page_title: Slavic speakers in Ottoman Macedonia
section_title: National antagonisms
hierarchical_section_title: Slavic speakers in Ottoman Macedonia / National antagonisms
caption_attribution_description: English: Bulgarian School in Kostur
context_page_description: Slavic-speakers inhabiting the Ottoman-ruled region of Macedonia had settled in the area since the Slavic migrations during the Middle Ages and formed a distinct ethnolinguistic group. While Greek was spoken in the urban centers and in a coastal zone in the south of the region, Slav-speakers were settled in its rural hinterland and were predominantly occupied in agriculture. Habitually known and identifying as "Bulgarian" on account of their language, they were considered "Rum", members of the community of Orthodox Christians according to the Ottoman millet system.
  After the emergence of rival national movements among Balkan Christians, the allegiance of Macedonian Slavs became the apple of discord for nationalists vying for dominion over the region of Macedonia. Parties with national affiliations, mostly Greek and Bulgarian, were formed in their midst, largely expressing and accentuating pre-existing social cleavages. From the 1870s onwards Bulgarian and Greek propaganda appealed to them via the creation and operation of national education networks and by supporting the structures of the Bulgarian Exarchate or the Patriarchate of Constantinople respectively.
context_section_description: During the Greek War of Independence two revolts erupted in southern Macedonia with considerable peasant support. In 1821 an insurrection under the leadership of monks of Mount Athos had limited success and only two groups of villages from the Chalkidiki peninsula were involved in it. The insurrection of Naousa, Imathia the next year, led by local notables and warlords, was joined by ca 2,000 Greek- and Slav-speakers from the surrounding villages. Both uprisings were characterized by the absence of concrete planning and demands from the revolutionaries, other than a desire for freedom and putting an end to Muslim rule, and were suppressed in a short time. A considerable number of Slavs from Macedonia, amounting to a few hundreds, continued fighting, imbued with religious sentiment, in southern Greece as professional soldiers and settled in the independent kingdom of Greece, where they were given land. Their descendants were called "Bulgarians" or "Thracian-Macedonians," and were considered Bulgarian-speaking Orthodox Christian co-nationals on a par with Greek-speaking Greeks, as they perceived themselves.
  While Greeks claimed the Slavs of Macedonia as their Orthodox brethren, Serbs and Bulgarians considered them members of their nation on account of their language. Maps and statistics produced mostly reflected their creators' intentions than the demographic reality on the ground, while Ottoman censuses classified their subjects using their religious affiliation further perplexed the issue of their national identity. Rival Serb, Greek and Bulgarian nationalism used religious and educational institutions to tie Macedonia's population to their respective national cause. While a vibrant minority of schoolteachers, priests, and government officials readily espoused national causes, that was not the case with the vast majority of Slav peasants. Alignment of the Slavs of Macedonia with the Bulgarian, the Greek or sometimes the Serbian national camp did not imply adherence to different national ideologies: these camps were not stable, culturally distinct groups, but parties with national affiliations, described by contemporaries as "sides", "wings", "parties" or "political clubs". The Exarchist movement met with less success in Macedonia than in eastern Bulgarian lands, due to the social and cultural dominance of the Greek bourgeoisie. In the middle of the century, despite the opposition of Greek bishops, many Slav villages adopted the use of Bulgarian in education and liturgical life.
  The 1870 firman establishing the Bulgarian Exarchate allowed for a diocese to join the Exarchate, given the support of 2/3 of its flock. Ecclesiastical allegiance was treated as a declaration of one's national identity. From 1870 until 1913 the national affiliation of the Orthodox Slavs of Macedonia became the locus of a contest between Greece and Bulgaria, who intensified their national educational activity in the region of Macedonia, alongside Serbia. In the 1870s, Serbs directed their attentions to Macedonia, due to their interest in the area of Kosovo and after the frustration of hopes of acquiring Bosnia-Herzegovina, once it was occupied by Austria-Hungary in 1878. Serbian intellectuals denied the Bulgarian identity of Macedonian Slavs, based on the differences between eastern and western Bulgarian dialects, and suggested they should be incorporated in Serbia. For Slav peasants, however, the choice between the Patriarchate and the Exarchate was not tainted with national meaning, but was a choice of Church or millet. Thus, adherence to the Bulgarian national cause was going against notions of the sanctity of the Greek language, but was attractive as a means of opposing oppressive Christian chiflik owners and urban merchants, who usually identified with the Greek nation, as a way to escape arbitrary taxation by Patriarchate bishops, via shifting allegiance to the Exarchate and on account of the free (and, occasionally, even subsidized) provision of education in Bulgarian schools. The Greek party initially relied on the traditional appeal of bel
caption: Pupils of the Bulgarian school of Kostur/Kastoria
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