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Expulsion of Ethnic Macedonians After 1913
The Greek government attempted to ethnically cleanse the Macedonian population and colonize Aegean Macedonia with Greeks. A series of population exchanges occurred after 1913 which saw tens of thousands of Macedonians forcibly expelled while over half a million Greeks were shipped in from Turkey and Bulgaria.
"All statistics except the Greek ones are also in general agreement that these Macedonians represented the largest single group on the territory of Aegean Macedonia before 1913. The figures range from 329,371 or 45.3 per cent to 382,084 or 68.9 per cent of the non-Turkish population; and from 339.369 or 31.3 per cent to 370.371 or 35.2 per cent of the total population of the area of approximately 1,052,227 inhabitants.
The number of Macedonians in Aegean Macedonia began to decline both in absolute terms and as a percentage of the total population during the Balkan wars and particularly after the First World War. The Treaty of Neuilly with Bulgaria provided for the so-called volun-tary exchange of Greek and Bulgarian minorities. According to the best available estimates, 86,582 Macedonians were compelled to emigrate from Aegean Macedonia, mostly from its eastern and central regions, to Bulgaria in the years from 1913 to 1928. More importantly still as a result of the compulsory exchange of Greek and Turkish or rather Christian and Muslim minorities required by the Treaty of Lausanne, which ended the Greek-Turkish war (1919-22), 400,000 Turks, including 49,000 Muslim Macedonians, were forced to leave Greece; and 1,300,000 Greeks and other Christians were expelled from Asia Minor. In the years up to 1928 the Greek government settled 565,143 of these refugees as well as 53,000 colonists from other parts of Greece in Aegean Macedonia. Thus, as a result of the removal of 127,384 Macedonians and the conscious and planned settlement of 618,199 refugees, the Greek government transformed the ethnographic structure of Aegean Macedonia in the period between 1913 and 1928."
"Even Greek sources concede that during the years from 1913 to 1928 the enormous movements of population which took place in Greek Macedonia changed the ethnological composition of the area. Macedonia, History and Politics, acknowledges that perhaps 100,000 Slavic speakers 'left' (ie., were forced to leave), 77,000 of these in 1926 alone. These figures may well be an underestimate but this material does add weight to the idea that even greater numbers of Greeks came in. The extent of the population movement out of Aegean Macedonia is emphasized in a report on March 30, 1927, in the Greek newspaper Rizospastis, which stated that 500,000 Slavic speakers were resettled to Bulgaria."
"Thus the majority of the Greek-speaking population of Aegean Macedonia is descended from relatively recent Greek refugees from Turkey and other places. This being the case, Greece might be considered to have questionable claim on the name Macedonia. Remember, too, that the name Macedonia was not applied to the province by Greece until 1988. Thus much of the current population has lived at most some 70 years in a land that has been called 'Macedonia' for less than a decade. Clearly they do not have the kind of historical claim to the land and to the name Macedonia as the Macedonian Slavs, Vlachs and Albanians whose ancestors have been there for 1,500 years or more."
"...they have carefully fostered this delusion, as if to give the impression both to their own people and to the world that there that there was no Slav minority in Greece at all; whereas, if a foreigner who did not know Greece were to visit the Florina (Lerin) region and from his idea of the country as a whole, he would conclude that it was the Greeks who were the minority. 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 Macedonians became a minority in the eastern half of Aegean Macedonia while remaining (still today) a majority in western Aegean Macedonia, around the villages of Lerin, Kostur, and Voden. The numbers of ethnic Macedonians was reduced to 240,000. Today, the estimates range between 270,000 and one million (the latter number by Macedonian human rights activists in Greece).
"As official census data do not exist, and if they did they would not be reliable, we will mention here the most frequent estimate of some 200,000 Macedonian speakers in Greece (IHF, 1993:45; & Rizopoulos, 1993); the 1987 Encyclopedia Britannica Book of the Year 1987 gives an estimate of 180,000 (Banfi, 1994:5). Also, an anonymous Greek ethnologist gave an estimate of 200,000 for the community...(Chiclet, 1994:8). Another scholar, based on a detailed estimate of 30,000 speakers in the Florina and Aridea area makes a global estimate of 100,000-150,000 Macedonian speakers throughout Greek Macedonia (Van Boeschoten, 1994). Thus, the 200,000 estimate for the Macedonian community seems reasonable..." 5
"...we note Greek claims that Northern Greece, or Aegean Macedonia, is 'more than 98.5% ethnically pure.' The purity is held to be Greek. However, the statement is not accepted by reputable opinion outside of Greece. For instance, the 1987 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica indicated that there were still 180,000 Macedonian speakers in this area, indicating a much greater percentage than 1.5%. If Macedonian activists from these areas are correct,there may be as many as 1,000,000 people from Macedonian-speaking backgrounds in Aegean Macedonia." 6
"Following the partition of Macedonia in 1913, Aegean Macedonia was annexed by Greece and since then its indigenous people, the ethnic Macedonians, became the target and often the victim of the oppressive policies of Greek state. Today, after nearly ninety years of assimilation efforts by the Greek governments it seems that measures have proved to be unsuccessful in Hellenizing the region. Currently, the ethnic Macedonians, estimated around 1,000,000 by some sources, still constitute the majority of population in that part of the Greece, Aegean Macedonia."
