Macedonian Bulgarians

Macedonians or Macedonian Bulgarians (Bulgarian: македонци or македонски българи), sometimes also referred to as Macedono-Bulgarians, Macedo-Bulgarians, or Bulgaro-Macedonians are a regional, ethnographic group of ethnic Bulgarians, inhabiting or originating from the region of Macedonia. Today, the larger part of this population is concentrated in Blagoevgrad Province but much is spread across the whole of Bulgaria and the diaspora. The Slavic-speaking population in the region of Macedonia had been referred to both (by outsiders and by most of themselves) as Bulgarians, and that is how they were predominantly seen since 10th, up until the early 20th century and beyond. The Balkan Wars (1912–1913) and World War I (1914–1918) left the area divided mainly between Greece and Serbia (later Yugoslavia), which resulted in significant changes in its ethnic composition. The formerly leading Bulgarian community was reduced either by population exchanges or by change of communities ethnic identity. The Macedonian Slavs were faced with the policy of forced Serbianisation.
Per Apostolos Vacalopoulos, from the beginning of the 18th century, there is mention only of Bulgarians by the travellers in the area, which reveals they formed the largest Slavic community and gradually absorbed the sparse Serbian villagers here. As a result, during the 19th century, the Slavic-speakers in Ottoman Macedonia, who were already Bulgarian by name, began to acquire mainly Bulgarian national identity.
With the rise of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire during 19th century, rival Bulgarian, Greek and Serb nationalism used religious and educational institutions to tie Macedonia's population to their respective national cause. The classical Ottoman millet system began to degrade with the continuous identification of the religious creed with ethnic identity. In this way, in the struggle for recognition of a separate national Church, the modern Bulgarian nation was created, and the religious affiliation became a consequence of national allegiance.
The semi-official term Bulgarian Millet, was used by the Ottoman Sultan for the first time in 1847, and was his tacit consent to a more ethno-linguistic definition of the Bulgarians as a separate ethnic group. Officially as a separate Millet were recognized the Bulgarian Uniates in 1860, and then in 1870 the Bulgarian Exarchists. The year 1878 was a turning point in the history of Macedonia. After the Russo-Turkish War the Treaty of San Stefano was made, with whom a Great Bulgaria was created, including most of Macedonia in it. Greece and Serbia, jeopardized and jealous by this decision, protested and were supported by Austro-Hungary and the United Kingdom, who were fearful of Russian influence spreading in the region through Bulgaria. Therefore, a new Treaty of Berlin was created and Macedonia was returned to the Ottomans. As a result, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia in order to validate the territorial claims, started to compete for the allegiance of the Christian population of Macedonia, most of whom was without national consciousness, by implanting in them the "proper" national sense through the churches and schools. The absence of collective ethnic identity amongst the Macedonian Slavs meant that the different national movements were able to manipulate data and information in order to pursue their nationalist agendas. The functioning of the Bulgarian Exarchate then aimed specifically at differentiating the Bulgarian from the Greek and Serbian populations on an ethnic and linguistic basis, providing the open assertion of a Bulgarian national identity. However one basic distinction between the political agendas of local intelligentsias was clear.
The Macedonian Greeks and Serbs followed, in general, the directives coming from their respective centers of national agitation, while by the Bulgarians the term Macedonian was acquiring the significance of a certain political loyalty, that progressively constructed a particular spirit of regional identity. Contemporary travellers, ethnographers and linguists, including Slovak philologist Pavel Jozef Šafárik (1842), French geologist Ami Boué (1847, 1854), French ethnographer Guillaume Lejean (1861), English travel writers Georgina Muir Mackenzie and Paulina Irby (1867), Russian ethnographer Mikhail Mirkovich (1867), Czech folklorist Karel Jaromír Erben (1868), German cartographer August Heinrich Petermann (1869), German geographer Heinrich Kiepert (1876), Austrian diplomat Karl Sax (1877), etc. clearly identified the Slavs living in the part of Rumelia currently known as Kosovo as Serbs and only referred to the Slavs living in the Macedonia as Bulgarians. All of them also established the ethnographic boundary between Serbs and Bulgarians along the Šar Mountains. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, at the beginning of the 20th century the Macedonian Bulgarians constituted the majority of the population in the whole region of Macedonia, then part of the Ottoman Empire.
Although wearing the mantle of national ideology, the alignment of Macedonian Slavs to different national camps was not indeed belonging to a ethnic group, but rather political and flexible option. Contemporary observers used "party", "side" and "wing" when they wanted to denote different camps. Thus, this notion had not yet developed into a clear national identity in some non-Greek speaking parts of Macedonia. Furthermore, any expression of national identity among the majority of Macedonian Slavs was very superficial and was imposed by the educational and religious propaganda or by terrorism. Many foreign observers who visited Macedonia assumed that the local Slavs speak Bulgarian, however more astute observers concluded that Macedonian Slavs linguistically were not Bulgarians nor Serbs. Per John Van Antwerp Fine during the 19th century, Macedonian was merely a regional term and most of the Slavic Macedonian intelligentsia who had a clear ethnic identity, believed they were Bulgarians, while the peasantry was not involved in national debates, they were meaningless to their concern. In the Principality of Bulgaria the ethnic Bulgarian identification developed into a national ideology meanwhile between Macedonian Slavs the meaning remained vague, which made the divergence grow, especially in Vardar Macedonia after 1913.
