addressed this issue in a lengthy report for the Foreign Office. He wrote that "the majority of the inhabitants of Southern Serbia are Orthodox Christian Macedonians, ethnologically slightly nearer to the Bulgar than to the Serb.." He acknowledged that the Macedonians were better disposed toward Bulgaria than Serbia because, as he had pointed out: the Macedonians were "ethnologically" more akin to the Bulgarians than to the Serbs; because Bulgarian propaganda in Macedonia in the time of the Turks, largely carried on through the schools, was widespread and effective; and because Macedonians at the time perceived Bulgarian culture and prestige to be higher than those of its neighbors. Moreover, large numbers of Macedonians educated in Bulgarian schools had sought refuge in Bulgaria before and especially after the partitions of 1913.
The Central Department of the Foreign Office went even further in clarifying the separate identity of the Macedonians. In a confidential survey and analysis of the entire Macedonian problem it identified the Macedonians not as Bulgarians, Greeks or Serbs, but rather as Macedonian Slavs, and, on the basis of "a fairly reliable estimate made in 1912," singled them out as by far the largest single ethnic group in Macedonia. It acknowledged, as did Footman, that these Slavs spoke a language "understood by both Serbs and Bulgars, but slightly more akin to the Bulgarian tongue than to the Serbian"; and that after the 1870 establishment of the Exarchate, Bulgarian propaganda made greater inroads in Macedonia than the Serbian or Greek. However, it stressed that "While it is probable that the majority of these Slavs are, or were, pro-Bulgar, it is incorrect to refer to them as other than Macedo-Slavs. To this extent both the Serb claim that they are Southern Serbs and the Bulgarian claim that they are Bulgarians are unjustified." that "while amongst the Slav intellectuals there is violent partisanship, probably the majority of Slavs … do not care to what nationality they belong."
In view of the prevailing acceptance of the principle of national self-determination, the recognition of the Slav Macedonians as a distinct nationality would have legitimized the Macedonian claims for autonomy or at least for national minority rights. This would have connoted the tearing up or at least the revision of the peace treaties and of the frontiers, neither of which was acceptable to Britain's clients, Greece and Yugoslavia, or indeed, to Great Britain itself. "In all the circumstances the present partition of Macedonia is probably as good a practical arrangement as can be devised," declared the Central Department, "and there is no real reason or consideration of political expediency which could be quoted to necessitate a rearrangement of the present frontiers."
Indeed, the Foreign Office was contemplating a different and, as it turned out, an illusory solution to the Macedonian problem. It accepted as valid the official Greek determination of the low number of Macedonians in Aegean Macedonia and assumed that with time they would be assimilated. It also assumed that with time the Yugoslav hold on Vardar Macedonia would become more secure, that this would be followed "as a natural consequence" by the "rounding up of Macedonian agents," and that the Macedonian organization operating from Bulgaria would "suffer correspondingly through the lack of funds and general support forthcoming from that district...." And, as organized Macedonian activity declined.
by Andrew Rossos, Slavic Review, vol. 53, number 2, Summer 1994
EXCERPTS
Consequently, until World War II, unlike the other nationalisms in the Balkans or in eastern Europe more generally, Macedonian nationalism developed with-out the aid of legal political, church, educational or cultural institutions. Macedonian movements not only lacked any legal infrastructure, they also were without the international sympathy, cultural aid and, most importantly, benefits of open and direct diplomatic and military support accorded other Balkan nationalisms. Indeed, for an entire century Macedonian nationalism, illegal at home and illegitimate internationally, waged a precarious struggle for survival against overwhelming odds: in appearance against the Turks and the Ottoman Empire before 1913 but in actual fact, both before and after that date, against the three expansionist Balkan states and their respective patrons among the Great Powers.
For the victorious allies, especially Great Britain and France, this meant putting the Macedonian problem finally to rest. It also meant that the allies could satisfy two of their clients which were pillars of the new order in south-eastern Europe: the Kingdom of Greece and the former Kingdom of Serbia
Greece, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria all sought to destroy all signs of Macedonianism through forced deportation, so-called voluntary exchanges of populations and internal transfers of the Macedonian populations. They also implemented policies of colonization, social and economic discrimination, and forced denationalization and assimilation based on total control of the edu-cational systems and of cultural and intellectual life as a whole.
