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Macedonia and Greece
by
John Shea
1997, pp.6-21
It would probably be best to begin with a presentation of the Greek argument. This argument has been disseminated in various ways in America, including full-page political advertisements in leading newspapers, travel advertisements inviting people to visit "Macedonia" (meaning northern Greece), English-language materials published in Athens and distributed by the Greek embassy, and pamphlets distributed in Greek Orthodox churches. Recent statements by the Greek government have not deviated from these sources, so they remain a fair means of discovering what the Greeks appear to be concerned about. On the 26th of April 1992 and the 10th of May 1992, an organization called "Americans for the Just Resolution of the Macedonian Issue" placed full page advertisements in the New York Times. The first of these was headlined, "Macedonia, what's in a name"; the second, "The name "Macedonia" is a time bomb! Mr President, you can defuse it." In both cases the appeal was directed at then president George Bush. The first of these advertisements focuses on the idea of a threat to Greece from a state called Macedonia. While the text says, "Recognize the Republic of Skopje, yes!" it adds, "With the name 'Republic of Macedonia,' why?" Thus, on the face of, it the problem is not so much the existence of the new state, but the possible consequences of it bearing the name Macedonia. The implication is that this name will somehow rekindle past territorial ambitions that would not be so easily stirred with a different name.
The advertisement gives a lot of attention to the
involvement of Tito and Yugoslavia in the Greek civil war, referring
for instance to "former communist designs on sovereign
Greece." It informs the reader that "in 1946, Tito and Stalin armed insurgents to
trigger a bloody Civil war and unimaginable years of suffering for
the Greek nation.... Today, Skopje's government aims to perpetuate
the nightmare." The advertisement goes on to say that the "Skopje's
government":
According to this ad, recognition of an independent
republic called Macedonia would encourage aggression, increase
tensions, destabilize the Balkans, and validate a "shameless
fraud." In this last statement we have a reference to the
wider issue concerning the name Macedonia. The Greeks say that they
have the sole right to use the name, for various historical reasons.
The rest of the advertisement contains statements from American and
world leaders (including American senators, the president of the
European Parliament, the prime minister of Australia and the Greek
prime minister), opposing recognition of the state of Macedonia up
to the time the ad was placed, and an open letter to President Bush
appealing in particular to historic concerns about "communist
expansionism" in the area, the bitter experience of the Greek
civil war, and previous American support of anti-communist forces in
Greece. In this latter connection it is worth considering the quoted
statement by a former United States Secretary of State on December
26, 1944: "This government considers any talk of a Macedonian
'nation,' Macedonian 'Fatherland' or Macedonian national
consciousness' to be unjustified demagoguery representing no ethnic
or political reality ... a possible cloak for aggressive intentions
against Greece." The May 10 ad is much less detailed. It quotes a New York Times story (datelined May 2, 1992) on the European community's willingness to recognize the "breakaway republic of Macedonia" only if it changed its name, and once again appeals to past American concern about instability in the Balkans in general and about Macedonia in particular. "Since the break-up of Yugoslavia," reads the ad, "its people have suffered the relentless gunfire of hostilities: one tragedy after another - all stemming from ethnic violence and border disputes. The single stable border in the Balkans is provided by Greece. Now the breakaway southernmost Yugoslavian republic of Skopje insists on being recognized as 'Macedonia."' The advertisement goes on to say that in 1944, the Roosevelt administration recognized Greek ethnic, cultural and historical rights to the name and condemned any reference to a so-called Macedonian "nation." Describing the same issue today as a "dangerous ticking time bomb," the ad says that recognition of what it calls "Skopje" as the "Republic of Macedonia" would legitimize and encourage extremist and false claims upon sovereign Greek territory. Furthermore, the advertisement suggests a threat of war in the Balkans in which the United States could become involved. Any thoughtful reader of these advertisements not
versed in the history of Macedonia and Greece could not help being
concerned about the issues raised. To a large degree I will allow
other international commentators to pass judgment on the strength of
these Greek fears at a later point in the book, giving here only a
brief indication of an alternative viewpoint. Before that comment,
however, I will present the rest of the Greek position, expanding on
the question of the "Greek ethnic, cultural and historical
rights to the name." I will use, in particular, quotations from
pamphlets distributed from Greek Orthodox churches, apparently
deriving from Greek government publications available in the Greek
embassy during 1992. I do this so that the Greek position is
accurately represented. Here are some of the important claims that
are made. 1. The New York Times advertisement of 4/26/92 says,
"4000 years of Greek History, 4000 years of Greek Culture, 4000
years of Greek Heritage... Skopje's government seeking recognition
as the 'Republic of Macedonia' perpetuates a fraud." Pamphlets
distributed in churches stated, "Macedonia has been Greek for
3,000 years. In ancient times Macedonians spoke Greek, worshipped
Greek gods, expressed their creativity through Greek art and
maintained a refined Greek culture ... all archaeological
discoveries continue to unearth more information attesting to the
indisputable Greekness of Macedonia." 2. "Out of the blue, in 1944, the Yugoslav
communist leader, Tito, wishing to weaken Serbia on the one hand,
and set the footing for future territorial claims against Greece on
the other, schemingly gave South Serbia the Greek name 'Macedonia'
and re-wrote the 'history' books to declare that ancient Macedonia
was Slavic and that these people were descendants of Alexander the
Great." 3. "The existence of a 'Slav' Macedonia could
never be, and indeed, has never been supported either by historical
data, or by ethnographic maps, or by statistics, or by some census,
or by archaeological finds, or by even an obscure mention of such a
nation from antiquity till today." 4. "Macedonia has been the name of Northern
Greece for more than 3000 years. The Greek region ... has one of the
most homogeneous populations in the world (98.5% Greek). Its
