Demographic history of Macedonia - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Early history

The region of Macedonia

Macedonia (region)

Macedonia is a geographical and historical region of the Balkan peninsula in southeastern Europe. Its boundaries have changed considerably over time, but nowadays the region is considered to include parts of five Balkan countries: Greece, the Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia, as...

is known to have been inhabited since Paleolithic

Paleolithic

The Paleolithic Age, Era or Period, is a prehistoric period of human history distinguished by the development of the most primitive stone tools discovered , and covers roughly 99% of human technological prehistory...

times. Early historical inhabitants of the region were the Ancient Macedonians

Ancient Macedonians

The Macedonians originated from inhabitants of the northeastern part of the Greek peninsula, in the alluvial plain around the rivers Haliacmon and lower Axios...

, Phrygians, Thracians

Thracians

The ancient Thracians were a group of Indo-European tribes inhabiting areas including Thrace in Southeastern Europe. They spoke the Thracian language – a scarcely attested branch of the Indo-European language family...

and Illyrians

Illyrians

The Illyrians were a group of tribes who inhabited part of the western Balkans in antiquity and the south-eastern coasts of the Italian peninsula...

. Thracians in early times occupied mainly the eastern parts of Macedonia (Mygdonia

Mygdonia (Europe)

Mygdonia was an ancient territory, part of Ancient Thrace, later conquered by Macedon, which comprised the plains around Therma together with the valleys of Klisali and Besikia, including the area of the Axios river mouth and extending as far east as Lake Bolbe. To the north it was joined by...

, Crestonia

Crestonia

Crestonia was an ancient region immediately north of Mygdonia. The Echeidorus river, which flowed through Mygdonia into the Thermaic Gulf, had its source in Crestonia...

, Bisaltia

Bisaltia

Bisaltia or Bisaltica was an ancient region extending from the river Strymon and Lake Cercinitis on the east to Crestonia on the west. The eponymous inhabitants, known as the Bisaltae, were a Thracian people. The most important town in Bisaltia was the Greek city of Argilus...

) but were also present in Eordaia

Eordaia

Eordaia is a municipality in the Kozani peripheral unit, Greece. The seat of the municipality is the town Ptolemaida.-Municipality:The municipality Eordaia was formed at the 2011 local government reform by the merger of the following 5 former municipalities, that became municipal units:*Agia...

and Pieria. Illyrians once occupied many parts of west Macedonia. The ancient Macedonians established their kingdom

Macedon

Macedonia or Macedon was an ancient kingdom, centered in the northeastern part of the Greek peninsula, bordered by Epirus to the west, Paeonia to the north, the region of Thrace to the east and Thessaly to the south....

in the southern extremities of the region but would later expand into other parts of Macedonia. Paeonia

Paeonia

Paeonia or Paionia may refer to:*the generic name of the peony*the ancient tribe and kingdom of Paeonia , in today's northern Greece and the Republic of Macedonia*Paionia , a municipality in northern Greece...

was in ancient region, later kingdom, the exact boundaries of which are obscure. In the time of king Philip II of Macedon

Philip II of Macedon

Philip II of Macedon "friend" + ἵππος "horse" — transliterated ; 382 – 336 BC), was a king of Macedon from 359 BC until his assassination in 336 BC. He was the father of Alexander the Great and Philip III.-Biography:...

, Paeonia covered most of what is now the Republic of Macedonia

Republic of Macedonia

Macedonia , officially the Republic of Macedonia , is a country located in the central Balkan peninsula in Southeast Europe. It is one of the successor states of the former Yugoslavia, from which it declared independence in 1991...

, and was located immediately north of ancient Macedon

Macedon

and south of Dardania. The Paeonians seem to have been Thracian tribes, though they were considered to be of mixed Thraco-Illyrian

Thraco-Illyrian

Thraco-Illyrian refers to a hypothesis that the Thraco-Dacian and Illyrian languages comprise a distinct branch of Indo-European. Thraco-Illyrian is also used as a term merely implying a Thracian-Illyrian interference, mixture or sprachbund, or as a shorthand way of saying that it is not...

origin.

The Ancient Macedonians

The name of the region of Macedonia derives from the tribal name of the ancient Macedonians . According to the Greek

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

historian Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...

, the Makednoi were a Dorian tribe that stayed behind during the great southward migration of the Dorian Greeks (Histories 1.56.1). The word "Makednos" is cognate with the Doric Greek

Doric Greek

Doric or Dorian was a dialect of ancient Greek. Its variants were spoken in the southern and eastern Peloponnese, Crete, Rhodes, some islands in the southern Aegean Sea, some cities on the coasts of Asia Minor, Southern Italy, Sicily, Epirus and Macedon. Together with Northwest Greek, it forms the...

word "Μάκος" Μakos (Attic

Attic Greek

Attic Greek is the prestige dialect of Ancient Greek that was spoken in Attica, which includes Athens. Of the ancient dialects, it is the most similar to later Greek, and is the standard form of the language studied in courses of "Ancient Greek". It is sometimes included in Ionic.- Origin and range...

form Μήκος - "mékos"), which is Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

for "length". The ancient Macedonians took this name either because they were physically tall, or because they settled in the mountains. The latter definition would translate "Macedonian" as "Highlander".

Most academics take the view that the ancient Macedonians probably spoke either a language that was a member of the North-Western Greek dialect group (related to Doric and Aeolic), or a language very closely related to Greek which would form a Graeco-Macedonian or Hellenic branch; others such as Eugene Borza reach the conclusion that there is insufficient evidence on which to base a conclusion as to whether the original language of the Macedonians was a form of Greek or not, but that the Macedonians were most likely of proto-Greek stock. The controversy over whether the Macedonians were originally Greek or not is caused mainly by contradictory ancient accounts, but also due to the peculiar features of a few Macedonians words, though most words are consistent with Greek (see Ancient Macedonian language

Ancient Macedonian language

Ancient Macedonian was the language of the ancient Macedonians. It was spoken in the kingdom of Macedon during the 1st millennium BCE and it belongs to the Indo-European group of languages...

). Some scholars view the Pella katadesmos

Pella katadesmos

The Pella curse tablet is a text written in a distinct Doric Greek idiom, found in Pella, the ancient capital of Macedon, in 1986. Ιt contains a curse or magic spell inscribed on a lead scroll, dating to first half of the 4th century BC . It was published in the Hellenic Dialectology Journal in 1993...

, written in a form of Doric Greek

Doric Greek

, as the first discovered Macedonian text. The vast majority of Macedonian names on inscriptions and coinage are Greek and conform to the Doric Greek dialect morphology. In any case, even if the ancient Macedonians were originally not Hellenic or part of a Graeco-Macedonian branch, they were universally considered Hellenes after the reign of Alexander the Great.

Before the reign of Alexander I

Alexander I of Macedon

- Biography :Alexander was the son of Amyntas I and Queen Eurydice.According to Herodotus, he was unfriendly to Persia, and had the envoys of Darius I killed when they arrived at the court of his father during the Ionian Revolt...

, father of Perdiccas II

Perdiccas II of Macedon

Perdiccas II was a king of Macedonia from about 454 BC to about 413 BC. He was the son of Alexander I and had two brothers.-Background:After the death of Alexander in 452, Macedon began to fall apart. Macedonian tribes became almost completely autonomous, and were only loosely allied to the king...

, the ancient Macedonians lived mostly on lands adjacent to the Haliakmon, in the far south of the modern region of Macedonia

Macedonia (region)

. Alexander is credited with having added to Macedon many of the lands that would become part of the core Macedonian territory: Pieria, Bottiaia, Mygdonia, and Eordaia (Thuc. 2.99). Anthemus, Crestonia, and Bisaltia also seem to have been added during his reign (Thuc. 2.99). Most of these lands were previously inhabited by Thracian tribes, and Thucydides records how the Thracians were pushed to the mountains when the Macedonians acquired their lands.

Generations after Alexander, Philip II of Macedon

Philip II of Macedon

would add new lands to Macedon, and also reduce neighboring powers such as the Illyrians and Paeonians to semi-autonomous peoples. In Philip's time, Macedonians expanded and settled in many of the new adjoining territories, and Thrace up to the Nestus was colonized by Macedonian settlers. Strabo

Strabo

Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...

however testifies that the bulk of the population inhabiting in Upper Macedonia remained of Thraco-Illyrian

Thraco-Illyrian

stock. Philip's son, Alexander the Great, extended Macedonian power over key Greek city-states, and his campaigns, both local and abroad, would make the Macedonian power supreme from Greece, to Persia, Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

, and the edge of India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

.

Following this period there ware repeated barbaric invasions of the Balkans by Celt

Celt

The Celts were a diverse group of tribal societies in Iron Age and Roman-era Europe who spoke Celtic languages.The earliest archaeological culture commonly accepted as Celtic, or rather Proto-Celtic, was the central European Hallstatt culture , named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt, Austria....

Roman Macedonia

After the defeat of Andriscus

Andriscus

Andriscus, and often called the "pseudo-Philip", was the last King of Macedon , and ruler of Adramyttium in Aeolis ....

in 148 BC, Macedonia officially became a province of the Roman Republic

Roman Republic

The Roman Republic was the period of the ancient Roman civilization where the government operated as a republic. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, traditionally dated around 508 BC, and its replacement by a government headed by two consuls, elected annually by the citizens and...

in 146 BC. Hellenization of the non-Greek population was not yet complete in 146 BC, and many of the Thracian and Illyrian tribes had preserved their languages. It is also possible that the ancient Macedonian tongue was still spoken, alongside Koine

Koine Greek

Koine Greek is the universal dialect of the Greek language spoken throughout post-Classical antiquity , developing from the Attic dialect, with admixture of elements especially from Ionic....

, the common Greek language of the Hellenistic

Hellenistic civilization

Hellenistic civilization represents the zenith of Greek influence in the ancient world from 323 BCE to about 146 BCE...

era. From an early period, the Roman province of Macedonia included Epirus

Epirus

The name Epirus, from the Greek "Ήπειρος" meaning continent may refer to:-Geographical:* Epirus - a historical and geographical region of the southwestern Balkans, straddling modern Greece and Albania...

, Thessaly

Thessaly

Thessaly is a traditional geographical region and an administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient region of the same name. Before the Greek Dark Ages, Thessaly was known as Aeolia, and appears thus in Homer's Odyssey....

, parts of Thrace and Illyria

Illyria

In classical antiquity, Illyria was a region in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula inhabited by the Illyrians....

, thus making the region of Macedonia permanently lose connection to its ancient borders, and now including various inhabitants. According to accounts of Livy

Livy

Titus Livius — known as Livy in English — was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people. Ab Urbe Condita Libri, "Chapters from the Foundation of the City," covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome well before the traditional foundation in 753 BC...

, by the 3rd century Macedonians had adopted a purely Greek ethnic identity.

Byzantine Macedonia

As the Greek state of Byzantium

Byzantine Empire

The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...

gradually emerged as a successor state to the Roman Empire

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

, Macedonia became one of its most important provinces as it was close to the Empire's capital (Constantinople

Constantinople

Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...

) and included its second largest city (Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki , historically also known as Thessalonica, Salonika or Salonica, is the second-largest city in Greece and the capital of the region of Central Macedonia as well as the capital of the Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace...

). According to Byzantine maps that were recorded by Ernest Honigmann, by the 6th century AD there were two provinces carrying the name "Macedonia" in the Empire's borders:

Macedonia A, which corresponded to the geographical borders of ancient Macedon (approximately equivalent to today's Greek Macedonia);
Macedonia B, which corresponded to former barbaric regions that were included in Macedonia during Hellenistic and Roman times (approximately equivalent to parts of today's Southern Republic of Macedonia
Republic of Macedonia
Macedonia , officially the Republic of Macedonia , is a country located in the central Balkan peninsula in Southeast Europe. It is one of the successor states of the former Yugoslavia, from which it declared independence in 1991...

, Eastern Albania
Albania
Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...

and Western Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

).

Macedonia was ravaged several times in the 4th and the 5th century by desolating onslaughts of Visigoths, Huns

Huns

The Huns were a group of nomadic people who, appearing from east of the Volga River, migrated into Europe c. AD 370 and established the vast Hunnic Empire there. Since de Guignes linked them with the Xiongnu, who had been northern neighbours of China 300 years prior to the emergence of the Huns,...

and Vandals

Vandals

The Vandals were an East Germanic tribe that entered the late Roman Empire during the 5th century. The Vandals under king Genseric entered Africa in 429 and by 439 established a kingdom which included the Roman Africa province, besides the islands of Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and the Balearics....

. These did little to change its ethnic composition (the region being almost completely Hellenized

Hellenization

Hellenization is a term used to describe the spread of ancient Greek culture, and, to a lesser extent, language. It is mainly used to describe the spread of Hellenistic civilization during the Hellenistic period following the campaigns of Alexander the Great of Macedon...

by that time) but left much of the region depopulated.

Later in about 800 AD, a new province of the Byzantine Empire - Macedonia, was organised by Empress Irene out of the Theme of Thrace. It had no relation with the historical or geographical region of Macedonia, but instead it was centered in Thrace

Thrace

Thrace is a historical and geographic area in southeast Europe. As a geographical concept, Thrace designates a region bounded by the Balkan Mountains on the north, Rhodope Mountains and the Aegean Sea on the south, and by the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara on the east...

, including the area from Adrianople (the theme's capital) and the Evros

Evros Prefecture

Evros is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of East Macedonia and Thrace. Its name is derived from the river Evros, which appears to have been a Thracian hydronym. Evros is the northernmost regional unit. It borders Turkey to the east, across the river Evros, and it...

valley eastward along the Sea of Marmara

Sea of Marmara

The Sea of Marmara , also known as the Sea of Marmora or the Marmara Sea, and in the context of classical antiquity as the Propontis , is the inland sea that connects the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea, thus separating Turkey's Asian and European parts. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Black...

. It did not include any part of ancient Macedon

Macedon

, which (insofar as the Byzantines controlled it) was in the Theme of Thessalonica.

Middle Ages

The Slavs

Slavic peoples

The Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...

took advantage of the desolation left by the nomadic tribes and in the 6th century settled the Balkan Peninsula (See also: South Slavs

South Slavs

The South Slavs are the southern branch of the Slavic peoples and speak South Slavic languages. Geographically, the South Slavs are native to the Balkan peninsula, the southern Pannonian Plain and the eastern Alps...

). Aided by the Avars

Eurasian Avars

The Eurasian Avars or Ancient Avars were a highly organized nomadic confederacy of mixed origins. They were ruled by a khagan, who was surrounded by a tight-knit entourage of nomad warriors, an organization characteristic of Turko-Mongol groups...

and the Bulgars

Bulgars

The Bulgars were a semi-nomadic who flourished in the Pontic Steppe and the Volga basin in the 7th century.The Bulgars emerge after the collapse of the Hunnic Empire in the 5th century....

the Slavic tribes started in the 6th century a gradual invasion into the lands of Byzantium

Byzantine Empire

. They invaded Macedonia and reached as far south as Thessaly and the Peloponnese

Peloponnese

The Peloponnese, Peloponnesos or Peloponnesus , is a large peninsula , located in a region of southern Greece, forming the part of the country south of the Gulf of Corinth...

, settling in isolated regions that were called by the Byzantines Sclavinias, until they were gradually pacified. Many Slavs came to serve as soldiers in Byzantine armies and settled in other parts of the empire. Many among the Romanised and Hellenised Paeonian, Illyrian and Thracian population of Macedonia were assimilated by the Slavs, but pockets of tribes that fled to the mountains remained independent. A number of scholars today consider that present-day Aromanians

Aromanians

Aromanians are a Latin people native throughout the southern Balkans, especially in northern Greece, Albania, the Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, and as an emigrant community in Serbia and Romania . An older term is Macedo-Romanians...

