Exposing Bulgarian Myths and Lies

[TrueMacedonian]

Originally Posted by Onur

Is there anyone with reasonable mind can deny this? Ofc Bulgaria created by the Russians and you know what, they even invaded whole eastern Thrace for few months at Balkan war, so if we wouldn't be able to kick them out from here, Bulgaria would be even bigger country today for only 5 million people.

They are slowly disappearing anyway cuz as you know, there are still 5 million Bulgars in there after 130 years and their population consists of older people and decreases every year.

Onur there still remains a large ignorant class of scholars (from Bulgaria) who feel differently than what the truth says.

[Bratot]

The Chronicle becomes relevant as a source for Samoil’s Empire in Chapter XXXIII which refers to the emergence of Samoil (‘Eo tempore surrexit in gente Bulgarinorum quidem Samuel’), his proclamation as an emperor (‘qui se imperatorem vocari iussit’) and to the expulsion of the Greeks (‘et commisit proelia multa cum Graecis preicitque eos ex tota Bulagria, ut in diebus eius Graeci non auderent propinquare illuc’).
Basotova paid special attention to the ethnonym ‘Bulgarini’ used by the priest of Duklja whenever he referred to the subjects both of Samoil and his successors and highlighted the clear distinction made between this term and the ethnonym ‘Bulgari’[1], a fact neglected by almost all other interpreters of this text.

She further drew attention to the fact that the suffix –inus is productive in Latin for the creation of adjectives which are used as attributes to denote belonging to something, affiliation or similarity to something, as well as being characteristic of adjectives ‘derived from nouns which denote names of cities, and the adjectives themselves become substantives again… in order to denote the inhabitants of those cities or areas. For example Ameria (a city in Umbria) as opposed to Amerini (inhabitants of Ameria), Arpi as opposed to Arpini, Calatia as opposed to Calatini… All these examples are identical both in form and derivation to our form Bulgarini, because this form derived from the territorial denotation Bulgaria by addition of the suffix –inus: Bulgaria – Bulgarinus –Bulgarini. This means that the form Bulgarini as used by the priest from Duklja is not equivalent to the form Bulgari, which is a real ethnonym, but denotes ‘inhabitants of a certain territory, in this case the inhabitants of the territory of ‘Bulgaria’
[1] Similarly, in chapter VIII, we read that Constantine-Cyril christened ‘omnem gentem Bulgarinorum, that Samoil ‘surrexit in gente Bulgarinorum’, while Peter is named ‘imperator Bulgarorum’.




Consequently, Basotova concludes that the priest of Duklja made a clear distinction between the Bulgars and the Bulgarines, and for this reason he found it necessary to create a new form to denote a part of the population of Bulgaria, the inhabitants that become subjects of Samoil’s state. She believes that this supports the thesis about the Slavic origins of the author of the Chronicle, because he was able to perceive the difference, first and foremost, in the language of these two peoples: a difference which would be lost to both Byzantine and Western writers[1].

[1] This difference was felt also by Srećković, Istorija srpskog naroda, 1884, and Badžović D., Kojoj slovenskoj grani pripadaju Sloveni u Gornjoj Albaniji I Makedoniji.


Source: Basotova Lj., The Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja as a Source for Macedonian Medieval History.
EUROCLASSICA CONGRESS Dubrovnik, 29.03-02.04.05

[Bratot]

Another Bulgarian dellusive interpretation, namely, they claim the Bulgarian origin of Samoil and his state with these several documents which are to be analysed one by one.

Myth N'1.

In a letter to Pope Innocent in Tsar Kaloyan calls the Bulgarian Tsars Simeon, Peter and Samuil his ancestors



After that, last June, our Majesty sent our Archbishop and /head/ of the entire Bulgarian land and of the universal holy and great Church of Turnovo and a great man of my Kingdom, now raised to a Primate and Archbishop of all Bulgaria and Wallachia, named Vassilii, who, on his arrival in Drac was not allowed to proceed to Your Holiness, so that Your Holiness might fulfill the wish of our Majesty in accordance with the custom of my predecessors, the Tsars of the Bulgarians and the Wallachians - Simeon, Peter and Samuil, the ancestors of myself and of all other Tsars of the Bulgarians.

ЛИБИ, III p. 338, letter No. 19; Pgr CCXXV, col. 290-291, letter No. 6; I. Duichev, op. cit, pp 47-48; the original is in Latin



Pope Innocent III replies to Tsar Kaloyan's letter



You, however, humbly asked the Roman Church to give you a crown, as it is said in your books that it was granted to Peter, Samuil and your other predecessors of illustrious memory ... We, therefore, gave instructions that our registers be carefully read the better to assure ourselves and we learned clearly that many tsars were crowned in the land subordinated to you.


