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Old 04-17-2020, 06:59 AM   #21
vicsinad
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I've never read anything from Christowe being pro-Bulgaria. From what I remember, he never referred to Bulgaria as his homeland or country. He referred to Bulgaria as a foreign place.

Here are two very vital excerpts from This Is My Country (published 1938):

"When I filled out my passport application in Washington, I instinctively put down Macedonia as the place of my birth. After I did that I thought the State Department would make an issue of it and insist that I give a country that existed as an independent state, for Macedonia has not been one since the time of Alexander the Great. Parts of it were now under Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria; a small strip of it under Albania. Most likely through inadvertence, certainly not through lack of knowledge, the State Department made out my passport with Macedonia as my birthplace. And accordingly I could enter any of the four sections of Macedonia. [...] I knew the name of every town we passed, even though the Greeks had Hellenized their Slavic, or Turkish names."

"At this time the Macedonian Bulgars had a powerful influence in Bulgaria. The prime minister was a Macedonian, born within a short distance from where I was born. Nine out of the eleven Bulgarian minister-plenipotentiary to foreign countries were Macedonian-born. The Macedonian Bulgars had spun themselves so inextricably into the fabric of Bulgarian life that the foremost person in nearly every field of activity was likely to be a Macedonian, or at least part Macedonian...The Macedonians now took possession of me as their own special gifted child returned from another world as they opened their hearts and their houses to me.They saw something providential in my being an American writer and they believed that I would do something by way of aiding the old cause of Macedonian independence, which they pursued with great zeal.They heaped honors on me and feted me and took me into the mountains of Macedonia to meet Ivan Michailoff...Out of this also, and of my subsequent association with Michailoff's comitadjis and terrorists, among whom was the future assassin of King Alexander of Yugoslavia, grew my book 'Heroes and Assassins," which was a great disappointment to the Macedonians. My revolutionary hosts repented for having given me their hearts and wished they had given me poison instead. They expected me to be a Macedonian first, a writer and an American afterward."

There are of course other instances in this book where Macedonian/Bulgarian are mentioned. But never did he express any attachment to Bulgaria or never did he look to Bulgaria as his homeland. It's important to look at the context.

Forty years later, he wrote The Eagle and the Stork, a memoir. Here, his Macedonianism is rampant and there's hardly a mention of Bulgaria/Bulgarian. Reading these two books really show his evolution on thinking and identity.
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Old 04-18-2020, 04:33 AM   #22
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I am so glad to read that he acknowledged Bulgarian and Albanian occupation at a time I feel many Macedonian writers ignored.

As for his references to us as "Macedonian Bulgars", I would say this is likely a result of the millet system trying to be explained in liberal democracy: The US concept of nationality was something that Macedonains had at that time little understanding of, and so I can understand how, when asked to state their nationality/identity, some Macedonians referred to themselves as "Macedonian Bulgarians". I see this as an emphasis that whilst being Macedonian, they are not the same as the "Macedonian Romanians" or the "Macedonian Muslims/Turks" for example. It's all the legacy of a system of identity based soley on religious affiliation. I would say this is why it took some time to completely expunge the Bulgarian label within those early emmigrant communities. Perhaps the reason Christowe removed the label completely from his works from the 1940s onwards was because a Macedonian state then existed to clarify our identity, and therefore the Bulgarian label could only be used in a manner that expressed allegiance to Sofia?

Like to get your thoughts on this.
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Old 04-19-2020, 01:52 PM   #23
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I think that's fair. There may be more to it, though. Macedonians like Christowe always felt that Macedonians were their own people or race -- those concepts were known and understood outside the scope of nationality. But in general I think you summed it up well.

This is an excerpt by Christowe from 1953, in the Calgary Herald:

"Until eight years ago, the Macedonians were a people but not a nation; they had a homeland, but not a country; and they spoke a distinct Slavic tongue which never had been recognized as a language...The history of Macedonia was one of foreign oppression, terror and assassination. …

One of the foremost steps in the welding of the people into a nation is a new literary language. Macedonian scholars and writers are making extensive study of their tongue, and are giving the language a structure sharply distinguishing it from the kindred South Slavic tongues. Macedonia may now attempt to press claims against Greece and Bulgaria for the sections of the country now under their jurisdiction in an attempt to unite the entire Macedonian race into a republic. This was in fact the case from 1945 until Yugoslavia was expelled from the Cominform in 1948; with the Macedonian district of Bulgaria little more than an extension of the Macedonian republic. …

There is agitation on the part of Cominform neighbors to sever the republic from the Yugoslav body politic to be united with the parts under Greece and Bulgaria into an integral independent unit in the Balkan federation of soviet republics; but a plan such as this would not aid the republic, and would simply turn the clock back, leaving the Macedonian people where they were ten years ago."

So, yes, having their own country meant the Macedonians were their own nationality. Still, if you read closely, Christowe refers to how Macedonians were always their own people and had their own language, just they were never recognized.
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Old 04-19-2020, 09:42 PM   #24
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Very clear then, don't think there's anyway to twist that.
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