From the Once Classified Files - Part 11
Bulgarians in Greek Macedonia
August 9, 1943
The Foreign Service of the United States of America
No, 1106 (R-1013)
American Consulate General, Istanbul, Turkey
SUBJECT: Bulgarians in Greek Macedonia
THE HONORABLE THE SECRETARY OF STATE WASHINGTON
Sir:
I have the honor to present below an article from the Bulgarian newspaper UTRO of August 3, 1943, which gives some account of the relations between Greeks and Bulgarians in the region west and northwest of Salonika, that is, in Greek Macedonia.
The Bulgarian population in this part of Macedonia is gathered mainly around the towns of Kastoria, Florina, Vodena, and Enidje Vardar.
Besides the Bulgarian population of these towns, which is largest in the town of Vodena, the Bulgarians live mainly in the outlying villages. The Bulgarians in this are represent old populations going back to the Middle Ages. This region was included within the limits of the territory assigned to Bulgaria by the Treaty of San Stefano. Accurate information as to the total Bulgarian population in this district is lacking. At the time of the Treaty of Bucharest in 1913 the population of that part of Macedonia assigned to Greece was given as follows:
Turks 299,880
Bulgarians 297,735
Greeks 249,657
Kutso-Vlachs 39,480
Albanians 21,770
Gypsies 23,130
Jews 84,112
Total 1,015,812
(G.P. Genov, "Bulgaria and the Treaty of Neuilly, page 139)
This included the area as far east as the Mesta River. A considerable part of the Bulgarian populations was expelled from Eastern Macedonia after 1919. Also the Greek population was expelled from Asia Minor in 1923. The Turkish population was also exchanged. How many Bulgarians now live in that part of Macedonia referred to in the article is impossible of accurate estimation. One might guess 100,000.
The article presented below indicates that relations between The Bulgarian and Greek population in this region are bitterly hostile. The situation described represents the struggle between local nationalities characteristic of the Balkans in regions where nationalities are mixed. The relationship is that of mass feud. There in no question in such region of right being exclusively on the side of either party. The two parties are irreconcilable. No government in the Balkans will rule an equal hand in such a district. The only solution is absolute control by a foreign power or exchange of populations.
When this region became Greek after the second Balkan War, a situation confirmed following the First Balkan War, the Bulgarian minority was deprived of its schools, churches and other Bulgarian institutions. Bulgarian children were forced to go to Greek schools. All books and newspapers in the Bulgarian language were forbidden. As it was impossible to prevent the population from speaking their native language in the home the language was continued. This is a situation characteristic of those areas of the Balkans where a helpless minority has fallen under the rule of a neighboring government.
What will happen in this area when the war in the Balkans ends with the defeat of the Bulgarian army? The probability is that the Bulgarian population will either be forcibly expelled or massacred as occurred on a considerable scale in the summer of 1913. In Eastern Macedonia and Western Thrace the Bulgarian population, which consists to a large extent of settlers who have come in during the last two years, will be able to escape by flight into Bulgaria, but the Bulgarian population in the region in Macedonia indicated below will not be able to escape into Bulgarian territory and therefore will probably in large measure be destroyed, because the local hatreds which have existed for centuries have been greatly aggravated during the last two years. The only way in which massacre on a large scale in the Balkans can be prevented is by the occupation by Allied forces of all the regions where the population is mixed.
To say that in this case the Bulgarians will deserve any fate meted out to them is beside the point, because the persons who will suffer are the peasants who had nothing whatever to do with the policies of the government in Sofia, which brought Bulgaria into the war on the side of the Axis. The idea of justice in such cases does not exist in the Balkans. It is rather a question of humanity on the part of those at a distance who, not being concerned in local passions, are able to take a more humane view of the whole situation.
The article is extremely interesting as testimony of an actual situation in one of the most remote parts of Macedonia. In free translation it reads as follows:
The Bulgarians from the Kastoria District are waging an Epic Struggle against Greek Bands
By K. Naumov
“Salonika is full of hundreds of touch and stubborn sons of Enidje Vardar and of the provinces of Vodena, Florina and Kastoria. They speak to you in a wonderfully pure Bulgarian language and in their breasts beats a steel Bulgarian spirit. I was talking to one of them who comes from the district of Kastoria.