ЛИБИ, Ш. p. 312, letter No. 3; Pgr CCXIV, col. 1113-1115, letter No. 116; I. Duichev, op. cit, PP- 22-25, letter No. 3; the original is in Latin

Original: " Petisti ... Ut coronam tibi ecclesia Romana concederet, sicut illustri memorie Petro, Samueli et aliis progenitoribus tuis in libris tuis legitur concessisse. Nos ergo, ut super hos maiorem certitudinem haberemus, registra nostra perlegi fecimus diligenter, ex quibus evidenter comperimus, quod in terra tibi subiecta multi Reges fuerant coronati. "

The result:

Kaloyan was NOT given the crown!

Bulgarian propaganda tries to imply Bulgarian origin of Samoil by the letter of Kaloyan where he also tries to justify his grounds for the crown, of course, he was lying and he didn't received a crown.

[Bratot]

Myth N' 2.

Bulgarians claim that the state of Tsar Samoil was continuance of the Bulgarian, but that's clearly not the case:

"In 972 the emperor Joan Tsimishi destroyed the political and ecclesiastical independence of the Eastern Bulgarian kingdom."

Original: През 972 г. император Йоан Цимисхи унищожава политическата и църковна независимост на Източното българско царство.

Source: Църковен Вестник, Издание на Българската Православна Църква, Година 103, брой 9 и 10, София, 1-30 май 2003, наслов “Българските патриарси през Средновековието” Александра КАРАМИХАЛЕВА).

After what the Bulgarian Kingdom ceased to exist and the Bulgarian crown was taken to Constantinopol.
Because of these 2 points, the end of the kingdom and the captured crown, it's more than obvious Samoil couldn't be the successor of the Bulgarians.

[Bratot]

Myth N' 3.

Bulgarians often try to claim that Vasil II " the Bulgarslayer" has earned his nickname because he defeated exactly the "Bulgarians" of Samoil, as a prof.

If we pay attention when did he got this name we will come to this:

In chapter five, Stephenson explores how the contemporary authors referred to Basil. An extensive survey of the Byzantine sources reveal that instead of Voulgaroktonos, Basil was generally referred to as porphyrogennetos or "born in the purple" to show he was the reigning emperor.Otherwise he was referred to as "the younger" or "the second". Thus Basil was known to the chroniclers and others as Basil II. This trend continued in the literature well beyond the life of Basil. Stephenson also reveals that this was well known even to biographers in the seventeenth century.

It is not until chapter six thatthe mystery is revealed in why Basil transforms from porphyrogennetos into the Voulgaroktonos. As one might suspectit has more to do with political changes, particularly in the ways that Bulgars were viewed in the twelfth century, rather than any particular historical activities. However, Basil image would decline again in later centuries, particularly with the rise of the Turks and a decline in the threat from the Bulgars.

The Legend of Basil the Bulgar-Slayer
http://www.deremilitari.org/REVIEWS/...nson_basil.htm

The nickname "Vulgaroktonous" is first mentioned in 14th century in the Ephraim Aenii Historia Chronica.

[Bratot]

Myth N' 4.


In addition they often use the Byzantine author John Scylitzes, with this text to depict Samoil and his people as "Bulgarians":

The emperor [Basil] did not relent, but every year he marched into Bulgaria and laid waste and ravaged all before him. [The Bulgarian ruler] Samuel was not able to resist openly, nor to face the emperor in open warfare, so, weakened from all sides, he came down from his lofty lair to fortify the entrance to Bulgaria with ditches and fences. Knowing that the emperor always made his incursions through so-called “Kiava Longon” 1 and [the pass known as] “Kleidion,” he undertook to fortify the difficult terrain to deny the emperor access. A very wide fence ( phragmon ) was built and worthy defenders were committed to it to stand against the emperor. When he arrived and made an attempt to enter [Bulgaria], the guards defended the wall manfully and bombarded and wounded the attackers from above. When the emperor had thus despaired of gaining passage, Nikephoros Xiphias, the strategos of Philippopolis, met with the emperor and urged him to stay put and continue to assault the wall, while, as he explained, he turned back with his men and, heading round to the south of Kleidion through rough and trackless country, crossed the very high mountain known as Belasica. On 29 July, in the twelfth indiction [1014, Xiphias and his men] descended suddenly on the Bulgarians, from behind and screaming battle cries. Panic stricken by the sudden assault [the Bulgarians] turned to flee, while the emperor broke through the abandoned wall. Many [Bulgarians] fell and many more were captured; Samuel barely escaped from danger with the aid of his son, who fought nobly against his attackers, placed him on a horse, and made for the fortress known as Prilep. The emperor blinded the Bulgarian captives -- around 15,000 they say -- and he ordered every hundred to be led back to Samuel by a one-eyed man. And when [Samuel] saw the equal and ordered detachments returning he could not bear it manfully nor with courage, but was himself struck blind and fell in a faint to the ground. His companions revived him for a short time with water and smelling salts, and somewhat recovered he asked for a sip of cold water. Taking a gulp he had a heart attack and died two days later on 6 October

http://homepage.mac.com/paulstephenson/trans/scyl1.html


But what they forgot to mention is that:

1. Skylitzes was born in the beginning of 1040's.

2. The Theme Bulgaria on the territory of Macedonia, Serbia, Albania, Bulgaria already existed since 1018.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_of_Bulgaria

3. Skylitzes was writing most probably between 1079 and 1096, thus already up to eighty years after the battle.

He lived in changed reality, the existance of the different administrative territorial name and in respect of this fact he was reffering to the history.

4. Skylitzes did not called Basil as "Vulgaroktonos"!


5. Skylitzes says quite clearly that Skopje is the capital of Bulgaria, and the people of Bulgaria Bulgarians (for uprising of Czar Peter DELJAN in "Chronicle" from Skylitzes).
But Skopje was the capital of BULGARIA THEME, not the state of Bulgaria and John himself tells that under Bulgarian means citizens of Bulgaria theme!


If the state of Samuil was really called and was Bulgaria, then Skylitzes would speak of Ohrid as the capital of Bulgaria.

[Bratot]

The biggest historical paradox in the Bulgarian historiography is the next:

Roman was the king of Bulgaria (977-997).

Samuel's empire existed from 976 until 1018.

Now, whether is it possible that Bulgarians at the same time had two Emperors?

Roman 977 -997
Samuel 976 - 1018

So 21 years Bulgarians have been a kingdom with two Emperors.

[Makedonetz]

What did Bulgaria represent for Macedonia, 1913!