(Vlachs), Sarakatsani

Sarakatsani

The Sarakatsani are a group of Greek transhumant shepherds inhabiting chiefly Greece, with a smaller presence in neighbouring Bulgaria, southern Albania and the Republic of Macedonia. Historically centered around the Pindus mountains, they have been currently urbanised to a significant degree...

and Albanians

Albanians

Albanians are a nation and ethnic group native to Albania and neighbouring countries. They speak the Albanian language. More than half of all Albanians live in Albania and Kosovo...

originate from these mountainous populations. The interaction between Romanised and non-Romanised indigenous peoples and the Slavs resulted in linguistic similarities which are reflected in modern Bulgarian

Bulgarian language

Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...

, Albanian

Albanian language

Albanian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece...

, Romanian

Romanian language

Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...

and Macedonian

Macedonian language

Macedonian is a South Slavic language spoken as a first language by approximately 2–3 million people principally in the region of Macedonia but also in the Macedonian diaspora...

, all of them members of the Balkan linguistic union

Balkan linguistic union

The Balkan sprachbund or linguistic area is the ensemble of areal features—similarity in grammar, syntax, vocabulary and phonology—among the languages of the Balkans. Several features are found across these languages though not all need apply to every single language...

. The Slavs also occupied the hinterland of Thessaloniki launching consecutive attacks on the city in 584, 586, 609, 620, and 622 AD, however never taking it. The Slavs were often joined in their onslaughts by detachments of Avars

Eurasian Avars

, but the Avars did not form any lasting settlements in the region. A branch of the Bulgars led by khan Kuber

Kuber

Khan Kuber was a Bulgar leader, brother of Khan Asparukh and member of the Dulo clan, who according to the Miracles of St Demetrius, in the 670s was the leader of a mixed Christian population of Bulgars, ‘Romans’, Slavs and Germanic people that had been transferred to the Syrmia region in Pannonia...

, however, settled western Macedonia and eastern Albania around 680 AD and also engaged in attacks on Byzantium

Byzantium

Byzantium was an ancient Greek city, founded by Greek colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzas . The name Byzantium is a Latinization of the original name Byzantion...

together with the Slavs

Slavic peoples

. By this time, the whole Macedonia region was inhabited by several different ethnicities, with the Southern Slavs being the overall majority, while Greek dominated along the Aegean coast.

At the beginning of the 9th century, the Slavic kingdom of Bulgaria conquered Northern Byzantine lands, including Macedonia B and part of Macedonia A. Those regions remained under Bulgarian rule for two centuries, until the destruction of Bulgaria by the Byzantine Emperor of the Macedonian dynasty Basil II

Basil II

Basil II , known in his time as Basil the Porphyrogenitus and Basil the Young to distinguish him from his ancestor Basil I the Macedonian, was a Byzantine emperor from the Macedonian dynasty who reigned from 10 January 976 to 15 December 1025.The first part of his long reign was dominated...

(nicknamed the Bulgar-slayer) in 1018.
In the 11th and the 12th century, the first mention is made of two ethnic groups just off the borders of Macedonia: the Arvanites

Arvanites

Arvanites are a population group in Greece who traditionally speak Arvanitika, a dialect of the Albanian language. They settled in Greece during the late Middle Ages and were the dominant population element of some regions of the Peloponnese and Attica until the 19th century...

in modern Albania and the Vlachs (Aromanians) in Thessaly and Pindus. Modern historians are divided as to whether the Albanians came to the area then (from Dacia

Dacia

In ancient geography, especially in Roman sources, Dacia was the land inhabited by the Dacians or Getae as they were known by the Greeks—the branch of the Thracians north of the Haemus range...

or Moesia) or originated from the native non-Romanized Thracian or Illyrian populations.

Also in the 11th century Byzantium settled several tens of thousand Turkic Christians from Asia Minor

Asia Minor

Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...

, referred to as "Vardariotes", along the lower course of the Vardar. Colonies of other Turkic tribes such as Uzes, Petchenegs, and Cumans were also introduced at various periods from the 11th to the 13th century. All these were eventually Hellenized or Bulgarized. Roma, migrating from north India reached the Balkans, including Macedonia, around the 14th century with some of them settling there. There were successive waves of Roma immigration in the 15th and the 16th century, too. (See also: Roma in the Republic of Macedonia

Roma in the Republic of Macedonia

The Roma constitute an ethnic group in the Republic of Macedonia. According to the last census from 2002, there were 53,879 persons counted as Roma, or 2.66% of the population. Another 3,843 persons have been counted as "Egyptians"...

)

In the 13th and the 14th century, Macedonia was contested by the Byzantine Empire, the Latin Empire

Latin Empire

The Latin Empire or Latin Empire of Constantinople is the name given by historians to the feudal Crusader state founded by the leaders of the Fourth Crusade on lands captured from the Byzantine Empire. It was established after the capture of Constantinople in 1204 and lasted until 1261...

, Bulgaria and Serbia but the frequent shift of borders did not result in any major population changes. In 1338, it was conquered by the Serbian Empire

Serbian Empire

The Serbian Empire was a short-lived medieval empire in the Balkans that emerged from the Serbian Kingdom. Stephen Uroš IV Dušan was crowned Emperor of Serbs and Greeks on 16 April, 1346, a title signifying a successorship to the Eastern Roman Empire...

, but after the Battle of Maritsa

Battle of Maritsa

The Battle of Maritsa, or Battle of Chernomen, took place at the Maritsa River near the village of Chernomen on September 26, 1371 between the forces of the Ottoman sultan Murad I's lieutenant Lala Şâhin Paşa and the...

in 1371 most of the Macedonian Serbian lords would accept supreme Ottoman rule. With Skopje seized by the Turks in 1392, most of Macedonia was formally annexed into Ottoman territory in 1395.

Muslims and Christians

The initial period of Ottoman rule led a depopulation of the plains and river valleys of Macedonia. The Christian population there fled to the mountains. Ottomans were largely brought from Asia Minor and settled parts of the region. Towns destroyed in Vardar Macedonia

Vardar Macedonia

Vardar Macedonia is an area in the north of the Macedonia . The borders of the area are those of the Republic of Macedonia. It covers an area of...

during the conquest were renewed, this time populated exclusively by Muslims. The Ottoman element in Macedonia was especially strong in the 17th and the 18th century with travellers defining the majority of the population, especially the urban one, as Muslim. The Ottoman population, however, sharply declined at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century on account of the incessant wars led by the Ottoman Empire, the low birth rate and the higher death toll of the frequent plague epidemics among Muslims than among Christians.

The Ottoman-Habsburg war (1683–1699), the subsequent flight of a substantial part of the Serbian population in Kosovo

Kosovo

Kosovo is a region in southeastern Europe. Part of the Ottoman Empire for more than five centuries, later the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia...

to Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

and the reprisals and looting during the Ottoman counteroffensive led to an influx of Albanian Muslims (then known as Turko-Albanians) into Kosovo, northern and northwestern Macedonia. Being in the position of power, the Turko-Albanian Muslims managed to push out their Christian neighbours and conquered additional territories in the 18th and the 19th centuries. Pressures from central government following the first Russo-Turkish war that ended in 1774 and in which Ottoman Greeks were implicated as a "fifth column" led to the a superficial islamization of several thousand Greek-speakers in western Macedonia, subsequently called Vallahades (possibly because the only Turkish-Arabic they ever bothered to learn was how to pronounce the Muslim profession of faith "wa-llahi" or "by Allah") by local Greek Orthodox Christians. The destruction and abandoning of the Christian Aromanian city of Moscopole

Moscopole

Moscopole was a cultural and commercial center of the Aromanians, and now a small municipality in Korçë District, modern southeastern Albania. At its peak, in the mid 18th century, it hosted the first printing press in the Balkans outside Istanbul, educational institutions and numerous churches...

and other important Aromanian settlements in the southern Albania (Epirus-Macedonia) region in the second half of the 18th century caused a large-scale migration of thousands of Aromanians to the cities and villages of Western Macedonia, most notably to Bitola

Bitola

Bitola is a city in the southwestern part of the Republic of Macedonia. The city is an administrative, cultural, industrial, commercial, and educational centre. It is located in the southern part of the Pelagonia valley, surrounded by the Baba and Nidže mountains, 14 km north of the...

, Krushevo and surrounding regions. Thessaloniki also became the home of a large Jewish population following Spain's expulsions of Jews after 1492. The Jews later formed small colonies in other Macedonian cities, most notably Bitola and Serres

Serres, Greece

Sérres is a city in Macedonia, Greece. It is situated in a fertile plain at an elevation of about 70 m, some 24 km northeast of the Strymon river and 69 km north-east of the Macedonian capital, Thessaloniki. The Rhodope Mountains rise to the north and east of the city...

The Hellenic Idea

The rise of European nationalism in the 18th century led to the expansion of the Hellenic

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

idea in Macedonia. Its main pillar throughout the centuries of Ottoman rule had been the indigenous Greek and Aromanian population of southern Macedonia. Under the influence of the Greek schools and the Patriarchate of Constantinople, however, it started to spread among the other orthodox subjects of the Empire as the urban Christian population of Slavic and Albanian origin started to view itself increasingly as Greek. The Greek language

Greek language

became a symbol of civilization and a basic means of communication between non-Muslims. The process of Hellenization was additionally reinforced after the abolition of the Bulgarian Archbishopric of Ohrid

Bulgarian Archbishopric of Ohrid

The Archbishopric of Ochrid was an autonomous Orthodox Church under the tutelage of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople between 1019 and 1767...

in 1767. Though with a predominantly Greek clergy, the Archbishopric did not yield to the direct order of Constantinople and had autonomy in many vital domains. The poverty of the Christian peasantry and the lack of proper schooling in villages preserved the linguistic diversity of the Macedonian countryside and averted the possibility of complete Hellenization of the region. The Hellenic idea reached its peak during the Greek War of Independence

Greek War of Independence

The Greek War of Independence, also known as the Greek Revolution was a successful war of independence waged by the Greek revolutionaries between...

(1821–1829) which received the active support of the Greek Macedonian population as part of their struggle for the resurrection of Greek statehood. According to the Istituto Geografiko de Agostini of Rome, in 1903 in the vilayets of Selanik and Monastir Greek was the dominant language of instruction in the region:

Language	Schools	Pupils
Greek	998	59,640
Bulgarian	561	18,311
Romanian	49	2,002
Serbian	53	1,674

The independence of the Greek kingdom, however, dealt a nearly fatal blow to the Hellenic idea in Macedonia. The flight of the Macedonian intelligentsia to independent Greece and the mass closures of Greek schools by the Ottoman authorities weakened the Hellenic presence in the region for a century ahead, until the incorporation of southern Macedonia into Greece following the Balkan Wars in 1913.

The Bulgarian idea

Most of the population of Macedonia were described as Bulgarians during 16th and 17th centuries by Ottoman historians and travellers such as Hoca Sadeddin Efendi

Hoca Sadeddin Efendi

Hoca Sadeddin Efendi was an Ottoman scholar, official, and historian, a teacher of Ottoman sultan Murad III . His name is transcribed differently: Sa'd ad-Din, Sa'd al-Din, Sa’adeddin, Sadeddin, etc...

, Mustafa Selaniki

Mustafa Selaniki

Mustafa Selaniki was a Turkish scholar and chronicler, whose Tarih-i Selâniki described the Ottoman Empire of 1563–1599.- See also :*Salonica...

, Hadji Khalfa and Evliya Celebi

Evliya Çelebi

Evliya Çelebi was an Ottoman traveler who journeyed through the territory of the Ottoman Empire and neighboring lands over a period of forty years.- Life :...

. The name meant, however, rather little in view of the political oppression by the Ottomans and the religious and cultural one by the Greek clergy. The Bulgarian language was preserved as a cultural medium only in a handful of monasteries, to rise in terms of social status for the ordinary Bulgarian usually meant the process of Hellenisation. The Slavonic liturgy was preserved on the lower levels of the Bulgarian Archbishopric of Ohrid

Bulgarian Archbishopric of Ohrid

The Archbishopric of Ochrid was an autonomous Orthodox Church under the tutelage of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople between 1019 and 1767...

for several centuries until its abolition in 1767.

The creator of the modern Bulgarian historiography, Petar Bogdan Bakshev in his first work "Description of the Bulgarian Kingdom" in 1640, mentioned the geographical and ethnic borders of Bulgaria and Bulgarian people including also "the greather part of Macedonia,...as far as Ohrid, up to the boundaries of Albania and Greece...". Hristofor Zhefarovich

Hristofor Zhefarovich

Hristofor Zhefarovich was an 18th-century painter, engraver, writer and poet and a notable proponent of Pan-Slavism.- Biography :Born at the end of the 17th century,...

, a Macedonia-born 18th-century painter, had a crucial influence on the Bulgarian National Revival

Bulgarian National Revival

The Bulgarian National Revival , sometimes called the Bulgarian Renaissance, was a period of socio-economic development and national integration among Bulgarian people under Ottoman rule...

and made a great impact on the entire Bulgarian heraldry

Heraldry

Heraldry is the profession, study, or art of creating, granting, and blazoning arms and ruling on questions of rank or protocol, as exercised by an officer of arms. Heraldry comes from Anglo-Norman herald, from the Germanic compound harja-waldaz, "army commander"...

of the 19th century, when it became most influential among all generations of Bulgarian enlighteners and revolutionaries and shaped the idea for a modern Bulgarian national symbol. In his testament, he explicitly noted that his relatives were "of Bulgarian nationality" and from Dojran

Dojran

Dojran was a city located on the western shore of Dojran Lake in the south-eastern part of the Republic of Macedonia. Today, it is collective name for two villages that exist on the territory of the ruined city: Nov Dojran and Star Dojran, which contains both old ruins and recent construction,...

.
Although the first literary work in Modern Bulgarian, History of Slav-Bulgarians

Istoriya Slavyanobolgarskaya

Istoriya Slavyanobolgarskaya is a book by Bulgarian scholar and clergyman Saint Paisius of Hilendar...

was written by a Macedonia born Bulgarian monk, Paisius of Hilendar

Paisius of Hilendar

Saint Paisius of Hilendar or Paisiy Hilendarski was a Bulgarian clergyman and a key Bulgarian National Revival figure. He is most famous for being the author of Istoriya Slavyanobolgarskaya, the second modern Bulgarian history after the work of Petar Bogdan Bakshev from 1667, “History of Bulgaria”...

as early as 1762, it took almost a century for the Bulgarian idea to regain ascendancy in the region. The Bulgarian advance in Macedonia in the 19th century was aided by the numerical superiority of the Bulgarians

Bulgarians

The Bulgarians are a South Slavic nation and ethnic group native to Bulgaria and neighbouring regions. Emigration has resulted in immigrant communities in a number of other countries.-History and ethnogenesis:...

after the decrease in the Turkish

Turkic peoples

The Turkic peoples are peoples residing in northern, central and western Asia, southern Siberia and northwestern China and parts of eastern Europe. They speak languages belonging to the Turkic language family. They share, to varying degrees, certain cultural traits and historical backgrounds...

population, as well as by their improved economic status. The Bulgarians of Macedonia took active part in the struggle for independent Bulgarian Patriarchate and Bulgarian schools.

The representatives of the intelligentsia wrote in a language which they called Bulgarian and strove for a more even representation of the local Bulgarian dialects spoken in Macedonia in formal Bulgarian. The autonomous Bulgarian Exarchate

Bulgarian Exarchate

The Bulgarian Exarchate was the official name of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church before its autocephaly was recognized by the Ecumenical See in 1945 and the Bulgarian Patriarchate was restored in 1953....

established in 1870 included northwestern Macedonia. After the overwhelming vote of the districts of Ohrid

Ohrid

Ohrid is a city on the eastern shore of Lake Ohrid in the Republic of Macedonia. It has about 42,000 inhabitants, making it the seventh largest city in the country. The city is the seat of Ohrid Municipality. Ohrid is notable for having once had 365 churches, one for each day of the year and has...

and Skopje

Skopje

Skopje is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Macedonia with about a third of the total population. It is the country's political, cultural, economic, and academic centre...