These policies were particularly pursued with great determination in Yugoslavia and Greece. Though he approved of these policies, C. L. Blakeney, British Vice-Consul at Belgrade, wrote in 1930:
It is very well for the outsider to say that the only way the Serb could achieve this [control of Vardar Macedonia] was by terrorism and the free and general use of the big stick. This may be true, as a matter of fact one could say that it is true ...On the other hand, however, it must be admitted that the Serb had no other choice ... He had not only to deal with the brigands but also with a population who regarded him as an invader and unwelcome foreigner and from whom he had and could expect no assistance
Ten years later, on the eve of Yugoslavia's collapse during the Second World War, it was obvious that the Serbian policies in Macedonia had failed. R.I. Campbell, British minister at Belgrade, now denounced them to Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary:
Since the occupation by Serbia in 1913 of the Macedonian districts, the Government has carried out in this area, with greater or lesser severity, a policy of suppression and assimilation. In the years following the Great War land was taken away from the inhabitants and given to Serbian colonists. Macedonians were compelled to change their names and the Government did little or nothing to assist the economic development of the country
Athens made a concerted effort to eradicate any reminders of the centuries old Slav presence in Aegean Macedonia by replacing Slav Macedonian personal names and surnames, as well as place names, etc., by Greek. This policy reached its most extreme and tragic dimensions during the late 1930s under the dictatorship of General Metaxas when use of the Macedonian language was prohibited even in the privacy of the home to a people who knew Greek scarcely or not at all, and who in fact could not communicate properly in any other language but their own.
In 1944 Captain P.H. Evans, an agent of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) who spent eight months in western Aegean Macedonia as a British Liaison Officer (BLO) and station commander, condemned the Greek policies in a lengthy report for the Foreign Office. He described the attitude "even of educated GREEKS towards the SLAV minority" as "usually stupid, uninformed and brutal to a degree that makes one despair of any understanding ever being created between the two people." However, he also left no doubt that the Greek government's policies had failed: It is predominantly a SLAV region not a GREEK one. The language of the home, and usually also of the fields, the village Street, and the market is MACEDONIAN, a SLAV language... The place names as given on the map are GREEK...; but the names which are mostly used - - - are - - - all Slav names. The GREEK ones are merely a bit of varnish put on by Metaxas... GREEK is regarded as almost a foreign language and the GREEKS are distrusted as something alien, even if not, in the full sense of the word, as foreigners. The obvious fact, almost too obvious to be stated, that the region is SLAV by nature and not GREEK cannot be overemphasized
Sofia continued its traditional attitude towards all Macedonians, acting as their patron but claiming them to be Bulgarians. To a certain extent it left the Macedonians to do what they wanted; unlike Athens and Belgrade, it tolerated, or felt compelled to tolerate, the free use of the name "Macedonia" and an active Macedonian political and cultural life In its annual report on Bulgaria for 1922, the British Legation at Sofia referred to the Pirin region as "the autonomous kingdom of Macedonia" and stressed that "Bulgarian sovereignty over the district - - - is purely nominal and, such as it is, is resented by the irredentist Macedonian element no less strongly than is that of the Serb-Croat-Slovene Government over the adjacent area within their frontier."
More importantly still, the Macedonians, both in the large emigration in Bulgaria and at home, rejected the partition of their land and the settlement based upon it. As the British Legation at Sofia warned: "the Governments of Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, if not that of Greece, are faced with practically an identical problem in the pacification and control of a district overlapping both the frontiers inhabited by a pop-ulation hostile to both Governments for different reasons and determined on strengthening the hands of the opposition parties in each country."
Disturbing to London were calls for open resistance to foreign rule. Early in 1922 W.A.F. Erskine, the minister in Sofia, drew Lord Curzon's attention to an anonymous article in the newspaper Makedonija, purportedly from a Macedonian professor at the University of Sofia, which exhortedthe Macedonians to follow the example of the Irish, who after a bitter struggle lasting through centuries, have succeeded in gaining their autonomy. "Their country is today free. Ours, too, will be free if we remain faithful to our own traditions of struggle and if we take as our example the lives of people, who, like the Irish, have "never despaired of the force of right."
To be sure, organized Macedonian activity in Aegean and Vardar Macedonia, which had declined after the bloody suppression of the Ilinden uprising of 1903 and the repeated partitions of 1912-1918, came to a virtual standstill immediately after World War I. Virtually the entire Exarchist educated elite, most Macedonian activists from Aegean Macedonia and large numbers from Vardar Macedonia had been forced to emigrate and now sought refuge in Bulgaria Furthermore, the remaining Macedonian population in Aegean Macedonia, overwhelmingly rural and lacking an educated elite, found itself after the Greek-Turkish War (1919-1922) a minority in its own land as a result of the Greek government's settlement there of large numbers of Greek and other Christian refugees from Asia Minor by the mid-1920s IMRO had emerged as a terrorist organization. It virtually ruled Pirin Macedonia and was a state within the state of Bulgaria, pursuing its own self-saving ends by relying on Bulgarian reaction and Italian fascism, and allowing itself to be used by both. However, officially and very conspicuously-it promulgated the aims and the slogans of the older movement: "united autonomous or independent Macedonia" and "Macedonia for the Macedonians." IMRO conducted repeated, so-called "Komitaji," armed raids and incursions into Vardar and, to a lesser extent, into Aegean Macedonia until the military coup in Sofia of May 1934 when the new regime liquidated the organization.
