From: ivrissimtzis@vax1.bham.ac.uk
Newsgroups: alt.news.macedonia
Subject: Re: Some thoughts on the Macedonian issue
Date: 28 Jan 93 10:06:21 GMT
Organization: University of Birmingham
NNTP-Posting-Host: vax1.bham.ac.uk

Luben Boyanov said:

>Better say before the Balkan wars in 1912 when there were more than 100 000
>refugees from Greek Macedonia to Bulgaria.

Certainly so, and vice versa! Greek refugees from Bulgaria arrived in Greek
Macedonia. However, the major population exchanges occured after WWI.

>You mean Bulgarians and not Slav !!! Older Greek documents speak about
>Bulgarians. Only when Serbians placed their claims (absolutely artificial
>and politically motivated) on the Slavs in Macedonia after 1881-89, there
>were years to pass, when Greeks changed the term "Bulgarophones" with
>"Slavophones".

I was referring to 1905 census and the term Slav Patriarchists includes both
Bulgarian and Serbian groups. Anyway, I presume that the predominant
Slavic group in Macedonia were Bulgarians. But still Slavic, isn't it?

>> The research by J. Larmeroux [Le politique exterieure...; 1918]
>Rather late research. At this moment, most of the historians, researchers,
>etc were biased and many of them were politically motivated because of the
>war. 

J. Larmeroux culled almost every available statistic by his time. He found out
that depending on the source and the definition of major Macedonia  Bulgarians
of Macedonia "were said to number between 120,000 and 1,200,000; Serbs ranged
from 210,000 to 900,000; Greeks were estimated at between 50,000 and 1,000,000;
and Vlachs numbered between 24,000 and 1,200,000... Estimates of the total
population of Macedonia were between 350,000 and 2,911,000!" Similar data from
various sources were presented by J. Ivanoff [La question Macedonniene;  Paris;
1920], who as a matter of fact was member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences,
with statistics from various sources from as early as 1877.

>There are certain facts, which no one can dispute and has ever disputed.
>The problem is that some propaganda machines tend to "forget" those
>undisputed facts.

Definitely! That's still a question for historians.

>That is simply not true. The term Macedono-Slav was introduced by the
>SERBIAN scholar Cvijic ONLY IN 1906 !!!! Nobody before that has used that
>term when describing the ethnography of Macedonia (i.e. there is no ethnic
>map on the world before the on of Cvijic, which has Slavo-Macedonians). One
>of the undisputed facts on the Macedonian problem.

The term "Slavomacedonian" is used to define Slavic ethnic groups within
Macedonia major, and that is all. 

>an ethnic Bulgarian organization.

But its purpose was still "political autonomy of Macedonia" and relationships
with Supreme Macedonian Committee and the Exarchate not quite friendly at the
first stages. 

>Many regard Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian etc. and other movements as terrorist
>such. No need to portray Ilinden as terrorist movement. Furthermore, terror
>was spread by ALL - Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian, Vlach movements in
>Macedonia.

For the earlier and latest activities of IMRO you are referred to  [Politics of
Terror; Perry]. I never considered Ilinden as a terrorist movement at first
place! My phrase was misunderstood.

As long as today's policy of VMRO are concerned, we may discuss it in another
opportunity. However, it is still an open question for me why many of the
Slavomacedonians, which you consider as Bulgarians, fought against the
Bulgarian nationalism before the Balkan Wars either autonomously or along with
Greek bands, and during WWII when Skopje was under Bulgarian occupation.

Leonidas Ivrissimtzis
Dept. of Elec. Eng.
Univ. of Birmingham