, it grew to include the whole of present-day Vardar

Vardar Macedonia

Vardar Macedonia is an area in the north of the Macedonia . The borders of the area are those of the Republic of Macedonia. It covers an area of...

and Pirin Macedonia in 1874. This process of Bulgarian national revival

Bulgarian National Revival

The Bulgarian National Revival , sometimes called the Bulgarian Renaissance, was a period of socio-economic development and national integration among Bulgarian people under Ottoman rule...

in Macedonia, however, was much less successful in southern Macedonia, which beside Slavs had compact Greek and Aromanian populations. The Hellenic idea and the Patriarchate of Constantinople preserved much of their earlier influence among the local Bulgarians and the arrival of the Bulgarian idea turned the region into a battlefield between Bulgarians owing allegiance to the Patriarchate and the Exarchate with division lines often separating family and kin.
European ethnographs and linguists until the Congress of Berlin

Congress of Berlin

The Congress of Berlin was a meeting of the European Great Powers' and the Ottoman Empire's leading statesmen in Berlin in 1878. In the wake of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, the meeting's aim was to reorganize the countries of the Balkans...

usually regarded the language of the Slavic population of Macedonia as Bulgarian. French scholars Ami Boué

Ami Boué

Ami Boué , Austrian geologist, was born at Hamburg, and received his early education there and in Geneva and Paris....

in 1840 and Guillaume Lejean in 1861, Germans August Heinrich Rudolf Griesebach in 1841, J. Hahn in 1858 and 1863, August Heinrich Petermann

August Heinrich Petermann

August Heinrich Petermann was a German cartographer.-Early years:Petermann was born in Bleicherode, Germany. When he was 14 years old he started grammar school in the nearby town of Nordhausen...

in 1869 and Heinrich Kiepert

Heinrich Kiepert

Heinrich Kiepert , German geographer, was born at Berlin as the son of a wealthy businessman.Already in his youth he traveled with his parents and had a particular interest in the geographic circumstances, which he carefully sketched...

in 1876, Slovak Pavel Jozef Safarik

Pavel Jozef Šafárik

Pavol Jozef Šafárik Pavol Jozef Šafárik (Safáry / Schaffáry/ Schafary/ Saf(f)arik / Šafarík/ Szafarzik, Czech Pavel Josef Šafařík, German Paul Joseph Schaffarik, Serbian Павле Јосиф Шафарик, Latin Paulus Josephus Schaffarik, Hungarian Pál József Saf(f)arik) Pavol Jozef Šafárik (Safáry /...

in 1842 and the Czechs J. Erben in 1868 and F. Brodaska in 1869, Englishmen James Wyld in 1877 and Georgina Muir Mackenzie and Adeline Paulina Irby in 1863, Serbians Davidovitch in 1848, Constant Desjardins in 1853 and Stefan I. Verković in 1860, Russians Viktor I. Grigorovič in 1848 Vinkenty Makushev and M.F. Mirkovitch in 1867, as well as Austrian Karl Sax in 1878 published ethnography or linguistic books, or travel notes, which defined the Slavic population of Macedonia as Bulgarian. Austrian doctor Josef Müller

Josef Müller

Josef Müller , also known as "Ochsensepp", was a German politician. He was a member of the resistance during World War II and afterwards one of the founders of the Christian Social Union...

published travel notes in 1844 where he regarded the Slavic population of Macedonia as Serbian. The region was further identified as predominantly Greek by French F. Bianconi in 1877 and by Englishman Edward Stanford

Edward Stanford

Edward Stanford was the founder of Stanford's Ltd now a duo of Map and book stores based in London, and Bristol, UK.-Biography:Born in 1827, and educated at the City of London School, Edward got into maps after being employed by Mr Trelawney Saunders, at his map and stationers. He became a partner...

in 1877. He maintained that the urban population of Macedonia was entirely Greek, whereas the peasantry was of mixed, Bulgarian-Greek origin and had Greek consciousness but had not yet mastered the Greek language.

The Macedonian Question

In Europe, the classic non-national states were the multi-ethnic empires such as the Ottoman Empire

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

, ruled by a Sultan

Sultan

Sultan is a title with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic language abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", "rulership", and "dictatorship", derived from the masdar سلطة , meaning "authority" or "power". Later, it came to be used as the title of certain rulers who...

and the population belonged to many ethnic groups, which spoke many languages. The idea of nation state was an increasing emphasis during the 19th century, on the ethnic and racial origins of the nations. The most noticeable characteristic was the degree to which nation states use the state as an instrument of national unity, in economic, social and cultural life. By the 19th century, the Ottomans had fallen well behind the rest of Europe in science, technology, and industry. By that time Bulgarians initiated a purposeful struggle against the Greek

Greeks

The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....

clerics. Bulgarian religious leaders had realised that any further struggle for the rights of the Bulgarians

Bulgarians

in the Ottoman Empire

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

could not succeed unless they managed to obtain at least some degree of autonomy from the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The foundation of the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870, which included most of Macedonia by a firman of Sultan Abdülaziz

Abdülâziz

Abdülaziz I or Abd Al-Aziz, His Imperial Majesty was the 32nd Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and reigned between 25 June 1861 and 30 May 1876...

was the direct result of the struggle of the Bulgarian Orthodox against the domination of the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople in the 1850s and 1860s.

Afterwards in 1876 the Bulgarians revolted in the April uprising

April Uprising

The April Uprising was an insurrection organised by the Bulgarians in the Ottoman Empire from April to May 1876, which indirectly resulted in the re-establishment of Bulgaria as an autonomous nation in 1878...

. The emergence of Bulgarian national sentiments was closely related to the re-establishment of the independent Bulgarian church. This rise of national awareness became known as the Bulgarian National Revival

Bulgarian National Revival

The Bulgarian National Revival , sometimes called the Bulgarian Renaissance, was a period of socio-economic development and national integration among Bulgarian people under Ottoman rule...

. However the uprising was crushed by the Ottomans. As result on the Constantinople Conference

Constantinople Conference

The 1876–1877 Constantinople Conference of the Great Powers was held in Constantinople from 23 December 1876 until 20 January 1877...

in 1876 the predominant Bulgarian character of the Slavs in Macedonia reflected in the borders of future autonomous Bulgaria as it was drawn there. The Great Powers eventually gave their consent to variant, which excluded southern Macedonia and Thrace

Thrace

, and denied Bulgaria access to the Aegean sea

Aegean Sea

The Aegean Sea[p] is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the southern Balkan and Anatolian peninsulas, i.e., between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey. In the north, it is connected to the Marmara Sea and Black Sea by the Dardanelles and Bosporus...

, but otherwise incorporated all other regions in the Ottoman Empire inhabited by Bulgarians. At the last minute, however, the Ottomans rejected the plan with the secret support of Britain. Having its reputation at stake, Russia had no other choice but to declare war on the Ottomans in April 1877. The Treaty of San Stefano

Treaty of San Stefano

The Preliminary Treaty of San Stefano was a treaty between Russia and the Ottoman Empire signed at the end of the Russo-Turkish War, 1877–78...

from 1878, which reflected the maximum desired by Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n expansionist policy, gave Bulgaria the whole of Macedonia except Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki

, the Chalcidice

Chalcidice

Chalkidiki, also Halkidiki, Chalcidice or Chalkidike , is a peninsula in northern Greece, and one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Central Macedonia. The autonomous Mount Athos region is part of the peninsula, but not of the regional unit...

peninsula and the valley of the Aliakmon.

The Congress of Berlin

Congress of Berlin

in the same year redistributed most Bulgarian territories that the previous treaty had given to the Principality of Bulgaria

Principality of Bulgaria

The Principality of Bulgaria was a self-governing entity created as a vassal of the Ottoman Empire by the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. The preliminary treaty of San Stefano between the Russian Empire and the Porte , on March 3, had originally proposed a significantly larger Bulgarian territory: its...

back to the Ottoman Empire. This included the whole of Macedonia. As result in late 1878, the Kresna-Razlog Uprising

Kresna-Razlog Uprising

The Kresna-Razlog Uprising was a Bulgarian uprising against the Ottoman rule, predominantly in the areas of Kresna and Razlog in the region of Pirin Macedonia in late 1878 and early 1879...

- an unsuccessful Bulgarian revolt against the Ottoman

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

rule in the region of Macedonia - broke out. However the decision taken at the Congress of Berlin

Congress of Berlin

soon turned the Macedonian Question into "the apple of constant discord" between Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria. The Bulgarian national revival

Bulgarian National Revival

The Bulgarian National Revival , sometimes called the Bulgarian Renaissance, was a period of socio-economic development and national integration among Bulgarian people under Ottoman rule...

in Macedonia was not unopposed. The Greeks and Serbs, too, had national ambitions in the region, and believed that these could be furthered by a policy of cultural and linguistic dissimilation of the Macedonian Slavs, to be achieved through educational and church propaganda. Nonetheless, by the 1870s the Bulgarians were clearly the dominant national party in Macedonia. It was widely anticipated that the Macedonian Slavs would continue to evolve as an integral part of the Bulgarian nation, and that, in the event of the Ottoman Empire

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

's demise, Macedonia would be included in a Bulgarian successor-state. That these anticipations proved false was due not to any intrinsic peculiarities of the Macedonian Slavs, setting them apart from the Bulgarians, but to a series of catastrophic events, which, over a period of seventy years, diverted the course of Macedonian history away from its presumed trend.

Serbian propaganda

19th century Serbian nationalism viewed Serbs as the people chosen to lead and unite all southern Slavs into one country, Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

(the country of the southern Slavs). The conscience of the peripheral parts of Serbian nation grew, therefore the officials and the wide circles of population considered the Macedonians as "Southern Serbs", Bosniaks as "Islamized Serbs", and Shtokavian speaking part of today's Croatian population as "Catholic Serbs". Generally, the Macedonian Slavs were considered Serbs, although some more liberal scholars defined the southern portion of Macedonian people as independent and different from both Serbs and Bulgarians. But, the basic interests of Serbian state policy was directed to the liberation of the Ottoman regions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo; whilst Macedonia and Vojvodina should be "liberated later".

The Congress of Berlin of 1878, which granted Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina , sometimes called Bosnia-Herzegovina or simply Bosnia, is a country in Southern Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula. Bordered by Croatia to the north, west and south, Serbia to the east, and Montenegro to the southeast, Bosnia and Herzegovina is almost landlocked, except for the...

to Austro-Hungarian

Austria-Hungary

Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...

occupation and administration whilst nominally Ottoman, redirected Serbia’s ambitions to Macedonia and a propaganda campaign was launched at home and abroad to prove the Serbian character of the region. A great contribution to the Serbian cause was made by Croat astronomer and historian Spiridon Gopčević

Spiridon Gopcevic

Spiridon Gopčević or Leo Brenner was a Serbian-Austrian astronomer and historian born in Trieste.His father, also named Spiridon, was a great shipowner in Trieste , but had originated from the village of Podi near Herceg Novi in Boka Kotorska in present-day Montenegro...

(also known as Leo Brenner). Gopčević published in 1889 the ethnographic research Macedonia and Old Serbia, which defined more than three-quarters of the Macedonian population as Serbian. The population of Kosovo and northern Albania was identified as Serbian or Albanian of Serbian origin (Albanized Serbs, called "Arnauts") and the Greeks along the Aliákmon as Greeks of Serbian origin (Hellenized Serbs).

The work of Gopčević was further developed by two Serbian scholars, geographer Jovan Cvijić

Jovan Cvijic

Jovan Cvijić was a Serbian geographer, president of the Serbian Royal Academy of Sciences, and rector of the University of Belgrade. A world-renowned scientist, Cvijić is considered the founder of geography in Serbia.-Early life and family:Jovan Cvijić was born on October 11 Jovan Cvijić...

and linguist Aleksandar Belić. Less extreme than Gopčević, Cvijić and Belić claimed only the Slavs of northern Macedonia were Serbian whereas those of southern Macedonia were identified as "Macedonian Slavs", an amorphous Slavic mass that was neither Bulgarian, nor Serbian but could turn out either Bulgarian or Serbian if the respective people were to rule the region. The only Slavs in Macedonia which were referred to as Bulgarian were those living along the Strymon (Struma) and Nestos (Mesta) rivers, i.e., present-day Pirin Macedonia and parts of northeastern Greece. Cvijić further argued that the name Bugari (Bulgarians) used by the Slavic population of Macedonia to refer to themselves actually meant only ‘rayah’ – peasant Christians – and in no case affiliations to the Bulgarian ethnicity.

Greek propaganda

It was established by the end of the 19th century that the majority of the population of central and Southern Macedonia (vilaets of Monastiri and Thessaloniki) were predominantly an ethnic Greek population, while the Northern parts of the region (vilaet of Skopje

Skopje

Skopje is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Macedonia with about a third of the total population. It is the country's political, cultural, economic, and academic centre...

) were predominantly Slavic. Jews and Ottoman communities were scattered all over. Because of Macedonia's such polyethnic nature, the arguments which Greece used to promote its claim to the whole region were usually of historical and religious character. The Greeks consistently linked nationality to the allegiance to the Patriarchate of Constantinople

Constantinople

. "Bulgarophone", "Albanophone" and "Vlachophone" Greeks were coined to describe the population who were Slavic, Albanian or Vlach

Vlachs

Vlach is a blanket term covering several modern Latin peoples descending from the Latinised population in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. English variations on the name include: Walla, Wlachs, Wallachs, Vlahs, Olahs or Ulahs...

(Aromanian

Aromanian language

Aromanian , also known as Macedo-Romanian, Arumanian or Vlach is an Eastern Romance language spoken in Southeastern Europe...

)-speaking. There was also pressure on Aromanians to become linguistically dissimilated from the 18th century, when dissimilation efforts were encouraged by the Greek missionary Cosmas of Aetolia (1714–1779) who taught that Aromanians should speak Greek because as he said "it's the language of our Church" and established over 100 Greek schools in northern and western Greece. The offensive of the clergy against the use of Aromanian was by no means limited to religious issues but was a tool devised in order to convince the non-Greek speakers to abandon what they regarded as a "worthless" idiom and adopt the superior Greek speech: "There we are Metsovian brothers, together with those who are fooling themselves with this sordid and vile Aromanian language... forgive me for calling it a language", "repulsive speech with a disgusting diction".

As with the Serbian and Bulgarian propaganda efforts, the Greek one initially also concentrated on education. Greek schools in Macedonia at the turn of the 20th century totalled 927 with 1,397 teachers and 57,607 pupils. As from the 1890s, Greece also started sending armed guerrilla groups to Macedonia (see Greek Struggle for Macedonia

Greek Struggle for Macedonia

The Macedonian Struggle was a series of social, political, cultural and military conflicts between Greeks and Bulgarians in the region of Ottoman Macedonia between 1904 and 1908...

) especially after the death of Pavlos Melas

Pavlos Melas

Pavlos Melas was an officer of the Hellenic Army, and he was among the first who organized and participated in the Greek Struggle for Macedonia....

, which fought the detachments of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO).

The Greek cause predominated in southern Macedonia where it was supported by the native Greeks and by a substantial part of the Slavic and Aromanian populations. Support for the Greeks was much less pronounced in central Macedonia, coming only from a fraction of the local Aromanians and Slavs; in the northern parts of the region it was almost non-existent.

Bulgarian propaganda

The Bulgarian idea made a remarkable comeback in the 1890s with regard to both education and armed resistance. At the turn of the 20th century there were 785 Bulgarian schools in Macedonia with 1,250 teachers and 39,892 pupils. The Bulgarian Exarchate held jurisdiction over seven dioceses (Skopje

Skopje

Skopje is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Macedonia with about a third of the total population. It is the country's political, cultural, economic, and academic centre...

