UNITED · 2014. 7. 19. · The Ilinden traditions re-emerged during the National Lib-eration War...

1Januari 2009 Makedonski Glasnik - Glasilo na Organizacijata Obedineti Makedonci vo Kanada

UNITEDMACEDONIANS Established 1959Proudly Canadian

Makedonski Glasnik Glasilo na OrganizacijataObedineti Makedonci vo KanadaMacedonian Herald Voice of the United MacedoniansOrganization of Canada

JANUARIJANUARY 2009 GODINA 50, BROJ 1VOLUME 50, NUMBER 1 ISSN 1488-6006

2 January 2009Macedonian Herald - Voice of the United Macedonians Organization of Canada

Established 1959Proudly Canadian

United Macedonians Organiza-tion of Canada is the publisherof “Macedonian Herald” as avoice of the Macedonians inNorth America.

Editor-in-Chief:Dragi Stojkovski

Editor:Borche Kulevski

Macedonian Heraldadvertising price list :

Business Card - $ 20.00Quarter Page - $ 65.00 Half Page - $ 100.00 Full Page - $ 200.00 Back Page (full page)

- $ 300.00 Front Page (quarter page)

-$ 250.00

Organizacijata ObedinetiMakedonci vo Kanada eizdava~ot na “MakedonskiGlasnik” kako glasilo naMakedoncite od SevernaAmerika.

Glaven i odgovoren urednik:Dragi Stojkovski

Urednik:Bor~e Kulevski

685 McCOWAN ROADP.O. BOX 66517

TORONTO, ONTARIO,CANADAM1J 3N8

TEL: (416) 490-0181FAX: (416) 490-0398

[email protected]

The Macedonian peopleyearned for their own nationalidentity toward the end of the19th and the early 20th and as aresult of this desire for nationalautonomy the Macedonian na-tional liberation movementemerged. This was a direct re-sult of the political, national,economic and cultural oppres-sion of the Macedonian people.The Turkish occupation hadlasted for over 500 years lead-ing to social, economic, admin-istrative and legislative crisis inMacedonia, and by the interfer-ence of other foreign states inMacedonian affairs.

The Macedonian Revo-lutionary Organization (MRO)was formed and quickly becamethe established leader of theMacedonian national liberationand social revolution move-ment, struggling for nationalindependence and social jus-tice. Gotse Delchev, was an ex-traordinary visionary and ideo-logical leader who organizedand mobilized the MRO.Delchev had a brief but brilliantcareer and was completely dedi-cated to the cause ofMacedonian nationhood.

Gotse Delchev, wasborn to Macedonian parents,Nikola and Sultana Delchevi onFebruary 4th, 1872, in Kukush,a town 35 km north of Salonika.He completed his primary edu-cation in Kukush, expanded hiseducation by completing hissecondary education inSalonika, with emphasis on sci-ence, literature and social stud-ies. Delchev furthered in edu-cation in the sciences at theSalonika Military Academy. Heread widely on Macedoniannational affairs whilst attendingthe Academy. He took an activerole in politics, and joined po-litical clubs in Salonika andSofia, and had close contactswith others, especially with thesocialist and the “Lozari”clubs in Sofia. Membership ofthese political organisationscontributed to the formation ofhis revolutionary ideals.

Gotse Delchev’s mem-bership in the MRO was themost significant change in thecourse of in the history of theMacedonian national liberationmovement. While Delcev’s in-volvement with the MRO wasshort, the years between 1894and 1903 represent the efficientrevolutionary sequence of theMRO, and was directly attrib-

uted to the influence of Delchev.They comprise of Delchev’spublic education career as ascholar in Novo Selo (near Shtip)and Bansko (1894-1896), and ofhis involvement with revolution-ary ideals, making preparationsand seeking support for thearmed uprising from theMacedonian people.

After taking the oath ofmembership of the MacedonianRevolutionary Organization, ameeting of significant and his-torical importance took place inStip, in November 1894, betweenDelchev and Dame Gruev, thefounder of MRO. Gruev had al-ready realized the major impact

that Delcev had had upon theexpansion of the MRO, and itsorganized network throughoutMacedonia. Delchev believedthat the liberation of Macedoniawas an exclusively domestic af-fair, based on an internally orga-nized uprising. Delchev’s firstventure into the interior of theMacedonian land was in April1895. He oversaw the establish-ment of local branches of theMRO. These branches were re-sponsible for the spirit of free-dom widely among the popula-

tion of the country.Delchev was able to recog-

nize the influence of other Balkanmonarchies, and in particular Bul-garia (which continues in part to-day) and their aspirations for theMacedonian state. The most ag-gressive of this Bulgarian propa-ganda, was a destructive fractioncalled “Vrhovism” , became thetarget of Delcev’s most ferventopposition. Delchev continued toattend district meetings all overMacedonia and put into place arevision of the revolutionary dis-tricts in Macedonia in 1895, bystrengthening the weaker dis-tricts, by providing contacts for areliable network, and by the ap-pointing of strong district leader-ship of the MRO. Delcev contin-ued his belief that any revolutioncould only be fought byMacedonian forces to protectMacedonia from falling under any

foreign control of neighbouringBalkan states, in particular Bul-garia.

At the First Congress ofMRO, in April of 1896, a revisedrestructure of the districts was in-troduced, and MRO was renamedTMORO (Secret MacedonianOdrin Revolutionary Organiza-tion), a new Constitution andCharter was adopted (which wasdrawn up by Gotsce Delchev andGjorche Petrov), and an expatriatebranch of TMORO was estab-lished in Sofia. Delchev and

Petrov became the first repre-sentatives of the expatriatebranch, and assumed total re-sponsibility in respect of ma-terial supplies, includingweapons, ammunition, revolu-tionary literature, and otherpublications. Delchev’s corre-spondence with the TMOROmembers covers extensivedata on supplies, transportand storage of weapons andammunition in Macedonia.Delchev beleived in the inde-pendent production of weap-ons, which resulted in theconstruction of a bomb manu-facturing plant in theOsogovo Mountains.

The inclusion of therural areas into the TMOROresulted in the expansion ofthe organization and the ob-vious increase in its member-ship, while setting the foun-dation for the military powerof the organization. GoceDelchev was appointed as itsmilitary advisor. The clandes-tine character of the TMOROended as a result of the VinicaAffair in November 1897,when domestic and worldopinion was exposed to theTMORO’s existence and ex-tent. The unity of the TMOROwas subject to the adverse in-filtration of the Vrhovism frac-tion into the TMORO, fol-lowed by frequent subver-sions. These subversions ledto the reorganized structure ofsome districts, and this wasimplemented by Delchev dur-ing 1900-1902.

When was the upris-ing in Macedonia to takeplace? Delchev and his fol-lowers believed that a prema-ture uprising could fail and heregarding this as the ultimatecrime a leader can inflict upona nation and its history. On hisway to the Congress in Ser(now in Greece), held atLovchan Grove of Ali Botush,Delchev stopped at the villageof Banica on the 4th of May1903. Gotse Delchev foundhimself betrayed and sur-rounded, and he was shotdead. His tragic death can-celled many of his visions thathe had planned for that periodof the Macedonian history.The death of Delchev madeheadline news in Turkey andBulgaria. Delchev was only 31when he died and was themost dynamic personality ofthe Macedonian revolution-ary and national liberationmovement.

Delchev will be remem-bered for his famous quote: “Iunderstand the world solelyas a field for cultural compe-

tition among nations” .Even though Delchev

strongly resisted the prematureuprising, its date of the uprisingwas determined at the SmilevoCongress. The uprising was tostart on August 2, 1903, the or-thodox Christian holiday of St.Elijah (Ilinden). This uprisingwould hence be known as theIliden Uprising (IlindenskoVostanie) and involved the entireMacedonian people, and themost intense actions took placein the liberation of Neveska,Klisura and Krushevo, where theKrushevo Republic was pro-claimed by its president NikolaKarev.

The Ilinden traditions re-emerged during the National Lib-eration War (NOV) in Macedonia.Their climax occurred at the Sec-ond Ilinden, when the First As-sembly of ASNOM took place onAugust 2, 1944.

The remains of GotseDelchev were returned toMacedonia on 10 October 1946after an agreement was reachedbetween the government ofMacedonia and the Associationof the Macedonian Fraternities inBulgaria. The following day, theywere solemnly embedded into amarble tomb in grounds of theHoly Saviour Church (Sv. Spas)in Skopje.

Gotse Delchev’s effortepitomises the character of theproud Macedonian nation. TheMacedonian people considerDelcev a national hero, in admi-ration of his history-making per-sonality, tenacity, and hisunserving belief in Macedoniannational autonomy. Delchev’s as-pirations for an autonomous statebecame reality in 1991 whenMacedonia broke away from theYugoslav Federation. It is inter-esting to note that the 1991Macedonian breakaway from theYugoslav Federation wasachieved without armed uprisingor bloodshed. Other formerYugoslav Federation membershave not fared so well, and haveall endured some degree of armedconflict to achieve their indepen-dence.

GOTSE DELCHEV137 years since the birth of the legendary Macedonian hero


On September 3, 2008, the President of the United MacedoniansOrganization of Canada had a Press Conference in Skopje,Republic of Macedonia, presenting the Organization’s viewsregarding the name issue as well as other topics of concern. Thefollowing media reported from the Conference: A1 TV and SonceTV as well as the print media Makedonsko Sonce, Dnevnik,Utrinski Vesnik, Vecer, Vreme Spic, Nova Makedonija and FocusNews Agency. Here we present some of the articles:

O r g a n i z a c i j a t a“Obedineti Makedonci” voKanada upati apel do sekojMakedonec da pokaèpogolema po~it konnacionalnoto ime Make-donci, a gi povikapretsedatelot BrankoCrvenkovski i premierotNikola Gruevski da giprekinat site razgovori zaupotrebata na ustavnotoime na RepublikaMakedonija so Grcija.

- Nie nikoga{ nesme imale problem sona{eto nacionalno ime,toa e nametnat spor odstrana na Grcija - naglasipretsedatelot na organi-zacijata Dragi Stojkovskina v~era{nata pres-

konferencija.Toj poso~i deka prof.

d-r Igor Janev e eden odpove}eto eksperti {to imaatrazraboteno celosnastrategija za re{avawe napra{aweto so imeto, i toavo ramkite na ON.

