"They call themselves Macedonians"

[Bratot]

"We have many times heard from the Macedonists that they are not Bulgarians but Macedonians,descendants of the Ancient Macedonians" - Slaveykov ( Year: 1871)

[Bratot]

Colonel A. 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 AUTHONOMOUS MACEDONIA OR A MACEDONIA UNDER BULGARIA?" the answer was generally the same: "WE WANT GOOD ADMINISTRATION. WE ARE MACEDONIANS, NOT GREEKS OR BULGARS."

(Foreign Office document O371/8566).

[Pelister]

Pelister you are providing great information here in this thread, thank you very much!

Thanks Daskalot, you are very welcome mate. I'll keep adding stuff to it as I find it.

I hope that Macedonians can read it and be encouraged. The legacy of colonial rule in Macedonia has been dictating who we are and who we are not for a century now that Macedonians are no longer entirely sure themselves. Our enemies are just hoping that Macedonians begin to believe the crap our colonial rulers have been saying about us. The 'hegemony' (Gramsci's use of the term) of colonial terms, of false represenations and assumptions made about us had to be challenged, otherwise sooner or later a group of Macedonians is going to emerge, who 'accept' the basic premise that our identity has been manufactured and not even realise this is their position.

[Daskalot]

Pelister you are providing great information here in this thread, thank you very much!

[Pelister]

Another individual attached to the British foriegn office at Belgrade, R. A. Gallop, toured parts of Macedonia under Seriban occupation in April 1926. In his report, titled "Conditions in Macedonia" (April, 1926), Gallop reported his time in the region and insisted that:

Those people whom I had met were insistent on calling themselves neither Serbs nor Bulgars, but Macedonians. There seemed to be no love lost for the Bulgarians.

Source: British Foriegn Office, FO 371/11405, Kennard (Belgrade) to A. Chamberlain, 21 April, 1926. Enclosure, R.A Gallop, 'Conditions in Macedonia', 19 April, 1926, p1. Cited in A. Rossos, The British Foreign Office and Macedonian National Identity, 1919-1941, p.10

[Pelister]

"They call themselves Macedonians"

The Bulgarian ethnographer, Vasil Kanchov, like most Bulgarian contemporaries in the employ of the Bulgarian State at that time, defined all Macedonians as 'Bulgarians'. The purpose of such statements was to convince the Powers in the West that Macedonia was inhabited by 'Bulgarians'. We know that the representations were false, but they were particularly influential nonetheless. The observers and informers frame their statements in a way that distorts the picture on the ground, or leads to a belief that the inhabitants are 'Bulgarians' and/or 'Greeks'. These are not statemetns of actual fact, but of deliberately distortion and deception. Again, we don't actually get to here from the Macedonians themselves, and when we do it is deliberately distorted. Here is an example of how a Bulgarian ethnographer, can misrepresent what people are saying. Despite calling themselves Macedonians, he falsely represents them as 'Bulgarians'.

Vasil Kancov, 1911

“Bulgarians and Kutsovlachs (of Macedonia)... they call themselves Macedonians and the surrounding nations call them Macedonians”.

Source: Orohidrography of Macedonia, published in Plovdiv in 1911, p.1

nb. This can be interpreted several ways, but clearly the inhabitants of Macedonia were calling themselves 'Macedonians' and clearly that information was being omitted, and distorted in this case.

[Pelister]

Makedonche, you are right. I too am fed up with other people interfering in our affairs and playing around with our identity. I personally find nothing wrong with Macedonian nationalism. I want to see more of it and it should be fostered, and developed. There is nothing wrong or shameful with wanting to defend your land, and asking for your rights, and 'securing' our homeland. I don't think Macedonians themselves realise just how oppressed they have been by the international community. I mean, take the principle of self-determination. Did you know that Canadian legislation says that people have the right to take up arms to achieve basic human rights. The moment a Macedonian even opens his or her mouth, some fkn bureacrat in the E.U points the finger at them and brands them a 'nationalist' as though its an ugly word. The Macedonians knew who they were, and had a strong sense of national identity - its just that the Great Powers wanted us gone.

El bre wrote:

While the identities of our neighbours were being encouraged and even fostered, our own identity was being derailed at every turn.

