From: vkb57@cas.org ()
Subject: Re: The Balkan Dance of Death [Macedonia]
Organization: Chemical Abstracts Service, Columbus, Ohio
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 05:54:30 GMT

In article <1992Dec15.011615.10682@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> gd8f@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Gregory  Dandulakis) writes:
>In article <1992Dec14.213549.23873@cas.org> vkb57@cas.org () writes:
>>
>>Yes,  there were probably Macedonians that were praying that the brotherly
>>Christian Greece would liberate them from the Muslim Turk yoke.  Maybe even
>>thousands.  What they did not realize was that,  once they liberated them from
>>the Turks,  the Greeks were going to proceed to liberate them from their
>>language, their old Slavonic church books,  their names and the names of their
>>villages, mountains and rivers.  I am sure that the 11th and 12th century old
>>Slavonic writings on the church-wall frescoes did not fare much better.  You
>>know about most of that,  it has been on the net again and again,  quotes,
>>dates,  and the whole bit.
>
> I didn't know that the slav-speaking greek macedonians fighting during
> the Macedonian struggle in 1904-1912 didn't know that Greece's official
> language was Greek and not Slavic, like for example in Bulgaria and
> in Serbia.
>
Yes,  Gregory,  they knew the official language of Greece was Greek,  just as
the official language of the Ottoman empire was Turkish,  but their language,
their names,  the toponyms,  and  the old church books did survive 500 yers
of the "Ottoman yoke."  It took about five years of the enlightened Greek
rule to destroy all that.  I really have hard time believing that you don't
feel bad about it.

> You are known into manipulating things around, but not everything can
> be manouvered :-).
>
No Gregory,  some things speak for themselves.

> I thought that most of the educated people even in Skopjia had to drop
> their "heavy" regional accents, variant words and many even language (eg
> vlachs) just for their desire to belong in a group of people which
> offers to them much more than their local language. You can see this
> even here in the US in a ridiculous level. As far as the name change
> here in the US was even worse, without even the pressure from neighboring
> hostile states. In Greece, in areas where there was no foreign irredendism
> the names have kept their old look. What about Skopia? Do you keep all
> the Ottoman names?

Wake up Gregory.  More than half of the classes in my grade school were
Turkish,  the name of the school was Turkish.  My high school had two shifts,
the other shift was Serbian.  There were Albanian schools,  newspapers,
bookstores all over.  Five of the ministers in the government of Macedonia are
Albanian.  It has been that way in Macedonia, as Robert Kaplan put it in his
lenghty article in the June 1991 issue of the Atlantic magazine,  "since the
days of St. Paul."  Etnic cleansing is not indigenous to the region.  And yes,
a lot of Ottoman names are kept.

Who knows,  we may have had an easier time finding a common language if you
grew up in a similar atmosphere of cultural diversity and ethnic tolerance,  I
consider myself very fortunate for having experienced it.

>>Yes,  please do post parts from the Harvard encyclopedia,  as often as you
>>can.  Whenever I see them,  I get reassured that not all Greeks are as bad or
>>as badly biased as some of them,  and that there is still hope for peace in the
>>Balkans.  Your distinguished compatriot Chris Spirou,  for example,  former
>>democratic candidate for Governor of new Hampshire,  was so"appalled" when he
>>"read the  chapter on Macedonians,  pages 690-694,"  that in July of 1986 he
>>fired and angry 13-page letter to then Harvard president Derek Bok,
>>requesting, among other things that,  an erratum be published.  His stand was
>>apparently endorsed even by Governor Dukakis on August 9, 1986 in the Boston
>>Globe.  As you can see,  you have come a long way.
>>
>>Try to make sure that what you post reflects the impression given by the whole
>>pieece,  and do not take parts of paragraphs out of context.
>>
>>Vasil
>
>I have asked before to give me any reference for Dukakis objection. I cann't
>think why he would do it. If you fail to provide reference, then again you
>deserve to be named as "rumor generator".

I had just given you the reference above,  the Boston Globe of August 9, 1986.
It must have been prominently displayed,  he was the governor then,  so you
shouldn't have any trouble locating the article.  Please send me a copy or
post it when you locate it.