The Balkan Wars (1912–1913) and World War I (1914–1918) left Ottoman Macedonia divided between Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria and resulted in significant changes in its ethnic composition. The immediate effect of the partition of Ottoman Macedonia were the nationalistic campaigns in areas under Greek and Serbian administration, which expelled Bulgarian churchmen and teachers and closed Bulgarian schools and churches. As a consequence a sizable part of the Slavic population of Greek and Serbian (later Yugoslav Macedonia), fled to Bulgaria or was resettled there by virtue of a population exchange agreements (Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine, Politis-Kalfov Protocol). Within Greece, the Macedonian Slavs were designated "Slavophone Greeks", while within Serbia (later within Yugoslavia) they were officially treated as "South Serbs". In both countries, schools and the media were used to disseminate the national ideologies and identities, and also the languages, of the new ruling nations, the Greeks and the Serbs. These cultural measures were reinforced by steps to alter the composition of the population: Serb colonists were implanted in Yugoslav Macedonia, while in Greek Macedonia, the mass settlement of Greek refugees from Anatolia definitively reduced the Slav population to minority status. In Serbian Macedonia any manifestations of Bulgarian nationhood were suppressed. Even in the so-called Western Outlands ceded by Bulgaria in 1920 Bulgarian identification was prohibited. The Bulgarian notes to the League of Nations, consented to recognize a Bulgarian minority in Yugoslavia were rejected. The members of the Council of the League assumed that the existence of some Bulgarian minority there was possible, however, they were determined to keep Yugoslavia and were aware that any exercise of revisionism, would open an uncontrollable wave of demands, turning the Balkans into a battlefield. Belgrade was suspicious of the recognition of any Bulgarian minority and was annoyed this would hinder its policy of forced "Serbianisation". It blocked such recognition in neighboring Greece and Albania, through the failed ratifications of the Politis–Kalfov Protocol in 1924 and the Albanian-Bulgarian Protocol (1932). During the interwar period in Vardar Macedonia a Macedonian national feeling started growing.
Despite some attempts to differentiate a ethnic Macedonian identity from the Bulgarian one since the end of the 19th century, and despite the nebulous national consciousness of the mass of the Slavic population, most researchers agree that the bulk of the Slavic population in the region had a Bulgarian national identity until the early 1940s, when the Bulgarian troops, occupying most of the area, were greeted as liberators. Pro-Bulgarian feelings among the local Slavic population prevailed in Greece and Yugoslavia. Although in Yugoslavia this was an effect from the previous suffering rule which had negative impact on the majority of the population. Also, in Greece afterwards efforts were undertaken by the Bulgarian authorities to "instill in them a Bulgarian national identity". After the Second World War and Bulgarian withdrawal, on the base of the strong Macedonian regional identity a process of ethnogenesis started and distinct national Macedonian identity was formed. As a whole an appreciable Macedonian national consciousness prior to the 1940s did not exist. At that time even the political organization by the Slavic immigrants from the region of Macedonia, the Macedonian Patriotic Organization has also promoted the idea of Macedonian Slavs being Bulgarians. The nation-building process was reinforced by strong Bulgarophobia and Yugoslavism. The new authorities began a policy of removing of any Bulgarian influence and creating a distinct Slavic consciousness that would inspire identification with Yugoslavia.
With the proclamation of the new Socialist Republic of Macedonia, there were measures taken that would overcome the pro-Bulgarian feeling among the population. It has been claimed that from 1944 till the end of the 1940s people espousing a Bulgarian ethnic identity had been oppressed. According to Bulgarian sources more than 100,000 men were imprisoned and some 1,200 prominent Bulgarians were sentenced to death. In addition, the inconsistent policy towards the Macedonian Bulgarians followed by Communist Bulgaria at that time has thrown most independent observers ever since into a state of confusion, as to the real ethnicity of the population even in Bulgarian Macedonia. Practically as a consequence the rest of this people, with exception of Bulgaria proper, were eventually Macedonized or Hellenized.
Nevertheless, people with Bulgarian consciousness or Bulgarophile sentiments still live in North Macedonia and Greece. During the last years the EU membership of Bulgaria has seen more than 50,000 Macedonians applying for Bulgarian citizenship. In order to obtain it they must sign a statement declaring they are Bulgarians by origin. More than 90,000 Macedonian nationals have already received Bulgarian citizenship. However, this phenomenon can not give precise information about how many Macedonian nationals consider themselves Bulgarians in ethnic sense, because it is widely believed that this phenomenon is caused primarily for economic reasons.
In the Ottoman General Census of 1881/82, the Orthodox Christian population of the kazas currently falling within the borders of the Republic of North Macedonia identified, as follows: