| DJ_SHEMA |
The Greek government attempted to ethnically cleanse the Macedonian population and colonize Aegean Macedonia with Greeks. A series of population exchanges occurred after 1913 which saw tens of thousands of Macedonians forcibly expelled while over half a million Greeks were shipped in from Turkey and Bulgaria.
"All statistics except the Greek ones are also in general agreement that these Macedonians represented the largest single group on the territory of Aegean Macedonia before 1913. The figures range from 329,371 or 45.3 per cent to 382,084 or 68.9 per cent of the non-Turkish population; and from 339.369 or 31.3 per cent to 370.371 or 35.2 per cent of the total population of the area of approximately 1,052,227 inhabitants.
The number of Macedonians in Aegean Macedonia began to decline both in absolute terms and as a percentage of the total population during the Balkan wars and particularly after the First World War. The Treaty of Neuilly with Bulgaria provided for the so-called volun-tary exchange of Greek and Bulgarian minorities. According to the best available estimates, 86,582 Macedonians were compelled to emigrate from Aegean Macedonia, mostly from its eastern and central regions, to Bulgaria in the years from 1913 to 1928. More importantly still as a result of the compulsory exchange of Greek and Turkish or rather Christian and Muslim minorities required by the Treaty of Lausanne, which ended the Greek-Turkish war (1919-22), 400,000 Turks, including 49,000 Muslim Macedonians, were forced to leave Greece; and 1,300,000 Greeks and other Christians were expelled from Asia Minor. In the years up to 1928 the Greek government settled 565,143 of these refugees as well as 53,000 colonists from other parts of Greece in Aegean Macedonia. Thus, as a result of the removal of 127,384 Macedonians and the conscious and planned settlement of 618,199 refugees, the Greek government transformed the ethnographic structure of Aegean Macedonia in the period between 1913 and 1928."
"Even Greek sources concede that during the years from 1913 to 1928 the enormous movements of population which took place in Greek Macedonia changed the ethnological composition of the area. Macedonia, History and Politics, acknowledges that perhaps 100,000 Slavic speakers 'left' (ie., were forced to leave), 77,000 of these in 1926 alone. These figures may well be an underestimate but this material does add weight to the idea that even greater numbers of Greeks came in. The extent of the population movement out of Aegean Macedonia is emphasized in a report on March 30, 1927, in the Greek newspaper Rizospastis, which stated that 500,000 Slavic speakers were resettled to Bulgaria."
"Thus the majority of the Greek-speaking population of Aegean Macedonia is descended from relatively recent Greek refugees from Turkey and other places. This being the case, Greece might be considered to have questionable claim on the name Macedonia. Remember, too, that the name Macedonia was not applied to the province by Greece until 1988. Thus much of the current population has lived at most some 70 years in a land that has been called 'Macedonia' for less than a decade. Clearly they do not have the kind of historical claim to the land and to the name Macedonia as the Macedonian Slavs, Vlachs and Albanians whose ancestors have been there for 1,500 years or more."
"...they have carefully fostered this delusion, as if to give the impression both to their own people and to the world that there that there was no Slav minority in Greece at all; whereas, if a foreigner who did not know Greece were to visit the Florina (Lerin) region and from his idea of the country as a whole, he would conclude that it was the Greeks who were the minority. It is predominantly a Slav region not a Greek one. The language of the home, and usually also of the fields, the village street, and the market, is Macedonian, a Slav language."
The Macedonians became a minority in the eastern half of Aegean Macedonia while remaining (still today) a majority in western Aegean Macedonia, around the villages of Lerin, Kostur, and Voden. The numbers of ethnic Macedonians was reduced to 240,000. Today, the estimates range between 270,000 and one million (the latter number by Macedonian human rights activists in Greece).
"As official census data do not exist, and if they did they would not be reliable, we will mention here the most frequent estimate of some 200,000 Macedonian speakers in Greece (IHF, 1993:45; & Rizopoulos, 1993); the 1987 Encyclopedia Britannica Book of the Year 1987 gives an estimate of 180,000 (Banfi, 1994:5). Also, an anonymous Greek ethnologist gave an estimate of 200,000 for the community...(Chiclet, 1994:8). Another scholar, based on a detailed estimate of 30,000 speakers in the Florina and Aridea area makes a global estimate of 100,000-150,000 Macedonian speakers throughout Greek Macedonia (Van Boeschoten, 1994). Thus, the 200,000 estimate for the Macedonian community seems reasonable..." 5
"...we note Greek claims that Northern Greece, or Aegean Macedonia, is 'more than 98.5% ethnically pure.' The purity is held to be Greek. However, the statement is not accepted by reputable opinion outside of Greece. For instance, the 1987 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica indicated that there were still 180,000 Macedonian speakers in this area, indicating a much greater percentage than 1.5%. If Macedonian activists from these areas are correct,there may be as many as 1,000,000 people from Macedonian-speaking backgrounds in Aegean Macedonia." 6
"Following the partition of Macedonia in 1913, Aegean Macedonia was annexed by Greece and since then its indigenous people, the ethnic Macedonians, became the target and often the victim of the oppressive policies of Greek state. Today, after nearly ninety years of assimilation efforts by the Greek governments it seems that measures have proved to be unsuccessful in Hellenizing the region. Currently, the ethnic Macedonians, estimated around 1,000,000 by some sources, still constitute the majority of population in that part of the Greece, Aegean Macedonia."
|
| Kiril i Metodi |
Well, Hane, I am also from Bulgaria, so U can guess my question was a rhethoric one. But the real issue is how can U make people who for 50 and more years have been fed up with the Serbo-Titoist version of history look from a different perspective, search for different history sources, change their anti-Bulgarian attitude? For several decades official Belgrade propaganda indoctrinated them hatred towards Bulgaria and Bulgarians, insisting on the fact that Bulgaria was an ally of Germany during WWI and WWII, that in legal terms Bulgaria was an occupying force in Vardar Macedonia in 1941-1944 (although we believe it was a liberating force) etc. And what we perceive as a well-known yugo-communist forgery of Bulgarian history to those people in the Republic of Macedonia is the only "true" history they know. And, let's be honest, after all, we are neither aware of all the details concerning the birth and development of "Macedonianism". It is not that simple as the Serbian-Komintern-Yugoslav conspiracy theory presents it. I personally know Bulgarian Macedonians, elderly persons (now deceased), who 20 years ago tried with all seriousness to convince me of Macedonians' relationship to Alexander the Great and his kinsmen.
Besides, I wonder, why the emigrant Macedonians - expatriates from Solunsko to Canada and US, are in their majority pro-macedonist, they have never experienced the Yugoslav repression. And do U know where the most agressively anti-Bulgarian Macedonists come from? U may not believe it - from Albania, the Mala Prespa area. The truth should be somewhere in between, but we have to seek it together with the Macedonians from RM and Greece, living aside emotions and nostalgia for past grandeur and glory. Then we may come to and accept in all serenity the conclusion, that we have common roots an we had common destiny in the past, but today we are different, and these are the facts! After all, historically seen, nation-making in Europe was in the majority of cases the result of division and separation of peoples that used to belong to the same ethnic and cultural space in the past, but later on were divided and continued each along its own way and destiny. What I cannot accept, however, is the attempts to build one's national identity, dignity and self-respect at the expense of others, including at the expense of one's closest relatives, agressively and in disregard of historic facts and data.
Hope to hear your opinion on that.
|