population speaks Greek, feels Greek, is Greek." 5. "An independent 'Macedonia' would monopolize
the name at the expense of the real Macedonians who are twice the
number of the Slavs. The use and abuse of the name would cause
widespread confusion as is already apparent." 6. "Macedonia is an indispensable part of
Greece's historical heritage it cannot identify, in an ethnic sense
another nation." 7. "The Skopje 'language' is undeniably
Slavic." 8. "The Slavs did not set foot in the Balkans
until 1000 years after Alexander the Great." 9. "The name 'Macedonia (which is etymologically
Greek) was in use at least 1500 years before the arrival of the
first Slavs." 10. "Every known Macedonian town, river and
person had a Greek name – Philip (lover of horse), Alexander
(protector of men), Archelaus (leader of people), Amyntas
(defender), Ptolemy (warlike), Bucephalus (ox-head)." 11. "The Old Testament (Daniel Ch. 8) and the
New Testament (Acts Ch. 17) confirm the Greekness of Alexander and
the Macedonians." 12. "It was the Greek language that was taken to
Asia (Bible written in Greek) and cities with Greek names and
institutions that were founded." 13. "There are 60,000 archaeological finds that
confirm that the Macedonians were Greek in language, culture and
religion." 14. "The home of the Greek gods was in
Macedonia. Is it feasible that a people would worship its national
gods in a foreign country?" 15. " Yugoslav Macedonia is not even
geographically in the territory occupied by ancient Macedonia." 16. "Independent sources in this century
(Turkish Census of 1904 when the region was part of the Ottoman
Empire, League of Nations Census of 1926 and declassified British
Archives 1934) make no mention of any ethnic Macedonians whatsoever
until the Communists came along with their preposterous concoction
to dominate the Balkans." 17. "By appropriating and maintaining the name
'Macedonia' the Slavs are laying the foundations for future
territorial claims against the region of the same name in Greece.
They have clearly expressed this intention by:- (a) plagiarizing and
blatantly falsifying history (b)... continuously using maps and
emblems that include northern Greece as part of 'Macedonia~ and (c)
refusing to comply with the directive of the European Community in
its declaration of 16th December 1991 to (i) cease hostile
propaganda; (ii) commit itself to guarantees that it has no
territorial claims and (iii) not use a denomination (Macedonia)
which implies expansionist intentions." This set of statements was widely circulated, with
minor changes made for particular locations, in different parts of
the English-speaking world. Copies of the main points were
distributed through Greek churches, and were frequently published in
the "letters to the editor" sections of local newspapers.
Clearly the Greek communities were very keen to see the message
spread and went to great organizational effort and expense to see
that this happened. I have no doubt that most of those engaged in
this effort hold these beliefs very sincerely. Indeed the mass
demonstrations by Greeks in various parts of the world suggest deep
emotional commitment to these ideas. All the more reason, of course,
to examine the claims more closely. In this book I will examine the Greek claims as fully
as possible and present the views of historians, linguists, and
other experts who will paint a different picture for us. While there
are histories and anthropological analyses of the Greek and
Macedonian positions emerging at the present time, to my knowledge
there has been no significant presentation of the other side of the
argument outlined above, nor any analysis of how it fits into
broader Balkan politics centered on Macedonia at the present time.
Macedonian interest groups in various parts of the world have taken
to the streets themselves, indicating their distress at what they
say is a one-sided airing of the Macedonian question in the media.
Like the Greeks, the Macedonians express a strong emotional
commitment to their interpretation of the situation. I do not claim to be unbiased, though in my
examination of the evidence available to me I have tried to be as
objective as possible. When I began my own inquiry about the topic,
I wanted to know the truth. I began the process of discovery from a
state of quite profound ignorance. I had talked with elderly
Macedonian people about their lives, and about stories they
remembered from the old days in Macedonia, and the things they told
me often conflicted with the arguments of modern-day Greeks. I knew
that these Macedonians, at least, thought of themselves as
Macedonian long before the time of Tito. They told stories of
Macedonian revolutionaries who, at the turn of the century, wanted a
state separate from Bulgaria. They described how Bulgarian agents
infiltrated the revolutionary movement and assassinated Macedonian
leaders, and voiced a prevailing belief that Aegean Slavic
Macedonians had been persecuted by successive Greek governments. But
they told me little about the broader facts of the history of the
Macedonians over the past two and a half thousand years. My readings have established to my satisfaction the
weakness of the Greek historical argument. It is also clear to me
that national aspirations were alive and well in Macedonia long
before Tito arrived on the scene. But by and large the Macedonians
have had a pretty miserable time of it, dominated by one greater
power or another for much of their history, a domination most
recently perpetrated by the same European nations who were slow to
support the Macedonians in the 1990s. As the Irish patriot Roger
Casement (executed by the British after the 1916 uprising in
Ireland) put it: “I know of two tragic histories in the world -
that of Ireland, and that of Macedonia. Both of them have been
deprived and tormented.” Casement was speaking primarily of the Macedonians
who then inhabited the lands that fell within the borders of the
ancient Macedonian homeland. A majority of them were Slavic speakers
when Greece conquered a large part of Macedonia, taking it from the
Turks, just before the First World War. Casement's rather eloquent
lines by themselves must cause us to ponder Greek claims that a
non-Greek Macedonia was merely a Communist invention. Before I present my argument, I need to make a few
introductory statements to establish the context of the discussion. First, it should be noted that the Greek claims are a
new political development. Just a few years ago the Greeks preferred
not to use the name Macedonia at all. The Macedonian news magazine
(Skopje, February 15, 1992, pp. 20-2 1) claims that "there were
periods in Greece when use of the name 'Macedonia' was avoided with
administrative measures. After the Balkan wars (191213) the area of
Macedonia under Greek rule was called ... the 'New territory' while
the Ministry in Salonika was called the Ministry of Northern Greece.