, Debar

Debar

Debar is a city in the western part of the Republic of Macedonia, near the border with Albania, on the road from Struga to Gostivar. It is the seat of Debar Municipality.-Geography:...

, Ohrid

Ohrid

, Bitola

Bitola

, Nevrokop, Veles

Veles (city)

Veles is a city in the center of the Republic of Macedonia on the Vardar river. The city of Veles is the seat of Veles Municipality.-Name:The city's name was Vylosa in Ancient Greek and before the Balkan Wars, it was a township with the name Köprülü in the Üsküp sandjak, Ottoman empire for 600...

and Strumica

Strumica

Strumica is the largest city in eastern Macedonia, near the Novo Selo-Petrich border crossing with Bulgaria. About 100,000 people live in the region surrounding the city. The city is named after the Strumica River which runs through it...

), i.e., the whole of Vardar and Pirin Macedonia and some of southern Macedonia. The Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committee (BMARC), which was founded in 1893 as the only guerilla organization established by locals, quickly developed a wide network of committees and agents turning into a "state within the state" in much of Macedonia. The organization changed its name on several occasions, settling to IMRO in 1920. IMRO fought not only against the Ottoman authorities, but also against the pro-Serbian and pro-Greek parties in Macedonia, terrorising the population supporting them.

The failure of the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising

Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising

The Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising or simply the Ilinden Uprising of August 1903 |Macedonia]] affected most of the central and southwestern parts of the Monastir Vilayet receiving the support mainly of the local Bulgarian peasants and to some extent of the Aromanian population of the region...

in 1903 signified a second weakening of the Bulgarian cause resulting in closure of schools and a new wave of emigration to Bulgaria. IMRO was also weakened and the number of Serbian and Greek guerilla groups in Macedonia substantially increased. The Exarchate lost the dioceses of Skopje and Debar to the Serbian Patriarchate in 1902 and 1910, respectively. Despite this, the Bulgarian cause preserved its dominant position in central and northern Macedonia and was also strong in southern Macedonia.

The independence of Bulgaria in 1908 had the same effect on the Bulgarian idea in Macedonia as the independence of Greece to the Hellenic a century earlier. The consequences were closure of schools, expelling of priests of the Bulgarian Exarchate and emigration of the majority of the young Macedonian intelligentsia. This first emigration triggered a constant trickle of Macedonian-born refugees and emigrants to Bulgaria. Their number stood at ca. 100,000 by 1912.

Slav Macedonian propaganda

Further info: Macedonian nationalism

Macedonian nationalism

Macedonian nationalism is a term referring to the ethnic Macedonian version of nationalism.-Late 19th century beginning:The development of the Macedonian ethnicity can be said to have begun in the late 19th and early 20th century. This is the time of the first expressions of ethnic nationalism by...

The Slav Macedonian

Macedonians (ethnic group)

The Macedonians also referred to as Macedonian Slavs: "... the term Slavomacedonian was introduced and was accepted by the community itself, which at the time had a much more widespread non-Greek Macedonian ethnic consciousness...

ideology during the second half of 19th century was at its inception. One of the first preserved accounts is an article The Macedonian question by Petko Slavejkov, published on 18 January 1871 in the "Macedonia" newspaper in Constantinople

Constantinople

. In 1880, Gjorgi Pulevski

Gjorgi Pulevski

His next published works were a revolutionary poem, Samovila Makedonska published in 1878, and a Macedonian Song Book in two volumes, published in 1879 in Belgrade, which contained both folk songs collected by Pulevski and some original poems by himself.In 1880, Pulevski published...

published Slognica Rechovska in Sofia

Sofia

Sofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria and the 12th largest city in the European Union with a population of 1.27 million people. It is located in western Bulgaria, at the foot of Mount Vitosha and approximately at the centre of the Balkan Peninsula.Prehistoric settlements were excavated...

as an attempt at a grammar of the language of the Slavs who lived in Macedonia. Although he had no formal education, Pulevski published several other books, including three dictionaries and a collection of songs from Macedonia, customs, and holidays. In 1888, Kuzman Shapkarev

Kuzman Shapkarev

Kuzman Anastasov Shapkarev, , was a Bulgarian folklorist, ethnographer and scientist from Macedonia, author of textbooks and ethnographic studies and a significant figure of the Bulgarian National Revival. He is considered an ethnic Macedonian in the Republic of Macedonia.- Biography :Kuzman...

wrote to Marin Drinov

Marin Drinov

Professor Marin Stoyanov Drinov was a Bulgarian historian and philologist from the National Revival period who lived and worked in Russia through most of his life...

with regard to the usage of the words Macedonian and Bulgarian:

"But even stranger is the name Macedontsi, which was imposed on us only 10 to 15 years ago by outsiders, and not as something by our own intellectuals.... Yet the people in Macedonia know nothing of that ancient name, reintroduced today with a cunning aim on the one hand and a stupid one on the other. They know the older word: Bugari, although mispronounced: they have even adopted it as peculiarly theirs, inapplicable to other Bulgarians".

The first significant manifestation of Slav Macedonian nationalism was the book За Македонските Работи (Za Makedonckite Raboti - On Macedonian Matters, Sofia, 1903) by Krste Misirkov

Krste Misirkov

Krste Petkov Misirkov was a philologist, slavist, historian, ethnographer, publicist author of the first book and scientific magazine in Macedonian, where he for the first time outlined the principles of the literary Macedonian language...

. In the book Misirkov advocated that the Slavs of Macedonia should take a separate way from the Bulgarians and the Bulgarian language. Misirkov considered that the term "Macedonian" should be used to define the whole Slavic population of Macedonia, obliterating the existing division between Greeks, Bulgarians and Serbians. The adoption of a separate "Macedonian language" was also advocated as a means of unification of the Ethnic Macedonians with Serbian, Bulgarian and Greek consciousness. On Macedonian Matters was written in the South Slavic

South Slavic languages

The South Slavic languages comprise one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches by a belt of German, Hungarian and Romanian speakers...

dialect spoken in central Bitola-Prilep

Prilep

Prilep is the fourth largest city in the Republic of Macedonia. It has a population of 66,246 citizens. Prilep is known as "the city under Marko's Towers" because of its proximity to the towers of Prince Marko.-Name:...

. This dialect was proposed by Misirkov as the basis for the future language, and, as Misirkov says, a dialect which is most different from all other neighboring languages (as the eastern dialect was too close to Bulgarian and the northern one too close to Serbian). Misirkov calls this language Macedonian.

While Misirkov talked about the Macedonian consciousness and the Macedonian language as a future goal, he described the wider region of Macedonia in the early 20th century as inhabited by Bulgarians, Greeks, Serbs, Turks, Albanians, Aromanians, and Jews. As regards to the Ethnic Macedonians themselves, Misirkov maintained that they had called themselves Bulgarians until the publication of the book and were always called Bulgarians by independent observers until 1878 when the Serbian views also started to get recognition. Misirkov rejected the ideas in On Macedonian Matters later and turned into a staunch advocate of the Bulgarian cause - only to return to the (Slav) Macedonian idea again in the 1920s. http://www.promacedonia.org/misirkov.html

Another prominent activist for the ethnic Macedonian national revival was Dimitrija Čupovski, who was one of the founders and the president of the Macedonian Literary Society

Macedonian Literary Society

The Macedonian Scientific and Literary Society, sometimes called as Slavic-Macedonian Scholarly and Literary Society was an organization of the Macedonians in Russia...

established in Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

in 1902. During the 1913-18 period, Čupovski published the newspaper Makedonski Golos (Македонскi Голосъ) (meaning Macedonian voice) in which he and fellow members of the Petersburg Macedonian Colony propagandized the existence of a separate Macedonian people different from Greeks, Bulgarians and Serbs, and were struggling for popularizing the idea for an independent Macedonian state.

Following the Second Balkan War

Second Balkan War

The Second Balkan War was a conflict which broke out when Bulgaria, dissatisfied with its share of the spoils of the First Balkan War, attacked its former allies, Serbia and Greece, on 29 June 1913. Bulgaria had a prewar agreement about the division of region of Macedonia...

in 1913, the partition of Macedonia among three entities who had taken part in the battle (Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria) placed today's territory within the Kingdom of Serbia

Kingdom of Serbia

The Kingdom of Serbia was created when Prince Milan Obrenović, ruler of the Principality of Serbia, was crowned King in 1882. The Principality of Serbia was ruled by the Karađorđevic dynasty from 1817 onwards . The Principality, suzerain to the Porte, had expelled all Ottoman troops by 1867, de...

. Serbian rule ensured that all Slav Macedonian symbolism and identity were henceforth proscribed, and only standard Serbian was permitted to be spoken by the locals of Macedonia. In addition, Serbia did not refer to its southern land as Macedonia, a legacy which remains in place today among Serbian nationalists (e.g. the Serbian Radical Party

Serbian Radical Party

The Serbian Radical Party is a far-right Serbian nationalist political party in Serbia, founded in 1991. Currently the second-largest party in the Serbian National Assembly, it has branches in three of the nations that currently border Serbia – all former federal republics of Yugoslavia...

).

The ideas of Misirkov, Pulevski and other ethnic Macedonian Slavs would remain largely unnoticed until the 1940s when they were adopted by the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia influencing the codification of the Macedonian language. Claims of present-day historians from the former Yugoslav Socialist Republic of Macedonia

Socialist Republic of Macedonia

The Socialist Republic of Macedonia was a socialist state that was a constituent country of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia...

that the "Autonomists" in IMRO who defended a Macedonian position are largely ungrounded. IMRO regarded itself - and was regarded by the Ottoman authorities, the Greek guerrilla groups, the contemporary press in Europe and even by Misirkov -as an exclusively Bulgarian organization. The present-day historians from the Republic of Macedonia claim that IMRO was split into two factions: the first aimed an ethnic Macedonian state, and the second believed in a Macedonia as a part of wider Bulgarian entity.

Romanian propaganda

Attempts at Romanian propaganda among the Aromanian population of Macedonia began in early 19th century and were based manly on linguistic criteria, as well as the claim of a common Thraco-Roman

Thraco-Roman

The terms Thraco-Roman and Daco-Roman refer to the culture and language of the Thracian and Dacian peoples who were incorporated into the Roman Empire and ultimately fell under the Roman and Latin sphere of influence.-Meaning and usage:...

origin of Romanians

Romanians

The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....

(Daco-Romanians) and Aromanians (Macedo-Romanians), the two most numerous Vlach populations. The first Romanian

Romanian language

Vlach school was, however, established in 1864 in Macedonia. The total number of schools grew to 93 at the beginning of the 20th century. Though the Romanian propaganda made some success in Bitola, Kruševo, and in the Aromanian villages in the districts of Bitola and Ohrid. Macedonian Aromanians regarded themselves as a separate ethnic group, and Romanians view such nations as subgroups of a wider Vlach ethnicity.

Independent point of view

Independent sources in Europe between 1878 and 1918 generally tended to view the Slavic population of Macedonia in two ways: as Bulgarians and as Macedonian Slavs. German scholar Gustav Weigand

Gustav Weigand

Gustav Weigand , was a German linguist and specialist in Balkan languages, especially Rumanian and Aromanian. He is known for his seminal contributions to the dialectology of the Romance languages of the Balkans and to the study of the relationships between the languages of the Balkan...

was one of the most prominent representatives of the first trend with the books Ethnography of Macedonia (1924, written 1919) and partially with The Aromanians (1905). The author described all ethnic groups living in Macedonia, showed empirically the close connection between the western Bulgarian dialects and the Macedonian dialects and defined the latter as Bulgarian. The International Commission constituted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is a foreign-policy think tank based in Washington, D.C. The organization describes itself as being dedicated to advancing cooperation between nations and promoting active international engagement by the United States...

in 1913 to inquire into causes and conduct of the Balkan Wars

Balkan Wars

The Balkan Wars were two conflicts that took place in the Balkans in south-eastern Europe in 1912 and 1913.By the early 20th century, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia, the countries of the Balkan League, had achieved their independence from the Ottoman Empire, but large parts of their ethnic...

also talked about the Slavs of Macedonia as about Bulgarians in its report published in 1914. The Commission had eight members from Great Britain, France, Austria-Hungary

Austria-Hungary

, Germany, Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

and the United States.

The term "Macedonian Slavs" was used by scholars and publicists in three general meanings:

as a politically convenient term to define the Slavs of Macedonia without offending Serbian and Bulgarian nationalism;
as a distinct group of Slavs different from both Serbs and Bulgarians, yet closer to the Bulgarians and having predominantly Bulgarian ethnical and political affinities;
as a distinct group of Slavs different from both Serbs and Bulgarians having no developed national consciousness and no fast ethnical and political affinities (the definition of Cvijic).

An instance of the use of the first meaning of the term was, for example, the ethnographic map of the Slavic peoples published in (1890) by Russian scholar Zarjanko, which identified the Slavs of Macedonia as Bulgarians. Following an official protest from Serbia the map was later reprinted identifying them under the politically correct name "Macedonian Slavs".

The term was used in a completely different sense by British journalist Henry Brailsford in Macedonia, its races and their future (1906). The book contains Brailford's impressions from a five-month stay in Macedonia shortly after the suppression of the Ilinden Uprising and represents an ethnographic report. Brailford defines the dialect of Macedonia as neither Serbian, nor Bulgarian, yet closer to the second one. An opinion is delivered that any Slavic nation could "win" Macedonia if it is to use the needed tact and resources, yet it is claimed that the Bulgarians have already done that. Brailsford uses synonymously the terms "Macedonian Slavs" and "Bulgarians", the "Slavic language" and the "Bulgarian language". The chapter on the Macedonians Slavs/the Bulgarians is titled the "Bulgarian movement", the IMRO activists are called "Bulgarophile Macedonians".

The third use of the term can be noted among scholars from the allied countries (above all France and the United Kingdom) after 1915 and is roughly equal to the definition given by Cvijic (see above).

According to Edmund Spencer:

"The inhabitants are for the most part composed of Rayahs, a mixed race of Greeks, Bulgarians and Serbians, who, it cannot be doubted, would join to the man their brethren in faith of Serbia and Upper Moesia. It must therefore be evident that the great danger to be apprehended to the rule of the Osmanli in these provinces, is the successful inroad of the Serbian nationality into Macedonia; with this people they have the tradition of right, and their former greatness, aided by the powerful ties of race and creed"

Development of the name "Macedonian Slavs"

The name "Macedonian Slavs" started to appear in publications at the end of the 1880s and the beginning of the 1890s. Though the successes of the Serbian propaganda effort had proved that the Slavic population of Macedonia was not only Bulgarian, they still failed to convince that this population was, in fact, Serbian. Rarely used until the end of the 19th century compared to ‘Bulgarians’, the term ‘Macedonian Slavs’ served more to conceal rather than define the national character of the population of Macedonia. Scholars resorted to it usually as a result of Serbian pressure or used it as a general term for the Slavs inhabiting Macedonia regardless of their ethnic affinities. The Serbian politician Stojan Novaković proposed in 1887 employing the Macedonistic ideas as they means to counteract the Bulgarian influence in Macedonia, thereby promoting Serbian interests in the region.

However, by the beginning of the 20th century, the continued Serbian propaganda effort and especially the work of Cvijic

Cvijic

Cvijić is a Serbian surname, and may refer to:* Jovan Cvijić , Serbian geographer* Srđan Cvijić , Serbian political scientist...

had managed to firmly entrench the concept of the Macedonian Slavs in European public opinion, and the name was used almost as frequently as ‘Bulgarians’. Even pro-Bulgarian researchers such as H. Henry Brailsford and N. Forbes argued that the Macedonian Slavs differed from both Bulgarians and Serbs. Practically all scholars before 1915, however, including strongly pro-Serbian ones such as Robert William Seton-Watson

Robert William Seton-Watson

Robert William Seton-Watson , commonly referred to as R.W. Seton-Watson, and also known by the pseudonym Scotus Viator, was a British political activist and historian who played an active role in encouraging the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the emergence of Czechoslovakia and...