- Makedonijapostoela i bez NATO i bezEU mnogu godini i moè dapostoi u{te mnogu godinidodeka kone~no ne se re{iovoj problem – oceniStojkovski, potsetuvaj}ideka Makedonija imaprijateli i lobisti, kako{to se SAD.

Spored nego, ne trebada se organizira refe-rendum vo odnos napra{aweto za imeto, zatoa

{to najgolemiot del gra|aninemaat problem so na{etoime, no i zatoa {to soreferendum, moè lesno dase manipulira za, podpritisok, da se dobieposakuvaniot rezultat.Stojkovski, vo imeto namakedonskite iselenici voKanada, upati apel i dodràvniot vrv da pokaèedinstvo za site nacionalnipra{awa vo dràvata.

Stojkovski vo imetona makedonskite iselenicipobara i ostvaruvawe napravoto na glas. Toj izrazinade` deka ovoj sobraniskisostav }e ovozmoì nivnoramnopravno vklu~uvawe voizbornite procesi, i toa nesamo so glasawe, tuku i so

Ve~er, 04.09.2008

“OBEDINETI MAKEDONCI” VO KANADA

Da prekinat pregovorite za imeto so Grcijapredlagawe nivni kandi-dati.

- Ne smezadovolni sopredloèniot broj,odnosno eden partenik daja pretstavuva Evropa,eden za Severna Amerikai eden za Avstralija. Toase ogromni prostranstvai dràvata mora da goznae brojot na glasa~itei da se dade mo`nost zasoodveten broj pratenici– re~e Stojkovski.

Spored negopotrebna e dràvnastrategija za da seohrabrat iselenicitepomasovno da zemaatmakedonsko dràv-janstvo. Toj poso~i deka

potrebno e poednosta-vuvawe na procedurata inamaluvawe na cenata zadobivawe makedonskipaso{i, koja vo momentotiznesuva 250 ameri-kanski dolari za ednolice.

P r e t s e d a t e l o tStojkovski informiradeka od osamostoju-vaweto na Makedonija,organizacijata imakedonskata zaednica voKanada lobiraat idejstvuvaat vo interes nazemjata, a svoiteiskustva gi razmenuvaat iso makedonskite isele-nici vo Avstralija.

Organizacijata“Obedineti Makedonci”vo Kanada upati apel dosekoj Makedonec dapokaè pogolema po~itkon nacionalnoto imeMakedonci, a gipovikuva pretsedatelotBranko Crvenkovski ipremierot NikolaGruevski da gi prekinatsite razgovori zaupotrebata naustavnoto ime na

Iselenicitebaraat

poevtinipaso{iZa nas e mnogu da

pla}ame po 250 kanadskidolari za eden paso{ sokoj moème da patuvame

samo vo mati~nata zemja,veli Dragi Stojkovski,pretsedatel naorganizacijata “ObedinetiMakedonci” od Kanada

^ e t i r i ~ l e n osemejstvo treba da dadeiljada dolari za paso{i:Dragi Stojkovski

Taksata od 250dolari za dobivawemakedonski paso{ epreskapa za na{itesonarodnici vodijasporata, poradi {totie vo mnogu slu~ai nesakaat da go dobijat, izjaviv~era Dragi Stojkovski,pretsedatel na

organizacijata “ObedinetiMakedonci” od Kanada. Toj japovika makedonskata vlastda ja namali cenata, zaednoso olesnuvawe naprocedurata za dobivawepaso{. Toa se golemi pari iza na{ite sonarodnici {toìveat vo stranstvo. Naprimer, edno ~etiri~lenosemejstvo treba da dade 1.000dolari za da dobiemakedonski paso{i. Toa e

premnogu vo situacija koga zadobivawe kanadski paso{treba da platat samo 70.00dolari. Nie imame paso{i nadràvite vo koi ìveeme iso niv patuvame nasekade vosvetot. Glavnata pri~inazo{to sakame da imame imakedonski paso{ epatriotska, bidej}i toj paso{moème da go koristime samokoga odime vo Makedonija.Zatoa, cenata treba da senamali – re~e Stojkovski. Tojdodade deka vakvite poplakidoa|ale i od makedonskiteiselenici vo SAD,Avstralija i vo drugi zemji.Taksata {to gra|anite na

Republika Makedonija japla}aat za paso{i iznesuva1.500 denari, odnosno 40dolari. Osven ova, te{kotiiza dobivawe make-donskipaso{ predizvikuvala iadministrativnata proce-dura.

- Samo na porane{niotpretsedatel na na{ataorganizacija mu bea potrebnidve godini da izvadi paso{.Go pra}aa od ambasadata do

konzulatot, vr{ea mnogupproverki. Tamu kako da nefunkcionira edno{alter-skiot sistem – se poàliDragi Stojkovski.

Spored nego,dobivaweto makedonskipaso{ mnogu }e pomogne vozajaknuvawe namakedonskiot identitet kajnovite generacii na{isonarodnici. Voorganizacijata “ObedinetiMakedonci” procenuvaatdekavo Kanada momentalno imaokolu 150.000 Makedonci,dodeka oficijalniot popispokaàl deka taa brojka

Utrinski Vesnik, 04 septemvri 2008

Makedoncite od Kanada

baraat prekin napregovorite

za imetoMakedonija so Grcija.“Nikoga{ ne sme imaleproblem so na{etonacionalno ime, toa enametnat spor od stranana Grcija”, naglasipretsedatelot naorganizacijata, DragiStojkovski, nav~era{nata pres-konferencija. (P.R.)

Dnevnik, ~etvrtok, 04 septemvri 2008

I PATRIOTIZMOT IMA CENAiznesuva okolu 40.000. VoMVR v~era izjavija dekabaraweto za poevtinipaso{i i za poedno-stavni administrativniproceduri }e biderazgledano. Organizacijata“Obedineti Makedonci”pobara pravo na glas zaiselenicite, pri {to,namesto eden prfatenik,tie da imaat pravo napove}e mandati.

Da seprekinat

pregovoriteso Grcija

S t o j k o v s k ipobara Makedonijavedna{ da gi prekinepregovorite vo sporot

okolu ustavnoto ime soGrcija. Toj ne prifa}anitu referendum okolure{enieto do koe bi sedo{lo vo pregovorite.

- Grcija e zemja {toima problem so imeto, ane nie. Treba da seprifati predlogot naprofesor Igor Janev dazaprat pregovorite i da goostvarime priemot voOON preku Me|unarod-niot sud vo Hag. Deseticizemji uspeale na toj na~inda stanat ~lenki. Niemo‘eme da opstoime kakodr‘ava ~ekaj}i na tapresuda, a na{etorakovodstvo ne smee da n#stava vo situacija “ili }epopu{time ili nema daopstaneme” – veli toj.

(B.\.)Foto: Maja Zlatevska

Na 3ti septemvri 2009 godina, pretsedatelot naOrganizacijata Obedineti Makedonci vo Kanada oddràpres konferencija vo Skopje, kade gi pretstavipogledite na organizacijata vo odnos problemot soimeto kako i drugi va`ni temi. Sledinte glasilaobjavija za konferencijata: A1 TV i Sonce TV, kako ipe~atenite glasila Makedonsko Sonce, Dnevnik,Utrinski Vesnik, Ve~er, Vreme, [pic, Nova Makedonijai novinska agencija Fokus. Tuka prenesuvame nekoi odnapisite:


3 September 2008 | 15:20 | FOCUSNews Agency (Sofia)Skopje. An organization calledUnited Macedonians with aheadquarters in Canadaappealed during a press

conference in Skopje today thatthe Macedonian governmentsuspends the talks on the namewith Greece, the correspondentof FOCUS News Agency inSkopje announced.

Organization of Macedonians in Canada suggeststalks for the name with Greece are suspended

M a k e d o n s k a t avlada da gi prekinepregovorite so Grcija iitno da go informiraSovetot za bezbednost naObedinetite nacii deka goprodolùva ~lenstvotopod imeto RepublikaMakedonija, pobara v~eraOrganizacijata “ObedinetiMakedonci” od Kanada.Dragi Stojkovski,pretsedatel naorganizacijata, pobara odmakedonskoto rakovodstvoda kaè zo{to gi ignorira

sugestiite na ekspertot pome|unarodno pravo IgorJanev, koj predlagaMe|unarodniot sud vo Hagda re{ava za imeto pod koeMakedonija ~lenuva vo ON.

- @alno e kogadràvnoto rakovodstvopostavuva la`ni dilemi iveli deka ili }epopu{time vo sporot zaimeto i }e opstoime ili nepopu{tame i nema dapostoime. Rakovodstvoto eizbrano ne da dava crniscenarija, tuku da najde

Organizacijata“Obedineti Makedonci”vo Kanada upati apel dosekoj Makedonec dapokaè pogolema po~itkon nacionalnoto imeMakedonci, a gi povikapretsedatelot BrankoCrvenkovski i premierotNikola Gruevski da giprekinat site razgovoriza upotrebata naustavnoto ime naRepublika Makedonija soGrcija.

- Nikoga{ ne smeimale problem so na{etonacionalno ime, toa enametnat spor od stranana Grcija - naglasipretsedatelot naorganizacijata DragiStojkovski na v~era{natapres-konferencija.

Toj poso~i dekaprof. d-r Igor Janev eeden od pove}eto

eksperti {to imaatrazraboteno celosnastrategija za re{avawe napra{aweto so imeto, i toavo ramkite na ON. SporedStojkovski, ‘alosno e kogadr‘avnoto, kako {to re~e, gistava problemite za imetovo odnos “ili-ili” - ili }epopu{time i }e opstoime,ili nema da opstoime.

- Makedonijapostoela i bez NATO i bezEU mnogu godini i mo‘e dapostoi u{te mnogu godinidodeka kone~no ne se re{iovoj problem – oceni toj,potsetuvaj}i dekaMakedonija ima prijateli ilobisti, kako {to se SAD.

Spored nego, netreba da se organizirareferendum vo odnos napra{aeto za imeto, zatoa{to najgolemiot delgra|ani nemaat problem sona{eto ime.

Vreme, 04.09.2008OBEDINETI MAKEDONCI

Da se prekinat pregovorite zaimeto so Grcija

re{enie – izjaviStojkovski. OMK pobara dase olesni procedurata zavadewe paso{ zaMakedoncite oddijasporata. Cenata od 250kanadski dolari za niv eprevisoka, a za paso{ se~ekalo duri i dve godini.Kanadskite Makedoncibaraat vo idniotparlament da se zgolemibrojot na pratenici {todoa|aat od dijasporata.G.M.

Nova Makedonija, 04.09.2008

Da prekinatpregovorite za

imeto

The organizationopposes a referendum for thename because they believe theresults could easily bemanipulated.

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON AND MACEDONIA IN SCOTLAND

As proof of the Scotslove for and connection toMacedonia, here we present thebeautiful monument depictingthe scene of Alexander ofMacedon (the Great) taming thewild Bucephalus. Another Scot-tish connection to Macedonia isthe Memorial plaque in honourof the soldiers fallen on battle-fields. The plague reads: “To theglory of God and the memory ofthe officers, non-commissionedofficers and the men of the Scot-tish horse who gave their livesin the two great wars”. Under theyears of the First World War,1914-1918, Macedonia is men-

tioned along Gallipoli, Egyptand France. A similar plagueand for the same purpose,adorns the Canadian Parlia-ment building in Ottawa.

When we arementioning Macedonia inconnection to Scotland, it isonly fitting that we alsomention the plague that theBritish placed on aMacedonian cliff after the FirstWorld War and a replica wasrecently placed in the Republicof Macedonia which reads:“To the memory of the heroicdead of the 22nd division whofell in Macedonia 1915-1918.

Lets hope the Greeks (read theirgovernment) do not find outabout the Scottish, British andCanadian mention ofMacedonia, because whoknows, they might findthemselves in front of the

International Court of Justice forstilling “Greek” history. And asfar as the Scottish monument ofAlexander is concerned…well…is that not too much forBakoyannis?


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TERRITORIAL EXPANSSION OF GREECE . . .

By presenting this mapof Greece, our aim is to simplycounter Greece’s claim that theRepublic of Macedonia has“territorial pretensions againstthe Greek province ofMacedonia”.

The map, which was

taken from Stavrianos’ book“The Balkans since 1453”,clearly shows the opposite -that Greece as a country, sinceits inception in 1832, has hadterritorial pretensions on itsneighbours. Namely, as themap depicts, indicating with a

black colour, the Greek state wasformed on the historic territory ofthe Hellenic city-states. Since then,the Greek state has been inexpansion: in 1864 the British gavethem the Ionian Islands in order tostrengthen the state for theforthcoming attacks on the

neighbours; in 1881 Greeceattacked Turkey and occupiedThessaly and part of Epirus; in1913, Greece, along with Bulgariaand Serbia, attacked Turkey andoccupied the biggest part ofMacedonia as well as Crete andthe north-eastern Aegean Islands.

Of course, the territorialaspirations of the ever-hungryGreek state for territory did notstop here. Fortunately, thesubsequent territorialexcursions into Turkey endedin total fiasco, so that the“darling of the west” was


. . . AND BULGARIAforced to retreat. Unfortunatelyfor the Macedonians, the retreatdid not go far enough.

From the moment thatGreece occupied and partitionedMacedonia with Serbia andBulgaria, the Greek king gaveorders for the “newly occupiedterritories”. This was not a naïvestatement by the king – he knew

perfectly well that Macedonianwas never Greek prior to thattime (1912), therefore the use ofthe statement “newly occupiedterritories”.

Just to be fair to the Eu-ropean politicians and policy-makers, we will attempt to edu-cate them about the territorial ex-pansion of the new EU country,

Bulgaria, by also present themap from the same book.Stavrianos here presents withblack colour the formation of thePrincipality of Bulgaria in 1878,following the Treaty of Berlin. In1885 Bulgaria occupied EasternRumelia from Turkey and in1912-13, along with the other ex-pansionist EU country, Greece(with the future EU country,

Serbia), occupied and parti-tioned Macedonia.

The European policy-makers need to also be remindedthat both expansionist coun-tries, Greece and Bulgaria, evenafter the occupation of foreignlands, pretend to be ethnicallyhomogenous countries! Whomare they trying to lie? For obvi-ous reasons it is very easy tomanipulate the European policy-

makers (or maybe they knowthey are being manipulated,however, it is in their interest toplay along).

However, it is hard to ma-nipulate the Macedonians,Turks, Albanians, Vlahs and oth-ers whose lands they have oc-cupied.


OD PROSLAVATA NA ILINDENSKIOT PIKNIKAVGUST 3, 2008 GODINA

Na 2 avgust bea polo`eni venci vo ~est na padnatite borci zaslobodata na Makedonija i Kanada

Pretsedatelot na “Obedineti Makedonci” DragiStojkovski so Generalniot konzul, Ambasadorot Martin

Trenevski i Konzulot Branko Trajkovski; podole sopogolema grupa gosti na piknikot.


Iljadnici Makedonci budno go sledeja izborotza Ubavica na “Obedineti Makedonci za 2009 godina”- pobedni~ka be{e Meri Lazarevska dodekaAleksandra Pazarkoska i Biljana Markovska gopodelija vtoroto mesto.

Najmladite Makedon~iwa se razonoduvaa skokaj}i na skoka~katatvrdina, igraj}i na lizgalkite, lula{kite i drugite igra~ki.


THE UNTAMED BALKANSBook Review:

The book “The UntamedBalkans” was written by FranzCarl Weiskopf (born 3. April1900 in Prague; died 14.

September 1955 in Berlin) underthe pseudonyme Frederic W.L.Kovacs in 1941 by Modern AgeBooks Inc, New York (the bookwas also published in 1942 byRobert Hale and now the bookcan be viewed on the Internetat http://www.archive.org/d e t a i l s /untamedbalkans009125mbp.)The book was written andpublished at the height of theNazi occupation of Europe andthe start of the undergroundmovement for liberation. Forthat reason the author dedicatedthe book “(T)o the soldiers of

the great underground army inthe Nazi-occupied countries-Germany included-to the victorsof tomorrow.”

The book has 248

pages and is divided into threeparts. The first part, TheDebacle , in two chaptersexplains the Nazi Blitz strategy ofconquest and the reaction of theBalkan governments and theirpeoples to the Germanoccupation.

Part two, The BalkanPattern , is divided into sevenchapters. The third chapter of thebook (or first in this section)gives a historic overview of theBalkan Peninsula while thefollowing chapters cover theBalkan countries under the

headings: Albania: The Sons ofthe Eagle; Macedonia: ForlornLand; Hellas: Home of Beautyand Poverty; Bulgaria: BlackSea, Blue Sea, and Red River;

Rumania: Boyars andBaksheesh; and “Unity orDeath”: The Story ofYugoslavia. It is interesting herethat all the chapters cover anexisting country at the time,1941, but the author also givesus special chapter onMacedonia, even though at thetime, Macedonia was not aseparate state entity. We knowthat this happened in 1944, withthe proclamation of the People’sRepublic of Macedonia as partof the Yugoslav Federation.Each of these chapters begins

with a map of the country withgraphic depiction for the areaswhere minorities live.

The chapter thatcovers Macedonia (Chapter 5,

Macedonia: Forlorn Land) alsohas a map of the area, indicatingthe state borders as they existedbetween Albania, Yugoslavia,Bulgaria and Greece, howeveralso indicating the ethnicMacedonian borders withseparate shading and coveringthe parts of Macedonia thatwere within the abovementioned states. Similarly, abigger map on the inside frontcover, showing South EastEurope with emphasis on theBalkan countries, depictsMacedonia within its ethnic

borders.T h e

c h a p t e rcovers pages54-66 andgives anoverview ofr e c e n tMacedonianh i s t o r yt h r o u g hh e a d i n g ssuch as TheB u l g a r o -Serbian Feud,I M R O ,Ilinden , andReaction andFeudism.

It isi n t e r e s t i n ghere topresent whatthe authorsays aboutt h eMacedoniansand theMacedonian

language:The inhabitants are a

mixture of peoples, the majorityof them Slavic. Macedonianidioms belong neither to the

Serbian nor to the Bulgariantongues. They constitute a sortof l ink between these twobranches of the South Slavicfamily of languages. The Serbs,however, call the Macedonianlanguage “Southern Serbia”;the Greeks contend that theMacedonians are only“Slavophones,” meaningSlavic-speaking Greeks; andthe Bulgarians claim theMacedonians as pure Bulgars.The Macedonians themselvesare not asked their opinion.And this is the story ofMacedonia in a nutshell: acountry and a peoplecontinually under thedomination of other peoplesand states, a bone of contentionbetween rival neighbours, abattlefield for foreign wars, anoft-cheated rebel whosestruggle for freedom andindependence has beenconstantly misused for the sakeof others. (p. 56)

One needs to bereminded that the book wasprinted three years before Titoapparently “made up” theMacedonians as a separatepeople and four years beforeBlaze Koneski “made up” theMacedonian language, both“historical claims” according tothe Bulgarian and Greekpropagandists. It is alsointeresting that neither Tito norKoneski are mentionedanywhere in the book.

The author makes anin-depth analysis of the stagesof the Internal Macedonian


Revolutionary Organization(IMRO), from the formation ofthe organization through theIlinden uprising and the BalkanWars, as well as its final stagewhen “the IMRO movementhad already come under theinfluence and onto the payrollof Bulgarian nationalist circles,(when) the greater part of theleadership (was) fighting notfor a free Macedonia but for aBulgarian Macedonia.”

This is how theauthor presents the formationof IMRO:

In the autumn of1893, a student and a teacherfounded in Reesen, a littletown of Western Macedonia, asecret society on the pattern ofthe Carbonaris of Italy. Theycalled it the “InternalMacedonian RevolutionaryOrganization,” and its aimwas to fight for the liberationand complete independence ofMacedonia. Its symbol was ablack cloth, signifyingserfdom under the Turks, andembroidered across it, theinscription, in white: “Libertyor Death.” Members had toswear an oath on Bible, dirk,and pistol, as follows:

“I swear on my faith,conscience, and honor that Iwill work for the liberty ofMacedonia and the Vilayet ofAdrianople with all mystrength and means, and thatI will never betray the secretsof the revolutionary work ofIMRO. Should I do so, may Ibe killed by this dagger, whichI kiss. Amen.”

