The Existence of a Macedonian Minority in Greece!

[TrueMacedonian]

Aegean Macedonia. Entire villages.

Thank you for pointing out the obvious to our resident deaf, blind, and dumb man Julie.

[George S.]

akzion i wonder if you know about the abcedar primer that the greeks wanted to release to teach the macedonians macedonian & changed it's mind.In 1925 the league of nations demanded of greece to teach its macedonian population macedonian.When the serbs & bulgarians found out they protested & said how come greece gets to produce a primer in macedonian & they weren't even asked.But of course greece reneged on that.Akzion i know you are going to deny this because your greek govt asks you to deny it.

[Stojacanec]

(Cough, cough) Does that book mention in which areas of Macedonia these schools were located? Or how many people they had to Hellenize?

I had someone from Aeg Mkd explain to me that she had to hold up a Hellarse sign around 1948 and march down the road.

She explained that most of the ppl from that village were Macedonians and only 2 or 3 greek families.

The village was near the boarder of ROM.


Its amazing what you can do with a strong Hell-enic army and police brought in from the south to the inhabitants of the north.

If you open your eyes Akzion you may discover that your proverbial cough may get worse.

[tomovsk]

it is beyond doubt there is a macedonian minority in aegean macedonia. my family comes from florina, and my mother and uncles went to a greek school, but they spoke macedonian at home. in high school i knew many "greek-macedonians" who admitted they had grandparents who spoke macedonian. i'm sure fear has kept many silent about their heritage, but i'm not one of them.

[Soldier of Macedon]

Tomovsk, just out of interest, why don't you use Lerin instead?

[tomovsk]

i dunno. i was really just putting it in a way the greeks here could understand.

[George S.]

Tomosk you should not be scared to use macedonian toponyms.Greece took away 51% of macedonia in 1913 & renamed all the places from macedonian to greek.Some of those names of toponyms are thousands of years old & are a reminder of the existence of the macedonian people.The greeks thinking if they aren't there then they don't exist .That's BS the macedonians do exist.Can you imagine greece is simply denying everything.We need to stand up to these bullies that we won't put up with their shit anymore.

[TrueMacedonian]

(Cough, cough) Does that book mention in which areas of Macedonia these schools were located? Or how many people they had to Hellenize?

Can you honestly tell me that Annexed Macedonia was always "Greek" for 4000 years? Do you know what your compatriots said about Salonica when they entered it in the early 20th century? Like I said before, Macedonia is the prosthetic limb for Hellenism. It's the plastic leg made in order for the myth of a cultural continuation from antiquity to present day to have something to stand on. Like some 19th century philhellenes knew already - There had been a vast deal too much talk about the descendants of Leonidas and Themistocles, about the glories of Marathon and Thermopylae. The Greeks and their friends were too apt to leap back two thousand years and ignore all history between the fight of Chaeronea and the fight of Dragatshan.

The life and letters of Edward A. Freeman, D.C.L., LL. D. By William Richard Wood Stephens pages 190-192.

[Akzion]

TrueMacedonian,
Your questions are not exactly answering MY question, which was… an innocent one. I didn’t say or deny anything. Since you refer to a… whole book about the Hellenization process I asked if it provided further data that might help your older demographic questions on Macedonia.
How many people had to be Hellenized? 5%? 10%? 90% of the population? How were they geographically distributed, in Western, Central, and Eastern Macedonia, in various prefectures, cities and villages? Does the book say anything?

[Akzion]

In 1925 the league of nations demanded of greece to teach its macedonian population macedonian.When the serbs & bulgarians found out they protested & said how come greece gets to produce a primer in macedonian & they weren't even asked.But of course greece reneged on that.Akzion i know you are going to deny this because your greek govt asks you to deny it.

Of course I know about the abecedary. It’s been brought up hundreds of time recently. But I don’t remember (or believe) much about the Serbian and Bulgarian interference and its' importance.

I had someone from Aeg Mkd explain to me that she had to hold up a Hellarse sign around 1948 and march down the road.
The village was near the boarder of ROM.
Its amazing what you can do with a strong Hell-enic army and police brought in from the south to the inhabitants of the north.

It’s not clear what you describe here. It could be a humiliation act during Civil War or something simple and normal (e.g. standard-bearer in a school parade). What sign? Which village was it?

Some of those names of toponyms are thousands of years old & are a reminder of the existence of the macedonian people.

Well, Florina is not the best example. Does anybody know the official name of the city under Ottoman Empire? (couldn’t find it)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florina#Name

[Soldier of Macedon]

i dunno. i was really just putting it in a way the greeks here could understand.

You're at a Macedonian forum, no need to accomodate anybody other than Macedonians in their own tongue, aside from the general use of English.