Whence such zeal to pre-empt the names 'Macedonia' and 'Macedonian'
today when so recently they avoided them as the devil avoids
church?" Peter Hill, professor of Slavonic studies at the
University of Hamburg in Germany, makes a similar point: Funnily enough, northern Greece was for many years
called just that, "Northern Greece"... and the name
Macedonia was considered somehow suspect....
But three years ago that all changed. Now that name,
Macedonia, is at the heart of it dispute that has paralyzed the
foreign policy of the European Community and brought thousands of
people on to the streets of Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and
Brussels. Second, I have tried to present ideas that can be
critically examined. I have tried to avoid insupportable claims, and
have cited the sources from which I have drawn my conclusions. It
seems reasonable to me to read the views of people who are experts
in the field, and to adjust my own conclusions on the basis of some
aggregation of what they have said. You might think that this matter
could be dealt with quite simply by referring to such historical
experts. But one of the problems is that the Greek
"experts" often do not agree with the "experts"
from other parts of the world. Not surprisingly, the Greek experts
almost invariably take a nationalistic line. The ancient Greeks are
said to have been imbued with a "mythic imagination." They
tended to interpret historical events in the light of their
understanding of the role of supernatural powers in their lives, and
of course they were often inclined to present stories that showed
Greeks in the best possible light. What could be more natural? It is
hardly surprising that writers throughout the world do exactly the
same kind of thing these days. Bulgarians and Serbians tend to favor
views that support their own nations' historical perspectives about
Macedonia. Sometimes, though, Greek writers have gone to such
extremes that other historians have actually ridiculed their
conclusions. I will give some examples later on. Thus it is
necessary to tread very carefully amongst the expert opinions. For
this reason when discussing historical issues I have tended to give
preference to writers from Britain, France, Germany, and the United
States. When dealing with contemporary matters I have given much
greater emphasis to news sources and interpretations from within
Macedonia. Generally these are about uncontroversial matters of
recorded fact. Third, in some ways this kind of analysis is little
more than an empty academic game, since we have to talk in part
about ancient history. It is not a very convincing exercise to
justify the boundaries of modern states on the basis of things that
happened more than two thousand years ago. Ancient historical claims
seem of trivial importance beside the realities of the present day.
To people who live in former English colonies, such as Americans,
Canadians and Australians, a lot of these ideas seem very strange.
After all, at the very least the Slavic speakers have lived for
around 1500 years in the territory that has been called Macedonia.
(Some historians present a more extreme position, claiming that the
invading Slavs were really just the returning Paeones who had
inhabited northern and western parts of Macedonia before the
Macedonian kingdom existed.) They would not have had to wait 1500
years to be entitled to call themselves Americans, Canadians or
Australians. They have been there at least as long as the Germanic
tribes, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes have been in Britain. No one
seems to think it a problem that the English use a Celtic name,
"Britain," for their land. So we have clear examples of
this sort of thing happening elsewhere in the world without any
necessary belittling of the original peoples and their historic
achievements. However, we have to recognize that rationality may
have little influence in matters of national pride. Nonetheless it
can be argued that the Macedonians, by virtue of 1500 years of
occupation, have a pre-eminent claim to the place and to the name,
regardless of who lived there 3000 years ago. And that is precisely
the case for recognizing the right of Macedonians everywhere to call
themselves by that name today. Of course I will make the longer
historical case too. Greek advertising throughout the world has made a
great play of using what are said to be historical facts to support
the attack on the Macedonians. So I will discuss some of these ideas
first before turning to the more recent past and to contemporary
events. It is worth noting that after Macedonians voted to become
independent from the Yugoslav state, the only resistance to their
international recognition came from Greece. The other eleven members
of the European Community accepted the Republic of Macedonia's
claims to independence and to the use of a name which the population
of these lands has used for thousands of years. Greece was able to
block this recognition for a considerable time because of an EC
requirement for consensus in its decision-making. The same
requirement for consensus kept Macedonia out of some European
organizations up until the end of 1995. It is something of a paradox
that throughout its attack on Macedonia, Greece, claiming a threat
from Macedonia, has been seen by its European allies and America as
a greater threat to peace in the Balkans. The issue of the Slavic minority in northern Greece
is one that deserves attention in its own right. It has some bearing
on our understanding of certain issues in areas bordering the state
of Macedonia. In its annual reports from 1991 through 1994, the
United States State Department complained about the Greek
government's denial of civil rights to minority groups, including
Slavic speakers in Aegean Macedonia and Turkish speakers in Thrace.
