From: lb@cs.man.ac.uk (Luben Boyanov)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.greek
Subject: Re: Confusions...
Summary: Confusing names, races and nationalities
Date: 14 Sep 92 09:01:30 GMT
Organization: Dept Computer Science, University of Manchester, U.K.

In article <4063@keele.keele.ac.uk> cla04@seq1.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes:

[deleted]

>> this nationality appeared with the help of the Yugoslav communists' magic
>> wand...
>
>Well a journalist working for the Manchester Guardian called Brailsford who travel in the region at the turn
>of the century certainly thought there was, not only does he believe in
>slavic Macedonians as opposed to Bulgarians, Serbs, etc and that there

Not correct! Brailsford talks about RACES, when he "opposes" Macedonians to
Bulgarians and Serbs !!! He DOESN'T WRITE that Macedonians had a distinct
national consciousness (as 'Macedonian' one) and DON'T VIEW them as
SEPARATE ETHNIC ENTRY !!! And coming to this point, we can try and make a
'more understandable' (maybe) example. Let us think what 'races' existed in
Britain, for example, - Celts, Romans (who invaded Britain just like the
proto-Bulgars invaded the Balkans but later 'disappeared', leaving their
name only !!!), Angles, Saxons, and Jutes - oh, yes - later - Normans
(maybe the parallel here with the proto-Bulgars is a better one, because
the Normans remained in Britain as RULERS of the country - just like the
Bulgars, but unlike the later, the Normans didn't 'left' their name to the
conquered land). Now - the people living in Great Britain are/feel (as far
as I know) English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish - as we can see - the 'races'
don't 'match' the nationalities at all. So - can we "oppose" Celts, or
Saxons to English? I might have made some mistakes when compiling this
analogy, but I hope my idea is clear. Back to Macedonia there is even more - 
Macedonia for some time was the homeland (and the core of the territory) of
the Bulgarian kingdom - Tzar Samuel had his capital in Ohrid, and according
to ALL historic sources that was a BULGARIAN kingdom (no historic source
mentions 'Macedonian' kingdom). Later on, Ohrid was one of the centres of
the Bulgarian culture and orthodox church (and not 'Macedonian' one) - also
undisputable by any historian. BTW, the BULGARIAN orthodox church had
it's only bishop remained in Ohrid, during several centuries of the Ottoman
rule, until it's abolition in the late 18th century.

>was a distinct Macedonian language, he also mentions slavic nationalist songs which 'mention Macedonia in every chorus'

There are many books on how 'distinct' and not the Macedonian language to
the Bulgarian is. I'm not a linguist to comments. But all travelers and
observers agree that this is Bulgarian, or at least a dialect of the
language. Or at least (researchers), agree that these languages are the
closest to each other than any other Slav languages. As for the songs -
of course they mention Macedonia. And they still do. And all these songs are
Bulgarian songs, which you can often hear in Bulgaria. Their first
collection was by Miladinovi Brothers, who named their book with Macedonian
songs BULGARIAN FOLK SONGS and this book was issued in 1861 - far before
the establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchiat. I'd prefer these songs to
make nowadays Bulgarians and Macedonians closer friends as in concern of
the future and not be used as examples for anything else (as it's
unpleasant to be so). Is a Yorkshire song (if there are such?) a
non-English song (or something opposed to English?). The greatest mistake
when talking on Macedonia is mixing and not understanding the sense in
which this term WAS used in the past. And there is no doubt HOW and in what
sense were 'Macedonia' and 'Macedonian' used before/during the turn of this
century.


>Andy 


Best regards

Luben

--------------------------------------------------------------------
"To live means to struggle: the slave - for liberty, the free - for
perfection" 
				Yane Sandanski
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: soc.culture.greek