Summary of the Partition and Colonization of Aegean Macedonia
After the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), the First World War (1914-1918) and especially after the Peace Treaties of Lausanne (1923), which gave the Macedonian issue a central place, there began a great ethnic cleansing of Macedonians, who in 1912 had numbered 374,000, from the Aegean part of Macedonia.
Disregarding the principle of respect for minority rights within existing states, the negotiations in Lausanne accepted the principle of an obligatory resettlement of Christians from Turkey (Greeks, Turkophones, etc.) and of Moslems from Greece (Turks, Macedonian Moslems, etc.). Under the convention for obligatory emigration, 350,000 Moslems were expelled from the Aegean part of Macedonia. 40,000 of these were Macedonian Moslems.
In place of the Macedonians expelled to Bulgaria and Turkey (a total of 126,000) the Greek state resettled 618,000 persons of Greek and non-Greek origin in the Aegean part of Macedonia. This heterogeneous population, colonized in the Aegean part of Macedonia in the period between the two world wars, came from other parts of Greece, as well as from Asia Minor, the Black Sea region, the Caucasus, western Thrace, Bulgaria and other places.
The large majority of the refugee Christian population was settled in villages throughout the Aegean part of Macedonia, thus creating what has become known as the village, or agricultural, colonization; and a smaller number were colonized in towns, creating the so-called urban colonization.
This large colonization effected by Greece resulted in a major change in the historical status of the Macedonian language. Once the language used by most, it was now afforded only the status of the language of a minority, or the status of a family language, which was spoken by 240,000 Macedonians.
The large ethnic changes were the cause of changes in the status of the Greek language as well. From being the language of a minority, it now became the most used language, being imposed even on the Armenians, the "Turkophones", the in-comers from among the various Caucasian peoples, etc. With the imposition of the Greek language and with the help of mixed marriages, a new Greek nation was being created in the Aegean part of Macedonia.
The colonization by this population, whom the Macedonians called madziri (in-comers, foreigners), resulted in the Aegean part of Macedonia losing its Macedonian ethnic character. The Macedonians (240,000) became a minority; they were present as a majority only in the western part of the Aegean part of Macedonia (Kostur, Lerin and Voden regions).
The large colonization brought about by the Greeks was followed by a law passed by the Greek government in 1926 on the change of the toponymy of the Aegean part of Macedonia. All villages, towns, rivers and mountains were renamed and given Greek names.
The Greek state achieved this through a policy of state terror. As early as the period of the Balkan War of 1913 Greece had begun the ethnic genocide of the Macedonian people. The cruelty displayed by the Greek soldiers in their dealings towards the Macedonian people was merciless.
Following the political partition of Macedonia in 1913, Greece launched upon an active policy of the denial of the nationality and the assimilation of the Macedonians. The name Macedonian and the Macedonian language were prohibited and the Macedonians were referred to as Bulgarians, Slavophone Greeks or simply "endopes" (natives). At the same time, all the Macedonians were forced to change their names and surnames, the latter having to end in -is, -os or -poulos.
With the denial of the Macedonian nation went the non-recognition of the Macedonian language. It was prohibited, its standing was minimized and it was considered a barbarian language, unworthy of a cultured and civilized citizen. Its use in personal communication, between parents and children, among villagers, at weddings and funerals, was strictly forbidden. Defiance of this ban produced Draconian measures, ranging from moral and mental maltreatment to a "language tax" on each Macedonian word that was uttered. The written use of Macedonian was also strictly prohibited, and Macedonian literacy was being eliminated from the churches, monuments and tombstones. All the churches were given Greek names.
The attacks on the Macedonian language culminated at the time of Ioannis Metaxas (1936). General Metaxas banned the use of Macedonian not only in everyday life in the villages, in the market-place, in ordinary and natural human communications and at funerals, but also within the family circle. Adult Macedonians, regardless of their age, were forced to attend what were known as evening schools and to learn "the melodious Greek language". The violation of the ban on the use of the Macedonian language in the villages, market-places or the closed circle of the family caused great numbers of Macedonians to be convicted and deported to desolate Greek islands.