More than anything else, it succeeded in maintaining the Macedonian question on the international scene and, as champion of Macedonia and the Macedonians, it continued to enjoy considerable support throughout most of the 1920s
As Erskine reported from Sofia: "The program of the Communists, therefore, at the instigation of Moscow, was modified to a form of cooperation with the Macedonian revolutionaries - - - to stir up trouble generally - - - and to pave the way for a revolution by creating disorder." Commenting on the election in Yugoslavia, the British minister at Sofia, R. Peel, stressed that although Serbian troops had resorted to the worst excesses in order to terrorize the inhabitants into voting for government lists, "…a large proportion of communist deputies were returned from Macedonia." Clearly, the communist vote was, in effect, a Macedonian protest against foreign rule. This cooperation between communists and Macedonians, dating from the end of World War I, intensified in the late 1920s and early 1930s, when the Balkan communist parties, after long and heated debates, officially recognized Macedonia as a distinct Slav nation with its own language, history and territory. The Comintern followed suit in 1934 and thus supplied the first formal international recognition of Macedonian nationalism.
For some time following World War I, London refused to consider the unrest in Macedonia and, hence, the revival of the Macedonian question. A lengthy memorandum, "The Macedonian Question and Komitaji Activity," prepared by the Central Department of the Foreign Office in 1925, maintained that "While amongst the Slav intellectuals there is violent partisanship, probably the majority of Slavs - - - do not care to what nationality they belong." DJ. Footman, the vice consul at Skopje, echoed a similar sentiment when he wrote, "I believe that 80 percent of the population merely desire a firm, just and enlightened Administration, and regard Nationalism as of minor importance." If there was a problem, the explanation for it could be found in Bulgaria:
London blamed Sofia not only for tolerating, but for encouraging and sponsoring an organized Macedonian movement, revolutionary organizations and armed bands on its own territory
O.C. Harvey of the Foreign Office after a visit to Yugoslav and Greek Macedonia in April 1926: "Although the peasants are said to be doing well, the towns are dying from lack of trade. And wherever else the Serb is spending his money, he does not seem to be spending it in Macedonia. Yet this country is perhaps really the biggest problem for the Serbs."
Or, as R.A. Gallop, third secretary in the legation in Belgrade, put it: "What discontent there is comes from economic causes and the Government must seek palliatives. This of course will take time and cost money, but to my mind the key to the Macedonian question is now this: a prosperous Macedonia will be a contented one."
But most reports to London singled out the administration as the root cause for discontent in Macedonia. The new rulers had forced on the Macedonians their own, that is foreign, administrative and legal codes ''without regard to local conditions or requirements." Their manner of administration was considered even worse: it was described as invariably harsh, brutal, arbitrary and totally corrupt. As Colonel Corfe wrote: "One of the Macedonian's chief grievances is against the Greek Gendarmerie and during our tour we saw many examples of the arrogant and unsatisfactory methods of the Gendarmerie, who comandeer from the peasants whatever food they want…One visits few villages where some of the inhabitants are not in Greek prisons, without trial…"DJ. Footman described the Serbian officials in Vardar Macedonia as poorly qualified, underpaid, arbitrary and corrupt. "
Although this authoritative statement of the Foreign Office acknowledged the existence and the seriousness of the Macedonian problem, the underlying assumption was that, once the economic and administrative causes for grievance were allayed, it would be finally resolved. But while the Foreign Office endeavored to avoid dealing with the national dimension and implications of the problem until as late as 1930, by the mid-1920s its position was already being questioned and challenged by Foreign Office officials in the Balkans, and was becoming untenable. It was difficult to reconcile the use of three different terms-Slavophone Greeks, Old Serbians and Bulgarians-when referring to a people who called themselves Makedonci and spoke Macedonian or dialects of it.
The British could maintain their position only as long as relations between Athens and Belgrade remained friendly; and a crisis in Greek-Yugoslav relations in the mid-1920s provoked a heated debate over the national identity of the Macedonians -Although unwillingly, the Foreign Office was also drawn into this debate and was forced to consider: "Who are the Macedonian Slavs?"
