"They call themselves Macedonians"

[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.

[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.

[Pelister]

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]

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

[Daskalot]

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

[Pelister]

Originally Posted by Daskalot

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.

[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).

[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]

Originally Posted by 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?

That's simply not true and given in this example:

Canadian Railway Workers and World War I Military Service" Author: Mary MacKinnon
Source: Labour / Le Travail, Vol. 40 (Fall, 1997), pp. 213-234 Published by: Canadian Committee on Labour History and Athabasca University Press

It's about year 1910:



PoI:

1. Reported nationalities often did not correspond to nation states.

2. Immigrants from the British Isles were usually classified as English, Ireland, Welsh or Scottish


This means that nations without states (as Macedonians) were pretty much aware of their ethnic origin.

[Pelister]

Originally Posted by Bratot

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

Thats a good source. Thanks Bratot.