Australian Macedonian Human Rights Committee (AMHRC)

[Bratot]

Excellent activity, keep with the work guys!

[Grotius]

Well done AMHRC, some high quality articles in there. Keep going!!

[TrueMacedonian]

Link is not working now AMHRC (or is it my computer?)

[Vangelovski]

Link is not working now AMHRC (or is it my computer?)

I had trouble as well, but I managed to finally download it.

[makedonche]

Well done boys, as usual -"outstanding"!
Onward and upward.

[VMRO]

I can't even go on the website, can someone please upload it to some file server please?

[AMHRC]

Our website has been attacked, not for the first time this year, though our technician will get it up again - apologies for the inconvenience.

AMHRC.

[blackcactus]

Thank you AMHRC for all you are doing

[julie]

AMHRC thank you so much for your efforts, will be joining you guys soon

[TrueMacedonian]

Our website has been attacked, not for the first time this year, though our technician will get it up again - apologies for the inconvenience.

AMHRC.

AMHRC you guys are too honest in your opinion on things. That is why your website was attacked

[AMHRC]

Dear all,

The website is running again and also we have been advised to mention that patience is needed when loading the Review - it can take a few minutes.

AMHRC.

[AMHRC]

Very nice work AMHRC Solid articles. I especially like the article on hellenism and the megali idea

TM,

We might whet some more appetites by reproducing it here:

Hellenism and the Megali Idea

What is Hellenism? One answer is obtained by focusing on certain policies of Greek governments throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. These policies seem in significant proportion to have been given ‘historical support’ sourced from some German Romantics in the nineteenth century. An old propaganda campaign which has its roots not in Greece, but Prussia, began back when a German named Johan Gustav Droysen wrote a three volume work titled Geshichte des Hellenismus (History of Hellenism) between 1833 and 1843.

According to one of many scholars Droysen coined the term Hellenism (1) which was defined as an unbroken, unending, uninterrupted assimilatory culture that dated back from the ancient Hellenes to the present. The purpose of composing such a Romantic continuity myth was in significant part, undeniably political. The aim was to lay the foundations, on the basis of ‘historical precedent’, for a case in favour of the construction of a German national state via the sponsorship of the Prussian state-let. (2). Droysen offered an interpretation of ancient history in which he portrayed Hellenistic history as posing the problem of “freedom”, in a form relevant to his own time. The solution, in Droysen’s mind was clear, ‘re-unification’ of Germany (3). How would this be achieved and what would be the justification? Droysen would later reveal in more direct terms, that the power of the Prussian war machine should serve the purpose of‘re-unification’. The justification was found in a very romantic tracing back of German ‘roots’ to the 700’s and Charlemagne.

Modern Greece became a recognized state in 1830 via the sponsorship of Europe’s Great Powers (who for their own reasons were dismembering the Ottoman Empire) and the various elite groups controlling the state, began searching for the glue that could hold together the construction of a cohesive modern mass society. The convenience of Droysen’s Hellenism was at first not apparent to the ethno-culturally diverse strata attempting to govern the new state. Indeed, Greece’s chief historian at this time, Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos, expressed the view that the ancient Macedonians were different from the ancient Hellenes (4).

Eventually however, myths of the ‘Droysenian’ variety came to be implemented through the state education system. One version presents an essentialist history and culture that in an uninterrupted form stretches back 4000 years (5). Another became a vehicle for the Megali Idea or the Great Idea. This Megali Idea was nothing more than an attempt to justify the expansion of the new state on basis of irredentist ‘Droysenian’ myths. It was publicly proposed by the Vlach Prime Minister of Greece Ioannis Kolettis in 1844. Kolettis would go on to state in a speech well known to Greek historiography, that:

The Kingdom of Greece is not Greece. It constitutes only one part, the smallest and the feeblest. The name Hellenes describes not only those who live in this kingdom, but also those who live in Jannina, in Thessaloniki, in Serres, in Adrianople, in Constantinople, in Trebizond, in Crete, in Samos, and in any territory associated with Hellenic history and the Hellenic race…..There are two prime cores of Hellenism: Athens, the capital of the Hellenic Kingdom, and the City (Constantinople), the vision and hope of all Hellenes.(6)

A classic example of essentialist ethno-nationalistic romanticism, ignoring the ethnographic realities of the present and even baselessly dismissing historical perspectives that had been commonly held within Greece until the 1840’s. This speech marked the beginning of territorial claims upon Macedonia. Macedonia had not before been seriously considered as land to be “re-claimed” by the intelligentsia in the new Greek state. Furthermore, between 1794 – 1841, at least fourteen Greek revivalist intellectuals expressed the opinion that the ancient Macedonians were not part of the Greek world and that they should in fact be viewed as conquerors of ancient Greece (7). Notably, this perspective found traction in an attempt to foster unity between warring factions during the Greek War for independence, when the philhellene Lord Cochrane quoted a famous passage to the Albanian Klepht (bandit) leader Kolokotronis from the first Philipic “in which Demosthenes exhorts the Athenians to lay aside their differences and unite against Philip of Macedon.”(8) Another intellectual/politician who would end up becoming president of the Athens Archaeological Society stated in a speech on 25 May 1841:

……And a battle in Chaironeia took place, in which Philip won, destroying the Hellenic freedom. But Philip committed something even more disastrous, he fathered Alexander!(9)

Adamantios Korais, the chief protagonist for, and inventor of, Katharevousa, a language invented for the purpose of filtering out Turkish, Albanian, Vlach, Arabic, and other foreign words ‘unclean’ for the neo-Hellenes, saw the period of Turkish rule as simply the lowest point in the downward path that the nation had followed ever since Greece had been conquered by the Macedonian king Philip II in the second half of the fourth century BCE(10).