“The whole district, where every peak, every mountain and every village is marked by bloody traces as the result of the struggles which Bulgarian Macedonia fought for freedom and national existence in the past has taken up arms to defend itself and are openly against Greek bands, who have taken the offensive and are openly against everything Bulgarian in the district of Kastoria and elsewhere. Some of these bands are communists under the leadership of some one by the name of Ksilanti, while most bands are Greek nationalists acting under the slogan ‘Great Greece’. The aim of both bands is to wipe out the Bulgarians, and they are using the most cruel and barbaric means. Separately the bands act as communists or nationalists, as was the case in Serbia.
But when it comes to attacking whole Bulgarian villages, they are then all Greeks and are inspired only by the bloodthirsty desire to destroy in the most merciless way Bulgarianism, which appears in these parts of the Balkans as the only stronghold of Bulgarianism, peace, order, tranquility and the ideas of New Europe.
“The Kastoria district already has its own militia to fight these bands. In the town of Kastoria itself there is a special ‘Bulgarian committee of the Axis.’ In every village of the Kastoria district this militia, armed more with a high spirit, a sound Bulgarian stubbornness and a steel spirit rather than with sufficient arms and military supplies, is creating a grand epic of legendary struggle. Bulgaria appears as the ideal country of the long desired freedom. The people compose and sing songs of liberty as once the whole of Bulgaria fought against the Phanariotes . Flying columns, recalling the bands of Benkovski and Kableshkov, watch over the life and safety of the whole Kastoria district, which has already made heavy sacrifices. The pretty and purely Bulgarian villages of Nestruni, Staricheni , Drenichevo, Gurche, Chuka, Ieleyoze, Breshani, Stensko, Radokoze and Slimnitsa have been burned down and destroyed by the raging Greek communist and nationalist bands which appear as ‘fifth columns’ of the Anglo-Americans. Many other villages also in the district of Kastoria, as Hrupishte and Embore, Gorenitsi and Chetiro as well as others have suffered. There is no village in the district of Kastoria which has not made heavy sacrifices for its freedom and its adherence to the Bulgarian nation. Greek bands enter Bulgarian villages at night, drag out the more aggressive and kill them. The population of the districts of Kastoria, Florina, Vodena and Enidje Vardar is united more and more around the Bulgarian tricolor with which the Kastoria militia defends its Bulgarian origin in the struggle against the Greek bands. The Bulgarian tricolor flies high in every place where the Bulgarian militia is, Bulgarian police has been organized in some villages. In the Kastoria militia hundreds of brave and bold Bulgarian girls are also carrying arms and are defending mothers, children and old people on an equal footing with the militiamen. Everything Greek has been for years boycotted and discarded. The children do not go to Greek schools. All Greek beginning books and textbooks have been burned or thrown into the Bistritsa River. If by any chance a Bulgarian book falls into their hands it is guarded as something holy. Old exarchate teachers, men and women, have organized courses for the Bulgarian language groups similar to those in the time of Paisii at Hilendar. The Greeks allow no food to these Bulgarians, not even salt. In spite of it all, the Bulgarians from the districts of Kastoria, Enidje Vardar, Florina and Vodena with their unbreakable and enthusiastic spirit, with the inerasable memories of the great epic of Gotse Delchev and the leader Chakalarov, are fighting and defending the great cause of justice and national existence with the idealism of the pre-liberation epoch”
Respectfully yours, Burton Y. Berry, American Consul General
To Department in original and hectograph
Bulgaro-Yugoslav Relations – Macedonian question
September 10, 1940
Draft telegram No. 455 to Belgrade and No. 333 to Sofia of 23rd August recording a conversation with the Bulgarian Minister on 21st August who said Bulgarian relations with Yugoslavia were excellent and that it was no longer possible for the Macedonian issue to be used as a means of estranging the two countries. Macedonian revolutionaries now relied on funds issuing from bodies in the United States of America whose aim was an independent Macedonia, the establishment of which would entail sacrifices alike by Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Greece.
Belgrade telegram No. 655
This is a very useful telegram on a subject which has lost its former prominence. I think we can agree with both the Bulgarian Minister and with Mr. Campbell that the Macedonian question is of little importance in connexion with Yugoslav-Bulgarian relations.
At the same time there are indications that all three totalitarian powers are showing marked interest in the movement (see Sofia telegram No. 493 on 7075/613/7). Presumably the only possible German or Italian aim in encouraging Macedonian autonomy would be to include an autonomous Macedonia within Bulgarian borders, thus disintegrating Greece and Yugoslavia. In view of the close relations between the Axis and Bulgaria it may be possible that the instrument which they will use will not be either Ivan Mihailoff’s Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization or (naturally) the Communist Federalists who are mostly, I believe, organized in a Macedonian labour party which is backed very largely by American funds. At the moment I should imagine that most Macedonians belong to Mr. Campbell’s third category of discontented peasants who are anti-Yugoslav, anti-Greek, anti-Bulgarian, anti-German and anti everything except possibly anti-Rissian.
See also R 7515/G.
Canadian Embassy
Athens, February 16th, 1949
No. 111
Sir,
I have the honour to refer to my dispatch No. 50 of February 1st, 1949 concerning the activities in Canada of a pro-Bulgar and pro-Macedonian organization.
2. The British Embassy Security Authorities in Athens have forwarded to the Embassy a report entitled “A protest by the Macedonian People’ Union of Canada to the Yugoslav Government,” a copy of which is enclosed.
3. While this report has jest reached me, it was obtained by British Security Authorities in Greece from the Aliens directorate of the Greek Ministry of Public Order on December 14th, 1948.
4. The protest of the Macedonian People’s Union was addressed to the Legation of Yugoslavia in Ottawa. The Macedonian People’s Union is possible the same organization as the Macedonian0Canadian Peoples’ League mentioned in paragraph 2 of your dispatch under reference. The resolution is of particular interest in showing the Union’s anti-Tito and pro-Bulgarian sympathies.
I have the honour to be, Sir, Your obedient servant, (can’t tell signature)
The Right Honourable, The Secretary of State for External Affairs, Ottawa.
taken from email from r stefov
Bulgarians in Greek Macedonia
August 9, 1943
The Foreign Service of the United States of America
No, 1106 (R-1013)
American Consulate General, Istanbul, Turkey
SUBJECT: Bulgarians in Greek Macedonia
THE HONORABLE THE SECRETARY OF STATE WASHINGTON
Sir:
I have the honor to present below an article from the Bulgarian newspaper UTRO of August 3, 1943, which gives some account of the relations between Greeks and Bulgarians in the region west and northwest of Salonika, that is, in Greek Macedonia.
The Bulgarian population in this part of Macedonia is gathered mainly around the towns of Kastoria, Florina, Vodena, and Enidje Vardar.
Besides the Bulgarian population of these towns, which is largest in the town of Vodena, the Bulgarians live mainly in the outlying villages. The Bulgarians in this are represent old populations going back to the Middle Ages. This region was included within the limits of the territory assigned to Bulgaria by the Treaty of San Stefano. Accurate information as to the total Bulgarian population in this district is lacking. At the time of the Treaty of Bucharest in 1913 the population of that part of Macedonia assigned to Greece was given as follows:
Turks 299,880
Bulgarians 297,735
Greeks 249,657
Kutso-Vlachs 39,480
Albanians 21,770
Gypsies 23,130
Jews 84,112
Total 1,015,812
(G.P. Genov, "Bulgaria and the Treaty of Neuilly, page 139)
This included the area as far east as the Mesta River. A considerable part of the Bulgarian populations was expelled from Eastern Macedonia after 1919. Also the Greek population was expelled from Asia Minor in 1923. The Turkish population was also exchanged. How many Bulgarians now live in that part of Macedonia referred to in the article is impossible of accurate estimation. One might guess 100,000.
The article presented below indicates that relations between The Bulgarian and Greek population in this region are bitterly hostile. The situation described represents the struggle between local nationalities characteristic of the Balkans in regions where nationalities are mixed. The relationship is that of mass feud. There in no question in such region of right being exclusively on the side of either party. The two parties are irreconcilable. No government in the Balkans will rule an equal hand in such a district. The only solution is absolute control by a foreign power or exchange of populations.