This leads us into a fascinating exploration of the redistribution
of populations in northern Greece earlier this century, and the
repeated efforts by strong central government in Greece to create
the impression of a tightly knit and coherent Greek-speaking
community. At first blush one might think that northern Greeks have
a legitimate claim to at least share the name Macedonia with the
Vardar Macedonians. However, it turns out that the immediate
forbears of a majority of the Greek population of northern Greece
originate from outside of the Balkans, in Western Turkey. These
northern Greeks are not indigenous to the area, a fact to be taken
into consideration when seeking to discover who has a legitimate
claim on the name Macedonia. We might also wonder at the
unwillingness of Greece to use the name Macedonia when it conquered
the southern part of Macedonia in the first Balkan war, and the
apparent rehabilitation of the name in recent years. Several analysts, who will be referred to later,
suggest that Greek actions should not be seen in isolation, but must
be viewed in the light of a strong alliance with Serbia. As we view
Balkan events now, and see Serbians attempting to expand Serbian
territory, first in one former Yugoslav state and then another, with
very modest success up to the present time, we might wonder whether
Serbia has designs on Macedonia. Certainly some Macedonians believe
this to be the case. Skopje was the capital of the great
fourteenth-century Serbian Empire, and just a few decades ago the
Serbs ruled this territory by conquest. They have engaged in
provocative border actions that have drawn in United Nations troops
with a major United States contingent. It is not disputed that the
Greeks are the strongest allies of the Serbs in the Balkans, and
that they have reached some kind of accord with the Serbian leader
Milosevic. What we cannot know yet is whether some master plan
guides both the Greeks and the Serbians. By way of introduction to some of the content that
follows, here are some of the conclusions that seem to me arguable
after my examination of historical literature. These points briefly
deal with the list of Greek claims above, both those published in
national newspaper advertisements and those distributed throughout
Greek communities. Firstly, regarding the appeals to the American people
based on concerns arising from the Greek civil war and the
involvement of Yugoslavia and the U.S.S.R. in support of that
conflict: The Macedonia under discussion by Edward Stettinius,
United States Secretary of State, in 1944, was the "Greater
Macedonia' that had been dismembered by Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and
Albania after the Balkan wars some thirty years earlier. The nation
under discussion today encompasses less than 38 percent of that
Greater Macedonia. Furthermore, Greece acknowledges this new
nation's right of existence. Can we believe that the use of the name
Macedonia by the new state somehow constitutes a threat to Greek
borders? It should be remembered that Slavic-speaking Macedonian
partisans fought against the Nazis on the side of the allies (and in
alliance with Tito) during the Second World War. They were among the
most reliable and successful of the resistance fighters against the
German and Bulgarian invaders. Their language of command was
Macedonian. Their motivation to resist the Bulgarian and German
occupation came partly from being forced to use Bulgarian language
and customs in their schools. Since Tito himself was Croatian, and
Croatians traditionally have been more sympathetic to Macedonians
than Serbians, it is perhaps not surprising that he took advantage
of this motivating force within the Macedonian community and
harnessed it to the new socialist state he forged out of the diverse
groups that became the new Yugoslavia. There is little doubt that Tito saw the possibility
of expanding his sphere of interest into parts of Greek territory.
At one point the new socialist Bulgarian government, fired with
ideological righteousness, expressed its concern at the repression
of the Macedonian language wherever it existed, including Western
Bulgaria (Pirin Macedonia), and seemed on the verge of forming a
Balkan federation with the Yugoslav states. At the time of this
activity, the issue of a greater Macedonian state was being
proposed; both the U.S.S.R. and Yugoslavia were supporting insurgent
forces in the Greek civil war; and Macedonian nationalists who had
fought with the partisans had joined in an alliance with the Greek
Communists in an effort to achieve a freedom which had been denied
them previously. A Balkan federation incorporating a Greater
Macedonia and other Yugoslav states and Bulgaria would have
presented a very strong barrier to Russian influence. Stalin soon
applied pressure to Bulgaria to change its tune and stopped support
for the Greek Communists and Macedonian partisans. Thus it was not
just the United States that was concerned about the development of a
Greater Macedonia. On this issue the United States saw eye-to-eye
with the U.S.S.R. This was the turning point in the Greek civil war.
The statements made by American political figures must be understood
in the context of those times. With changes in the political
situation, American political figures changed their analyses of
Balkan history. The small Macedonian state has publicly, formally,
and repeatedly disavowed any territorial claim on Greek lands since
the Greeks first made their accusations. None of the surrounding
states has expressed any support for the idea of a greater
Macedonia, since it would threaten their own borders. It is simply
not a live issue. Furthermore, it is unrealistic to think that a
tiny nation of little more than two million people, with no heavy
arms, no air force and no navy, could be a threat to the Greeks, who
have been supplied and supported in their armed forces by NATO and
the United States to the tune of billions of dollars in past years.
No political analysts in the United States believes that this could
happen. I will now respond to the broader historical issues,
dealing with these in the order listed above. My responses are a
summary of ideas that will be expanded elsewhere in this book. For
the moment they lay the groundwork for the more detailed arguments
that follow. 1. Three thousand years ago the lands that came to be
called Macedonia were inhabited mainly by Illyrians and Phrygians.