The Greek government attempted to ethnically cleanse the Macedonian population and colonize Aegean Macedonia with Greeks. A series of population exchanges occurred after 1913 which saw tens of thousands of Macedonians forcibly expelled while over half a million Greeks were shipped in from Turkey and Bulgaria.
"All statistics except the Greek ones are also in general agreement that these Macedonians represented the largest single group on the territory of Aegean Macedonia before 1913. The figures range from 329,371 or 45.3 per cent to 382,084 or 68.9 per cent of the non-Turkish population; and from 339.369 or 31.3 per cent to 370.371 or 35.2 per cent of the total population of the area of approximately 1,052,227 inhabitants.
The number of Macedonians in Aegean Macedonia began to decline both in absolute terms and as a percentage of the total population during the Balkan wars and particularly after the First World War. The Treaty of Neuilly with Bulgaria provided for the so-called volun-tary exchange of Greek and Bulgarian minorities. According to the best available estimates, 86,582 Macedonians were compelled to emigrate from Aegean Macedonia, mostly from its eastern and central regions, to Bulgaria in the years from 1913 to 1928. More importantly still as a result of the compulsory exchange of Greek and Turkish or rather Christian and Muslim minorities required by the Treaty of Lausanne, which ended the Greek-Turkish war (1919-22), 400,000 Turks, including 49,000 Muslim Macedonians, were forced to leave Greece; and 1,300,000 Greeks and other Christians were expelled from Asia Minor. In the years up to 1928 the Greek government settled 565,143 of these refugees as well as 53,000 colonists from other parts of Greece in Aegean Macedonia. Thus, as a result of the removal of 127,384 Macedonians and the conscious and planned settlement of 618,199 refugees, the Greek government transformed the ethnographic structure of Aegean Macedonia in the period between 1913 and 1928."
"Even Greek sources concede that during the years from 1913 to 1928 the enormous movements of population which took place in Greek Macedonia changed the ethnological composition of the area. Macedonia, History and Politics, acknowledges that perhaps 100,000 Slavic speakers 'left' (ie., were forced to leave), 77,000 of these in 1926 alone. These figures may well be an underestimate but this material does add weight to the idea that even greater numbers of Greeks came in. The extent of the population movement out of Aegean Macedonia is emphasized in a report on March 30, 1927, in the Greek newspaper Rizospastis, which stated that 500,000 Slavic speakers were resettled to Bulgaria."
"Thus the majority of the Greek-speaking population of Aegean Macedonia is descended from relatively recent Greek refugees from Turkey and other places. This being the case, Greece might be considered to have questionable claim on the name Macedonia. Remember, too, that the name Macedonia was not applied to the province by Greece until 1988. Thus much of the current population has lived at most some 70 years in a land that has been called 'Macedonia' for less than a decade. Clearly they do not have the kind of historical claim to the land and to the name Macedonia as the Macedonian Slavs, Vlachs and Albanians whose ancestors have been there for 1,500 years or more."
"...they have carefully fostered this delusion, as if to give the impression both to their own people and to the world that there that there was no Slav minority in Greece at all; whereas, if a foreigner who did not know Greece were to visit the Florina (Lerin) region and from his idea of the country as a whole, he would conclude that it was the Greeks who were the minority. 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 Macedonians became a minority in the eastern half of Aegean Macedonia while remaining (still today) a majority in western Aegean Macedonia, around the villages of Lerin, Kostur, and Voden. The numbers of ethnic Macedonians was reduced to 240,000. Today, the estimates range between 270,000 and one million (the latter number by Macedonian human rights activists in Greece).
"As official census data do not exist, and if they did they would not be reliable, we will mention here the most frequent estimate of some 200,000 Macedonian speakers in Greece (IHF, 1993:45; & Rizopoulos, 1993); the 1987 Encyclopedia Britannica Book of the Year 1987 gives an estimate of 180,000 (Banfi, 1994:5). Also, an anonymous Greek ethnologist gave an estimate of 200,000 for the community...(Chiclet, 1994:8). Another scholar, based on a detailed estimate of 30,000 speakers in the Florina and Aridea area makes a global estimate of 100,000-150,000 Macedonian speakers throughout Greek Macedonia (Van Boeschoten, 1994). Thus, the 200,000 estimate for the Macedonian community seems reasonable..." 5
"...we note Greek claims that Northern Greece, or Aegean Macedonia, is 'more than 98.5% ethnically pure.' The purity is held to be Greek. However, the statement is not accepted by reputable opinion outside of Greece. For instance, the 1987 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica indicated that there were still 180,000 Macedonian speakers in this area, indicating a much greater percentage than 1.5%. If Macedonian activists from these areas are correct,there may be as many as 1,000,000 people from Macedonian-speaking backgrounds in Aegean Macedonia." 6
"Following the partition of Macedonia in 1913, Aegean Macedonia was annexed by Greece and since then its indigenous people, the ethnic Macedonians, became the target and often the victim of the oppressive policies of Greek state. Today, after nearly ninety years of assimilation efforts by the Greek governments it seems that measures have proved to be unsuccessful in Hellenizing the region. Currently, the ethnic Macedonians, estimated around 1,000,000 by some sources, still constitute the majority of population in that part of the Greece, Aegean Macedonia."