Further on thisis what the authorwrites about IMRO’sinvolvement during theBalkan Wars andexpectations for theaftermath:

When the BalkanWar broke out in 1912, theIMRO chief, TodorAlexandroif, issued an appealfor open uprisings in supportof the Balkan allies. TheCentral Committee of IMROthen knew nothing of thesecret treaty of Greece, Serbia,and Bulgaria concerning thedivision of Macedonia. Therevolutionists expected togain Macedonian freedom asa reward for their aid.

The chapter endswith another eye-opener forthe Balkan propagandists:

In World War II,Macedonia has againbecome a battlefield. A fewbands of reactionary Imroistsjoined the Nazi armies as theypoured into Yugoslavia, butthe bulk of the population didnot greet the soldiers underthe swastika as liberators.And it is significant that onthe day of the Yugoslavsurrender, when officialBulgarian hopes ofrecovering the whole ofMacedonia were high, thegovernment papers carriedsharp attacks against “thoseBolshevist elements of ImroUnited who want to splitnational unity by renewingtheir old demagogic sloganof Macedonia for theMacedonians.”

Chapter 6 coversGreece under the headingHellas: Home Of Beauty AndPoverty.

Here too the chapterstarts with a map of Greeceand has graphic depiction ofwhere the Macedonians live.On page 70 the author givesan interesting data aboutGreece’s population make-up:

Of the 6,900,000inhabitants, more than1,500,000 were refugees fromAsia Minor, having come intothe country after 1923.Almost 90 percent of thepopulation is Greek; the rest

are Macedonians, Bulgars, andTurks, with a few Armenians,Jews, and Albanians.

Chapter 9 covers “Unityor Death”: The Story ofYugoslavia. The chapter startswith a map of Yugoslavia wherethe different ethnic groups(Slovenes, Magyars, Bulgars,Turks, Macedonians, Germans,Albanians and Rumanians) arerepresented with a differentgraphic design and theMacedonians are presented ascovering most of the territory ofpresent Republic of Macedonia.

In terms of thepopulation of Yugoslavia, on page130 the author states thefollowing:

“The Yugoslav populationof 15,000,000 has a manifoldnational and religious pattern.There are about 7,000,000 Serbs,3,500,000 Croats, 1,175,000Slovenes, 600,000 Macedonians,500,000 Germans, and as manyAlbanians; the rest areBulgarians, Rumanians, Jews,Gypsies, Tsintsars, Italians, Turks,and a few other nationalsplinters.”

Throughout the book theauthor uses the terms Macedonia(territory), Macedonians (aspeople or ethnic group) orMacedonian (language,peasants…) separately fromSerbian, Bulgarian or Greek(Hellen). To stress the point, herewe will present few examples.

On page 6 (Chapter 1:Twenty-eight days of blitz history)the author explains the internalcontradictions in Yugoslavia thatthe Nazis can use to control thecountry:

There are serious threatsfrom within too. Maintainingitself through terror andcorruption, the dictatorial regimefor years has aroused and fed thehatred of the national minorities– Croats, Moslem Bosnians,Macedonians, and Slovenes.

In relation of the economicconditions of the Balkan peasants,on page 164 the author states: InBulgaria, Rumania, Albania,Greece, Macedonia, and Serbia,the majority of the peasants donot know mattresses or even strawsacks…

In relation to the localfoodstuffs page 165 make a cleardistinction betweenMacedonians andBulgarians: Onions andgarlic are both primaryfoods and delicacies. ABulgarian peasantfamily will consume anaverage of 120 pounds ofonions and 60 pounds ofgarlic a year.

On the otherhand, an oldMacedonian children’ssong goes: “The angelssmell sweet of onions.”

Further on thesame page: To buy a pairof shoes the Rumanianpeasant must work forty-five days; the Bulgarian,thirty-five; and theMacedonian seventy.

The author endsthe book with a prophecyof the “things to come”with the resolution of theSecond World War. Onpage 229 (Chapter 14,Conquered ButUntamed: The Shape ofThings to Come ) theauthor gives hisprophetic views aboutthe “New Order”:

But it may besaid, in all sobriety andwithout illusions, thatHitler will not be able tosolve the Balkanproblem, and that theBalkans, now submergedunder the Nazi wave, willemerge again and oncemore play an importantrole in the hour when thereal “New Order” ofEurope will be set up inthe final stages of the warand in the first phaseafter its end. What is thefoundation for such anassertion? In order to get at itwe must examine Nazi methodsand plans for the conquest andreorganization of the Balkans intheir “New Order.”

And further on thesame page, under the heading“Half a Dozen NewMacedonias” the authorexplains how the Nazis used the

minority problems in theBalkans as “human dynamite”in order to establish its control

over the area. Because of itsinsight on the topic, especiallyabout the Bulgarian/Serbian“solution” to the Macedonianquestion, we present thesection in its entirety:

One of the mosteffective Nazi weapons indisrupting the defensivepotentialities of the Balkan

countries was the nationalquestion. The minoritieswere correctly called“human dynamite” in thehands of Nazi foreign policy.The Nazis have succeeded inshattering Yugoslavia andRumania largely by means ofusing this human dynamite.

But their “NewOrder” in the Balkanscreates half a dozenMacedonias in place of theone old one. Where formerlythere were a millionHungarians under theforeign rule of Rumania,there is now a new minorityof a million Rumaniansunder Hungarian rule in thenorthern half ofTransylvania, which wasceded to Hungary under Axisdictation. By givingCarpathian Russia toHungary, the Axis created anational minority of 600,000Ukrainians, and by allowingHungary to occupy theformer Yugoslav Voivodina itcreated a third nationalminority of 600,000 to700,000 Serbs and Croats.Slovenia, with a populationof about 1,175,000 Slovenes,was divided between Italyand Germany. And Italygathered under its wing anadditional 250,000 Croatsin Dalmatia, and about200,000 Greeks in SouthernEpirus and on the islandsunder her “protection.”

The Macedonianquestion was “solved” in theway that the Bulgarianreactionaries wanted it. Thebiggest part of Macedoniabecame Bulgarian. It simply

changed masters withoutgetting national independence.And it may be remembered that

there already has been a periodof Bulgarian administration inMacedonia from 1916 to 1918with the result that Bulgariancourts-martial had to work ona twenty-four-hour-a-dayschedule in order to deal withthe flood of “Serbophiletreason.” When, later on,Macedonia was turned over tothe Serbs, Serbian tribunalshad the same trouble andoften tried the Serbophilesof yesterday for“Bulgarophile treason.”(pages 229-230)

Dragi Stojkovski

DEL^EV VOJVODA

Goce Del~ev na{ vojvodaGoce Del~ev gorski junakNa{ slaven Makedonec.

Ti da znae{ Goce daznae{roden den ti pravimeime tvoe Ti slavime.

Pesni za tebe peemevo pesni te spomnuvamenie so Tebe se gordeeme.

I ako ne si na ovoj belisvetvo na{ite srca Te nosimekako rosen gorocvet.

Slavno e ime tvoena sekade na zemjatana{ Del~ev makedonski.

Slaven Ti }e ostane{vo mislite na{iTvoeto ime ve~nose slavit.

Ratka [apasToronto


Soo~uvaj}i se soposledicite od trage-dijata na nad 80.000begalci, od koi 28.000deca, od voenite dejstvijavo Republika Grcija zavreme na Gra|anskata iVtorata svetska vojna,

Rakovodej}i se odKonvencijata za statu-sotna begalcite, spored kojase raboti za socijalen ihumanitaren problem kojne treba da predizvikuvatenzii me|u dràvite,kako i nivnata obvrska daprezemat se {to e vonivna mo} ovoj problem dabide nadminat,

Imaj}i gi predvidpravnite akti doneseni odstrana na RepublikaGrcija, kako {to seZakonot broj 1285 od 1982godina za priznavawe nanacionalniot otpor nagr~kiot narod protivokupatorskite vojski(1941-1944), Zakonot broj1543 od 1985 godina,Zakonot broj 1540 od 1985godina za reguli-rawe naimotite na politi~kitepovrat-nici vo Grcija iZakonot broj 1863 od 1989godina za eliminirawe naposledicite odGra|anskata vojna (1944-1949), kako i brojniteodluki na sudovite ilokalnite organi naRepublika Grcija so koise vr{i diskriminacijapo etni~ka osnova na ovielica, gra|ani naRepublika Makedonija,

Imaj}i gi predvidiznesenite stavovi nasednicite na Postoja-nataanketna komisija zaza{tita na slobodite ipravata na gra|aninot naSobranieto na Republi-kaMakedonija, a vo vrska sopretstavkite na gra|ani naRepublika Makedonija,organizi-rani prekuZdruènieto na decatabegalci od Egejskiot delna Makedonija ipoddràni od srodnite

zdruènija vo RepublikaMakedonija, a obedineti voKonferen-cijata za

koordinacija nazdruènijata na Makedon-cite od Egejskiot del naMakedonija,

Iskaùvaj}i ja svojatacvrsta opredele-nost da seispolni obvrskata kojaproizle-guva od Ustavot i odme|unarodnite dokumentikoi se odnesuvaat na~ovekovite prava i so koi segarantira pravoto nasopstvenost, a so cel da sepoddràt ovie gra|ani predse na planot na pravnotorazjasnuvawe na nivniteotvoreni pra{awa ireguliraweto na nivniteodnosi od dràvata od kojapoteknuvaat,

Povikuvaj}i se na~lenot 13 stav 2 odUniverzalnata deklaracijaza ~ovekovite prava naObedinetite nacii sporedkoj “Sekoj ima pravo da janapu{ti zemjata,vklu~uvaj}i ja i negovatasopstvena zemja, kako i da sevrati vo svojata zemja”,~lenot 1 od Me|unarodnatakonvencija za eliminacija nasite formi na rasnadiskriminacija i ~lenot 14od Evropskata konvencija zaza{tita na ~ovekovite

prava i osnovni slobodi sokoja se zabranuva diskrimi-nacijata,

1. Sobranietona RepublikaMakedonija iukaùva naVladata naR e p u b l i k aMakedonija:

- da gi prezemesite aktivnostiso cel da imovozmoì nabegalcite odvoenite dejstvijavo RepublikaGrcija za vremena Gra|anskatavojna i Vtoratasvetska vojna,gra|ani naR e p u b l i k aMakedonija, da ja

k o m p l e t i r a a tdokumentacijata vofunkcija na instituci-onalno i pravno zaokruèno

i izdràno istapuvawe voprocesot na ostvaruvawe nanivnite imotni prava prednadle`nite organi naRepublika Grcija ime|unarodnite organizacii,