Ironically, the crisis in Greek-Yugoslav relations was sparked by the conclusion of the abortive Greek-Bulgarian Minorities Protocol of 1924, which "connoted the recognition on the part of Greece that the Slavophone inhabitants of Greek Macedonia were of Bulgarian race." This infuriated the Serbs and the Belgrade government broke off its alliance with Greece on 7 November 1924; it also launched a press and a diplomatic campaign that Greece protect the rights of what it called the "Serbian minority" in Aegean MacedoniaColonel Corfe had written in 1923 that the Macedonians of Aegean Macedonia, and incidentally in the other two parts, were fearful of state officials and had nothing to say in their presence:
But in the evenings in their own houses or when we had given the officials the slip, we encouraged them to speak to us. Then we in-variably heard the same story as "Bad administration. They want to force us to become Greeks, in language, in religion, in sentiment, in every way. We have served in the Greek army and we have fought for them: now they insult us by calling us 'damned Bulgars"' … To my question "What do you want? an autonomous Macedonia or a Macedonia under Bulgaria?" the answer was generally the same: "We want good administration. We are Macedonians, not Greeks or Bulgars…We want to be left in peace."
The Greek-Serbian crisis, however, forced the Foreign Office to concentrate its attention, as never before, on the national identity of the Macedonian Slavs and, indeed, on the question: who are the Macedonians? On 30 June 1925, DJ. Footman, the British vice consul at Skopje, the administrative center of Vardar Macedonia, addressed this issue in a lengthy report for the Foreign Office. He wrote that "the majority of the inhabitants of Southern Serbia are Orthodox Christian Macedonians, ethnologically slightly nearer to the Bulgar than to the Serb.." He acknowledged that the Macedonians were better disposed toward Bulgaria than Serbia because, as he had pointed out: the Macedonians were "ethnologically" more akin to the Bulgarians than to the Serbs; because Bulgarian propaganda in Macedonia in the time of the Turks, largely carried on through the schools, was widespread and effective; and because Macedonians at the time perceived Bulgarian culture and prestige to be higher than those of its neighbors. Moreover, large numbers of Macedonians educated in Bulgarian schools had sought refuge in Bulgaria before and especially after the partitions of 1913.
The Central Department of the Foreign Office went even further in clarifying the separate identity of the Macedonians. In a confidential survey and analysis of the entire Macedonian problem it identified the Macedonians not as Bulgarians, Greeks or Serbs, but rather as Macedonian Slavs, and, on the basis of "a fairly reliable estimate made in 1912," singled them out as by far the largest single ethnic group in Macedonia. It acknowledged, as did Footman, that these Slavs spoke a language "understood by both Serbs and Bulgars, but slightly more akin to the Bulgarian tongue than to the Serbian"; and that after the 1870 establishment of the Exarchate, Bulgarian propaganda made greater inroads in Macedonia than the Serbian or Greek. However, it stressed that "While it is probable that the majority of these Slavs are, or were, pro-Bulgar, it is incorrect to refer to them as other than Macedo-Slavs. To this extent both the Serb claim that they are Southern Serbs and the Bulgarian claim that they are Bulgarians are unjustified." that "while amongst the Slav intellectuals there is violent partisanship, probably the majority of Slavs … do not care to what nationality they belong."
In view of the prevailing acceptance of the principle of national self-determination, the recognition of the Slav Macedonians as a distinct nationality would have legitimized the Macedonian claims for autonomy or at least for national minority rights. This would have connoted the tearing up or at least the revision of the peace treaties and of the frontiers, neither of which was acceptable to Britain's clients, Greece and Yugoslavia, or indeed, to Great Britain itself. "In all the circumstances the present partition of Macedonia is probably as good a practical arrangement as can be devised," declared the Central Department, "and there is no real reason or consideration of political expediency which could be quoted to necessitate a rearrangement of the present frontiers."
Indeed, the Foreign Office was contemplating a different and, as it turned out, an illusory solution to the Macedonian problem. It accepted as valid the official Greek determination of the low number of Macedonians in Aegean Macedonia and assumed that with time they would be assimilated. It also assumed that with time the Yugoslav hold on Vardar Macedonia would become more secure, that this would be followed "as a natural consequence" by the "rounding up of Macedonian agents," and that the Macedonian organization operating from Bulgaria would "suffer correspondingly through the lack of funds and general support forthcoming from that district...." And, as organized Macedonian activity declined.
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