From: sk@groo.sunbim.be (Sasa Konecni)
Subject: The New Greek Phobia (phobos): [Part 3 from 5]
Reply-To: sk@sunbim.be ()
Organization: BIM Everberg Belgium
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 92 08:37:46 GMT


The New Greek Phobia (phobos) 
----------------------------
(Part 3 from 5 )


Alexander The Great

The Greek ideology is busy printing luxurious leaflets
on the topic "falsification of the historical truth",
in which, with a careful selection of
historical facts, each time they want to prove two
things - that Alexander The Great was a Greek and that
the Macedonian Nation was "Tito's invention", and as
well the language. The first statement ( according to
non-greek historical literature ) is at the least not
founded, and the second one is misusing the fact that
one nation had the chance for the first time to be
politically constituted after the Second World War.
Even if the both statement are true, what does it have
to do with the present efforts to avoid
destabilization of the Balkan region.


Territorial pretensions

The territorial claims of the northern neighbours "The
Skopjans" the greek side is supporting with maps of
united Macedonia which are mostly ilegally distributed by the
macedonian emigration, but also with some statements
of the leaders of VMRO, a strong nationalistic party.
The guarantees provided by the official 
statute of Macedonia which last winter satisfied the
EC commission and the statements of the macedonian
president Gligorov in which the Macedonian state is
demanting any antic claims are not enough. Posters,
writings on shopping bags, stamps on every possible
paper - even on electricity bills - are trying to prove
that "Macedonia is Greek".

Behind the fierce fight "about a national matter" most
probably there is no intention to enlarge the greek part
of Macedonia, the simple reason being the fact that
the whole operation is executed with defensive
politics which with the inherited fear from all the
previous failures extremely emotinaly - and
completely counter-productive - with methods from the
past tries to keep what it has, because before all Greece
feels threatened. The roots of this feeling are very
deep and far away - from the death of Alexander the
Great, three c. BC, until the liberation from the
Turks in 1821, we can not speak of a united greek
land, on the territory which includes present Greece.

Greek kingdom

Since, the beginning of XIX c., constituated greek
state, and with a king broth from the Gliksburg
dinasty,  the national identity of the greeks, and all
the population which was brought there by the Balkan
winds and Turkish governement, is build on two elements
- on the antic heritage ( reconstructed, because there
is no continouity) and orthodox church, the 
srongest factor in the fight against the Turks. Both
elements are also sistematicaly nourished today,
because the need for homogenization is  even bigger after
the bloody greek civil war and the "communist threat",
in which, the Yugoslavian side, and with this also the
Macedonian was not inocent.

"Macedonian Politics" of Athens

Inside the country, the consequences of all this were
fearful and discouraging - the explosion of
nationalism which will be put back under control with
great difficulty, outside the country - Greece is
placed in a diplomatic dead-end, forced to quietly wacth
the spreading of the crises in the south, to discretely
give up it's "traditional friend Serbia, the only
alliance on the Balkan", to take part in the navy
blockade, to be used as a field for measuring the
powers of the new world nations, which is  the
case with the Russion recognition of Macedonia.


-------To be continoued-------

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