Vrz osnova na ~len 68 stav 2 od Ustavot na Republika Makedonija, Sobranieto na Republika Makedonija,na sednicata odràna na 27 avgust 2008 godina, donese

R E Z O L U C I J Aza begalcite od voenite dejstvija vo Republika Grcija za vreme na Gra|anskata i Vtorata svetska vojna

a po potreba da se primeniinstitutot na generalnasupstitucija,

- da obezbedipoddr{ka so cel da sepomogne vo procesot navodewe na edna takvaobemna i sloènaaktivnost i da obezbedisloboden prekugrani~enprotok na lu|e posebno zaovie celi,

- da dadepoddr{ka name|unarodnata sorabotkavo ramkite naKonferencijata naorganizaciite za privatennedvièn imot odbalkanskite zemji,

- da prezemeaktivnosti vo ramkite nabilateralnata sorabotkapreku redovnite kontaktiso nadle`nite organi naRepublika Grcija, naplanot na razgleduvawe na

imotnite pobaruvawa naovie gra|ani na RepublikaMakedonija spremaRepublika Grcija i

- da dostavuva

Informacija doSobranieto na RepublikaMakedonija za prezemeniteaktivnosti i merki nasekoi {est meseca.

2. Ovaa rezolucija}e se dostavi dopretsedatelot naRepublika Makedonija iVladata na RepublikaMakedonija i doparlamentarnite sobranijana site me|unarodnivladini organizacii.

3. Ovaa rezolucija}e se objavi vo “Slu`benvesnik na RepublikaMakedonija”.

SOBRANIE NAR E P U B L I K AMAKEDONIJA

Broj 07 - 3627/1 27avgust 2008 godinaS k o p j e

PRETSEDATEL NASOBRANIETO NAR E P U B L I K AMAKEDONIJA

Trajko Veqanoski

Lerin

Solun


In a recent search on theInternet, on a Bulgarian propa-ganda site, I found a referenceon the American census of the1910. Namely, the site mentionsthe Instructions to Enumeratorsfor the 1910 Census (the Instruc-tions can be seen on http://u sa . ipums .o rg /usa /vo l i i i /inst1910.shtml) and quotes Ar-ticle 137 which states:

Do not write“Macedonian,” but write Bul-garian, Turkish, Greek , Servian,or Roumanian, as the case maybe.

The Bulgarian propagan-dists use this as proof of non-existence of the Macedonianlanguage and, therefore, a sepa-rate Macedonian ethnicity.However, this would not be apropagandist theory if it did notstop there, without revealing thereasons for such a statementand without continuing the re-search for the censuses beforeand after 1910.

So lets start from the be-ginning. The Instructions toEnumerators for the 1900 Cen-sus (the Instructions can beseen on http://usa.ipums.org/usa/voliii/inst1900.shtml) underthe section Nativity, Column 13- Place of birth of person it hadexplanations for enumerators inorder to help in situations whena client states a name of non-ex-istent country as a place of birth.This is what the Instructionsstate at the end of Article 139:

…Thus, do not writePrussia or Saxony, but Germany.To this rule, however, note thefollowing exceptions:

140. Write Ireland, En-gland, Scotland, or Wales ratherthan Great Britain. Write Hun-gary or Bohemia rather thanAustria for persons born in Hun-gary or Bohemia, respectively.Write Finland rather than Rus-sia for persons born in Finland.

141. Note, also, that thelanguage spoken is not alwaysa safe guide to the birthplace.This is especially true of Ger-mans, for over one-third of theAustrians and nearly three-fourths of the Swiss speak Ger-man. In case a person speaksGerman, therefore, inquire care-fully whether the birthplace wasGermany, Austria, or Switzer-land.

142. In case the personsspeaks Polish, as Poland is notnow a country, inquire whetherthe birthplace was what is nowknown as German Poland orAustrian Poland, and enter theanswer accordingly as Poland(Ger.), Poland (Aust.), or Poland(Russ.).

As can be seen from Ar-ticles 139 through 142, becauseof the border changes in Europe,it became very confusing for theenumerators what they can writedown. Therefore, if a Pole statedthat he spoke Polish or that hewas Polish, the enumerator wasinstructed to “inquire whetherthe birthplace was what is nowknown as German Poland orAustrian Poland, and enter theanswer accordingly as Poland

(Ger.), Poland (Aust.), or Poland(Russ.). This meant therefore,just because Poland was not acountry at the time, the Polishlanguage and “nativity” had tobe specified with a geographicdesignation (similar specifica-tion what the Greek nationalistsdemand of the Macedonians atthe present time).

Perhaps already at thistime, during the census of 1900,there were people who claimedthat they spoke Macedonianand that their “nativity” wasMacedonian, although not in alarge enough number to make amark as a separate language andethnicity for the following cen-sus. And now we come back tothe fist quotation from the topof this article, which the Bulgar-ian propagandists love to quote.However, by looking at thewhole section “Ability to speakEnglish” of the Instructions,Article 134 gives a list of lan-guages with additional instruc-tions. It is best to quote the fullArticle:

The following is a list ofprincipal foreign languages spo-ken in the United States. Avoidgiving other names when one inthis list can be applied to the lan-guage spoken. With the excep-tion of certain languages of east-ern Russian, the list gives aname for every European lan-guage in the proper sense of theword.

Albanian Armenian Basque Bohemian Briton Bulgarian Chinese Danish Dutch Finnish Flemish French German Greek Gypsy Irish Italian Japanese Lappish Lettish Little Russian Lithuanian Magyar Moravian Norwegian Polish Portuguese Rhaeto-Romanish Roumanian Russian Ruthenian Scotch Servian or Croatian (IncludingRussian, Dalmatian,

Herzegovinian, and Montenegrin) Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swedish Syrian Turkish Welsh Wendish Yiddish

Article 138 follows with aninteresting instruction: Do not write“Czech,” but write Bohemian,Moravian, or Slovak , as the casemay be. Similarly, Article 141 in-structs the enumerator to: WriteLittle Russian instead of “Ukrai-nian.”

It is widely known to all lin-guists that both Czech and Ukrai-nian languages exist as separate lan-guages, however, it is also widelyknown that state bureaucracies arenot examples of fast adaptation toreality on the ground.

However, with time changedoes come and the Instructions toEnumerators for the 1920 Censusshows precisely that (the Instruc-tions can be seen on http://u s a . i p u m s . o r g / u s a / v o l i i i /inst1920.shtml). Section “Nativityand Mother Tongue”, Article 146,gives the “Principal foreignlanguages…which are likely to bereported as the mother tongue orlanguage of customary speech offoreign-born persons”: Albanian Arabian Armenian Basque Bohemian (Czech.) Breton Bulgarian Chinese Croatian Dalmatian Danish Dutch English Esthonian Finnish Flemish French Frisian Friulian Gaelic Georgian German Great Russian Greek Gypsy Hebrew Hindu Icelandic Irish Italian Japanese Korean Kurdish Lappish Lettish Lithuanian Little Russian Macedonian Magyar Montenegrin Moravian (Czech.) Norwegian Persian

Polish Portuguese Romansh Rumanian Russian Ruthenian Scotch Serbian Slovak Slovene Spanish Swedish Syrian Turkish Ukrainian Walloon Welsh Wendish White Russian Yiddish

As can be seen from the listabove, the Macedonian language islisted equally among all the otherBalkan languages (Albanian, Bulgar-ian, Greek, Serbian), and all of thishappens in 1920, 3 years before the“Executive Committee of theComintern and the Executive Com-mittee of the Balkan CommunistFederation decided that the questionof the independence of Macedoniawas “a question of Principle””(Evangelos Averoff-Tossizza: ByFire and Axe, The Communist Partyand the Civil War in Greece, 1944-1949, p. 22); 24 years before Tito“made up” the Macedonian nation;and 25 years before Blaze Koneski“made up” the Macedonian lan-guage (or as the Greek and Bulgar-ian propagandists love to shootthemselves in the foot). We mustalso stress that with this list theCzech and Ukrainian languages wereofficially recognized by the US gov-ernment. This recognition does notmean that they were “made up” bythe US, but simply that the lan-guages finally received official rec-ognition.

Just to give a final blow tothe Bulgarian and Greek propagan-dists, chauvinists and human rightsviolators, we will present the listone more time, because the same listis presented in the 1930 census aswell (the Instructions can be seenon http://usa.ipums.org/usa/voliii/inst1930.shtml)…177. Principalforeign languages.-Following is a listof the principal languages which arelikely to be reported as the mothertongue or native language of foreign-born persons:

Albanian Arabic Armenian Basque Breton Bulgarian Czech Chinese Croatian Dalmation Danish Dutch Egyptian English Estonian Finnish

THE MACEDONIAN LANGUAGE IN US CENSUSES Flemish French Frisian Friulian Gaelic Georgian German Great Russian Greek Gypsy Hebrew Hindu Icelandic Irish Italian Japanese Korean Kurdish Lappish Lettish Lithuanian Little Russian Macedonian Magyar Montenegrin Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Romansh Rumanian [sic] Russian Ruthenian Scotch Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swedish Syrian Turkish Ukrainian Walloon Welsh Wendish White Russian Yiddish

Although the same websitepresents the Enumerator Instruc-tions for 1850, 1860, 1870,1880,1890, as well as 1940 and 1950, wewill not cover them here, since theInstructions do not mention specifi-cally any of the Balkan languages.