When this region became Greek after the second Balkan War, a situation confirmed following the First Balkan War, the Bulgarian minority was deprived of its schools, churches and other Bulgarian institutions. Bulgarian children were forced to go to Greek schools. All books and newspapers in the Bulgarian language were forbidden. As it was impossible to prevent the population from speaking their native language in the home the language was continued. This is a situation characteristic of those areas of the Balkans where a helpless minority has fallen under the rule of a neighboring government.
What will happen in this area when the war in the Balkans ends with the defeat of the Bulgarian army? The probability is that the Bulgarian population will either be forcibly expelled or massacred as occurred on a considerable scale in the summer of 1913. In Eastern Macedonia and Western Thrace the Bulgarian population, which consists to a large extent of settlers who have come in during the last two years, will be able to escape by flight into Bulgaria, but the Bulgarian population in the region in Macedonia indicated below will not be able to escape into Bulgarian territory and therefore will probably in large measure be destroyed, because the local hatreds which have existed for centuries have been greatly aggravated during the last two years. The only way in which massacre on a large scale in the Balkans can be prevented is by the occupation by Allied forces of all the regions where the population is mixed.
To say that in this case the Bulgarians will deserve any fate meted out to them is beside the point, because the persons who will suffer are the peasants who had nothing whatever to do with the policies of the government in Sofia, which brought Bulgaria into the war on the side of the Axis. The idea of justice in such cases does not exist in the Balkans. It is rather a question of humanity on the part of those at a distance who, not being concerned in local passions, are able to take a more humane view of the whole situation.
The article is extremely interesting as testimony of an actual situation in one of the most remote parts of Macedonia. In free translation it reads as follows:
The Bulgarians from the Kastoria District are waging an Epic Struggle against Greek Bands
By K. Naumov
“Salonika is full of hundreds of touch and stubborn sons of Enidje Vardar and of the provinces of Vodena, Florina and Kastoria. They speak to you in a wonderfully pure Bulgarian language and in their breasts beats a steel Bulgarian spirit. I was talking to one of them who comes from the district of Kastoria.
“The whole district, where every peak, every mountain and every village is marked by bloody traces as the result of the struggles which Bulgarian Macedonia fought for freedom and national existence in the past has taken up arms to defend itself and are openly against Greek bands, who have taken the offensive and are openly against everything Bulgarian in the district of Kastoria and elsewhere. Some of these bands are communists under the leadership of some one by the name of Ksilanti, while most bands are Greek nationalists acting under the slogan ‘Great Greece’. The aim of both bands is to wipe out the Bulgarians, and they are using the most cruel and barbaric means. Separately the bands act as communists or nationalists, as was the case in Serbia.
But when it comes to attacking whole Bulgarian villages, they are then all Greeks and are inspired only by the bloodthirsty desire to destroy in the most merciless way Bulgarianism, which appears in these parts of the Balkans as the only stronghold of Bulgarianism, peace, order, tranquility and the ideas of New Europe.