The Macedonians who appeared around 700 to 800 B.C. were for
centuries a small group confined to a very small area of land. This
area of land is a tiny portion of what is now Greek Macedonia. The
language of these Macedonians was not Greek, nor were their gods;
nor were they recognized by the Greeks. In time their leaders
aspired to be as culturally refined and politically powerful as the
Greeks, and used Greek teachers for their children. By about the
fourth century B.C. the Macedonian nobles often used Greek for
official purposes, but they and the common people spoke the
Macedonian vernacular at home. A version of the Greek language had
become an important trade language in the area and was widely used
for such purposes. This variety of Greek was from the southern Greek
states, and its use proves nothing at all about the native tongue of
the Macedonians, which, if it had been Greek, would likely have been
a different dialect. In any case, there are no inscriptions in any
form of Greek from before about 400 B.C. found in material excavated
in any part of Macedonia. Of course there were small Greek
settlements in coastal areas of Macedonia, and until the Macedonians
conquered the area, the Chalcidice peninsula was Greek. 2. It is certainly true that the Yugoslav leader Tito
gave the Macedonians a degree of recognition as a unique nationality
with their own language. No doubt there were various reasons for
doing so. The Macedonian partisans were of great significance in the
Yugoslav resistance to the Nazis, and the respect they earned at
this time probably helped. It should be noted too that Tito adopted
the same policy throughout Yugoslavia. All regions had a degree of
autonomy, including the use of their own language. The success of
Tito's policies in maintaining unity has become increasingly clear
as we witness the bloody conflicts that erupted in Yugoslavia after
his death. However, getting back to the point about the existence of
Macedonia, even in the very long rule of the Turks Macedonia was
recognized as a separate entity. It was this Greater Macedonia that
was divided by the Greeks, Bulgarians and Serbians after the Balkan
wars of 1912-13. No historian, Greek or otherwise, uses any name but
Macedonia to describe the territories that were partitioned. After
the division, none of the controlling powers permitted the use of
the name in the portions of Macedonia that they had taken. The
kingdom of the Serbs, Croatians and Slovenians used the name
"South Serbia7; Greece referred to the "Northern
Provinces"; and Bulgaria used the name "Western
Bulgaria." Of relevance to the Greek claim is the interesting
point that the people in the Yugoslav part of Macedonia were
permitted to use the name Macedonia in this century long before the
people in the Greek part. The Greek assertion that Yugoslav history books claim
the ancient Macedonians were Slavic seems not to be true. I have
examined secondary school texts written in Macedonian and
interpreted for me by Macedonian speakers. I am confident that these
books do not present such a view of history. However, that view does
exist; it is promulgated by historians who have sympathies with the
"Illyrian" movement. (The Albanian language is thought by
some linguists to be related to ancient Illyrian, and Albanians
believe that they are the rightful heirs of the ancient
Macedonians.) Their argument states that the ethnic predecessors of
the Slavs were the Paeones, who inhabited significant portions of
Macedonian lands before and during the time of the great Macedonian
kingdom. They say that the Paeones returned to their Macedonian
homelands in the fifth and sixth centuries A.D. and that these
peoples have been called Slavs. Whether or not these claims are verifiable, it should
be noted that both Macedonia and Greece have changed dramatically in
ethnic mix over the past 2000 years. Neither shows any close match
to the ethnic nature of the area at the time of Alexander the Great.
Over the past 2300 years or so, the Balkan peninsula has been
invaded by hordes of newcomers, including Celts (third to first
century B.C.), Germanic tribes (third century A.D.), Slavs (fifth
and sixth century A.D.), and Turks (fourteenth century A.D.). The
original peoples may not have been wiped out, or pushed out of
Macedonia or Greece by these new peoples. What happened often was
that after a time the new peoples merged with the existing peoples.
Throughout the Balkans, in both Macedonia and Greece, the ethnic mix
is profoundly complex. However, there is no evidence to suggest that
the people of Macedonia are any less ethnically "pure" and
representative of the ancient peoples than the Greeks. If it is
argued that the Slavic ethnic influence predominates in Macedonia,
precisely the same case can be made for most of Greece. Quite
simply, in Macedonia we have a majority of people of mixed ethnic
stock who speak a Slavic language and have a predominantly Slavic
culture, and in Greece we have a majority of people of mixed ethnic
stock who speak Greek and have a Greek culture. 3. Has there ever been a "Slav Macedonia"?
By most people's standards, it would be very hard to make a case
that there has not. A great Slavic Empire in the tenth century A.D.
incorporated most of the territory that historians recognize as
ancient Macedonia as well as Bulgaria. This empire was ruled by
Samuil, a Macedonian Slav, who governed from Ohrid, in the Southwest
of modern-day Macedonia. Although the Byzantine Emperor Basil II
("the Macedonian") vanquished this empire, he and
subsequent conquerors always acknowledged the Slavic language,
culture and ethnicity of the people that they ruled. They generally
recognized the territory of Macedonia, although administrative
boundaries changed from time to time. The fact that the Macedonian
Slavs were ruled by others is no grounds for speaking as though they
did not exist, or for saying that their territories should not
retain the old name of Macedonia. In the chapters that follow,
historical, ethnographic, statistical and census material
demonstrates clearly the existence of a Slavic Macedonia. There is evidence that the Slavs of Macedonia called
themselves "Macedonian" as early as the tenth century A.D.
At the same time, the Byzantine emperors came to call the Macedonian
Slavs "the Macedonians" since they made up the politically
most significant population of the area. Written evidence and
surviving crests from the sixteenth century proclaim Macedonia’s
distinction from other Balkan territories. When other Balkan states
began to assert themselves against the Turks between the seventeenth
and the twentieth centuries, similar feelings of nationalism were
seen in Macedonia, and recognized by the leading powers of Europe.
During the twentieth century the Serbians, Bulgarians and Greeks
tried to eliminate the influence of the Slavic Macedonian language,
and to suppress the customs of Macedonian people in territories they
conquered. The United Nations recognizes the Macedonian (Slavic)
language. 4. While it is true to say that the name Macedonia
has been applied to Aegean Macedonia for a long time, "more
than 3000 years" is pushing things just a little. Twenty-three
hundred to twenty-six hundred years would be closer to the mark.