Dragi Stojkovski

UPRAVATANA

ORGANIZACIJATAOBEDINETIMAKEDONCIVO KANADA

IM GO^ESTITABO@I] I

NOVATA 2009GODINA

NASVOITE

^LENOVII SITE

MAKEDONCIVO SVETOT

SO @ELBI ZAZDRAVJE,SRE]A,

NAPREDOK INACIONALNO

EDINSTVO

Obedineta Makedonija

Saturdays 9 – 10 am on CHKT AM 1430

Macedonian Radio Program

Micko i Dragica Dimovski Tel/Fax: 905-265-2197

16 Condotti Dr., Woobridge, ON L4H 2C8


ÊSTIT BO@I]I

NOVATA 2009GODINA

ODDRAGI

STOJKOVSKI SOSEMEJSTVOTO

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ODMENDO

BAKALOVSKI SOSEMEJSTVOTO

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ODPECO

PETLI^KOVSKISO SEMEJSTVOTO

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ODAMI[

SELMANOVSKI SOSEMEJSTVOTO

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ODSTASE

YUNYUROV SOSEMEJSTVOTO

ÊSTIT BO@I]I

NOVATA 2009GODINA

ODVLADE

STERIOVSKI SOSEMEJSTVOTO

Professor Victor Fried-man is one of the world’s fore-most experts on Balkan lan-guages, and has been studyingthem for almost four decades,since 1993 as a linguist at theUniversity of Chicago. Profes-sor Friedman has a special placein his heart for Macedonia,which he first visited in 1971.This year finds him back in thecountry, as the recipient of aFulbright-Hays Grant from theUS Department of Educationand a research grant from theJohn Simon Guggenheim Foun-dation. (All opinions expressedherein are his own and do notnecessarily represent those ofthe funding organizations.)

Balkanalysis.com DirectorChristopher Deliso caught upwith Professor Friedmanrecently in Skopje for aninterview. Their engrossing andwide-ranging conversation,covering everything fromlinguistic history, politics andlobbying to national identityand multiculturalism, isreproduced below for ourreaders.

………………

Christopher Deliso: Victor,thanks for taking the time todiscuss your ideas and yourresearch, it’s a great privilege.

Victor Friedman: Thank you,I’m always happy to speakabout the Balkans andMacedonia.

Reminiscences

CD: Victor, the first time youvisited Macedonia was in 1971.A lot must have changed sincethen.

VF: Indeed it has. When I firstcame here, during the height ofYugoslavia, many houses didnot have telephones, and I recallyou had to wait for 2 years toget one… even in 1994 when Iwas here for 3 months it wasimpossible for me to get one inthe apartment where I wasstaying. Things have improvedconsiderably since those days.And some of the damage fromthe 1963 earthquake damagewas also still evident in Skopje.

CD: Even in the center?

VF: Even in the center. A lot ofthe new buildings were alreadycompleted, but there were stillsome piles of rubble near theHotel Turist, today’s BestWestern on the UlicaMakedonija pedestrian street.Sewer lines were being laid inthe Stara Charshija (the bazaarquarter in the old part of town)so you had to cross somestreets on boards. And therewere an awful lot of buildingsstill housed in purpose-built‘barracks.’

CD: Some of which still remain,for housing and offices.

VF: Probably so. And backthen, the new main campus ofUniversity Ss Cyril &Methodius of Skopje hadn’tbeen built yet, and the newbuilding for MANU (theMacedonian Academy ofSciences & Arts) hadn’t beenrebuilt yet. It was housed in amansion that I was told hadonce been owned by a Vlahmerchant, and later served asthe Italian embassy. There wasone shopping center that justopened up in 1973.

CD: You mean the famous GTC(Gradski Trgovski Center)?

VF: Indeed, the GTC. And therewere many ordinary consumergoods you couldn’t get here.People went to Thessaloniki orBelgrade to shop for many items.

CD: Interesting. ManyMacedonians proudly claim tome that in Yugoslav times theywere on a much higher social andeconomic level than the Greeks.

VF: Actually, the Greeks andYugoslavs were about on the

same level then. With hardcurrency, you could get a goodrate on the drachma. But thedifference was that Greece neverhad Communism, and in the1970s Greece already hadAmerican style-supermarkets;one had to go to Thessaloniki orthe US Embassy PX in Belgradeto get peanut butter.

Fewer consumer goods wereavailable in Macedonia than inwealthier parts of Yugoslavia, ofcourse. In 1973, for example, meatwas hard to find. I was told thatthe price for meat was better inSerbia and all the meat wentthere. On the other hand, publicsociability was more vibrant andrelaxed. In mild weather all ofSkopje went to what was thenMarshal Tito Square for korzo(corso). In those days, Skopjewasn’t as big as it is now, andyou could meet anyone youwanted to see there. It was alsoa great way to make new friends.

The Project of the Day

CD: So how about your projectthat brings you here this time.What is that about?

VF: My project investigates thecontinuing existence ofmultilingualism in Skopje.

CD: That’s an interesting topic.I suspect you are spending a lotof time in the Stara Charshija?

VF: Indeed. Among thecraftsmen’s shops, tea houses,mosques, churches and openmarkets there, that is one of thebest places in the city to finddifferent social groups andlanguages rubbing elbows on adaily basis- Macedonian,Albanian, Turkish, Romani, evensome Aromanian and Greek. Myproject studies the way thatthese languages are interactingtoday.

CD: And this idea wassomething you used to getfunding for the project?

VF: Yes. As a linguist, I had topresent my case, and theargument that won funding fromthe Fulbright-Hays (Departmentof Education) and Guggenheimis that Macedonia in general, andSkopje especially, represents thelast place in the Balkans wherethe conditions that created theBalkan linguistic league are stillpresent to some extent. So I

wanted to study this anddocument its continuingexistence today.

Grammatical Multilingualism

CD: ‘Balkan linguistics league’-what do you mean by this?

VF: Right. At the beginning ofthe 20th century, in the Balkansyou had a range of diverselanguages on the same territory-the Slavic languages, Greek,Albanian, local dialects ofTurkish, three kinds of Romani,Romance languages like

Roman ian ,Aromanian,a n dM e g l e n o -R o m a n i a nand, beforet h eHolocaus t ,Ladino (orJudezmo) -the languageof theS e p h a r d i cJews, al a n g u a g e

derived from medieval Spanishwith additions from Hebrew andlocal languages that too shapeafter the expulsion of the Jewsfrom Spain in 1492.

In particular, the Slavic,Romance, Albanian and Greeklanguages share a lot ofgrammatical features that are theresult of mutual multilingualism.

CD: Grammaticalmultilingualism? I canunderstand vocabulary, loan-words, shared by co-existinglanguages, but what examplesare there of grammar influencein the Balkan languages?

VF: The replacement ofinfinitives by analyticsubjunctive clauses usingnative material is an example ofa shared grammatical featureamong Balkan languages.

CD: Meaning the particle, like‘na’ in Greek and ‘da’ inMacedonian?

VF: Yes. And what is reallyinteresting is that even theBalkan dialects of Turkish, butonly the Balkan ones, replacethe infinitive with an optative-a verb form like a subjunctivebut without a particle.

Linguistic Developments

CD: Wow- that’s fascinating.

VF: Yes, the Balkans are veryinteresting. We know whatAncient Greek, Latin, and OldChurch Slavonic, and Sanskritlooked like, and we have Turkictexts going back to the 8thcentury. We know what theselanguages looked like in theearly medieval period. ForAlbanian, our oldest significanttexts are from the early modernperiod. We know these changes,these grammatical influences,were taking place in the latemedieval and early Ottomanperiods (although some areolder in some languages). It wasreally in the Ottoman period thatthe Balkan languages as weknow them today came toresemble one another.

CD: Was this line ofinvestigation something thathad been applied elsewhere, orreceived attention from linguistsfor a long time?

VF: Well there was some talk in

the 19th century of that sort ofthing, but in the 19th century,when modern linguistics firsttook shape with the discoveryof the regularity of soundchange, most linguists werespending their time trying to findout how languagesgenealogically resembled oneanother.

CD: Genealogically, meaningfinding a common ancestor,yes? Was this a result of theinfluence of Darwinism, somesort of intellectual zeitgeist ofthe time?

VF: Well, some people might tellyou that, but most accurately wecan say that it coincided withDarwinism and similar trends.But what got people reallyinterested in the genealogicalapproach to linguistics was theBritish conquest of India.

CD: Really! Very unusual.

VF: Well think about it: you hadthese cultured Britishgentlemen, who had been raisedon the full classical education ofLatin and ancient Greek, comingto this land of supposedprimitives and savages- andgetting completely blown awayby the resemblances betweenSanskrit, which they cameacross for the first time, andLatin and Greek.

The Balkans: A Special Place

CD: So then, to return to theformer topic, can I ask whetherthis grammatical influence ofdifferent languages within aspecific terrain is a rare thing?Do you find it in other parts ofEurope like, say, Switzerland,with its four official languages(French, German, Italian, andRomansch) as well as thelinguistically distinct SwissGerman?

VF: Not to the same extent as inthe Balkans. French, Germanand those languages hadspecific influences of differentkinds on each other, but theordinary populations were notnecessarily multilingual untilrelatively recently, and eventoday each language inSwitzerland is influencedsignificantly by the usage in theneighboring nation-stateswhere they are standardized.

CD: So what was it about theBalkans that made it soamenable to multilingualism?

VF: Well, going back toOttoman times, we couldconsider it partially an issue ofpragmatism for city dwellers,traders and so on, for whomknowing other languages wasdirectly beneficial to theirlivelihoods and businesses,with such diverse populationsliving together.

It’s also interesting to note thatmost linguistic studies ofmultilingualism today are beingcarried out in post-colonial areasof the world, or amongimmigrant communities living inwealthy countries. My researchhere in the Balkans is unusualin this context because this is aregion with an endemic, long-existing, relatively stable anduninterrupted history ofmultilingualism.

the Balkanalysis.com Interview:

VICTOR FRIEDMAN ON MACEDONIA12/14/2008 (Balkanalysis.com)

Continues on next page


Multilingualism as a CultureValue: A Telling Absence

VF: At the same time,multilingualism here was also amatter of a common culturalvalue, one shared by speakers ofall the Balkan languages, exceptGreek. But we should also notethat this language-ideologicalresistance on the part of Greek didnot keep the language from beinginfluenced by those with whichit was in contact.

CD: Really! That’s unusual. Howdo we know Greek lacks thisvalue?