, admitted that the affinities of the majority of them lay with the Bulgarian cause and the Bulgarians and classified them as such. Even in 1914 the Carnegie Commission report states that the Serbs and Greeks classified the Slavs of Macedonia as a distinct group "Slav-Macedonians" for political purposes and this term is "political euphemism designed to conceal the existence of Bulgarians in Macedonia".

Bulgaria's entry into World War I on the side of the Central Powers

Central Powers

The Central Powers were one of the two warring factions in World War I , composed of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria...

signified a dramatic shift in the way European public opinion viewed the Slavic population of Macedonia. For the Central Powers the Slavs of Macedonia became nothing but Bulgarians, whereas for the Allies

Allies of World War I

The Entente Powers were the countries at war with the Central Powers during World War I. The members of the Triple Entente were the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire; Italy entered the war on their side in 1915...

they turned into anything other than Bulgarians. The ultimate victory of the Allies in 1918 led to the victory of the vision of the Slavic population of Macedonia as Macedonian Slavs, an amorphous Slavic mass without a developed national consciousness.

During the 1920s the Comintern

Comintern

The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...

developed a new policy for the Balkans, about collaboration between the communists and the Macedonian movement, and the creation of a united Macedonian movement. The idea for a new unified organization was supported by the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, which saw a chance of using this well developed revolutionary movement to spread revolution in the Balkans and destabilize the Balkan monarchies. In the so-called May Manifesto of 6 May 1924, for the first time the objectives of the unified Slav Macedonian liberation movement were presented: independence and unification of partitioned Macedonia, fighting all the neighbouring Balkan monarchies, forming a Balkan Communist Federation

Balkan Communist Federation

The Balkan Federation was a project about the creation of a Balkan federation or confederation, based mainly on left political ideas.The concept of a Balkan federation emerged at the late 19th century from among left political forces in the region...

and cooperation with the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

.

Later the Comintern published a resolution about the recognition of Macedonian ethnicity. The text of this document was prepared in the period December 20, 1933 – January 7, 1934, by the Balkan Secretariat of the Comintern. It was accepted by the Political Secretariat in Moscow on January 11, 1934, and approved by the Executive Committee of the Comintern. The Resolution was published for the first time in the April issue of Makedonsko Delo under the title ‘The Situation in Macedonia and the Tasks of IMRO (United)’.

The missing national consciousness

What stood behind the difficulties to properly define the nationality of the Slavic population of Macedonia was the apparent levity with which this population regarded it. The existence of a separate Macedonian national consciousness prior to the 1940s is disputed. This confusion is illustrated by Robert Newman in 1935, who recounts discovering in a village in Vardar Macedonia

Vardar Macedonia

Vardar Macedonia is an area in the north of the Macedonia . The borders of the area are those of the Republic of Macedonia. It covers an area of...

two brothers, one who considered himself a Serb, and the other considered himself a Bulgarian. In another village he met a man who had been, "a Macedonian peasant all his life", but who had varyingly been called a Turk, a Serb and a Bulgarian. However anti-Serban and pro-Bulgarian feelings among the local population at this period prevailed.

Nationality in early 20th century Macedonia was a matter of political convictions and financial benefits, of what was considered politically correct at the specific time and of which armed guerrilla group happened to visit the respondent's home last. The process of Hellenization at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century affected only a limited stratum of the population, the Bulgarian Revival in the middle of the 19th century was too short to form a solid Bulgarian consciousness, the financial benefits given by the Serbian propaganda were too tempting to be declined. It was not a rare occurrence for whole villages to switch their nationality from Greek to Bulgarian and then to Serbian within a few years or to be Bulgarian in the presence of a Bulgarian commercial agent and Serbian in the presence of a Serbian consul. On several occasions peasants were reported to have answered in the affirmative when asked if they were Bulgarians and again in the affirmative when asked if they were Serbs. Though this certainly cannot be valid for the whole population, many Russian and Western diplomats and travelers defined Macedonians as lacking a "proper" national consciousness.

Statistical data

The basis of the Ottoman censuses was the millet system

Millet (Ottoman Empire)

Millet is a term for the confessional communities in the Ottoman Empire. It refers to the separate legal courts pertaining to "personal law" under which communities were allowed to rule themselves under their own system...

. People were assigned to ethnic categories according to religious affiliation. So all Sunni Muslims were categorised as Turks, all members of Greek Orthodox church as Greeks, while rest being divided between Bulgarian and Serb Orthodox churches.

Ottoman census of Hilmi Pasha (1904)

Region	Greeks	Bulgarians
1. Vilayet of Salonica Salonika Province, Ottoman Empire The Vilayet of Salonica was an Ottoman province from 1867 to 1912. In the late 19th century it reportedly had an area of .The vilayet was bounded by the Principality , of Bulgaria on the north; Eastern Rumelia on the northeast ; Edirne Vilayet on the east; the Aegean Sea on the south; Monastir...	373,227	177,317
2. Vilayet of Monastir Monastir Province, Ottoman Empire The Vilayet of Monastir was an Ottoman vilayet, created in 1864. The Monastir Vilayet was occupied during the First Balkan War in 1912 and later divided between Principality of Albania, Kingdom of Greece and Kingdom of Serbia.- Demographics :...	261,283	178,412
3. Sanjak Sanjak Sanjaks were administrative divisions of the Ottoman Empire. Sanjak, and the variant spellings sandjak, sanjaq, and sinjaq, are English transliterations of the Turkish word sancak, meaning district, banner, or flag... of Skopje Skopje Skopje is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Macedonia with about a third of the total population. It is the country's political, cultural, economic, and academic centre... (part of the Vilayet of Kosovo Kosovo Province, Ottoman Empire The Vilayet of Kosovo was a vilayet of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkan Peninsula which included the current territory of Kosovo and the western part of the Republic of Macedonia... )	13,452	172,735

Ottoman census of Hilmi Pasha for the region of Macedonia (1906)

Muslims (Turks and Albanians)	423,000 (41.71%)
Greeks	259,000 (27.30%)
Bulgarians	178,000 (18.81%)
Serbs	13,150 (1.39%)
Others	73,000 (7.72%)

Rival statistical data

Name	Nationality	Greeks	Bulgarians	Serbs	Remarks
1. Spiridon Goptchevitch	Serbia	201,140	57,600	2,048,320	Refers to Macedonia and Old Serbia (Kosovo and Sanjak)
2. Cleanthes Nicolaides	Greece	454,700	656,300	576,600	---
3. Vasil Kantchoff	Bulgaria	225,152	1,184,036	700	---
4. M. Brancoff	Bulgaria	190,047	1,172,136	---	---

Todor Simovski, writing in 1972, estimated the population of the area as slightly over one million people, of which more than 360,000 were Slavs – whose allegiance was claimed by Bulgarian, Serbian and Macedonian nationalists – and just over 250,000 were Greeks. The remaining population was principally composed of Albanians, Jews, Roma, Turks and Vlachs

Vlachs

Encyclopaedia Britannica

The 1911 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica gave the following statistical estimates about the population of Macedonia:

Bulgarians (described in encyclopaedia as "Slavs, the bulk of which is regarded by almost all independent sources as Bulgarians", a statement referring to the controversy between Bulgaria and Serbia as to the national affinities of the Slavs of Macedonia): ca. 1,150,000, whereof, 1,000,000 Orthodox and 150,000 Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...

s (called Pomaks
Pomaks
Pomaks is a term used for a Slavic Muslim population native to some parts of Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, the Republic of Macedonia, Albania and Kosovo. The Pomaks speak Bulgarian as their native language, also referred to in Greece and Turkey as Pomak language, and some are fluent in Turkish,...

)
Turks: ca. 500,000 (Muslims)
Greeks: ca. 250,000, whereof ca. 240,000 Orthodox and 14,000 Muslims
Albanians: ca. 120,000, whereof 10,000 Orthodox and 110,000 Muslims
Vlachs: ca. 90,000 Orthodox and 3,000 Muslims
Jews: ca. 75,000
Roma: ca. 50,000, whereof 35,000 Orthodox and 15,000 Muslims

In total 1,300,000 Christians (almost exclusively Orthodox), 800,000 Muslims, 75,000 Jews, a total population of ca. 2,200,000 for the whole of Macedonia.

It needs to be taken into account that part of the Slavic-speaking population in southern Macedonia regarded itself as ethnically Greek and a smaller percentage, mostly in northern Macedonia, as Serbian. All Muslims (except the Albanians) tended to view themselves and were viewed as Turks, irrespective of their mother tongue.

Sample statistical data from neutral sources

The following data reflects the population of the wider region of Macedonia as it was defined by Serbs and Bulgarians (Aegean, Vardar and Pirin), which was significantly larger than the traditional region known to the Greeks.

Name	Nationality	Population total	Bulgarians	Greeks	Turks	Albanians	Remarks
1. Prince Tcherkasky 1877	Russia	1,771,220(100%)	872,700(49,3%)	124,250(7%)	516,220(29,1%)	---	All Muslims incl. Albanians under Turks
2. Official Turkish Statistic Ethnicity of Macedonia Philippopoli 1881	Turkey	754,353(100%)	500,554(66,4%)	22,892(3%)	185,535(24,6%)	---	All Muslims incl. Albanians under Turks
3. Stepan Verkovitch 1889	Serbia	1,949,043(100%)	1,317,131(67,6%)	222,740(11,4%)	240,264(12,3%)	78,790(4%)	---
4. Prof. G. Wiegland - Die Nationalen Bestrebungen der Balkansvölker. Leipzig 1898	Germany	2,275,000(100%)	1,200,000(52,7%)	220,000(9,7%)	695,000(30,5%)	---	All Muslims incl. Albanians under Turks
5. Von der Golts - "Balkanwirren und ihre grunde" 1904	Germany	---	266,000	580,000	730,000	---	All Muslims incl. Albanians under Turks
6. Journal "Le Temps" Paris 1905	France	2,782,000(100%)	1,200,000(43,1%)	270,000(9,7%)	410,000(14,7%)	600,000(21,6%)	Refers to Macedonia and Old Serbia (Kosovo and Sanjak)
7. Richard von Mach - Der Machtbereich des bulgarischen Exarchats in der Türkei. Leipzig - Neuchatel, 1906	Germany	1,334,827(100%)	1,166,070(87,4%)	95,005(7,1%)	---	6,036(0,5%)	Only Christian population
8. Amadore Virgilli "La questiona roma rumeliota" 1907	Italy	---	341,000	642,000	646,000	---	All Muslims incl. Albanians under Turks; Refers only to the vilyets of Thessaloniki Thessaloniki Thessaloniki , historically also known as Thessalonica, Salonika or Salonica, is the second-largest city in Greece and the capital of the region of Central Macedonia as well as the capital of the Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace... and Monastir (Bitola)
9. Robert Pelletier - La verite sur la Bulgarie. Paris 1913	France	1,437,000	1,172,000	190,000	---	3,036	only Christian population
10. Leon Dominian - The frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe. New York 1917	USA	1,438,084	1,172,136	190,047	---	---	Only Christian population

After the great population exchanges of the 1920s, 380,000 Turks left Greece and 538,253 Greeks came to Macedonia from Asia Minor. After the signing of the treaty of Neuilly in 1919, Greece and Bulgaria agreed on a population exchange on the remaining Bulgarian minority in Macedonia. In the same year some 66,000 Bulgarians and other Slavophones left to Bulgaria and Serbia, while 58709 Greeks entered Greece from Bulgaria

Statistical data of Greek Macedonia

Professor Richard Gillespie stated that according to the League of Nations

League of Nations

The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...

in 1926 the inhabitants of the Greek Macedonia were Greeks (88.8%) and Bulgarians or Slavophones (5%).

According to A.Angelopoulos, published in the Journal of Balkan Studies, Greek Macedonia's national makeup in 1913 was 44.2% Greek, 38.9% Muslim, 8.7% Bulgarian and 8.2% others.

20th century

The Balkan Wars

Balkan Wars

(1912–1913) and World War I (1914–1918) left the region of Macedonia divided between Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Albania and resulted in significant changes in its ethnic composition.

Greece

After the treaty of Bucharest

Treaty of Bucharest, 1913

The Treaty of Bucharest was concluded on 10 August 1913, by the delegates of Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece.As Bulgaria had been completely isolated in the Second Balkan War , and as it was closely invested on its northern boundary by Romania and on its western frontier by the...

, some 51% of the modern region that was known as Macedonia was won by the Greek state (also known as Aegean

Aegean Macedonia

Aegean Macedonia is a term that refers to the Greek region of Macedonia. It is currently mainly used in the Republic of Macedonia, including in the irredentist context of a United Macedonia. The term is also used in Bulgaria as the more common synonym for Greek Macedonia, without the connotations...

or Greek Macedonia). This was the only part of Macedonia that Greece was directly interested in. Greeks regarded this land as the only true region of Macedonia as it geographically corresponded to ancient Macedon

Macedon

and contained an ethnically Greek majority of population. Bulgarian and other non-Greek schools in southern (Aegean) Macedonia

Aegean Macedonia

were closed and Bulgarian teachers and priests were deported as early as the First Balkan War

First Balkan War

The First Balkan War, which lasted from October 1912 to May 1913, pitted the Balkan League against the Ottoman Empire. The combined armies of the Balkan states overcame the numerically inferior and strategically disadvantaged Ottoman armies and achieved rapid success...

simultaneous to deportation of Greeks from Bulgaria. The bulk of the Slavic population of southeastern Macedonia fled to Bulgaria during the Second Balkan War or was resettled there in the 1920s by virtue of a population exchange agreement. The Slavic minority in Greek Macedonia, who were referred to by the Greek authorities as “Slavomacedonians”, “Slavophone Greeks” and “Bulgarisants”, were subjected to a gradual assimilation by the Greek majority. Their numbers were reduced by a large-scale emigration to North America in the 1920s and the 1930s and to Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia following the Greek Civil War

Greek Civil War

The Greek Civil War was fought from 1946 to 1949 between the Greek governmental army, backed by the United Kingdom and United States, and the Democratic Army of Greece , the military branch of the Greek Communist Party , backed by Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania...

(1944–1949). At the same time a number of Macedonian Greeks from Monastiri (modern Bitola) entered Greece.

The 1923 Compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey

Population exchange between Greece and Turkey

The 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey was based upon religious identity, and involved the Greek Orthodox citizens of Turkey and the Muslim citizens of Greece...

led to a radical change in the ethnic composition of Greek Macedonia. Some 380,000 Turks and other Muslims left the region and were replaced by 538,253 Greeks from Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace.

According to The League of Nations, the population data for Southern Macedonia in 1926 was the following:

Greeks	1,341,000 (88.8%)
Bulgarians	77,000 (5.1%)
Muslims	2,000 (0.1%)
Others (mainly Aromanians and Jews)	91,000 (6.0%)

Greece was attacked and occupied by Nazi

Nazism

Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

-led Axis

Axis Powers

The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...

during World War II. By the beginning of 1941 the whole of Greece was under a tripartite German, Italian and Bulgarian occupation. The Bulgarians were permitted to occupy western Thrace

Western Thrace

Western Thrace or simply Thrace is a geographic and historical region of Greece, located between the Nestos and Evros rivers in the northeast of the country. Together with the regions of Macedonia and Epirus, it is often referred to informally as northern Greece...

and parts of Greek Macedonia, where they persecuted and committed massacre

Massacre

A massacre is an event with a heavy death toll.Massacre may also refer to:-Entertainment:*Massacre , a DC Comics villain*Massacre , a 1932 drama film starring Richard Barthelmess*Massacre, a 1956 Western starring Dane Clark...

s and other atrocities against the Greek population. The once thriving Jewish community of Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki

was decimated by the Nazis, who deported 60,000 of the city's Jews to the death camps of Germany and German-occupied Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

. Large Jewish populations in the Bulgarian occupied zone were deported by the Bulgarian army and had an equal death rate to the German zone.