However, most of the territory of the present Republic of Macedonia
has also had that name for the same period of time. Although the
boundaries of that land called Macedonia have changed from time to
time under the rule of the Romans (this includes the period of
Byzantium), the Bulgarians, the Serbians, the Turks and the Greeks,
all historical analyses, even those emanating from Greeks, show
certain territories to have been part of Macedonia since the time of
Alexander the Great. Included in these territories are Skopje, Stobi,
and Herakleia. (later Monastir/Bitola). These towns come close to
the northern and western boundaries of the present Republic of
Macedonia. They have been Macedonian since before the great empire.
The territory that is now northern Greece has also been an important
part of Macedonia since ancient times, though most of this territory
was not a part of the first Macedonian kingdom, but was gradually
incorporated into that kingdom as Macedonian power grew. Macedonia was split apart in 1912 when the
Bulgarians, the Greeks and the Serbs united to push the Turks out of
the Balkans. Succeeding in that, they split Macedonia among
themselves. Aegean Macedonia, some 52 percent of Greater Macedonia,
was taken by Greece by conquest, never by any act of
self-determination. It could be argued that Greece created the very
problem about which it now complains since Greece participated in
the initial division of Macedonia earlier this century. Given this
division of territories it is hardly surprising that some
Macedonians hope for a restoration of older borders. Nationalist
forces throughout the Balkans have very similar ambitions. The Slavic-language Macedonian people who come from
Aegean Macedonia, including those who left the country before and
during the Second World War and the Greek civil war (many are now in
the United States, Canada, and Australia), still call themselves
Macedonian. Even Greek government publications admit that the
different peoples of Macedonia, such as the Slavs, Greeks, and
Vlachs, called themselves Macedonians in earlier times and during
the last century. Only in the last few years have the Greeks
publicly attempted to reclaim for themselves the name that they
abandoned and actually tried to suppress for so many years. The statement that the Greek region called Macedonia
"has one of the most homogeneous populations in the world"
(98.5 percent Greek) is very much without substance. For a start the
number is probably a considerable exaggeration, according to United
Nations and United States State Department estimates. But given that
there is a high proportion of Greek speakers in this area, a more
important question is how did northern Greece became so
"ethnically pure"? There is no dispute that this happened
through a process of exiling tens of thousand of Slav-speaking
Macedonians, both Christian and Moslem, and resettling hundreds of
thousands of Greek speakers from Asia Minor and Armenia. fly this
process the Greeks accomplished a great change in the ethnic mix in
Aegean Macedonia. Today, after the term was coined during the war in
Bosnia, we would call this "ethnic cleansing." It is not a
new phenomenon, and was not uncommon in Europe around and after the
First World War. After this process in Aegean Macedonia, the Greeks
made it illegal to speak the Slavic language and imprisoned and in
other ways severely punished people who did so. Naturally enough,
members of the minority Slavic population that remained after this
social engineering were also forbidden to teach their children in
their own language. The Greeks changed place names and forced people
to use Greek names in place of their Slavic names. Given all of this
extraordinary government intervention, it is hardly surprising to
find a high proportion of Greek speakers in Aegean Macedonia. But
clearly this does not tell us anything useful about historic rights
to the name or the lands of Macedonia or the people who inhabited
the area for fifteen hundred years. Brief reflection will show that
the Greek speakers brought into northern Greece had no historic
association with the land at all. 5. The idea that an independent Macedonia will
somehow monopolize the name seems an overreaction to the situation.
Many places in the world have the same names as other places, but
human beings can deal with this. For instance, people can get used
to the idea that a place in Greece and a place in the United States
might have the same name and still be different places. This point
also implies that since there are twice as many "real
Macedonians" in Aegean Macedonia as there are in Vardar
Macedonia, those with the numerical superiority should get the name.
However, if we consistently appeal to the older historical
justifications noted above, most of this Greek population would not
count, since they are relative newcomers to Aegean Macedonia. 6. It is fine to say that Macedonia, meaning the
history of ancient Macedonia, is an indispensable part of Greece's
heritage. Given that the Greeks occupy a major part of ancient
Macedonian territory, this seems fair enough. The fact that the
ancient Macedonians and Greeks despised each other, and that the
Macedonians conquered the Greeks, need not be relevant to this
aspect of modern political life. However, it does seem quite
paradoxical for Greeks to choose as a national symbol a recently
discovered emblem used by the hated overlords of ancient times (the
Macedonians). The implication that there is a coherent ethnic group
existing today, living only in northern Greece, that we could
recognize as "Macedonian"- people who have a strong line
of descent from the ancient Macedonians - simply cannot be
substantiated. 7. There is no dispute that the language of Vardar
Macedonia is predominantly Slavic, though in modern times there are
increasing demands to allow the official use (in schools for
instance) of the languages of minority groups such as Albanians and
Turks. If it can be demonstrated that the ancient Macedonians were
neither Slavic speakers nor Greek speakers -and such a case is
presented in this book - the Greek position does not gain any
advantage by pointing to the current language of the occupants of
Vardar Macedonia. 8. The Slavs set foot in the Balkans about 900 years
after the time of Alexander the Great. They, and some other
"new" peoples, spread widely throughout the Balkans, but
particularly into those lands that we have called Greece and
Yugoslavia. The Slavs eventually mixed with the remaining peoples,
but in Vardar Macedonia the language and culture that lasted was
Slavic Macedonian, and in the south, in Greece, the language and
culture that survived was Greek. In both cases it was necessary to
have a very strong government support for the stabilization and
establishment of an official modern form of the language. In Greece
this happened a little more than a hundred years earlier than it did
in Macedonia. The Greek language was not imposed on Aegean Macedonia
until the mid-1920s. Until that time Slavic Macedonian was the
"lingua franca7 of the area. 9. The name Macedonia was not used until the second
century B.C., and it was applied to the country by the Macedonian
king, not by a Greek. The term "Macedon' and the expression
"land of the Macedons" were used long before that time,
though there is debate about the origins of the word
"Macedon." Philologists are not certain of its derivation,
though Greeks prefer to think that the word comes from Greek. In any
case, neither the ancient Macedonians nor the ancient Greeks thought
that the Macedonians were Greek; thus the name the Macedonians used
for their land must surely belong to them alone. The weight of this
issue does not seem to be substantial. 10. It is quite true that many Macedonian places and
people were given Greek names. This was especially the case after
the Macedonian rulers started to use a Greek dialect that came from
the south (they were not using a dialect similar to that of their
nearest Greek neighbors, but one borrowed from much farther away)
and ostentatious features of Greek culture. However, we do not know
the names that were given to many places and people because we have
no written records. The contemporary records we have come from Greek
writers, or others writing in the Greek language, for Greek-speaking
readers. It would be surprising if they did not use Greek names. 11. Generally the Old Testament is not accepted as
being very good history, at least as we understand history. As far
as New Testament writings are concerned, we must be careful about
what has really been said. Differences in interpretation have led to
the establishment of different religious groups, so it can hardly be
said that the New Testament writings are always subject to the same
interpretation. It should be noted that several ancient writers
acknowledged the close association of the Macedonians and the
Greeks, once the Greeks had been conquered by the Macedonians. Often
the Macedonian rulers wanted the Greeks to be working in concert
with them, though the Greeks were less enthusiastic about this idea.