VF: One telling aspect, from alinguist’s point of view, is thatGreek is the only language in theBalkans that does not have aproverb to the effect that‘languages are wealth’ or ‘themore languages you know, themore people you’re worth.’ Allother Balkan languages havesome such saying that indicatesa value placed on multilingualism.

CD: Are we sure this is true, thatGreek lacks such a value? Orcould someone just invent onefor the sake of it?

VF: To the best of my knowledge,there is no such expression. Andover the years I have asked everyGreek friend of mine for such aproverb and not one of them hascome up with one. And I amtalking about linguists, experts onthe Balkans who are notsubjective.

An example I recall comes fromthe introduction to a recentlypublished book on the minoritylanguages of Greece (which is,alas, still a highly political topicin that nation-state). The authorwas talking about Arvanitika, theAlbanian dialect/language ofspeakers who migrated to Greecea millennium or so ago. Theintroduction was written by arespected Greek linguist… hewrote that among the Arvanites,and probably, emphasis mine,among the other Balkan peoples,there is this expression oflanguages as wealth. But hedidn’t know of any suchexpression in Greek.

Confusion and Denial

CD: By the term ‘Arvanitika,’ youmean medieval Albanian?

VF: Most precisely, it refers to theAlbanian dialects of Greece thatseparated from the main body ofTosk Albanian 600-1000 yearsago. The dialects were spoken onmany Greek islands, thePeloponnese, and in Attica andCentral Greece. Greeks don’t liketo admit it, but they have hadlarge Albanian-speakingpopulations for a very long time,not just post-Communisteconomic migrants. While thesedialects are now moribund owingto hegemonistic Greek languagepolicies, they can still beencountered in places likeLivadhia.

CD: An interesting detail-

VF: And I recall one vignette:many years ago at a conference,I met a woman who was Greek,but she knew Arvanitika. So wecommunicated, I in standardmodern Albanian, she inArvanitika. It was close enoughto communicate.

I asked her, ‘how do you knowthis language’? As a linguist, itwas an interesting detail. Shereplied, ‘well, I learned it from mygrandmother.’

CD: Which would have meantshe was of partial Arvanitikadescent?

VF: Well, I asked innocentlyenough – I wasn’t really awareof the politics at the time – ‘whywould a Greek learn Albanian ifthey weren’t Albanian’? She wassomewhat confused.

The next morning, however,when I saw this woman she saidto me: ‘I couldn’t sleep all nightthinking about what you said.’She was a bit upset. ‘I thoughtabout it,’ she said, ‘and no! I amGreek! I am Greek!’ It was the lasttime I tried to suggest to a Greekthat if they learned anotherlanguage at home, it was becausethat was the native language ofthe speaker.

The Nationalist Trap and StatePolicies

CD: (Laughing) on that note,let’s talk about the Macedoniaissue now. Greece denies theMacedonian identity, referring toancient history. What do youthink about this?

VF: Unfortunately, withindependence, someMacedonians fell into thenationalist trap set by Greece.The Greeks came up with a lineclaiming the Macedonianscould not claim the nameMacedonia unless they weredescended from the AncientMacedonians.

Well, no one can reasonablyclaim to be descended from theAncient Macedonians, but thisbecame part of the argument,instead of other more pertinentthings. And so the issue hasremained. But the Greeks havebeen denying the existence ofMacedonia and theMacedonians all along.

CD: From your perspective, howfar back does this go as a statepolicy? To the breakdown ofYugoslavia, or further?

VF: Oh, it’s been that way eversince modern Macedoniansbegan to call themselvesMacedonians. The Greeks havebeen denying the existence of itsMacedonian minority sinceacquiring Greek Macedonia atthe Treaty of Bucharestfollowing the Second Balkan War(1913), except for a brief periodin the 1920s. In 1957, anotherwise respectable Greeklinguist named N. Andriotispublished a polemical and, froman academic point of view,deeply flawed booklet entitled‘The Confederate state of Skopjeand Its Language’ – referring, ofcourse, to Macedonia andMacedonian within SocialistYugoslavia.

CD: This is very interesting tome, because as you know, manyGreeks today refer to the wholecountry of Macedonia by thename of the capital, and thepeople as ‘Skopjeans.’ So theywere using this reference eventhen?

VF: Of course. But already in the19th century, Macedonianspeakers were calling themselvesMacedonians (Makedontsi),their language, ‘Makedonski.’This is documented.

CD: But they were also callingthemselves ‘Bulgarians’ then.

VF: Yes, some were, andspeakers identified as Serbs orGreeks or Turks, depending onreligious loyalties, but most ofthe time, speakers calledthemselves Christians or Turks(Muslims).

CD: Because the Ottoman

system used religion as the mainfactor in classifying its subjects?

VF: Yes, but not just because ofthe Ottomans- religion was moreimportant then as well. It was thelate 18th/early19th century ideas,developed from the FrenchRevolution that led to nation-state ideologies.

Organized Obliteration?

VF: But even well before this,some have made a case – and thisrefers again to the socialresistance against otherlanguages – that the Greeks havebeen trying to destroy Slavicculture in this area since theMiddle Ages.

CD: ‘Greeks,’ meaning theByzantines?

VF: Yes. For example, John Finein his book The Early MedievalBalkans (p. 220) cites VladimirMoshin, who published an articlein1963 in a Russian academicjournal in which he made theargument that the reason thereare no Slavic languagemanuscripts from this region

prior to 1180 is owing to theirdeliberate destruction by theGreeks/Byzantines.

CD: Really!

VF: Up until his article, peoplehad been saying it was the Turkswho destroyed everything. Butthere are Greek-languagemanuscripts from this period thatsurvived in this region, whereasSlavic ones did not. And it is notas if the latter were not beingcomposed in an organized way;the Ohrid literary school whichbegan in the late 9th century isjust one place where manuscriptswere being written in largenumbers. Which means thatGreeks have been trying todestroy Slavic culture andliteracy for a very long time.

CD: Many Bulgarian politiciansand academics claim thatMacedonian is just a dialect ofBulgarian. What do you say onthis topic?

VF: The answer is of courseMacedonian is a distinctlanguage. It is similar toBulgarian, but just as Swedishand Norwegian are similarlanguages, but separate, so, too,are Macedonian and Bulgarian.

CD: Why?

VF: Both sets of languages havedifferent dialectal bases. And forthis reason it is not at all like thecase of Moldovan andRomanian. The Moldovanstandard language is not basedon Moldovan dialects; it is basedon the same Wallachian dialectsas standard Romanian.

In the case of Macedonian,however, the standard languageis based on the dialects spokenin the west-central geographicalarea defined by Veles, Bitola,

Prilep and Kichevo. It is notidentical with any specificdialect, and has elements fromthe eastern ones as well.Standard Bulgarian is notbased on a single dialect, butis based on eastern Bulgariandialects, from Veliko Tarnovoto the Danube and furthereast.

CD: Why were these specificdialectal areas chosen, in bothcases?

VF: What happened was thatin the 19th century there weretwo major centers of literacyand prosperity- one insouthwestern Macedonia, theother in northeasternBulgaria. The Bulgariansdecided to impose thoseeastern dialects from the areanorth of the Stara Planinarange, east of the dialectaldivision called the yat line,and south of the Danube, onthe whole state.

CD: What was the thinking?Was this an organizedcampaign for specificreasons?

VF: We’re talking about thephenomenon of intellectualsfighting over what’s going tohappen when they get theirown state- just like with theCongress of Manastir (Bitola)in 1908, when the Albanianswere worrying about agreeingon a common Albanianalphabet before there was anAlbanian state (in 1912). TheBulgarians didn’t have a stateuntil the Russo-Turkish Warof 1878.

CD: What about the situationin Greece at the time, wheredifferent propagandists wereat work from different sides?Were these dialectsconsidered Bulgarian orMacedonian, or both? Whatcan linguists reconstructtoday?

VF: There are a number ofdialectal studies. Somespeakers consideredthemselves Macedonians,some Bulgarians, and someGreeks, and some Turks,depending, in part, onreligious affiliation (Exarchist,Patriarchist, and Muslim forthe last three at that time).Firsthand accounts areavailable in some bookspublished in, e.g., Australiaand Poland, and Canada, butthe Aegean Macedonianswho were victims of Greekabuse at that time are mostlydead.

The generation that sufferedduring the Greek Civil War(1946-49) however, is stillalive. The ones who are stillalive often do not want to telltheir stories because they areafraid or the memories are toopainful. Even for curiousforeigners, if you go to Greeceto do research onMacedonian, you run the risk

that the police will take yourtapes, destroy them, and kickyou out for expressing aninterest in what is still a tabootopic for them.

CD: Really! Are there someexamples?

VF: Yes, and it happened to acolleague of mine who wasdoing dissertation research in avillage whose name I will omit toprotect the inhabitants.

CD: aha, the village of… nearKastoria?

VF: Yes, and precisely for thisreason it is one of the mostinteresting Macedoniandialects, because it is the mostsouthwestern Macedoniandialect. It is transitional betweeneastern and western types ofMacedonian. And the Greekpolice confiscated the tapes ofthis linguist and interfered withhis research. However, he didfinish his dissertation on thisdialect. In fact, in hisintroduction, he made a point ofthanking the Greek police forteaching him to always keepbackup tapes!

CD: Ha! So with all of thisintimidation, not to mention thejournalist arrests we sawrecently, what are the Greeks soafraid of?

VF: They’re incredibly insecure.No, they’re not just insecure.They have a linguistic ideologythat insists on wiping out allother languages. This is an oldideology. It is the origins of theterm barbarian. Think about it.

Why don’t we have any tracesof other languages preserved?As a matter of fact we do. Thereare some ancient inscriptions inThracian.

CD: I thought the Thracians hadno written language?

VF: They did. The inscriptionsare in Greek script, but the wordsare Thracian. And theinscriptions are sitting in Greece,gathering dust. They knowthey’re there, but no one’sgoing to work on them becausethe language is not Greek. Sothey’re not going to let anyonesee them. I have this from acolleague of mine who is aclassicist and interested in thesubject.