September 5, 1913

Dimitrija Chupovski: What did Bulgaria represent for Macedonia

The Bucharest Conference of the Balkan states completely destroyed Article 23 of the Berlin Congress which stipulated the introduction of reforms in Macedonia as a self-governing province of Turkey. At the time this stipulation gave wings to the hopes of the Macedonians for the possibility of creating an autonomous Macedonia and proved to be a counter-balance to the stipulations of the Treaty of San Stefano, which defaced Macedonia by its inclusion within the boundaries of Greater Bulgaria. However, regardless of the stipulations of the Berlin Congress, the Treaty of San Stefano constantly instigated the Bulgarians to actions for creating a Greater Bulgaria at the expanse of Macedonia and they continually spent millions of rubles for agitation in Macedonia by opening their own, purely Bulgarian, schools and churches. As a result of this, Bulgaria began regarding itself as the only future liberator of Macedonia, comparing its role in the cause of the liberation of Macedonia with the role of Russia in the liberating Russo-Turkish War. We, however, cannot agree at all with such a comparison….Russia was Bulgaria’s liberator, and accordingly, to compare its role with the role of Bulgaria in the present war is, at the very least, absurd and ridiculous for our contemporaries, before whose eyes this tragicomedy was being acted. The role of Bulgaria as regards to Macedonia was from the very beginning criminal; it was first to violate…the article of the Berlin Treaty which bound Turkey to introduce reforms in Macedonia. Moreover, carrying out unbearable, extremely chauvinist, propaganda among the Macedonians through its Constantinople Patriarchate, Bulgaria was the first to cause rivalry and the introduction of similar propaganda by the Greeks and the Serbs, thus instilling discord among the Macedonians. During the whole 30 years of its existence as a state, Bulgaria has carried out anti-Macedonian policy. Flattering and attracting the Macedonians to its side. at the same time it persecuted them with ferocity and hatred and strove to destroy in them any idea of an autonomous Macedonia; while doing so, the Bulgarians did not shrink from using any means. Thus, in 1888, the Bulgarian Government destroyed the ‘Macedonian Literary Society’ under the presidency of Georgi Pulevski….Two years later, in that same Sofia, the Bulgarian Government closed the evening schools, specially opened for the emigrant Macedonian craftsman, and the heads of those schools. Macedonian patriots – Damjan Gruev, Delchev, Petre Pop Arsov and many others – were expelled from Bulgaria. In addition, let us consider just those persecution to which the so-called Internal Macedonian Organization was exposed, working on the spiritual revival of Macedonia and its political liberation. Its members were persecuted both by the Bulgarian government and the Exarchate, the local instrument of those governments. In order to paralyze the successes resulting from the activity of the Internal Macedonian Organization, the Bulgarian government formed with Macedonian emigrant a requisite counter-Macedonian organization (made of the dregs(?) of society), known under the name of the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee, the task of which was to trumpet to the whole world that Macedonia is a purely Bulgarian country. Who does not know the shameful role of this Committee shown through its activity on the partition of Macedonia as a whole and of the Macedonian intelligentsia in particular? Guided by the Bulgarian government through its teachers and generals of the type of Mihajlovski and Conchev, this Committee acted against the Macedonian liberation movement and worked with all means on the annexation of Macedonia to Bulgaria. Still more criminal was the role of Bulgaria in this shameful ‘liberation’ war. Did not Bulgaria hold long negotiations concerning the division of Macedonia with its present occupiers? Did it not, according to the treaty of 29th February 1912 with the Serbs, give to them the whole western section of Macedonia and thus violate its integrity? Did not Bulgaria, which attracted Greece, too, to the Serbo-Bulgarian alliance, start to divide Macedonia? Could it not know that the Greeks might join the alliance only because they had in mind the acquisition of the southern section of Macedonia? Is not Bulgaria to be blamed for the partition of Macedonia, hiding the real aim of the war from the representatives of the Macedonian people, which it had to reckon with. On the contrary, starting the war, it declared to the Macedonians that it was fighting against Turkey alongside the allies for their liberation. Allowing the Macedonians to organize themselves into military units, Bulgaria committed a hunderdfold crime, because it did not allow them to fight against Turkey in their native land, but directed them to Thrace, towards the shore of the Sea of Marmara, under the walls of Adrianople and the trenches of Chataldzha, which weren’t needed, except for a bunch of Bulgarian glory-hunters; and the happened at the same time when the allied Bulgarians, Serbs and Greeks were conquering Macedonia. How can we explain this criminal act of the Bulgarians towards the Macedonians, if not by the fear that those same Macedonians with arms in their hands would defend their homeland equally from any encroachments upon its independence? But in fact Bulgaria thus ruined not only Macedonia but also all its future. Shedding now crocodile tears for the lost Macedonia, did Bulgaria at the proper time make any attempt to preserve the indivisibility of Macedonia, which it likes to call its younger sister? How can some Bulgarian patriots claim that Bulgaria was in respect to Macedonia that biblical mother which appeared before Solomon’s court? Would not a mother worthy of setting an example rather prefer to renounce her own son in only he could thus remain intact? However, as we all know, Bulgaria was the first to agree to the partition of Macedonia. Why has not Bulgaria up to this moment acted like a real “native mother” with her unselfishness, with motherly generosity towards Macedonia, with a project for its autonomy? This is exactly the attitude of Bulgaria which could have ensured the integrity and indivisibility of Macedonia, peace among the Balkan peoples and would have preserved the dignity of the “native mother” herself – Bulgaria. What hindered it, having included the item about the autonomy of Macedonia in the treaty, from raising at the proper time the question about the realization of that item? Nobody hinder it at all, but it did not make any attempts itself to raise this question. It did not make this attempt after the end of the first half of the war, when it realized that its allies of yesterday, the Serbs and the Greeks, having occupied Macedonia, would not like to leave it. And instead of submitting a project for autonomy, it decided to go to war, in order to gain as great as possible a section of Macedonia for itself. Even following the defeat, when the question was posed not for Macedonia but for Bulgaria itself – I am referring here to the Conference of Bucharest, where Bulgaria was “generously” offered an eighth or tenth part of Macedonia – here, too, it preferred to take that part, and did not follow the example of the biblical mother, renouncing its share of the child. I repeat, the following of this, there are some people again who compare the present position of Bulgaria to the position of Russia in the liberating Russo-Turksih War, with a desire in this way to represent it in the role of the same unselfish liberator as Russia was with regard to Bulgaria itself, refusing to see that the main reason for the misfortunes of Macedonia were precisely the Bulgaria aspiration towards this long tortured land.

Taken from Dimitrija Chupovski, Makednoskii Golos, pages 130-133

[TrueMacedonian]

Nice research Bratot and Makedonetz. The arguement for Tsar Samoil being a Bulgar is a politicized modern arguement. Speaking of political;

[TrueMacedonian]

Originally Posted by Bratot

Myth N' 2.

Bulgarians claim that the state of Tsar Samoil was continuance of the Bulgarian, but that's clearly not the case:

"In 972 the emperor Joan Tsimishi destroyed the political and ecclesiastical independence of the Eastern Bulgarian kingdom."



Source: Църковен Вестник, Издание на Българската Православна Църква, Година 103, брой 9 и 10, София, 1-30 май 2003, наслов “Българските патриарси през Средновековието” Александра КАРАМИХАЛЕВА).

After what the Bulgarian Kingdom ceased to exist and the Bulgarian crown was taken to Constantinopol.
Because of these 2 points, the end of the kingdom and the captured crown, it's more than obvious Samoil couldn't be the successor of the Bulgarians.

Here is something I hope we can add on to Bratot;