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The beauty of the excerpt provided is that all the authorities quoted are
Greek academics or journalists.
SOME GREEK OPINIONS ON MACEDONIAN HISTORY.
There have been many opinions on Macedonia and Greece expressed by prominent
Greek historians, journalists and intellectuals which do not toe the official
line of the Greek Government.
The Greek intellectual Damianos Papadimitropoulos wrote on the erroneous
approach of modern Greek historiography towards the Macedonian question in his
contribution Pos mborun na onomazonde Makedones (in the distinguished Greek
journal O Politis, afu den ine elines, Athens, March 1992, page 74) while
arguing on the erroneous approach of modern Greek historiography to the
Macedonian Question as a reply to questions asked by a certain
Mr.Atanasiadis: “The question asked by Mr. Atanasiadis is: How can they (the
Skopjans) call themselves Macedonians when they are not Greeks? How can they
usurp a name which does not belong to them? Is it because perhaps they found
it in the Lost Property Office?”
Mr. Papadimitropoulos replies: “Let me explain, Mr. Atanasiadis' standpoint
presupposes the existence of a three-thousand-year-long historical continuity
of Hellenism. In history, however, there exists no such continuity. It exists
only in our contemporary consciousness and only thus in our historical
knowledge. And, to give things their real names, such a continuity can only be
found if history is read "upside down", ie. from our time backwards to
yesterday. If we do so, indeed what happened yesterday inevitably leads to
today. The event of yesterday is nothing but a presupposition concerning the
event of today.
This kind of ideological reading of history, which requires that people from
other epochs, people with other needs, move and act in accordance with our
needs, our contemporary criteria, is in fact an elimination of history. Such
an eclectic continuous-in-time reading of history, which eliminates the
current context from each historical monument, leaves many questions
unanswered, not merely the question: How can they call themselves Macedonians,
not being Greeks?
One such question is posed by my grandmother's name, which was Romja, and not
Hellenida (a Hellene woman) as she should have been called, according to your
criteria. To cut a long story short, Hellenism as we see it today is a
creation of the last two centuries, a product of the institution of nation
states and of a corresponding awareness accompanying them. That is to say that
in the process of the constitution of the nation state we declared ourselves
as Hellenes (May God help me, I do not mean that we made such a declaration
arbitrarily), while others declared themselves Serbians, Bulgarians, etc..
Others still, who did not wish to be any of the above-mentioned, declared
themselves as Macedonians, taking their name from the territories they lived
in, so as to distinguish themselves from all the others around them and to
constitute a nation of their own.
What we have here is more recent history, which began about a century ago and
is only today being given a final shape as they (the Macedonians) now have a
possibility of constituting themselves as a state as well.”
The historian Antonis Liakos, Professor of History at the University of
Athens, writes in a lecture of May 1992 on "The Balkan Crisis and
Nationalism", published in his book The Janus Face of Nationalism and Greek
Balkan Policy [O Ionos tu etnikizmu ke i eliniki valkaniki politiki] (Athens,
1993, page 10):
“The attitude adopted by Greece towards the disintegration of Yugoslavia has
been focused exclusively, over the past year, on the question of the federal
republic to the north of us. How and why the complex, difficult and tragic
problems arising from the disintegration of a large state boil down to only
one issue, cannot be explained by any logical reasoning but only through
historical inheritance.
A tradition has been created around the Macedonian question, one which
initially was linked to a nationalistic ideology as the latter was formed
towards the end of the last century, being predominantly anti-Slav and
anti-Bulgarian. In the period between the two world wars this tradition was
retained by elevating social and political problems to the level of issues
concerning national security and the integrity of the country. During the
Civil War in Greece (1946-1949) it became a yardstick of loyalty and patriotic
feeling. This tradition, both the fruit and the seed of prejudice, grew
towards being a special national mythology of Northern Greece. It nourished
ideological tendencies as far as the utilisation of history was concerned and
was impressed into a philology and a network of mutual benefit which also
served the political authorities as well. It eventually imposed its own
description of reality which saw problems of a national character through the
criteria of the national ideology of the 19th century and which offered the
argument that the rights of a nation stem from the antiquity of its origin.
Thus, the Greek national ideology which claims a history of four thousand
years can refute the existence of a nation whose credentials are not older
than the last hundred years, as well as the legitimacy of its language and the
justification for its being constituted as a state. The fact that the
newly-created nations constitute the majority in the UN., and the fact that
the new era was inaugurated by the military protection of just such a state
(Kuwait), does not disturb them in the least.
In fact the weight of the generations of the dead is not sufficient to explain
how and why a national dogmatism which binds our foreign policy like a chain
was created with the help of such elements; to explain how this dogmatism came
to be codified, how its spirit in such a short time was able to penetrate
institutions, the media, parties, citizens' organisations and public opinion.
It cannot explain how a restrictive limit was drawn around what could be said
in public concerning these problems, nor how the implementation of this
measure was placed in the hands of the Public Prosecutor. Nor yet can it
explain how nationalistic kitsch could come to dominate singers, commercial
advertising, the squares and the shop windows and even the lapels of elegant
citizens, or again how publications about Macedonia have now come to multiply
and how the symbol from the tomb at Vergina was unexpectedly promoted to being
a national symbol. And, finally, neither can it explain how serious people can
put their names to texts which claim that the criterion for the Greekness of
Macedonia is the fact that the Apostle Paul wrote in Greek to the
Thessalonians and not in Slavonic to the Skopjans.”
----------------
This was posted on Usenet many years ago (early 1990s) and I am not sure who put it together.