>As far as the encyclopedia's article, I'm delighted that you don't
>have any problem w.r.t. THE PROCESS WHICH CREATED YOUR ETHNIC IDENTITY.
>I will reposted it ALL, without any subtraction. (Except if
>*you* like to intrude other information irrelevant to the "creation
>process" just "for the fun of it").
>
>==============================================================================
>
>******************************************************************************
>*                                                                            *
>*  "Harvard  Encyclopedia of American  Ethnic  Groups", Stephan Thernstrom,  *
>*   Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1980,                *
>*                                                                            *
>*   and from the entry under the title: Macedonians, p. 691:                 *
>*                                                                            *
>******************************************************************************
>
Thank you Gregory for the quote bellow.  I will include the preceeding
paragraph also,  it is an important part of the process.  The setting is the
end of the 19th century:

"In these unfavorable circumstances,  local leaders established the Internal
Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) in an EFFORT TO UNITE ALL THE
ETHNIC GROUPS IN THE REGION AND TO ESTABLISH AN INDEPENDENT MACEDONIAN STATE.
The IMRO leaders considered themselves Bulgarian but they also had a strong
sense of regional identity and advocated "MACEDONIA FOR MACEDONIANS."  They
did not prevail,  however;  following the Balkan wars (1912-1913) and World
War I  Macedonia remained divided among Greece,  Serbia (later Yugoslavia),
and Bulgaria"

>Macedonian  L E A D E R S BEGAN to develop a strong sense of  R E G I O-   [1]
>N A L  I D E N T I T Y  in  the  19th  century, but it  was not until the
>20th  century  that  SOME  I N T E L L E C T U A L S  BEGAN to  A R G U E   [2]
>that Macedonian Slavs  were neither Bulgarian nor Serbian, nor Greek, but
>a  S E P A R A T E  P E O P L E. The  C O M M U N I S T  party  of  Yugo-   [3]
>slavia  SUPPORTED this IDEA  during World War II, and in 1945 a People's
>(later Socialist) Republic of Macedonia was established as one of the six
>constituent republics of the Federal Socialist  Republic of Yugoslavia. A
>Macedonian  L I T E R A R Y  L A N G U A G E  was  D E V E L O P E D, and
>the   I D E A  of  Macedonian  N A T I O N A L I T Y  was  E N C O U R A-
>G E D. In 1958 a Macedonian Orthodox C H U R C H  was  C R E A T E D, and
>nine years later it acquired jurisdictional independence. Neighboring Bu-
>lgaria, which  has a  Macedonian  minority population, initially  favored
>these developments and from 1944 to 1958 even recognized the existence of
>a  Macedonian  nationality. Since 1958, however, Bulgaria has argued that
>all  Macedonians are  Bulgarians, and this policy contributes to the dis-
>cord and  tension  between  Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. The Greek government
>has never recognized Macedonians as a distinct nationality.
>
>===============================================================================
<Gregory's kind interpretation of the text deleted,  of course>
I include the ORIGINS, instead, from few paragraphs before

O R I G I N S

The historical region known as Macedonia is situated in the central part of
the Balkan peninsula.  Its frontiers have varied throughout the centuries but
Macedonia is generally defined as the area bounded on the east by the Rhodope
Mountains and on the north by the Shar, Osogovske and Rila Dagh mountains. In
terms of current political boundaries Macedonia is divided in three parts: the
Republic of Macedonia (formerly Vardar Macedonia) in Yugoslavia,  Aegean of
Greek Macedonia in Greece  and Pirin Macedonia or the Blagoevgrad district of
Bulgaria. There are also Macedonian minorities living in other parts of
Yugoslavia and in Albania.

Macedonia experienced several centuries of Roman rule but during the 6th and
the 7th centuries the region was SETTLED BY SLAVIC TRIBES WHO SOON ASSIMILATED
MOST OF THE LOCAL POPULATION. In the second half of the 7th centuries Bulgars
invaded the Balkans,  and they in turn were assimilated by Slavs.  the
Bulgars,  or proto-Bulgarians,  established a state,  usually referred to as
the First Bulgarian Kingdom,  which included most of Macedonia.

Cristianity was introduced to the Bulgarian Kingdom during the 9th century
when saints Cyril and Methodius and their disciples converted the population
and formulated for them a Slavic alphabet,  Glagolitic,  from which Cyrillic
later developed.  The Cyrillic alphabet is still used in Macedonian,  which by
the mid 20-th century had evolved into a distinct South Slavic language,
closely related to Bulgarian.  Most Macedonians still belong to the Eastern
Orthodox Church.

During the 10th century the Bulgarian state grew weaker and split into two.
The western Bulgarian Kingdom with its capital in Ohrid was ruled by Tsar
Samuil (997-1014) and many contemporary Macedonian historians regard this as
the first Slavic Macedonian state.  Samuil also created the Archibishopric of
Ohrid and proclaimed its ecclesiastical independence.

>Gr


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