Nothing has changed has it. You are so correct in your statement that the West has spent an enormous amount of money, time and energy trying to make us disappear. Thankfully we do care and we are free to say what we want. We shouldn't be afraid of that. In fact it is more important now than ever, given that there are forces trying to snuff us out.

To give you another example of how a false representation of who the Macedonians were, has made it into the Western academic literature. Take Patrick Finney, in his essay "An Evil for all Concerned: Britain and Minority Protection", on page, 544 writes that:

"The Slavic population of Macedonia and western Thrace clearly possessed Bulgarian national consciousness".

Clearly, they didn't ! It is these kinds of statements made by Western academics and Western politicians that continually misrepresent who we are, and misrepresent who we were, and what we called oursevles. The representations made by Greece, by Bulgaria and even Western institutions, like the League of Nations (which published false data about the Macedonians), are all false. But having said that, they have had an effect. These false representations of the Macedonians have made their way into political ciricles in the West, into academic institutions. Our enemies have been tapping into a century of oppression, denial, ommission, distortion...etc, whatever they can get their hands on in order to export the notion that we did not exist, or that we were a suspect people. This thread is about challenging some of those Western assumptions.

[El Bre]

" Perry, for example, suggests that the Macedonians were unable to liberate themselves because they lacked a clear sense of national identity."

The fact that we are all here, on a website dedicated to being Macedonian in the 21 century is a fucking miracle in itself. While the identities of our neighbours were being encouraged and even fostered, our own identity was being derailed at every turn. Perry needs to ask himself how you can build a cohesive population with a clear sense of national identity under those kind of conditions.

We need to take some pride in the fact that we're still around in spite all of energy dedicated towards trying to make us disappear.

[makedonche]

Pelister

Good article, there's one part that both intrigues me and provides a solemn reminder of what we should be striving to achieve/stamp our authority on, here it is:-

" Perry, for example, suggests that the Macedonians were unable to liberate themselves because they lacked a clear sense of national identity."

For far too long now other people/parties have been playing a game with our identity. They have denied it's exixtence, changed it, mixed it up with other identities, created confusion and doubt about it since nationalism came to the forefront in the 19th/20th centuries. What astounds me is that it's ok for US, France,Germany,Greece etc. to be fanatical about their identity and nationalism - yet any attempt by Macedonians to shore up there existence is seen as radical nationalism and has no place in a "modern Europe".
To a certian extent we the current Macedonians need to bear responsibility for allowing this to happen or moreso allowing it to continue to happen, the time has come to write our own history, tell our story and stand up and say we are Macedonians - "Not Negotiable".
I'll go out on a limb here and suggest we "create a clear sense of national identity" - similar to the way we have documented and clearly stated the "Macedonian Cause". Your thoughts?

[Pelister]

"They call themselves Macedonians"

The British foriegn office had been in Macedonia since about the 1860's, and during that time they had conducted many 'fact-finding' missions of the area. Although the British had often brought their own Western prejudices about who lived there and who didn't, occasionally they reveal what the Macedonians had been saying about themselves. For example, Oliver. C Harvey of the foriegn office had gone from place to place talking to Macedonians.

Oliver C.Harvey, 1926, wrote:

"The slavophone population of Serbian (occupied) Macedonia definitely regard themselves as distinct from the Serbs. If asked their nationality they say that they are Macedonians, and they speak the Macedonian dialect."

The same Oliver C. Harvey of the British foriegn office visited the Lerin-Voden district of Greek occupied Macedonia in 1926, and noted:

"The inhabitants here are no more Serb than the Macedonians of Serbia - they speak Macedonian, and they call themselves Macedonians."

Source: British Foriegn Office, FO 371/11245, p.2 and p.3. Also cited in A.Rossos, The British Foriegn Office and Macedonian National Identity, 1918 - 1941, p.11

There are a number of old assumptions in the West that there were no Macedonians, and that Macedonia was a land inhabited by either Bulgarian or Greeks or both. Another assumption that goes hand in hand with this one, is that the Macedonians had no strong sense of national identity, or sense of who they were. In the West Macedonia was generally considered to be a land "up for grabs" and the same old assumptions in the West that the Macedonians were somehow a suspect people, has influenced how Westerners, both politicians and academics, interpret the regions history. Perry, for example, suggests that the Macedonians were unable to liberate themselves because they lacked a clear sense of national identity. The notion that the Macedonians were a suspect people was a Western notion, informed by Greek and Bulgarian colonial propoganda no doubt, through diplomatic channels for the better part of half a century. We never actually here from the Macedonians, themselves, and when we do it is distorted. The fact was that they had always called themselves Macedonians.