Greek academics or journalists.
SOME GREEK OPINIONS ON MACEDONIAN HISTORY.
There have been many opinions on Macedonia and Greece expressed by prominent
Greek historians, journalists and intellectuals which do not toe the official
line of the Greek Government.
The Greek intellectual Damianos Papadimitropoulos wrote on the erroneous
approach of modern Greek historiography towards the Macedonian question in his
contribution Pos mborun na onomazonde Makedones (in the distinguished Greek
journal O Politis, afu den ine elines, Athens, March 1992, page 74) while
arguing on the erroneous approach of modern Greek historiography to the
Macedonian Question as a reply to questions asked by a certain
Mr.Atanasiadis: “The question asked by Mr. Atanasiadis is: How can they (the
Skopjans) call themselves Macedonians when they are not Greeks? How can they
usurp a name which does not belong to them? Is it because perhaps they found
it in the Lost Property Office?”
Mr. Papadimitropoulos replies: “Let me explain, Mr. Atanasiadis' standpoint
presupposes the existence of a three-thousand-year-long historical continuity
of Hellenism. In history, however, there exists no such continuity. It exists
only in our contemporary consciousness and only thus in our historical
knowledge. And, to give things their real names, such a continuity can only be
found if history is read "upside down", ie. from our time backwards to
yesterday. If we do so, indeed what happened yesterday inevitably leads to
today. The event of yesterday is nothing but a presupposition concerning the
event of today.
This kind of ideological reading of history, which requires that people from
other epochs, people with other needs, move and act in accordance with our
needs, our contemporary criteria, is in fact an elimination of history. Such
an eclectic continuous-in-time reading of history, which eliminates the
current context from each historical monument, leaves many questions
unanswered, not merely the question: How can they call themselves Macedonians,
not being Greeks?
One such question is posed by my grandmother's name, which was Romja, and not
Hellenida (a Hellene woman) as she should have been called, according to your
criteria. To cut a long story short, Hellenism as we see it today is a
creation of the last two centuries, a product of the institution of nation
states and of a corresponding awareness accompanying them. That is to say that
in the process of the constitution of the nation state we declared ourselves
as Hellenes (May God help me, I do not mean that we made such a declaration
arbitrarily), while others declared themselves Serbians, Bulgarians, etc..
Others still, who did not wish to be any of the above-mentioned, declared
themselves as Macedonians, taking their name from the territories they lived
in, so as to distinguish themselves from all the others around them and to
constitute a nation of their own.
What we have here is more recent history, which began about a century ago and
is only today being given a final shape as they (the Macedonians) now have a
possibility of constituting themselves as a state as well.”
The historian Antonis Liakos, Professor of History at the University of
Athens, writes in a lecture of May 1992 on "The Balkan Crisis and
Nationalism", published in his book The Janus Face of Nationalism and Greek
Balkan Policy [O Ionos tu etnikizmu ke i eliniki valkaniki politiki] (Athens,
1993, page 10):
“The attitude adopted by Greece towards the disintegration of Yugoslavia has
been focused exclusively, over the past year, on the question of the federal
republic to the north of us. How and why the complex, difficult and tragic
problems arising from the disintegration of a large state boil down to only
one issue, cannot be explained by any logical reasoning but only through
historical inheritance.
A tradition has been created around the Macedonian question, one which
initially was linked to a nationalistic ideology as the latter was formed
towards the end of the last century, being predominantly anti-Slav and
anti-Bulgarian. In the period between the two world wars this tradition was
retained by elevating social and political problems to the level of issues
concerning national security and the integrity of the country. During the
Civil War in Greece (1946-1949) it became a yardstick of loyalty and patriotic
feeling. This tradition, both the fruit and the seed of prejudice, grew
towards being a special national mythology of Northern Greece. It nourished
ideological tendencies as far as the utilisation of history was concerned and
was impressed into a philology and a network of mutual benefit which also
served the political authorities as well. It eventually imposed its own
description of reality which saw problems of a national character through the
criteria of the national ideology of the 19th century and which offered the
argument that the rights of a nation stem from the antiquity of its origin.
Thus, the Greek national ideology which claims a history of four thousand
years can refute the existence of a nation whose credentials are not older
than the last hundred years, as well as the legitimacy of its language and the
justification for its being constituted as a state. The fact that the
newly-created nations constitute the majority in the UN., and the fact that
the new era was inaugurated by the military protection of just such a state
(Kuwait), does not disturb them in the least.
In fact the weight of the generations of the dead is not sufficient to explain
how and why a national dogmatism which binds our foreign policy like a chain
was created with the help of such elements; to explain how this dogmatism came
to be codified, how its spirit in such a short time was able to penetrate
institutions, the media, parties, citizens' organisations and public opinion.
It cannot explain how a restrictive limit was drawn around what could be said
in public concerning these problems, nor how the implementation of this
measure was placed in the hands of the Public Prosecutor. Nor yet can it
explain how nationalistic kitsch could come to dominate singers, commercial
advertising, the squares and the shop windows and even the lapels of elegant
citizens, or again how publications about Macedonia have now come to multiply
and how the symbol from the tomb at Vergina was unexpectedly promoted to being
a national symbol. And, finally, neither can it explain how serious people can
put their names to texts which claim that the criterion for the Greekness of
Macedonia is the fact that the Apostle Paul wrote in Greek to the
Thessalonians and not in Slavonic to the Skopjans.”
----------------
This was posted on Usenet many years ago (early 1990s) and I am not sure who put it together.
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