As already noted, the Macedonian leaders, from about the fourth
century B.C., moved increasingly to adopt the use of the Greek
language for official affairs, and were attracted by facets of Greek
culture. Greek culture was spread widely throughout the world by
Macedonians rulers in their Macedonian Empire, and then by Romans in
the Byzantine Empire. To be consistent one might just as well argue
that since the Romans maintained and spread Greek culture they must
have been Greek. Of course this is obviously wrong, but it points to
the weakness of this argument when applied to the Macedonians. 12. It is quite true that Alexander took the Greek
language and some aspects of Greek culture to Asia. This was a
period of flowering for the Greek language, and for Greek trading
influence in the world. The time of Alexander marks a period in
Greek history called the Hellenic period for this very reason.
However, Alexander did not take that mainstay of Greek culture,
democracy, to his new Asian empire, and in time he even abandoned
most of the things he had started with, turning to a new blend of
Asian, Macedonian and Greek ways. It became more important to
appease Asians than to appease Greeks. The fact that Philip and Alexander used the Greek
language for administration and were supposedly
"Hellenistic" in orientation has more to do with political
manipulation and administrative convenience than any appreciation
for the Greeks. This observation is not disputed by historians. Thus
the use of the Greek language does not tell us anything about the
ethnic or cultural origins of the Macedonians. The English language
has had a similar role in recent international history. The third
largest English-speaking country in the world today (at least in
population terms) is the Philippines, according to that country's
own claims. Yet no one would seriously suggest that the people of
the Philippines are English, or even American, by race or by
culture. The evidence discussed in this book indicates that
Alexander's mother tongue was not Greek, his mother was probably not
Greek and his father was not Greek. Eventually Alexander himself
became an "internationalist" rather than a Hellenophile,
even to the extent of arranging marriages between thousands of
Persian women and his own troops in a strange effort to merge the
peoples and cultural extremes of his empire. 13. There are no archaeological finds that confirm
the racial origins of the Macedonians. In a later section I discuss
the writings of R. A. Crossland, who contributed to the Cambridge
volumes on ancient history. Crossland thoroughly deals with this
question and dismisses as worthless the supposed archaeological
evidence about the alleged Greek origins of the Macedonians.
14. To say that
the home of the Greek gods was in Macedonia is to embellish the
truth. However, the real issue here is not whether a people (the
Greeks) would worship its national gods in a foreign country, but
whether Greeks believed Macedonians to be foreigners. If the latter
is true, and if Greeks worshiped gods from Macedonia, then by
definition they worshiped gods from a foreign country. Thus the
argument fails if it can be shown that Greek people of ancient times
believed that the Macedonians were foreigners. There is no debate
among historians about the fact that in historical times the
Macedonians and the Greeks saw themselves as separate peoples. The
Macadamias were always named separately from the Greeks, even when
the two groups were in closest connection under the rule of Philip
II, Alexander the Great, and later the Turks. Historians say that
the two peoples were held together in ancient times only by force of
arms, and as soon as the empire of Alexander collapsed, they split
apart once again. So whatever linguistic analysis might be argued
these days to suggest similarity of ethnic background for the
ancient Greeks and Macedonians (and there is no such analysis that
is widely accepted), those ancient peoples knew nothing of it. The
Greeks explicitly classified the Macedonians as foreigners. That is
what the word "barbaroi," frequently given to the
Macedonians and other non-Greek groups, means. Since the ancient
Greeks thought of the Macedonians as foreigners, if modern Greeks
wish to argue that the home of Greek gods was Macedon, it is evident
that the ancient Greeks must, have worshipped gods from the lands of
foreigners. 15. As noted above, even modern Greek texts show that
the areas of modern-day Skopje, Stobi, and Bitola were included in
the boundaries of the Macedonian homelands. These cities are close
to the northern and western borders of the modern-day state of
Macedonia. Although some texts show slight variations in the
position of the northern borders, historians agree that virtually
the whole of the territory of the modern-day Republic of Macedonia
was a part of ancient Macedonia. 16. Most of the census figures cited here are of
questionable relevance. A crucial date is the 1912-13 Balkan wars
which resulted in the partitioning of Macedonia. Since Greece took
about 52 percent of the territory of Macedonia it is not helpful to
talk about census figures taken after that date. It might be noted
again that by the late 1920s the Greeks had completed a major social
engineering program in Aegean Macedonia, having exiled tens of
thousands of Slavic speaking Macedonians, and imported perhaps ten
times as many nonMacedonian Greek speakers from Turkey and Armenia.