The Bulgarian Army occupied the whole of Eastern Macedonia and Western Thrace, where it was greeted from a part of a Slav-speakers as liberators. Unlike Germany and Italy, Bulgaria officially annexed the occupied territories, which had long been a target of Bulgarian irridentism

Greater Bulgaria

Greater Bulgaria is term to identify the territory associated with a historical national state and a modern Bulgarian irredentist nationalist movement which would include most of Macedonia, Thrace and Moesia...

. A massive campaign of "Bulgarisation

Bulgarisation

Bulgarisation is a term used to describe a cultural change of the spread of Bulgarian culture within various areas in the Balkans....

" was launched, which saw all Greek officials deported. This campaign was successful especially in Eastern and later in Central Macedonia, when Bulgarians entered the area in 1943. All Slav-speakers there were regarded as Bulgarians. However it was not so effective in German occupied Western Macedonia. A ban was placed on the use of the Greek language, the names of towns and places changed to the forms traditional in Bulgarian.

In addition, the Bulgarian government tried to alter the ethnic composition of the region, by expropriating land and houses from Greeks in favour of Bulgarian settlers. The same year, the German High Command approved the foundation of a Bulgarian military club in Thessaloníki. The Bulgarians organized supplying of food and provisions for the Slavic population in Central and Western Macedonia, aiming to gain the local population that was in the German and Italian occupied zones. The Bulgarian clubs soon started to gain support among parts of the population. Many Communist political prisoners were released with the intercession of Bulgarian Club in Thessaloniki, which had made representations to the German occupation authorities. They all declared Bulgarian ethnicity. In 1942, the Bulgarian club asked assistance from the High command in organizing armed units among the Slavic-speaking population in northern Greece. For this purpose, the Bulgarian army, under the approval of the German forces in the Balkans sent a handful of officers from the Bulgarian Army, to the zones occupied by the Italian and German troops to be attached to the German occupying forces as "liaison officers". All the Bulgarian officers brought into service were locally born Macedonians who had immigrated to Bulgaria with their families during the 1920s and 1930s as part of the Greek-Bulgarian Treaty of Neuilly which saw 90,000 Bulgarians migrating to Bulgaria from Greece.

With the help of Bulgarian officers several pro-Bulgarian and anti-Greek armed detachments (Ohrana

Ohrana

Ohrana ; were armed collaborationist detachments organized by the former Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization structures, composed of Bulgarian in Nazi-occupied Greek Macedonia during World War II and led by Bulgarian officers. from Macedonia...

) were organized in the Kastoria

Kastoria

Kastoria is a city in northern Greece in the periphery of West Macedonia. It is the capital of Kastoria peripheral unit. It is situated on a promontory on the western shore of Lake Orestiada, in a valley surrounded by limestone mountains...

, Florina

Florina

Florina is a town and municipality in mountainous northwestern Macedonia, Greece. Its motto is, 'Where Greece begins'. It is also the Metropolitan seat for the region. It lies in the central part of Florina peripheral unit, of which it is the capital. Florina belongs to the periphery of West...

and Edessa

Edessa, Greece

Edessa , is a city in northern Greece and the capital of the Pella regional unit, in the Central Macedonia region of Greece. It was also the capital of the defunct province of the same name.-Name:...

districts of occupied Greek Macedonia in 1943. These were led by Bulgarian officers originally from Aegean Macedonia; Andon Kalchev

Andon Kalchev

Andon Kalchev was a Bulgarian Axis-collaborationist paramilitary leader active in northern Greece during the country's occupation by the Axis in the Second World War. He was one of the leaders of the Bulgarian-backed Ohrana, a paramilitary formation of Bulgarians in Greek Macedonia during World...

and Georgi Dimchev. Ohrana (meaning Defense) was an autonomist pro-Bulgarian organization fighting for unification with Greater Bulgaria

Greater Bulgaria

. Uhrana was supported from IMRO leader Ivan Mihaylov too. It was apparent that Mihailov had broader plans which envisaged the creation of a Macedonian state under a German control. It was also anticipated that the IMRO volunteers would form the core of the armed forces of a future Independent Macedonia in addition to providing administration and education in the Florina, Kastoria and Edessa districts. In the summer of 1944, Ohrana constituted some 12,000 fighters and volunteers from Bulgaria charged with protection of the local population. During 1944, whole Slavophone villages were armed by the occupation authorities and developed into the most formidable enemy of ELAS. Ohrana was dissolved in late 1944 after the German and Bulgarian withdrawal from Greece and Josip Broz Tito

Josip Broz Tito

Marshal Josip Broz Tito – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, Tito was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, viewed as a unifying symbol for the nations of the Yugoslav federation...

's Partisans

Partisans (Yugoslavia)

The Yugoslav Partisans, or simply the Partisans were a Communist-led World War II anti-fascist resistance movement in Yugoslavia...

movement hardly concealed its intention of expanding. After World War II, many former "Ohranists" were convictеd of a military crimes as collaborationists.It was from this period, after Bulgaria's conversion to communism, that some Slav-speakers in Greece who had referred to themselves as "Bulgarians" increasingly began to identify as "Macedonians".

Following the defeat of the Axis powers and the evacuation of the Nazi occupation forces many members of the Ohrana joined the SNOF where they could still pursue their goal of secession. The advance of the Red Army

Red Army

The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...

into Bulgaria in September 1944, the withdrawal of the German armed forces from Greece in October, meant that the Bulgarian Army had to withdraw from Greek Macedonia and Thrace. A large proportion of Bulgarians and Slavic speakers emigrated there. In 1944 the declarations of Bulgarian nationality were estimated by the Greek authorities, on the basis of monthly returns, to have reached 16,000 in the districts of German-occupied Greek Macedonia, but according to British sources, declarations of Bulgarian nationality throughout Western Macedonia reached 23,000.

By 1945 World War II had ended and Greece was in open civil war. It has been estimated that after the end of World War II over 40,000 people fled from Greece to Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. To an extent the collaboration of the peasants with the Germans, Italians, Bulgarians or ELAS

ELAS

ELAS may refer to:*The Greek People's Liberation Army, World War II Greek Resistance group*The Equitable Life Assurance Society, a life insurance company in the United Kingdom...

was determined by the geopolitical position of each village. Depending upon whether their village was vulnerable to attack by the Greek communist guerrillas or the occupation forces, the peasants would opt to support the side in relation to which they were most vulnerable. In both cases, the attempt was to promise "freedom" (autonomy or independence) to the formerly persecuted Slavic minority as a means of gaining its support.

The National Liberation Front (NOF) was organized by the political and military groups of the Slavic minority in Greece, active from 1945-1949. The interbellum was the time when part of them came to the conclusion that they are Macedonians. Greek hostility to the Slavic minority produced tensions that rose to separatism. After the recognition in 1934 from the Comintern of the Macedonian ethnicity, the Greek communists have also recognized Macedonian national identity. Soon after the first "free territories" were created it was decided that ethnic Macedonian schools would open in the area controlled by the DSE. Books written in the ethnic Macedonian language were published, while ethnic Macedonians theatres and cultural organizations operated. Also within the NOF, a female organization, the Women's Antifascist Front

Women's Antifascist Front of Macedonia

The Women's Antifascist Front of Macedonia abbreviated AFŽ ) was a World War II-era feminist movement in Macedonia and the predecessor to several present-day feminist organisations in the Republic of Macedonia...

(AFZH), and a youth organization, the National Liberation Front of Youth (ONOM), were formed.

The creation of the ethnic Macedonian cultural institutions in the Democratic Army of Greece

Democratic Army of Greece

This article is based on a translation of an article from the Greek Wikipedia.The Democratic Army of Greece , often simply abbreviated to its initials DSE , was the army founded by the Communist Party of Greece during the Greek Civil War, 1946–1949...

(DSE)-held territory, newspapers and books published by NOF, public speeches and the schools opened, helped the consolidation of the ethnic Macedonian conscience and identity among the population. According to information announced by Paskal Mitrovski on the I plenum of NOF on August 1948 - about 85% of the Slavic-speaking population in Greek Macedonia has ethnic Macedonian self-identity. The language that was thought in the schools was the official language of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia

Socialist Republic of Macedonia

The Socialist Republic of Macedonia was a socialist state that was a constituent country of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia...

. About 20,000 young ethnic Macedonians learned to read and write using that language, and learned their own history.

From 1946 until the end of the Civil War in 1949, the NOF was loyal to Greece and was fighting for minimal human rights within the borders of a Greek republic.But in order to mobilize more ethnic Macedonians into the DSE it was declared on 31 January 1949 at the 5th Meeting of the KKE Central Committee that when the DSE took power in Greece there would be an independent Macedonian state, united in its geographical borders. This new line of the KKE had an impact on the mobilisation rate of ethnic Macedonians (which even earlier was considerably high), but did not manage, ultimately, to change the course of the war.

The government forces destroyed every village that was on their way, and expelled the civilian population. Leaving as a result of force or on their own accord (in order to escape repression and retaliation), 50,000 people left Greece together with the retreating DSE forces. All of them were sent to Eastern Bloc

Eastern bloc

The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...

countries. It was not until the 1970s that some of them were allowed to come to the Socialist Republic of Macedonia. In the 1980s, the Greek parliament adopted the law of national reconciliation which allowed DSE members "of Greek origin" to repatriate to Greece, where they were given land. Ethnic Macedonian DSE remembers remained excluded from the terms of this legislation.

On August 20, 2003, the Rainbow Party

Rainbow (political party)

The Rainbow is a political party in Greece, and a member of the European Free Alliance. It is known for its activism amongst what it regards as the Ethnic Macedonian minority in Greece and their descendants abroad...

hosted a reception for the "child refugees", ethnic Macedonian children who fled their homes during the Greek Civil War who were permitted to enter Greece for a maximum of 20 days. Now elderly, this was the first time many of them saw their birthplaces and families in some 55 years. The reception included relatives of the refugees who are living in Greece and are members of Rainbow Party. However, many were refused entry by Greek border authorities because their passports listed the former names

Former toponyms of Greek places

Many settlements in Greece had Greek and non-Greek forms. Most of those names were in use during the multinational environment of the Ottoman Empire. Some of the forms were identifiably of Greek origin, others of Slavic, yet others of Turkish, Vlach or Albanian origin...

of their places of birth.

The present number of the "Slavophones" in Greece has been subject to much speculation with varying numbers. As Greece does not hold census based on self-determination and mother tongue, no official data is available. It should be noted, however, that the official Macedonian Slav party in Greece receives at an average only 1000 votes. For more information about the region and its population see Greek Macedonia.

Yugoslavia

After World War I (1914–1918) the Slavs in Serbian (Vardar

Vardar Macedonia

Vardar Macedonia is an area in the north of the Macedonia . The borders of the area are those of the Republic of Macedonia. It covers an area of...

) Macedonia were regarded as southern Serbs and the language they spoke a southern Serbian dialect. The Bulgarian, Greek and Romanian schools were closed, the Bulgarian priests and all non-Serbian teachers were expelled. Bulgarian surname endings '-ov/-ev' were replaced with the typically Serbian ending '-ich' and the population which considered itself Bulgarian was heavily persecuted. The policy of Serbianization in the 1920s and 1930s clashed with popular pro-Bulgarian sentiment stirred by IMRO detachments infiltrating from Bulgaria, whereas local communists favoured the path of self-determination suggested by the Yugoslav

Kingdom of Yugoslavia

The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a state stretching from the Western Balkans to Central Europe which existed during the often-tumultuous interwar era of 1918–1941...

Communist Party in the 1924 May Manifesto.

In 1925, D.J. Footman, the British vice consul at Skopje

Skopje

Skopje is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Macedonia with about a third of the total population. It is the country's political, cultural, economic, and academic centre...

, addressed a lengthy report for the Foreign Office. He wrote that "the majority of the inhabitants of Southern Serbia are Orthodox Christian Macedonians, ethnologically

Ethnology

Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity.-Scientific discipline:Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct...

more akin to the Bulgarians than to the Serbs." He acknowledged that the Macedonians were better disposed toward Bulgaria because, Bulgarian education system in Macedonia in the time of the Turks, was widespread and effective; and because Macedonians at the time perceived Bulgarian culture and prestige to be higher than those of its neighbors. Moreover, large numbers of Macedonians educated in Bulgarian schools had sought refuge in Bulgaria before and especially after the partitions of 1913. "There is therefore now a large Macedonian element in Bulgaria, continued represented in all Government Departments

Ministry (government department)

A ministry is a specialised organisation responsible for a sector of government public administration, sometimes led by a minister or a senior public servant, that can have responsibility for one or more departments, agencies, bureaus, commissions or other smaller executive, advisory, managerial or...

and occupying high positions in the army and in the civil service...." He characterized this element as "Serbophobe, [it] mostly desires the incorporation of Macedonia in Bulgaria, and generally supports the IMRO." However, he also pointed to the existence of the tendency to seek an independent Macedonia with Salonica as its capital. "This movement also had adherents among the Macedonian colony in Bulgaria."

Bulgarian troops were welcomed as liberators in 1941 but mistakes of the Bulgarian administration made a growing number of people resent their presence by 1944. It must also to be noted that the Bulgarian army during the annexation of the region, was partially recruited from the local population, which formed as much as 40%-60% of the soldiers in certain battalions. Some recent data has announced that even the National Liberation War of Macedonia has resembled ethno-political motivated civil war. After the war the region received the status of a constituent republic within Yugoslavia and in 1945 a separate, Macedonian language

Macedonian language

Macedonian is a South Slavic language spoken as a first language by approximately 2–3 million people principally in the region of Macedonia but also in the Macedonian diaspora...

was codified. The population was declared Macedonian, a nationality different from both Serbs and Bulgarians. The decision was politically motivated and aimed at weakening the position of Serbia within Yugoslavia and of Bulgaria with regard to Yugoslavia. Surnames were again changed to include the ending '-ski', which was to emphasise the unique nature of the ethnic Macedonian population.

From the start of the new Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav state that existed from the abolition of the Yugoslav monarchy until it was dissolved in 1992 amid the Yugoslav Wars. It was a socialist state and a federation made up of six socialist republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,...

(SFRY), accusations surfaced that new authorities in Macedonia were involved in retribution against people who did not support the formation of the new Yugoslav Macedonian republic. The numbers of dead "counter-revolutionaries" due to organized killings, however is unclear. Besides, many people went throughout the Labor camp

Labor camp

A labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons...

of Goli Otok

Goli otok

Goli otok is an island off the northern Adriatic coast, located between Rab's northeastern shore and the mainland, in what is today Croatia's Primorje-Gorski Kotar county. The island is barren and uninhabited...

in the middle 1940s. This chapter of the partisan's history was a taboo

Taboo

A taboo is a strong social prohibition relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and or forbidden based on moral judgment, religious beliefs and or scientific consensus. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society...

subject for conversation in the SFRY until the late 1980s, and as a result, decades of official silence created a reaction in the form of numerous data manipulations for nationalist communist propaganda purposes.

After the creation of Macedonian Republic the Presidium of ASNOM which was the highest political organ in Macedonia made several statements and actions that were de facto boycotting the decisions of AVNOJ

AVNOJ

The Anti-Fascist Council of the People's Liberation of Yugoslavia, known more commonly by its Yugoslav abbreviation AVNOJ, was the political umbrella organization for the national liberation councils of the Yugoslav resistance against the World War II Axis occupation, eventually becoming the...

