|
|
Statistics of the Population of Macedonia before its Partition and the "Macedonian Question"
In 1827,
the European powers intervened on behalf of the Greek rebels and
forced the Turks to grant them independence. The same powers, established
the first modern Greek state, chose Prince Otto of Bavaria to be
the "King of the Hellenes", and sent him to Athens. Serbia
freed herself also from the Turkish rule, while Russia declared
war on Turkey to help Bulgaria gain its independence.
The war between Russia and Turkey ended on March 3, 1878,
with the peace settlement of San Stefano. The Turks had to agree
to the formation of the new Bulgarian state, to also include all
of Macedonia but the city of Salonika. Russia was hoping that greater
Bulgaria with Macedonia would give her the strategic exit on the
Aegean Sea, but she encountered fierce resistance from Austria-Hungary
and England that saw their interests on the Balkans endangered.
On July 13, 1878 with the Berlin Conference, they forced Russia
to give up her dream and the San Stefano agreement was revised.
Macedonia was returned to the Ottoman Empire. From this moment,
Macedonia became a battleground where the interests not only of
the Balkan states, but also of the Great Powers, collide.
The Ohrid Archbishopric was founded as a separate
church in 995 to care for the religious needs of the Orthodox Macedonians.
However, under the influence of the Greek Orthodox church, the Turkish
sultan abolished the Macedonian church in 1767. The Greek Orthodox
church was now able to enforce its religious teachings in Greek
as the only Orthodox church to exist in the Balkans. Greece hoped
to spread her influence and propaganda through the newly opened
Greek schools, with a goal to Hellenize the population of Macedonia.
But as their influence grew bigger, so did the resistance of the
Macedonians. On March 7, 1851, the residents of Enidje-Vardar (today
in Greece) signed a petition, for replacement of the teachings in
Greek with Macedonian. In 1859, in Kukush was formed the resistance
movement against the Hellenization that quickly spread to Voden,
Kostur, Lerin, and the rest of southern Macedonia. Adding to the Greek influence, the Bulgarians now opened their
schools in Macedonia in 1871, and the Serbs followed shortly after.
This is the beginning of the so-called "Macedonian Question".
Statistics without "Macedonians"
There are three statistical tables
that the Greeks and the Bulgarians point to show that the Macedonians
do not exist as nation, and that Macedonia belongs to ether one
of them. 1) According to a Turkish census of Hilmi Pasha in 1904, in areas of Macedonia lived:
2) According to a Turkish census of Hilmi Pasha in 1906, in Macedonia lived:
3) Another table is the one published by the League of
the Nations. According to
the League of the Nations in 1926, in Aegean Macedonia
occupied by Greece in 1913
lived:
But this map was submitted to the League
of the Nations by the Greek government and it is clear that
it is biased. The League of the Nations had not visited Aegean
Macedonia and did not participate at all in conducting these
statistics. Greece here refers to the Macedonians as "bulgarisants",
which means "those who pretend to be Bulgarians" and obviously
non-Bulgarians. However, Greece uses many other names in
falsifying the identity of
the Macedonians. Slavophones, Slav Macedonians, Makedoslavs,
Slav Greeks, and Bulgarisants, are only some of the names that prove
Greece's unpreparess in this mean
falsification of the Macedonian
people and language.
Greek, Bulgarian, and Serbian Statistics of Macedonia's
Population
The new independent Balkan states used their Churches
and schools to propagate how the Macedonians do not exist, and how
Macedonia was populated only by Greeks, Bulgarians, and Serbs. Ethnographers,
historians, and writers begun writing books in favor of this or
that propaganda. Many of them did not even visit Macedonia, while
those who did already had a written scenario. Their presence there
was only a simple formality. Table 1 gives an excellent proof of
those Balkan speculations and bias surrounding Macedonia:
Table 1. Greek, Bulgarian, and Serbian Statistics of Macedonia's population
It is more than obvious that all the views coming
from the Macedonia's neighbors which sharply contradict eachother,
are biased. They all claim their people in Macedonia to justify
their well-planned aspirations. It is important to note that both
the Bulgarian and Serbian views agree that the Greeks in Macedonia
represent only a small minority of 10%. The Greek ethnographer Nikolaides,
on the other hand, claims three times bigger number than his colleagues
in Belgrade and Sofia. However, the most important about Nikolaides
is that he recognizes the Macedonian Slavs as a separate nation,
separate from the Bulgarians and the Serbs, to be part of population
of Macedonia. And although he tries hard to lower the numbers of
those Macedonian Slavs, he still comes up with a convincing proof
of their existence.