Eventually though, intellectuals like Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos would ‘catch on’ to ‘political requirements’ and begin to incorporate Droysen’s concept of Hellenism. Paparrigopoulos ignored a wealth of contrary historical and extant ethnographic evidence in order to create a historical narrative supporting the “unification” of the Hellenic nation that Kolettis had expressed a desire for (11). The same period that saw the rehabilitation of Byzantium in the Greek national narrative (1830’s to 1850’s) also saw ancient Macedonia fitted into the discourse of Greek national continuity; this move went hand in hand with the desire to incorporate modern Macedonia within Greek national territory(12).
The state’s ideological machines were now ready to ‘educate’ the masses with the new ideology. Kolettis and his protégé Paparrigopoulos had begun the process of the Megali Idea. The implementation of this idea was destined to have costly consequences for the inhabitants of Macedonia.
　
Ivan Hristovski

　

Sources

1 Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C., Peter Green (1992; 482-83). Green quotes one contemporary scholar who stated ‘Droysen’s conceptions were propounded so forcefully that they have conditioned virtually all subsequent scholarship on the subject’ (1992; 483).
2 Droysen and the Prussian School of Thought, Robert Southard (1995; 1-2).
3 Ibid (1995; 11-12).
4 European historiographical influences upon the young Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos, Ioannis Koulouris -The Making of Modern Greece; Edited by Roderick Beaton and David Ricks (2009; 59).
5 Constantinos Paparrigopoulos: History of the Hellenic Nation, Vangelis Kechriotis - Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe 1770-1945; Edited by Balazs Trencsenyi and Michal Kopecek (2007; 75).
6 See The Vlachs, the History of a Balkan People, Tom Winnifrith (1987; 139). Winnifrith states that Kolettis was "a Vlach who dressed like a Turk and had been a court physician to Ali Pasha" and also Ioannis Kolettis: Of This Great Idea, Vangelis Kechriotis - Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe 1770-1945; Edited by Balazs Trencsenyi and Michal Kopecek (2007; 246).
7 Nationalism, Globalization, and Orthodoxy; The social origins of ethnic conflict in the Balkans, Victor Roudometof (2001; 102).
8 That Greece Might Still Be Free; The Philhellenes in the War of Independence, William St. Clair (1972, 326).
9 The nation and its ruins; Antiquity, Archaeology, and National Imagination in Greece, Yannis Hamilakis (2007; 112). The speech was given by none other than I. Rizos Neurolos.
10 See Inventing Greece, Peter Bien Journal of Modern Greek Studies - Volume 23, Number 2, October 2005, pp. 217-234. Bien further adds 'even katharevousa was produced not just for the Ottomanized Greeks, but also for Western philhellenes, as Koraes reveals when he confesses that his notes, "written in our common tongue, were ready for the printers when some friends of mine - philhellenes expert in our ancient but not our modern language - eventually persuaded me to Hellenize [my notes] so that they might be understood . . . by the scholars of Europe, who are ignorant of Modern Greek" (Bien 1972:51, citing Koraes 1833:41) and also see: A language in the image of the nation: Modern Greek and some parallel cases, Peter Mackridge - The Making of Modern Greece; Edited by Roderick Beaton and David Ricks (2009; 182).
11 Language and National identity in Greece, Peter Mack ridge (2009; 182).
12 Ibid (2009;182).

[TrueMacedonian]

Excellent AMHRC

[Prolet]

Here is an initiative taken by Pavle Vosokopoulos Filipov, they are collecting signatures for the rights of all Macedonians from Egejska Makedonija.

I think these are NGO's from Greece, Anti Nationalists and Anti Military groups there. Perhaps Vodenka knows more about this.

http://www.kanal5.com.mk/default.aspx?mId=37&egId=13&eventId=62863

[vodenka]

Here is an initiative taken by Pavle Vosokopoulos Filipov, they are collecting signatures for the rights of all Macedonians from Egejska Makedonija.

I think these are NGO's from Greece, Anti Nationalists and Anti Military groups there. Perhaps Vodenka knows more about this.

http://www.kanal5.com.mk/default.asp...&eventId=62863

No, I do not know anything about the above initiative but I am sorry to disappoint you, there is no chance to win a cause like property rights by collecting signatures!!!! Not even by declaration of ownership, with no legal papers.
We are starting something about property claims by Begalci but it is too soon to inform you "on air". Be sure, we have found the legal way and greek state cannot escape its responsabilities.