. Instead of obeying the order of Tito's General Headquarters to send the main forces of the NOV of Macedonia to participate in the fighting in the Srem

Srem

Śrem is a town on the Warta river in central Poland. It has been situated in the Greater Poland Voivodeship since 1999; from 1975 to 1998 it was part of the Poznań Voivodeship...

area for the final liberation of Yugoslavia, the cadre close to President Metodija Andonov - Cento gave serious thoughts whether it is better to order the preparation for an advance of the 100.000 armed men under his command toward northern Greece in order to "unify the Macedonian people" into one country. Officers loyal to Chento's ideas made a mutiny in the garrison stationed on Skopje's fortress, but the mutiny was suppressed by armed intervention. A dozen officers were shot on place, others sentenced to life imprisonment. Also Chento and his close associates were trying to minimize the ties with Yugoslavia as far as possible and were constantly mentioning the unification of the Macedonian people into one state

United Macedonia

United Macedonia is an irredentist concept among ethnic Macedonian nationalists that aims to unify the transnational region of Macedonia in southeastern Europe, which they claim as their homeland, and which they assert was wrongfully divided under the Treaty of Bucharest in 1913, into a single...

, which was against the decisions of AVNOJ. Chento was even talking about the possibility to create an independent Macedonia backed by the USA. The Yugoslav secret police made a decisive action and managed to arrest Metodija Andonov - Chento and his closest men and prevent his policies. Chento's place was taken by Lazar Kolishevski, who started fully implementing the pro-Yugoslav line.

Later the authorities organised frequent purges and trials of Macedonian people charged with autonomist deviation. Many of the former IMRO (United) government officials, were purged from their positions then isolated, arrested, imprisoned or executed on various (in many cases fabricated) charges including: pro-Bulgarian leanings, demands for greater or complete independence of Yugoslav Macedonia, forming of conspirative political groups or organisations, demands for greater democracy, etc. People as Panko Brashnarov

Panko Brashnarov

Panko Brashnarov was a revolutionary and member of the left wing of the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization . As with many other IMARO members of the time, historians from the Republic of Macedonia consider him an ethnic Macedonian, whereas historians in Bulgaria consider him...

, Pavel Shatev

Pavel Shatev

Pavel Potsev Shatev , , was a Bulgarian revolutionary and member of the left wing of the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization , BMARC before 1902)...

, Dimitar Vlahov

Dimitar Vlahov

Dimitar Yanakiev Vlahov was a revolutionary from the region of Macedonia and member of the left wing of the Macedonian-Adrianople revolutionary movement...

and Venko Markovski

Venko Markovski

Venko Markovski, in Bulgarian and Macedonian Венко Марковски, born as Veniamin Milanov Toshev; was a Bulgarian and Macedonian writer, poet and Communist politician.-Biography:...

were quickly ousted from the new government, and some of them assassinated. On the other hand, former IMRO-members, followers of Ivan Mihailov

Ivan Mihailov

Ivan Mihailov Gavrilov , was a Bulgarian revolutionary in Ottoman and interwar Macedonia, and leader of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization after 1924.-Early years:...

, were also persecuted by the Belgrade

Belgrade

Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...

-controlled authorities on accusations of collaboration with the Bulgarian occupation. Metodi Shatorov

Metodi Shatorov

Metodi Tasev Shatorov - Sharlo was a prominent Bulgarian political leader during the first half of 20th century and also temporary leader of the Macedonian communists in 1940-1941...

's supporters in Vardar Macedonia, called Sharlisti, were systematically exterminated by the Yugoslav Communist Party (YCP) in the autumn of 1944, and repressed for their anti-Yugoslav and pro-Bulgarian political positions.

The encouragement and evolution of Macedonian culture has had a far greater and more permanent impact on Macedonian nationalism than has any other aspect of Yugoslav policy. While development of national music, films and the graphic arts has been encouraged in Macedonia, the greatest cultural effect has come from the codification of the Macedonian language and literature, the new Macedonian national interpretation of history and the establishment of a Macedonian Orthodox Church

Macedonian Orthodox Church

The Macedonian Orthodox Church – Ohrid Archbishopric or just Macedonian Orthodox Church is the body of Christians who are united under the Archbishop of Ohrid and Macedonia, exercising jurisdiction over Macedonian Orthodox Christians in the Republic of Macedonia and in exarchates in the Macedonian...

in 1967.

Bulgaria

The Bulgarian population in Pirin Macedonia remained Bulgarian after 1913. The “Macedonian Question,” became especially prominent after the Balkan wars

Balkan Wars

in 1912-1913, followed from the withdraw of the Ottoman Empire

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

and the subsequent division of the region of Macedonia between Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia. The Slav - speakers in Macedonia tended to be Christian peasants, but the majority of them were under the influence of the Exarchate and its education system, thus considered themselves as Bulgarians. Moreover, Bulgarians in Bulgaria believed that most of the population of Macedonia was Bulgarian. Before the Balkan Wars the regional Macedonian dialects were treated as Bulgarian and the Exarchate school system taught the locals in Bulgarian. Following the Balkan wars the Bulgarian Exarchate activity in most of the region was discontinued. After World War I, the territory of the present-day Republic of Macedonia came under the direct rule of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia

Kingdom of Yugoslavia

The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a state stretching from the Western Balkans to Central Europe which existed during the often-tumultuous interwar era of 1918–1941...

and was sometimes termed "Southern Serbia". Together with a portion of today's Serbia, it belonged officially to the newly formed Vardar Banovina. An intense program of Serbianization was implemented during the 1920s and 1930s when Belgrade enforced a Serbian cultural assimilation process on the region. Between the two world wars in Vardar Banovina, the regional Macedonian dialects were declared as Serbian and the Serbian language

Serbian language

Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....

was introduced in the schools and administration as official language. There was implemented a governmental policy of assassinations and assimilation. The Serbian administration in Vardar Banovina felt insecure and that provoked its brutal reprisals on the local peasant population.
Greece, like all other Balkan states, adopted restrictive policies towards its minorities, namely towards its Slavic population in its northern regions, due to its experiences with Bulgaria's wars, including the Second Balkan War, and the Bulgarian inclination of sections of its Slavic minority.

IMRO was a “state within the state” in the region in the 1920s using it to launch attacks in the Serbian and the Greek part of Macedonia. By that time IMRO had become a right-wing Bulgarian ultranationalist organization. According to IMRO statistics during 1920s in the region of Yugoslav (Vardar) Macedonia operated 53 chetas (armed bands), 36 of which penetrated from Bulgaria, 12 were local and 5 entered from Albania. In the region of Greek (Aegean) Macedonia 24 chetas and 10 local reconnaissance detachments were active. Thousands local of Slavophone Macedonians were repressed by the Yugoslav and Greek authorities on suspicions of contacts with the revolutionary movement. The population in Pirin Macedonia was organized in a mass people's home guard. This militia was the only force, which resisted to the Greek army when general Pangalos launched a military campaign against Petrich

Petrich

Petrich is a town in Blagoevgrad Province in southwestern Bulgaria, located at the foot of the Belasica Mountains in the Strumeshnitsa Valley. , the town has 29920 inhabitants.Petrich is located close to the borders with Greece and the Republic of Macedonia...

District in 1925, speculatively called the War of the Stray Dog. IMRO's constant fratricidal killings and assassinations abroad provoked some within Bulgarian military after the coup of 19 May 1934 to take control and break the power of the organization. Meanwhile, the left-wing later did form the new organisation based on the principles of independence and unification of partitioned Macedonia. The new organisation which was an opponent to Ivan Mihailov

Ivan Mihailov

Ivan Mihailov Gavrilov , was a Bulgarian revolutionary in Ottoman and interwar Macedonia, and leader of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization after 1924.-Early years:...

's IMRO was called IMRO (United). It was founded in 1925 in Vienna. However, it did not have real popular support and remained active until 1936 and was funded by and closely linked to the Comintern

Comintern

The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...

and the Balkan Communist Federation. In 1934 the Comintern adopted resolution about the recognition of Macedonian nation and confirmed the project of the Balkan Communist Federation about creation of Balkan Federative Republic, including Macedonia.

The outbreak of World War II on 1 September 1939, inspired the whole Macedonian community, foremost the refugees from the occupied parts, to seek ways for the liberation of Macedonia. Early in 1941 the British vice-consul at Skopje provided the Foreign Office with an even more extensive and perceptive analysis of the current state of the Macedonian Question. He claimed that the vast majority of the Macedonians belonged to the national movement; indeed, he estimated "that 90 percent of all Slav Macedonians were autonomists in one sense or another...." Because the movement was wrapped in secrecy, however, it was extremely difficult to gauge the relative strength of its various currents, except that it could be assumed that IMRO had lost ground since it was banned in Bulgaria and its leaders exiled.

Between 6 April 1941 and 17 April 1941, Axis forces invaded the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The Axis victory was swift, as Yugoslavia had surrendered within 11 days. Macedonian newspaper "Makedonska Tribuna", an organ of Macedonian Patriotic Organisation, published by Macedonian immigrants in the U.S. and Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, vaunted the German victory in the Invasion and fall of the Kingdom Yugoslavia. At the beginning of the Invasion of Yugoslavia

Invasion of Yugoslavia

The Invasion of Yugoslavia , also known as the April War , was the Axis Powers' attack on the Kingdom of Yugoslavia which began on 6 April 1941 during World War II...

a meeting was held on April 8, 1941, in Skopje, in which participated mainly followers of the idea for the liberation through independence or autonomy of Macedonia. There were activists of IMRO, as well as Yugoslav Communists - former IMRO (United) members, followers of the idea for the creation of a pro-Bulgarian Macedonian state under |German and Italian protection. This meeting was to decide of action towards independence of Macedonia, but the situation changed dynamically. The local population in Macedonia met with joy the defeat of Kingdom of Yugoslavia. It saw as the end of Serbian rule and it was not surprising that the soldiers from Vardar Macedonia

Vardar Macedonia

Vardar Macedonia is an area in the north of the Macedonia . The borders of the area are those of the Republic of Macedonia. It covers an area of...

, mobilized in the Yugoslav army in large numbers refuse to fight. The Serbian administration in most places had run away afraid not as much of the Germans or Bulgarians but of the revenge of the local population.

Although the Bulgarian government had officially joined the Axis Powers, it maintained a course of military passivity during the initial stages of the Invasion of Yugoslavia and the Battle of Greece

Battle of Greece

The Battle of Greece is the common name for the invasion and conquest of Greece by Nazi Germany in April 1941. Greece was supported by British Commonwealth forces, while the Germans' Axis allies Italy and Bulgaria played secondary roles...

. German, Italian, and Hungarian

Kingdom of Hungary

The Kingdom of Hungary comprised present-day Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia , Transylvania , Carpatho Ruthenia , Vojvodina , Burgenland , and other smaller territories surrounding present-day Hungary's borders...

troops crushed opposing forces of Yugoslavia and Greece but on 6 April 1941, Yugoslavian airplanes bombed the Bulgarian town of Kyustendil

Kyustendil

Kyustendil is a town in the far west of Bulgaria, the capital of Kyustendil Province, with a population of 44 416 . Kyustendil is situated in the southern part of the Kyustendil Valley, 90 km southwest of Sofia...

, with 67 people killed and 90 wounded and a suburb of Sofia where 8 people were killed. The Yugoslav

Kingdom of Yugoslavia

The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a state stretching from the Western Balkans to Central Europe which existed during the often-tumultuous interwar era of 1918–1941...

government surrendered on April 17. The Greek government was to hold out until April 30. On 18 April 1941 the Bulgarian government received a telegram from Joachim von Ribbentrop

Joachim von Ribbentrop

Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop was Foreign Minister of Germany from 1938 until 1945. He was later hanged for war crimes after the Nuremberg Trials.-Early life:...

in which he specified the regions to be taken by units of the Bulgarian army. In Greece, the units were to occupy Thrace

Western Thrace

, as well as Macedonia between the Strymon and Nestos rivers. In Yugoslavia, the Bulgarians were to occupy an area from the river Vardar

Vardar

The Vardar or Axios is the longest and major river in the Republic of Macedonia and also a major river of Greece. It is long, and drains an area of around . The maximum depth of river is ....

and Pomoravlje

Pomoravlje

Pomoravlje may refer to:* Pomoravlje , a geographical area around the Morava river, Serbia* Pomoravlje District, a district in Serbia...

to the Pirot

Pirot

Pirot is a town and municipality located in south-eastern Serbia. According to 2011 census, the town has a total population of 38,432, while the population of the municipality is 57,911...

-Vranje

Vranje

Vranje is a city and municipality located in southern Serbia. In 2011 the city has total population of 82,782, while the urban area has 54,456...

-Skopje

Skopje

Skopje is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Macedonia with about a third of the total population. It is the country's political, cultural, economic, and academic centre...

line. Ribbentrop's telegram said that the line was temporary, i.e., that it could be moved to the west of the river Vardar as well.

The movement of the Bulgarian army in Yugoslavia started on April 19, and in Greece on April 20. The prominent force which occupied most of Vardar Macedonia, was the Bulgarian 5th Army. The 6th and 7th Infantry Divisions were active in invading the Vardar Banovina between 19 and 24 April 1941. The Bulgarian troops were mainly present in the western part of Vardar Macedonia, close to the Italian occupational zone, because of some border clashes with Italians, who implemented Albanian interests and terrorized the local peasants. So the most of Vardar Banovina

Vardar Banovina

The Vardar Banovina or Vardar Banate or Vardarska Banovina was a province of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia between 1929 and 1941. It was located in the southernmost part of the country, encompassing the whole of today's Republic of Macedonia, southern parts of Central Serbia and southeastern parts of...

, (including Vardar Macedonia

Vardar Macedonia

Vardar Macedonia is an area in the north of the Macedonia . The borders of the area are those of the Republic of Macedonia. It covers an area of...

), was annexed by Bulgaria and along with various other regions became Greater Bulgaria

Greater Bulgaria

. The western-most parts of Vardar Macedonia was occupied by the fascist Kingdom of Italy. As the Bulgarian Army entered Vardar Macedonia on 19 April 1941, it was greeted by the local population as liberators as it meant the end of Serbian rule. Former IMRO and IMRO (United) members were active in organizing Bulgarian Action Committees

Bulgarian Action Committees

The Bulgarian Action Committees in Macedonia were patriotic nationalist organizations of Bulgarians in Macedonia around 1941, emboldened by the invasion Yugoslavia by Nazi Germany, determined to end the Yugoslavian rule in the region, perceived as oppressive by Macedonian Bulgarians and by the...

charged with taking over the local authorities. Bulgarian Action Committees propagated a proclamation to the Bulgarians in Macedonia on occasion of the invasion of the Bulgarian Army in the Vardar Banovina. As regards the Serbian colonists, the members of the campaign committees were adamant - they had to be deported as soon as possible and their properties to be returned to the locals. With the arrival of the Bulgarian army mass expulsion of Serbs from the area of the Vardar Macedonia took place. First, the city dwellers were deported in 1941, then all of the suspected pro-Serbs. Metodi Shatarov-Šarlo

Metodi Shatorov

Metodi Tasev Shatorov - Sharlo was a prominent Bulgarian political leader during the first half of 20th century and also temporary leader of the Macedonian communists in 1940-1941...

, who was a local leader of the Yugoslav Communist Party, also refused to define the Bulgarian forces as occupiers (contrary to instructions from Belgrade

Belgrade

) and called for the incorporation of the local Macedonian Communist organizations within the Bulgarian Communist Party

Bulgarian Communist Party

The Bulgarian Communist Party was the communist and Marxist-Leninist ruling party of the People's Republic of Bulgaria from 1946 until 1990 when the country ceased to be a communist state...

(BCP). The Macedonian Regional Committee refused to remain in contact with Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) and linked up with BCP as soon as the invasion of Yugoslavia started. The CPY formally decided to launch an armed uprising on 4 July 1941 but Šarlo refused to distribute the proclamation of calling for military actions against Bulgarians. More than 12,000 Yugoslav Macedonian prisoners of war

Prisoner of war

A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...

(POWs) who had been conscripted into the Yugoslav army were released by a German, Italian and Hungarian Armies. The Slav-speakers in occupied from Bulgarian Army part of Aegean Macedonia also greeted it as liberation.