CD: Your Greece vignettereminds me of being the villageof Amyndaeo south of Florinalast year. I came across thesetwo old men speaking to eachother in Macedonian. I saiddobar den (’good day’). Andyou know what? This man wasso alarmed that he reactedbefore he could think,instinctively, by blurting out nerazbiram Makedonski (‘I don’tunderstand Macedonian’). Thiswas one of the most ironicexamples of fear of speakingone’s language I could imagine.

VF: Indeed.

CD: So I guess my question foryou is, we asked the local peoplein Florina what percent of thepeople there speak Macedonian,since public life is mostly inGreek it was an interestingquestion. And several peoplesaid, ‘oh, everyone speaks it.’What is your experience?

VF: Well, as far as I was toldeverybody in the area aroundFlorina, or Lerin in Macedonian,over the age of 40 speaksMacedonian, whether they’reMacedonian or not. This isaccording to a colleague of minewho has done recent research.However, the younger

Continued from previous page


generation is not learning it. Butit is a topic that requires further(unhindered) research.

CD: From what I understand fromdifferent stories, this is becauseit is not helpful to advancementin Greek society, and can even bea strongly negative factor-

VF: Yes. The Greek governmentis effectively carrying out‘linguicide’ on the Macedoniansof Greece. And it has been a long-running policy. For anotherexample, I have a photo of a signin Greek, from the 1950s, printedup in blue-on-white, urgingpeople to forbid anyone fromspeaking in ‘Vlahika, Makedonikaetc.’ There used to be many suchsigns in Greek Macedonia.

CD: Really! That is quitecompelling. Do people knowabout this?

VF: I don’t know-a friend sent thephoto to me, I am finally gettingaround to publishing it in a reviewarticle in the journal Balkanistikanext year.

But the Greek policy was alwaystrying to kill the language. It wasespecially horrible in the 1930s.Macedonian kids would go toschool, and if they spoke theirlanguage, the language theylearned at home, numerous‘corrective’ methods were used:teachers beat them, or stuck theirtongues with needles, or rubbeda hot pepper on their tongues;anything to make them stopspeaking Macedonian.

CD: Really! That sounds veryextreme.

VF: Oh, they were terrible. In the1930s, people were put in jail justfor speaking Macedonian. TheGreek government had peopleskulking around the windows ofpeople’s houses, listening to hearif they spoken Macedonian sothat they could report them to thepolice. Mothers were thrown injail for speaking Macedonian totheir babies. They terrorized theMacedonians, and then, with theGreek Civil War, they drove manyof them out.

CD: Never to return-

VF: And then there’s theinfamous ‘race clause’ in theamnesty law of 1982; it stipulatedthat to return the country andreclaim one’s property, all thosewho had been banished had todeclare they were Greek by genos,by race or birth. Macedonianswho were expelled, many justchildren at the time, in 1949, werenever allowed to reclaim theirproperty. It was racism, pure andsimple.

CD: Do you recall what was thereaction here in Macedonia, fromthe locals? And what about theEuropean countries? Surely thiswould have been considered agreat breach of European values?

VF: I was actually here at the timethis was announced. The peoplewere very upset, because theyhave been so badly mistreated allalong. The ‘Great Powers,’ ofcourse, said nothing.

CD: Well this is interesting,because here we have in Americaa new president, a black man whosurely knows something aboutthe meaning of racism, and indeedthe issues of race and injusticesresonated throughout Obama’scampaign.

And at the same time, Obamasigned that anti-Macedoniansenate resolution, and has beena big supporter of the Greeklobby, who are probably countingon a return on their investment.Has anyone, to the best of your

knowledge, pointed out thisblatant hypocrisy regarding hissupport for a country that has ahistory of racist policies againstits own citizens?

VF: No, I haven’t heard anyoneput this to his people. It wouldbe nice if the message could begotten out, but so far I haven’tseen this happen. TheMacedonians don’t seem toknow enough about publicrelations and American politics-they should be using lobbycompanies, getting theirmessage out every day inWashington.

CD: Yes, I concur with that-

VF: And, at the same time, theGreeks get away with this ‘cradleof democracy’ image! Give me abreak! Ancient Greece was aslave-owning society. And youknow, some scholars argue thatModern Greece is a creation ofthe Western European romanticimagination- for example, LordByron’s romanticized view ofAncient Greece projected, onthe modern population. This ispersuasively argued in a book ofacademic Michael Herdzfeld,called Ours Once More.

CD: That is an interestingschool of thought, I had notreally conceived it as such butthere is something to it. Whatwas the reaction to this book?

VF: I do not think there was ahuge reaction, but Herzfeld wasinvolved with another book,Anastasia Karakasidou’s Fieldsof Wheat, Hills of Blood, whichdid generate a great deal ofcontroversy. Published by theUniversity of Chicago Press in1997, this book was actually avery mild challenge to Greekhegemonistic notions. What itdared to do, based on fieldworkin Greek Macedonia, was tostate that there were citizens ofGreece who did not feelthemselves to be ethnic Greeksand that they still spoke theirown language.

Cambridge University Press hadcommitted to publishing thebook with minor revisions, andthen they suddenly decided notto publish the book. They hadcommitted to it and suddenlychanged their minds. ProfHerzfeld was on the editorialboard of CUP’s anthropologyseries at the time, and heresigned in protest, as did othermembers of the board.

CD: Yes, they cited ‘the safetyof their staff in Greece’ as theirreason, right?

VF: Well they said that.However, the way I heard it, CUPhad a monopoly on English-language testing in the schoolsof Greece as well…

CD: Do you believe that theGreek government threatenedthat they would lose thisprivilege?

VF: I have no idea, but assumingthat they had a monopoly- twoplus two, what are you going tomake of that, four or twenty-two?

CD: But then you guys savedit-

VF: Yes, the University ofChicago went ahead andpublished the book, to theircredit. But the whole situation isjust disgusting; it makes Europelook like what she was called atthe beginning of the 20th century,as depicted in the Bulgarian filmMera spored Mera , made in the1980s. It was somewhatprovocative, and receivedcriticism from some quarters of

the Communist government,because i t used AegeanMacedonian dialects, as it wasabout the post-Ilinden periodjust after 1903.

The memorable line from thefilm, which was part of a real folksong dating back to 1878, wassomething like this: ‘be thoucursed and thrice cursedEurope, O you whore ofBabylon and murderer ofMacedonia.’

CD: So, what do you think thenof the internationalnegotiations over the nameissue, and the constantpressure for Macedonia to‘compromise’ with Greece here?

VF: There is no realcompromise. There can’t be.Think about it: if a thief comesup to and holds a gun to yourhead and says ‘give me yourmoney,’ do you say, ‘I’ll giveyou half,’ and call that acompromise? That’s Greece.They are trying to destroyMacedonia’s identity, plain andsimple.

Note that no one on theMacedonian side is saying thatGreeks cannot call themselvesMacedonians, or their provinceMacedonia. But they never callthemselves as such out of thiscontext- they are, tothemselves, Greeks first andforemost. So nobody actuallyneeds the name Macedonia,and no one needs to callthemselves Macedonians fortheir primary identity, except forthese people in this smallcountry that is not a threat toanyone.

CD: On that note, to conclude,let me ask this: based on yourresearch, do you think thatMacedonia gets enough creditfor preserving itsmulticulturalism? And does itreflect at all on the temperamentof the people here that it hasbeen able to do so?

VF: First of all, Macedoniadoesn’t get any credit. And infact the isolation that Greecehas succeeded in imposing onMacedonia in the last 17 yearshas been a major factor inadding to interethnic tensionhere, as we saw unfortunatelyin the 2001 conflict.

If the Greeks had just left theMacedonians alone to beginwith, there would have beenfewer such problems, or at leastgreater capacity to deal with theexisting ones. But it was theGreek government (especiallyafter 1991) and the Serbiangovernment (especially after1981) who exacerbated most ofthe problems, for their ownpurposes.

You know, the vast majority ofnormal people of all ethnicitiesin this country live togetherpeacefully. There is a saying inMacedonian: nie sme krotoknarod: ‘we are a mild people.’ Apeaceful people. This issomething that is constantlyoverlooked by the GreatPowers- that, relative to the restof the Balkans and much of theworld, for all the very realproblems that exist,Macedonians are still amongthe most peaceful and tolerantpeople you will find anywhere.

CD: Victor, thank you verymuch for your time andinsightful comments. Iappreciate it.

VF: And thank you.

Sakam da se najdamna vrvot od najvisokataplaninaza da mo`am odviso~initeda go izgovoram tvoetoimestopati na cel glas…

Ehoto gromoglasno da seraznese nasekadevo dale~ni prostori…preku okeani imeridijani;za da slu{nat onie koi{to te sonuvaati vo mugrite tvoi sebudat,za da slu{nat onie {tote sakaat,i onie {to te baraat podtu|iot svod.

Ehoto niz dale~inite sotvoeto ime

od vrvor na najvisokataplaninada dopre do burniot Egej,kade silnite branovibijatpo ronliviot breg namoretoDa dopre i do onie {toslu{aat- a ne zau{uvaat, i ne te prepoznavaat da im gi zaglu{i{u{ite!I kamenot belutrak daprepukneod vibracijata na glasotod imeto tvoe iskonsko,- Makedonija,stopati Makedonija nacel glas.

Blagica Dafovska~len na literaturnoto

dru{tvo “Bra}aMiladinovci” - Toronto

GLAS OD DALE^INITE(Vo ~est na 50-godi{ninata od osnovaweto naorganizacijata “Obedineti Makedonci”)

BLAGODARNOSTKON NA[ITE

DARITELI

Majk Ro{tankovski

Marko Janovski

Blagodarej}i dodare`livosta i trudoqu-bivosta na mnogubrojniteMakedonci, Organiza-cijata Obedineti Makedon-ci vo Kanada postananajgolemata makedonskaorganizacija nadvor odtatkovinata. I ovaa godinakoga ja slavime 50-godi{ninata od osnova-weto, so gordost sezablagodaruvame na MajkRo{tankovski i MarkoJanovski, koi bea vidnidariteli za minatatagodina. Prethodni dari-teli bea Trajanka Baka-lovska i Kice Aleksovski.

Blagodarej}i doprethodnite dariteli kakoi site site ~lenovi naupravata, Organizacijatauspeva da go obnovuvamanastirot Sv. Ilija i dago priprema Ilindenskiotpark za veli~enstveniotIlindenski piknik.

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