From: irakliot@longs.LANCE.ColoState.Edu (Leo J. Irakliotis)
Subject: Re: Ellemann-Jensen on Macedonia
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 19:52:15 GMT
Reply-To: irakliot@lance.colostate.edu
Organization: Engineering Network Services, Colorado State University

In article <C1Ez3H.C8C@gabriel.keele.ac.uk>, cla04@seq1.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes:

|> Is there any *evidence* for such acts being plotted? Let's remember
|> Greece is a huge country compared to Macedonia.

Of course they are. How would you explain the fact that in Skopje there are
maps of the FYRM incorporating parts of northern Greece, all the way down to
Mt. Olympus? And how would you explain the claims of the communist FYRM
goverment that the "macedonian" minority is oppressed in Greece. However
such a minority doesn't exist.

|> How would you like Greece to be called the 'Republic of Athens'. I
|> suspect you wouldn't, why think Macedonians aren't similarly insulted by
|> such a proposal about their country?

Cm'on now. It's not Greece that seeks recognition. And no one ever objected
to the name "Hellenic Republic" or "Greece".

|> Now if the Stalinist dream is economic, this is not true as the
|> macedonians are trying to privatise their economu a.s.a.p. Of course
|> they're not helped by the fact that Greek posturing over the name has
|> stopped the Republic becoming a member of world financial institutions.

Not true. FYRM has been granted membership to the IMF under the name FYRM.

|> What other Stalinist dream could there be. if it's one to do with
|> expansionism is this just another way of saying that Greece can produce
|> no evidence of exapnsionist tendencies on the part of the *present*
|> (i.e. the one that matters) Macedonian government? As for the present of
|> Macedonia it's hardly surprising that he was a communist given the
|> background of the country. So was president Yeltsin of Russia, does that
|> make him a stalinist too??

That country's (FYRM) sole existence was based on expanding over Greece for\
the past 45 years. Now perhaps you feel confortable with that, but Greeks
do not. And they have some pretty good reasons. 

And there's a slight difference between Gligorov and Yeltsin. The later has
never been a hard core communist and the former worked consistently for the
past 30 years with the Yugo Comm Party to make Stalin's dream come true.

|> Now what would Vlachs and the Turks of Western Thrace make of that I
|> wonder... There are no ethnic nations any more, and thank god for that.

There are no turks in Western Thrace. If you refer to Muslim Greeks, please
be consistent. And yes, there are ethnic nations, still. Just because you
don't leave in one of them doesn't mean they do not exist.

|> Surely the term is entirely neutral. There are slavic Macedonians, but
|> there are also Albanian Macedonians and even GraecoMacedonians for all i
|> know (do any Greeks still live in Skopje?) in the Republic of Macedonia.
|> In other words it designates a country in your terms.

No it doesn't and you know better than that. As far as to whether there are
any Greeks living in FYRM well it depends who you ask.

|> Perhaps some of its members were a bit worried about interevening to
|> support a fascist coup de etat.

Right! :-) That was exactly. How you know? :-)

|> Well the ancestors of the slavic macedonians have been around in
|> Macedonian since 6th century AD - as long as the ancestors of most of
|> the British have been in Britain. That looks like a pretty good pedigree
|> to me.

I am not surprised.

-- 
Leo J Irakliotis                 irakliot@eva.lance.colostate.edu
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