“The Kastoria district already has its own militia to fight these bands. In the town of Kastoria itself there is a special ‘Bulgarian committee of the Axis.’ In every village of the Kastoria district this militia, armed more with a high spirit, a sound Bulgarian stubbornness and a steel spirit rather than with sufficient arms and military supplies, is creating a grand epic of legendary struggle. Bulgaria appears as the ideal country of the long desired freedom. The people compose and sing songs of liberty as once the whole of Bulgaria fought against the Phanariotes . Flying columns, recalling the bands of Benkovski and Kableshkov, watch over the life and safety of the whole Kastoria district, which has already made heavy sacrifices. The pretty and purely Bulgarian villages of Nestruni, Staricheni , Drenichevo, Gurche, Chuka, Ieleyoze, Breshani, Stensko, Radokoze and Slimnitsa have been burned down and destroyed by the raging Greek communist and nationalist bands which appear as ‘fifth columns’ of the Anglo-Americans. Many other villages also in the district of Kastoria, as Hrupishte and Embore, Gorenitsi and Chetiro as well as others have suffered. There is no village in the district of Kastoria which has not made heavy sacrifices for its freedom and its adherence to the Bulgarian nation. Greek bands enter Bulgarian villages at night, drag out the more aggressive and kill them. The population of the districts of Kastoria, Florina, Vodena and Enidje Vardar is united more and more around the Bulgarian tricolor with which the Kastoria militia defends its Bulgarian origin in the struggle against the Greek bands. The Bulgarian tricolor flies high in every place where the Bulgarian militia is, Bulgarian police has been organized in some villages. In the Kastoria militia hundreds of brave and bold Bulgarian girls are also carrying arms and are defending mothers, children and old people on an equal footing with the militiamen. Everything Greek has been for years boycotted and discarded. The children do not go to Greek schools. All Greek beginning books and textbooks have been burned or thrown into the Bistritsa River. If by any chance a Bulgarian book falls into their hands it is guarded as something holy. Old exarchate teachers, men and women, have organized courses for the Bulgarian language groups similar to those in the time of Paisii at Hilendar. The Greeks allow no food to these Bulgarians, not even salt. In spite of it all, the Bulgarians from the districts of Kastoria, Enidje Vardar, Florina and Vodena with their unbreakable and enthusiastic spirit, with the inerasable memories of the great epic of Gotse Delchev and the leader Chakalarov, are fighting and defending the great cause of justice and national existence with the idealism of the pre-liberation epoch”
Respectfully yours, Burton Y. Berry, American Consul General
To Department in original and hectograph
Bulgaro-Yugoslav Relations – Macedonian question
September 10, 1940
Draft telegram No. 455 to Belgrade and No. 333 to Sofia of 23rd August recording a conversation with the Bulgarian Minister on 21st August who said Bulgarian relations with Yugoslavia were excellent and that it was no longer possible for the Macedonian issue to be used as a means of estranging the two countries. Macedonian revolutionaries now relied on funds issuing from bodies in the United States of America whose aim was an independent Macedonia, the establishment of which would entail sacrifices alike by Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Greece.
Belgrade telegram No. 655
This is a very useful telegram on a subject which has lost its former prominence. I think we can agree with both the Bulgarian Minister and with Mr. Campbell that the Macedonian question is of little importance in connexion with Yugoslav-Bulgarian relations.
At the same time there are indications that all three totalitarian powers are showing marked interest in the movement (see Sofia telegram No. 493 on 7075/613/7). Presumably the only possible German or Italian aim in encouraging Macedonian autonomy would be to include an autonomous Macedonia within Bulgarian borders, thus disintegrating Greece and Yugoslavia. In view of the close relations between the Axis and Bulgaria it may be possible that the instrument which they will use will not be either Ivan Mihailoff’s Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization or (naturally) the Communist Federalists who are mostly, I believe, organized in a Macedonian labour party which is backed very largely by American funds. At the moment I should imagine that most Macedonians belong to Mr. Campbell’s third category of discontented peasants who are anti-Yugoslav, anti-Greek, anti-Bulgarian, anti-German and anti everything except possibly anti-Rissian.
See also R 7515/G.
Canadian Embassy
Athens, February 16th, 1949
No. 111
Sir,
I have the honour to refer to my dispatch No. 50 of February 1st, 1949 concerning the activities in Canada of a pro-Bulgar and pro-Macedonian organization.
2. The British Embassy Security Authorities in Athens have forwarded to the Embassy a report entitled “A protest by the Macedonian People’ Union of Canada to the Yugoslav Government,” a copy of which is enclosed.
3. While this report has jest reached me, it was obtained by British Security Authorities in Greece from the Aliens directorate of the Greek Ministry of Public Order on December 14th, 1948.
4. The protest of the Macedonian People’s Union was addressed to the Legation of Yugoslavia in Ottawa. The Macedonian People’s Union is possible the same organization as the Macedonian0Canadian Peoples’ League mentioned in paragraph 2 of your dispatch under reference. The resolution is of particular interest in showing the Union’s anti-Tito and pro-Bulgarian sympathies.
I have the honour to be, Sir, Your obedient servant, (can’t tell signature)
The Right Honourable, The Secretary of State for External Affairs, Ottawa.
taken from email from r stefov
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