[Pelister]

"They call themselves Macedonians"

There still exists in the West an old assumption that there were no Macedonians. It is a powerful assumption, influenced by the propoganda of Greece and Bulgaria, but ultimately a false one. One thing about this assumption, is that it is colored by the colonial statitics produced by Macedonia's neighbours, and it was effective in convincing European politicians, who could not have been aware of the local realites. One thing about Greek and Bulgarian colonial propoganda about Macedonia, is that we never actually here from the Macedonians themselves, and when we do it is distorted, or deliberately ommitted. The terms they used, such as 'Slav', 'Bulgarian', 'Greek'...etc, were one way they could hide the Macedonians, effectively write them out of the story, and at the same time write in 'Greeks' where none in fact existed, and write in 'Bulgarians' where none in fact existed. These distortions, naturally gave rise to the belief in Western Europe that there were no Macedonians, or that in was a land inhabited primarily by Bulgarian and Greek nationals. But again, we never actually here from the Macedonians themselves, and when we do it is distorted. The fact was that "they called themselves Macedonians" - we have always known this, our neighbours have always known this, but Europe refuses to believe it.

Edmond Bouchie, 1922

“In the district of Ostrovo / Bitola nine times out of ten these people, despite being the subject of dispute by three adjoining countries – Serbia, Bulgarian and Greece – would reply in response to the question as to their nationality that they were Macedonians”

Source: Taken from Edmond Bouchie de Belle, La Macedoine et les Macedoniens, Paris, 1922, 80, IV, 303.]

[Bill77]

Aegean Macedonians
and the Bulgarian Identity Politics

Oxford Balkan Society
South East European Studies Programme (SEESP)
European Studies Centre, St Antony’s College
_______________________________________________

By Tchavdar Marinov


QUOTE: After their visit to Sofia in December 1967, the Greek communist leaders Apostolos Grozos and Dimitris Partsalidis mentioned unsuccessful demands of refugees transferred to Bulgaria from Poland to have a page in Macedonian language in the Greek political refugees’
weekly Lefteria (Kirjazovski 1989: 259)45. Thus, the state and Party institutions dealing with the national policy had to face cases of a challenging ethnic self-identification of Aegean Macedonian refugees from the Greek Civil war. A clear distinction had to be established
between the previous Macedonian migration waves to Bulgaria (from the beginning of the 20th century) and the newcomers: contrary to older pro-Bulgarian refugees, those who came after the Greek Civil war had more “Macedonist” character and needed the application of
special strategies of national “homogenization”.




Almost all Slav-speakers, refugees from the Greek Civil war, who applied for a permission to settle in Bulgaria, declared their ethnic belonging (narodnost or nacionalnost) as undoubtedly “Macedonian”58. Some of them still conserved the Greek communist denomination “Slavo Macedonian” (slavjano-makedonec)59. Formulas like “refugee from the
Greek Macedonia with Macedonian nationality [=ethnic origin- narodnost] and Greek citizenship”60 are quite frequent, while the standard self-declaration is maybe “Macedonian by nationality, Greek political emigrant”61. The bulk of applicants point out “Macedonian”
undeniably as their ethnic identification.

[Soldier of Macedon]

Good one Pelister, I was just about to add that last one to your list, there are several more you can add I am sure by just searching through the MTO forums.

[Pelister]

Moving foward a few years, but still in the early part of the 20th century we see another example of the same theme.

1919

Sister Augustine Bewicke on the Macedoinan autonomy
January 4

"the inhabitants of Macedonia are in the great majority Slavs; they call themselves Macedonians, and what they desire and what we ardently desire for them is an autonomy under European control"

[Pelister]

They call themselves Macedonians

Going back a few decades, consider for example, the word of the
Bulgarian ethnographer, Vasil Kanchov, who liked to classify the regions inhabitants as 'Bulgarian'.

On page 1 of his book Orohidrography of Macedonia, published in Plovdiv in 1911 Kanchov makes the rather startling admission that all the:

“Bulgarians and Kutsovlachs (of Macedonia) call themselves Macedonians and the surrounding nations call them Macedonians”.