Figures taken after that date really do not help in this debate. Another interesting issue contained in this Greek
comment is worth mentioning briefly here, and that is the labeling
of Slavic-speaking Macedonians as Bulgarian. The major powers that
were fighting over Macedonia in the Balkan wars were Turkey, Serbia,
Bulgaria, and Greece. The occupying power, the Turks, identified
their Slavic subject peoples in the Balkans in terms of their
religious affiliation. The usual possibility was for them to be
Moslem, Jewish, Greek Orthodox, or Bulgarian Orthodox (although
there were some other numerically insignificant classifications such
as Roman Catholic). The Greek Church had been successful in pleading
with the Turkish authorities to have the Macedonian Orthodox Church
banned in favor of the Greek Orthodox Church towards the end of the
eighteenth century; thus Macedonians had no Slavic-speaking church
to attend. However, after about 1870 the Bulgarian Orthodox Church
was permitted in Bulgaria and began to attract Slav speakers in
Macedonia. Orthodox Christian Macedonians were called Bulgarian if
they had affiliated with the Slavic-speaking Bulgarian church, or
Greek if they still attended a Greek Orthodox church. So, at the
beginning of the twentieth century, the Turkish rulers of Macedonia
used a classification of its Balkan peoples that spoke as if
Macedonians did not exist. The competing powers, Bulgaria, Serbia
and Greece, also wished to extend their territory, and it did not
suit them to recognize a nationalistic group that might reduce their
acquisition. The Serbians spoke of "South Serbians" when
referring to Macedonians, and the Bulgarians simply spoke of
"Bulgarians." This kind of classification suited the Greek
political purpose also. Nevertheless, as you will see later in this
book, European powers recognized the Macedonians, as did some
newspaper accounts of the early part of the twentieth century. Even
today the Greeks deny that they have any ethnic minorities, and
their treatment of the Turkish and Macedonian speakers in Greece has
brought international condemnation. 17. The politics of the use of the name Macedonia are
rather more complex than the Greek writers suggest. I have no doubt
that Macedonians throughout the world would like to see a
reunification of Macedonia. However, the government of Macedonia
seems to appreciate the political reality that it is beyond their
power to achieve this. Some more radical groups in Macedonia still
hope for such a development through armed struggle, but given the
military might of Greece, this is undoubtedly a futile hope. The
political group that takes this extreme nationalist position is a
minority in the modern state of Macedonia. It is curious that the
Greeks seem not to recognize that the politicians in power in
Macedonia are moderate and that continued Greek agitation may
actually strengthen the position of the radicals. One can only
speculate about the intentions of the Greek government in this
issue. As with any elected government there must be an acute
sensitivity to the attitudes of the electorate. However, there may
be a greater political game being played here, one that is suggested
by some modern analysts and described in later chapters of this
book. While only extremists in Macedonia speak about going to war,
if we are to judge by the banners that have been waved in Salonika
in mass demonstrations about the issue, Greeks in general seem to be
prepared for war with the Macedonians. With luck, increased
awareness of alternative analyses of history may serve to reduce the
vigor of warlike thinking. It is the intention of this book to clarify and
present the conclusions of significant historians about the origins
of the modern-day Macedonians. From time to time I will again
compare those conclusions with the various points of the Greek
position. For instance, it is appropriate to explain the complex
ethnic mix that characterizes modern Greece. A major issue of
international concern is the treatment of minority ethnic groups in
Greece - Albanians, Turks, and Macedonians. Greece continues to deny
the existence of all except a "Muslim minority," meaning
Turkish speakers, and seems willing to acknowledge them only because
they are specified in international treaties. There are some who
argue that potential unrest from its Macedonian minority, or
pressures for the return of exiled Macedonians to Greece (and
resumption of confiscated lands), may be behind Greece's aggressive
posture against Macedonia. The matter is well worth exploration. By examining the particular dispute between Macedonia and Greece we can gain some understanding about other significant questions in the Balkans centered around Macedonia. Accordingly, this book examines the contemporary position of Macedonia. This has relevance to the Greek arguments, but introduces us also to broader questions about Macedonia’s stability and ability to survive as an independent nation. A consideration of the new nation's international experiences gives us a context for examining the aims of its immediate neighbors and the attitudes of the United Nations and the United States. The American involvement is of particular interest, since the United States was unwilling to send men to participate in the peacekeeping force in Bosnia, but shared in the ground-breaking move of sending a contingent of troops as part of the first ever United Nations "war-prevention" effort. This seems to have come about because of the American recognition that forces within and around Macedonia could provoke a European war much greater in scale than the present war in Bosnia. The issues that have provoked Greek reactions seem unlikely to go away in the near future. The Macedonians are quite unlikely to agree to abandon the name, though they may be prepared to accept the use of a longer name, such as "New Macedonia." However, at the present time Greece insists that no name involving "Macedonia" is acceptable. But this is only one dispute among many. Like the Greek arguments, what is visible on the surface may reveal only a part of the overall agenda. The strength of many old ambitions is there to be seen. There are larger stories being played out, and it is very likely that Greece is a part of many of them. That is what makes the present case so fascinating.
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