Summary of the Partition and Colonization of Aegean Macedonia
After the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), the First World War (1914-1918) and especially after the Peace Treaties of Lausanne (1923), which gave the Macedonian issue a central place, there began a great ethnic cleansing of Macedonians, who in 1912 had numbered 374,000, from the Aegean part of Macedonia.
Disregarding the principle of respect for minority rights within existing states, the negotiations in Lausanne accepted the principle of an obligatory resettlement of Christians from Turkey (Greeks, Turkophones, etc.) and of Moslems from Greece (Turks, Macedonian Moslems, etc.). Under the convention for obligatory emigration, 350,000 Moslems were expelled from the Aegean part of Macedonia. 40,000 of these were Macedonian Moslems.
In place of the Macedonians expelled to Bulgaria and Turkey (a total of 126,000) the Greek state resettled 618,000 persons of Greek and non-Greek origin in the Aegean part of Macedonia. This heterogeneous population, colonized in the Aegean part of Macedonia in the period between the two world wars, came from other parts of Greece, as well as from Asia Minor, the Black Sea region, the Caucasus, western Thrace, Bulgaria and other places.
The large majority of the refugee Christian population was settled in villages throughout the Aegean part of Macedonia, thus creating what has become known as the village, or agricultural, colonization; and a smaller number were colonized in towns, creating the so-called urban colonization.
This large colonization effected by Greece resulted in a major change in the historical status of the Macedonian language. Once the language used by most, it was now afforded only the status of the language of a minority, or the status of a family language, which was spoken by 240,000 Macedonians.
The large ethnic changes were the cause of changes in the status of the Greek language as well. From being the language of a minority, it now became the most used language, being imposed even on the Armenians, the "Turkophones", the in-comers from among the various Caucasian peoples, etc. With the imposition of the Greek language and with the help of mixed marriages, a new Greek nation was being created in the Aegean part of Macedonia.
The colonization by this population, whom the Macedonians called madziri (in-comers, foreigners), resulted in the Aegean part of Macedonia losing its Macedonian ethnic character. The Macedonians (240,000) became a minority; they were present as a majority only in the western part of the Aegean part of Macedonia (Kostur, Lerin and Voden regions).
The large colonization brought about by the Greeks was followed by a law passed by the Greek government in 1926 on the change of the toponymy of the Aegean part of Macedonia. All villages, towns, rivers and mountains were renamed and given Greek names.
The Greek state achieved this through a policy of state terror. As early as the period of the Balkan War of 1913 Greece had begun the ethnic genocide of the Macedonian people. The cruelty displayed by the Greek soldiers in their dealings towards the Macedonian people was merciless.
Following the political partition of Macedonia in 1913, Greece launched upon an active policy of the denial of the nationality and the assimilation of the Macedonians. The name Macedonian and the Macedonian language were prohibited and the Macedonians were referred to as Bulgarians, Slavophone Greeks or simply "endopes" (natives). At the same time, all the Macedonians were forced to change their names and surnames, the latter having to end in -is, -os or -poulos.
With the denial of the Macedonian nation went the non-recognition of the Macedonian language. It was prohibited, its standing was minimized and it was considered a barbarian language, unworthy of a cultured and civilized citizen. Its use in personal communication, between parents and children, among villagers, at weddings and funerals, was strictly forbidden. Defiance of this ban produced Draconian measures, ranging from moral and mental maltreatment to a "language tax" on each Macedonian word that was uttered. The written use of Macedonian was also strictly prohibited, and Macedonian literacy was being eliminated from the churches, monuments and tombstones. All the churches were given Greek names.
The attacks on the Macedonian language culminated at the time of Ioannis Metaxas (1936). General Metaxas banned the use of Macedonian not only in everyday life in the villages, in the market-place, in ordinary and natural human communications and at funerals, but also within the family circle. Adult Macedonians, regardless of their age, were forced to attend what were known as evening schools and to learn "the melodious Greek language". The violation of the ban on the use of the Macedonian language in the villages, market-places or the closed circle of the family caused great numbers of Macedonians to be convicted and deported to desolate Greek islands.
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