Independent and Neutral European Statistics of Macedonia's
Population
This is the time when many European slavists, ethnographers,
and historians, are also attracted to visit Macedonia and conduct
their own investigations. Therefore, to find the unbiased population
numbers in Macedonia, we have to rely on neutral and independent
statistics:
Table 2. Independent and Neutral European Statistics of Macedonia's Population
Although the Macedonians are referred as "Macedonian Slavs", the main point of the statistics is the fact that they are recognized as distinct nation with cultural and historical right over their country Macedonia in which they are overwhelming majority. The reluctance to refer to them for what they are (simply as Macedonians), is explained by the overemphasizing of the contemporary Greek vs. Slavic (Serb and Bulgarian) rivalry over Macedonia in which the westerners desired to make the note that the Macedonians were more "Slavs" then "Greeks" - thus resulting in the use of the term "Macedonian Slavs" to distinguish them from all but still indicate their closer relation to their northern then southern neighbors, as interestingly was the case with the ancient Macedonians and their closer relations with the Thracians and Illyrians then with the ancient Greeks.
Yet the
term "Macedonian Slavs" is erroneous since the Macedonians,
although conscious of their ancient Macedonian roots and Slav admixture,
did not specifically call themselves "Macedonians
Slavs", but Macedonians as the documents over the last 2,500
years show. The same "Macedonian Slavs" mistake
was again repeated by some western media, as the Albanian terrorists
attacked Macedonia in March of 2001, and again it was done deliberately. This deliberate bias is again there, unfortunately
because of the political situation and the
western media's inclination towards the goals of the
Albanian terrorism for "Greater Albania". As at the beginning of the 20th century, the Macedonians
showed their outrage at the beginning of the 21st century of this
racial insult and publicly instead that their nationality be respected.
Not only the Macedonians all over the world vigorously accused the
western media for racial bias, but also did
various western independent
and non-government organizations. That referring
to the Macedonians as "Macedonian Slavs" was a mistake
was publicly acknowledged by BBC
which apologized and withdrew its reporter Paul Wood precisely for
his bias reporting, and since continued to rightfully refer to the
Macedonians for what they have always been - Macedonians.
From the
two above tables one can easily notice that the number of Greeks
in Macedonia according to the neutral authors also aligns with the
numbers given by the Serb and Bulgarian authors. This is a proof
that the Greeks before the partition of Macedonia, were indeed a
small minority, only 10% from the total population. This fact certainly
does not give them the copyright of the name Macedonia. Dr. Ostreich,
Gersin, and Roussos, are only a few of the many neutral authors
to prove the groundless speculations of the Balkan counties. They
proved that Macedonia belongs to a separate nation, which proves
that the Bulgarians and the Serbs have than simply substituted the
numbers of the Macedonians for theirs. Another Austrian, Karl Hron
explained why that is unjustified:
"According to my own
studies on the Serb-Bulgarian conflict I came to the conclusion
that the Macedonians looking at their history and language are a
separate nation, which means they are not Serbs nor Bulgarians,
but the descendants of those Slavs who populated the Balkan peninsula
long before the Serb and Bulgarian invasions, and who later did
not mix with any of those other two nations..."
and:
"... the Macedonian
language according to its own laws in the development of the voices,
and its own grammatical rules, forms one separate language".
There were even Greek and Bulgarian
writers to support what Karl Hron has written. One such example
is the Bulgarian slavist and ethnographer P. Draganov, who in his
studies of 1887-1894 and 1903, proved the existence of the Macedonians
and the Macedonian language as a distinct language.
At the time of the emergence
of the so-called Macedonian question, and the aspirations of the
Macedonian neighbors for occupation of the country, the famous Macedonian
Gjorgi Pulevski wrote in 1875:
"I
am not Bulgarian, nor Greek, nor Tzintzar, I am pure Macedonian
as were Philip and Alexander the Macedonian and Aristotle Philosopher"
Pulevski
was right back in 1875. He
was proud Macedonian of his ancient heritage, conscious, and aware
that the Macedonians were a distinct nation, a fact that the
documents of the last 25 centuries clearly show.
The usage of Macedonian and Macedonia separate from Greek or Bulgarian and Greece or Bulgaria is more than obvious. Also these sources are objective, old and clear, and do not offer any further interpretation; that is how they prove the existence of the Macedonians as a Nation with this name in this region, separate from the Greeks and Bulgarians in many ways. The fact that old documents call these people Macedonians shows that the Macedonians aren't an artificial creation, but a nation with a homeland and a name-Macedonia and Macedonians.
|
|