[TrueMacedonian]

TrueMacedonian,
Your questions are not exactly answering MY question, which was… an innocent one. I didn’t say or deny anything. Since you refer to a… whole book about the Hellenization process I asked if it provided further data that might help your older demographic questions on Macedonia.
How many people had to be Hellenized? 5%? 10%? 90% of the population? How were they geographically distributed, in Western, Central, and Eastern Macedonia, in various prefectures, cities and villages? Does the book say anything?

This contribution by Karakasidou appears in Richard Clogg's 'Minorities in Greece' if you want a further glance at what is written in whole. As for %'s I don't remember her writing certain %'s but the fact that this elementary school teacher, Papadapoulos, wanted further Hellenization in the area of Voden (what your people call Edessa) in the mid 1930's should make people like you wonder what happened to 'Hellenism' in this part of Macedonia this late in the 1930's. What happened to the 4000 year thing??? Here it is one more time because I think everyone wouldn't mind reading this again:

pages 134-135

To counter these foreign efforts to gain control of Greek Macedonia, the Greek government attempted to present a picture to the outside world that the region was definitively 'Greek'. One incident in particular serves to illuminate the anxiety of the Greek authorities. In 1926, the International Commission for the Study of Minorities in Macedonia toured the area. Government authorities directed teachers to hold Greek festivities (epideixes) in the schools for the benefit of the visiting investigators. Teachers also told school children that the Minister of Education would be travelling along the Edessa-Florina railway, and that in order to please him they were to line the railroad tracks, holding Greek flags in their hands and singing patriotic marches. Students were also instructed that if approached by members of the commission on the streets or at the railway station and asked if they knew any language other than Greek, they were to answer no. The event was reported as a great success(53).
In conjunction with their attempts to portray the inherent 'Greekness' of the area to outsiders, the Greek authorities also actively suppressed all social and political movements aiming at the autonomy of Macedonia. Despite the fact that the area had been part of Greece for more than a decade, a large proportion of the local population was still hostile to Greek sovereignty and conditions in the region were far from tranquil. The Greek state attempted to consolidate its control over the area through a dual approach involving surveillance and repression on the part of the military and the police, on the one hand, and institutionalized forums of national education on the other.

Note 53: Metaxas Archives, File No. 36, 'The Attempt to Hellenize Western Macedonia and the results achieved during the last two years (confidential), Yiorgos Papadapoulos, Elementary School Teacher, 22 July 1938,7.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

pages 141-142

By the time of the Metaxas dictatorship, the linguistic situation in the Macedonian region remained at crisis proportions. In 1938, an Athenian teacher (Yiorgos Papadapoulos) who worked in the Edessa area wrote a confidential report evaluating efforts to Hellenize Western Macedonia and stressed the importance of the recently enacted language prohibitions(82). The importance of these prohibitions, he argued, lay in the fact that on the surface they provided for a uniform appearance, so that visitors to the area and local inhabitants alike would see and feel that it was part of Greece. More importantly, on a deeper level 'the young children will finally understand that they live in Greece, and that the Greek lessons are not taught in schools as a foreign language' (emphasis in original)(83).

Note 82: Metaxas Archives, File No.36, Papdapoulos letter (see Note 53).

Note 83: It was believed that night schools offered the most effective means of achieving substantive results in Hellenization. Such forums were attended by both women (between the ages of 15-40) and men (up to age 50), ibid., 5. Reading, writing, and history were the primary subjects of these schools, while women were also taugh home economics.

Cultural Illegitimacy In Greece: The Slavo-Macedonian 'Non-Minority' by Anastasia Karakasidou.

[Voltron]

Minorities is a concept inheritly flawed. It never worked, never will work and is a tool to seed division and control countries. Usually its a tool employed by major powers such as the USA. They did a nice job in Serbia. Look at them now.

[TrueMacedonian]

Minorities is a concept inheritly flawed. It never worked, never will work and is a tool to seed division and control countries. Usually its a tool employed by major powers such as the USA. They did a nice job in Serbia. Look at them now.

The Macedonian minority were put through forced hellenization policies. I think the concept that you feel is flawed is due to the fact that it ruins the 'Homogenous Greece' myth built on bs and fiction. The simple fact that there is a Macedonian minority asking for basic human rights is the penultimate factor in this bogus 'name issue'. But I don't expect someone of your capacity to grasp what is truth and what is the fable here. Maybe ask your boyfriend over at A'm'AC what the real reasons are for the so-called 'name issue'.

[Voltron]

TM, first off learn what the term homogenos means before posting wisecracks. Let me give you a hint, it has nothing to do with racial purity. Secondly, they have rights and nobody is stopping them. Go to maknews and see the panagiri videos in Greece. Third, I will give the benefit of the doubt regarding forced hellenisation policies.

Dont play the purity card, your smarter than that.