Before the German invasion in the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, there had not been any resistance

Resistance movement

A resistance movement is a group or collection of individual groups, dedicated to opposing an invader in an occupied country or the government of a sovereign state. It may seek to achieve its objects through either the use of nonviolent resistance or the use of armed force...

in Vardar Banovina. At the start of World War II, the Comintern supported a policy of non-intervention, arguing that the war was an imperialist war between various national ruling classes, but when the Soviet Union itself was invaded on 22 June 1941, the Comintern changed its position. The German attack on the Soviet Union sparked the rage of the Communists in Bulgaria. The same day the BCP spread a brochure among the people urging "To hinder by all means the usage of Bulgarian land and soldiers for the criminal purposes of German fascism". Two days later, on 24 June, the BCP called for an armed resistance against the Wehrmacht

Wehrmacht

The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...

and the Bogdan Filov

Bogdan Filov

Bogdan Dimitrov Filov was a Bulgarian archaeologist, art historian and politician. He was Prime Minister of Bulgaria during World War II. During his service, Bulgaria became the seventh nation to join the Axis Powers....

government. After that, and when already months ago Yugoslavia was annexed by Axis Powers, Macedonian Communist partisans, which included Macedonians, Aromanians, Serbs, Albanians, Jews and Bulgarians had begun organizing their resistance. The First Skopje Partisan Detachment was founded and had been attacked Axis soldiers on 8 September 1941 in Bogomila, near Skopje. The revolt on 11 October 1941 by the Prilep Partisan Detachment is considered to be the symbolic beginning of the resistance. Armed insurgents from the Prilep Partisan Detachment attacked Axis occupied zones in the city of Prilep

Prilep

, notably a police station, killing one Bulgarian policeman of local origin, which led to attacks in Kruševo

Kruševo

Kruševo also spelled Krushevo, is a town in the Republic of Macedonia. It is the highest town in Macedonia, situated at an altitude of over 4,000 feet above sea level. The town of Kruševo is the seat of Kruševo Municipality.-History:...

and to the creation of small rebel detachments in other regions of Macedonia. Partisan detachments were formed also in Greek Macedonia and today's Bulgarian Macedonia under the leadership of Communist Party of Greece

Communist Party of Greece

Founded in 1918, the Communist Party of Greece , better known by its acronym, ΚΚΕ , is the oldest party on the Greek political scene.- Foundation :...

and Bulgarian Communist Party.

In April 1942 a map titled "The Danube area" was published in Germany, where the so called "new annexed territories" of Bulgaria in Vardar

Vardar Macedonia

Vardar Macedonia is an area in the north of the Macedonia . The borders of the area are those of the Republic of Macedonia. It covers an area of...

and Aegean Macedonia and Western Thrace

Western Thrace

were described as "territories under temporary Bulgarian administration". This was a failure for Sofia

Sofia

's official propaganda, which claimed to have completed the National unification

Greater Bulgaria

of the Bulgarians and showed the internal contradiction among Italy, Bulgaria and Germany. With the ongoing war, new anti-fascist partisan units were constantly formed and in 1942 a total of nine small partisan detachments were active in Vardar Macedonia and had maintained control of mountainous territories around Prilep

Prilep

, Skopje, Kruševo

Kruševo

and Veles

Veles (city)

. The clash between the Yugoslav and Bulgarian Communists about possession over Macedonia was not ended. While the Bulgarian Communists avoided organizing mass armed uprising against the Bulgarian authorities, the Yugoslav Communists insisted that no liberation could be achieved without an armed revolt. With the help of the Comintern and of Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

himself a decision was taken and the Macedonian Communists were attached to CPY. Because of the unwillingness of local Communists for earnest struggle against the Bulgarian Army, the Supreme Staff of CPY took measurements for strengthening of the campaign.

Otherwise the policy of minimal resistance changed towards 1943 with the arrival of the Montenegrin Svetozar Vukmanović-Tempo

Svetozar Vukmanovic-Tempo

Svetozar Vukmanović "Tempo" was a leading Montenegrin communist and member of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia...

, who began to organize an energetic struggle against the Bulgarian occupants. Tempo served on the Supreme Staff of CPY and became Josip Broz Tito

Josip Broz Tito

's personal representative in the Vardar Banovina.

Meanwhile the Bulgarian government was responsible for the round-up and deportation of over 7,000 Jews in Skopje and Bitola. It refused to deport the Jews from Bulgarian proper but later under German pressure those Jews from the new annexed territories, without a Bulgarian citizenship

Citizenship

Citizenship is the state of being a citizen of a particular social, political, national, or human resource community. Citizenship status, under social contract theory, carries with it both rights and responsibilities...

were deported, as these from Vardar Macedonia and Western Thrace. The Bulgarian authorities created a special Gendarmerie

Gendarmerie

A gendarmerie or gendarmery is a military force charged with police duties among civilian populations. Members of such a force are typically called "gendarmes". The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary describes a gendarme as "a soldier who is employed on police duties" and a "gendarmery, -erie" as...

forces which received almost unlimited power to pursue the Communist partisans on the whole territory of the kingdom. The gendarmes became notorious for carrying out atrocities against captured partisans and their supporters. Harsh rule by the occupying forces and a number of Allied

Allies of World War II

The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...

victories indicated that the Axis might lose the war and that encouraged more Macedonians to support the communist Partisan

Partisan (military)

A partisan is a member of an irregular military force formed to oppose control of an area by a foreign power or by an army of occupation by some kind of insurgent activity...

resistance movement of Josip Broz Tito

Josip Broz Tito

.

Many former IMRO members assisted the Bulgarian authorities in fighting Tempo's partisans. With the help of Bulgarian government and former IMRO members, several pro-Bulgarian and anti-Greek detachments - Uhrana were organized in occupied Greek Macedonia in 1943. These were led by Bulgarian officers originally from Aegean Macedonia and served for protection of the local population in the zone under German and Italian control. After the capitulation of Fascist Italy

Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946)

The Kingdom of Italy was a state forged in 1861 by the unification of Italy under the influence of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which was its legal predecessor state...

in September 1943, the Italian zone in Macedonia was taken over by the Germans. Uhrana was supported from Ivan Mihailov

Ivan Mihailov

Ivan Mihailov Gavrilov , was a Bulgarian revolutionary in Ottoman and interwar Macedonia, and leader of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization after 1924.-Early years:...

. It was apparent that Mihailov had broader plans which envisaged the creation of a Macedonian state under a German control. He was follower of the idea about a United Macedonia

United Macedonia

n state with prevailing Bulgarian element. It was also anticipated that the IMRO volunteers would form the core of the armed forces of a future Independent Macedonia in addition to providing administration and education in the Florina

Florina

, Kastoria

Kastoria

and Edessa

Edessa, Greece

Edessa , is a city in northern Greece and the capital of the Pella regional unit, in the Central Macedonia region of Greece. It was also the capital of the defunct province of the same name.-Name:...

districts.

Then in the resistance movement in Vardar Macedonia were clearly visible two political tendencies. The first one was represented by Tempo and the newly-established Macedonian Communist Party, gave priority to battling against any form of manifest or latent pro-Bulgarian sentiment and to bringing the region into the new projected Communist Yugoslav Federation. Veterans of the pro - Bulgarian IMRO and IMRO (United) who had accepted the solution of the Macedonian Question as an ethnic preference, now regarded the main objective as being the unification of Macedonia into a single state, whose postwar future was to involve not necessarily inclusion in a Yugoslav federation. They foresaw in it a new form of Serbian dominance over Macedonia, and prefer rather membership of a Balkan federation or else independence. These two tendencies would have struck in the next few years. In Spring of 1944 the Macedonian National Liberation Army launched an operation called "The Spring Offensive" engaging German and Bulgarian Armies, which had over 60,000 military and administrative personnel in the area. In Strumica

Strumica

, approximately 3,800 fighters took part in the formation of military movements of the region; The 4th, 14th and 20th Macedonian Action Brigades, the Strumica Partisan Detachment and the 50th and 51st Macedonian Divisions were formed.http://www.strumicaonline.com/new/display_article.php?aid=3#15 Since the formation of an army in 1943, Macedonian Communist partisans were aspiring to create an autonomous government.

On 2 August 1944, on the 41st anniversary of the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising

Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising

, the first session of the newly created Anti-Fascist Assembly of the National Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM) was held at the St. Prohor Pčinjski

Prohor Pcinjski

Prohor Pčinjski is an 11th-century Serbian Orthodox monastery in the deep south of Serbia, located in village Klenike, Pčinja District near the border with Macedonia...

monastery. А manifesto

Manifesto

A manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. Manifestos relating to religious belief are generally referred to as creeds. Manifestos may also be life stance-related.-Etymology:...

was written outlining the future plans of ASNOM for an independent Macedonian state and for creation of the Macedonian language as the official language of the Macedonian state. However, a decision was later reached that Vardar Macedonia will become a part of new Communist Yugoslavia. In the summer of 1944, Ohrana constituted some 12,000 fighters and volunteers from Bulgaria. Whole Slavophone villages were armed and developed into the most formidable enemy of ELAS

ELAS

ELAS may refer to:*The Greek People's Liberation Army, World War II Greek Resistance group*The Equitable Life Assurance Society, a life insurance company in the United Kingdom...

. At this time Ivan Mihailov

Ivan Mihailov

Ivan Mihailov Gavrilov , was a Bulgarian revolutionary in Ottoman and interwar Macedonia, and leader of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization after 1924.-Early years:...

arrived in German occupied Skopje, where the Germans hoped that he could form an Independent State of Macedonia

Independent State of Macedonia

The Independent State of Macedonia was a failed project for the creation of a puppet state of the Axis powers in the region of Macedonia in September-October 1944.Unlike the pro-Yugoslav Communist resistance the right-wing followers of the Internal Macedonian...

with their support on the base of IMRO and Ohrana. Seeing that the war is lost to Germany and to avoid further bloodshed, he refused.

At this time the new Bulgarian government of Ivan Bagryanov began secret negotiations with the Allies aiming to find separate peace with repudiating any alliance with Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

and declaring neutrality, ending all anti-Jewish laws and ordering the withdrawal of the Bulgarian troops from Macedonia. Through its in Macedonia-born minister of Internal Affairs Alexander Stanishev, the government tried to negotiate with the Macedonian partisans promising that after Bulgarian army withdrawal from Vardar Macedonia

Vardar Macedonia

Vardar Macedonia is an area in the north of the Macedonia . The borders of the area are those of the Republic of Macedonia. It covers an area of...

its arms would be given up to the partisans. It would be possible by condition that partisans guaranteed the establishment of pro-Bulgarian Macedonian state without the frame of future Yugoslavia. The negotiations failed and on 9 September 1944 the Fatherland Front

Fatherland Front

There have been at least two organisations known as the Fatherland Front:*Vietnamese Fatherland Front*Fatherland's Front *Fatherland Front...

in Sofia made a coup d'état and deposed the government. After the declaration of war by Bulgaria on Nazi Germany, the withdrawing Bulgarian troops in Macedonia surrounded by German forces, fought their way back to the old borders of Bulgaria. Under the leadership of a new Bulgarian pro-Communist government, three Bulgarian armies, 455,000 strong in total, entered occupied Yugoslavia in late September 1944 and moved from Sofia to Niš

Niš

Niš is the largest city of southern Serbia and third-largest city in Serbia . According to the data from 2011, the city of Niš has a population of 177,972 inhabitants, while the city municipality has a population of 257,867. The city covers an area of about 597 km2, including the urban area,...

and Skopje with the strategic task of blocking the German forces withdrawing from Greece. They operated here in interaction with local partisans. Southern and eastern Serbia and most of Vardar Macedonia

Vardar Macedonia

Vardar Macedonia is an area in the north of the Macedonia . The borders of the area are those of the Republic of Macedonia. It covers an area of...

were liberated within an end of November. Toward the end of November and during early December, the main Bulgarian forces were assembled in liberated Serbia

Serbia

Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...

prior to their return home. The 135,000-strong Bulgarian First Army

Bulgarian First Army

The Bulgarian First Army was a Bulgarian field army during the Balkan Wars, World War I, and World War II.-First Balkan War:Following the military reforms of 1907 the territory of the Bulgarian Kingdom was divided into three Army Inspectorates...

continued to Hungary

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

, aided by Yugoslav Partisans

Partisans (Yugoslavia)

The Yugoslav Partisans, or simply the Partisans were a Communist-led World War II anti-fascist resistance movement in Yugoslavia...

However, the Bulgarian army during the annexation of the region was partially recruited from the local population, which formed as much as 40% of the soldiers in certain battalions. Some official comments of deputies in Macedonian parliament and of former Premier, Ljubčo Georgievski after 1991 announced the "struggle was civil, but not a liberation war". According to official sources the number of Macedonian communist partisan's victims against the Bulgarian army during World War II was 539 men. Bulgarian historian and director of the Bulgarian National Historical Museum Dr. Bozhidar Dimitrov

Bozhidar Dimitrov

Bozhidar Dimitrov Stoyanov is a well-known Bulgarian historian working in the sphere of Medieval Bulgarian history, the Ottoman rule of Bulgaria and the Macedonian Question...

, in his 2003 book The Ten Lies of Macedonism, has also questioned the extent of resistance of the local population of Vardar Macedonia

Vardar Macedonia

Vardar Macedonia is an area in the north of the Macedonia . The borders of the area are those of the Republic of Macedonia. It covers an area of...

against the Bulgarian forces and describes the clash as political.

After the end of World War II, the creation of People's Republic of Macedonia and of a new Macedonian language, it started a process of ethnogenesis

Ethnogenesis

Ethnogenesis is the process by which a group of human beings comes to be understood or to understand themselves as ethnically distinct from the wider social landscape from which their grouping emerges...

and distinct national Macedonian identity was formed. The new Yugoslav authorities began a policy of removing of any Bulgarian influence, making Macedonia connecting link for the establishment of new Balkan Federation and creating a distinct Slavic consciousness that would inspire identification with Yugoslavia. After World War II the ruling Bulgarian Communists declared the population in Bulgarian Macedonia as ethnic Macedonian and teachers were brought in from Yugoslavia to teach the locals in the new Macedonian language. The organizations of the IMRO in Bulgaria were completely destructed. Former IMRO members were hunted by the Communist Militsiya

Militsiya

Militsiya or militia is used as an official name of the civilian police in several former communist states, despite its original military connotation...

and many of them imprisoned, repressed, exiled or killed. Also internments of disagreeing with this political activities people at the Belene labor camp were organized. Tito and Georgi Dimitrov

Georgi Dimitrov

Georgi Dimitrov Mikhaylov , also known as Georgi Mikhaylovich Dimitrov , was a Bulgarian Communist politician...

worked about the project to merge the two Balkan countries Bulgaria and Yugoslavia into a Balkan Federative Republic according to the projects of Balkan Communist Federation. This led to the 1947 cooperation and signing of Bled Agreement

Bled agreement

The Bled agreement was an agreement signed on the 1st August, 1947 in Bled, Slovenia. The agreement was signed between Bulgaria under Georgi Dimitrov and Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito which paved the way for future unification between the states in a new Balkan Federative Republic...

. It foresaw unification between Vardar Macedonia and Pirin Macedonia and return of Western Outlands to Bulgaria. They also supported the Greek Communists and especially Slavic-Macedonian National Liberation Front in the Greek Civil War

Greek Civil War

with the idea of unification of Aegean Macedonia and Western Thrace

Western Thrace

to the new state under Communist rule. According this project the bourgeoisie

Bourgeoisie

In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...

of the ruling nations in the three imperialist states among which Macedonia was partitioned, tried to camouflage its national oppression, denying the national features of the Macedonian people and the existence of the Macedonian nation. The policies resulting from the agreement were reversed after the Tito-Stalin split

Tito-Stalin Split

The Tito–Stalin Split was a conflict between the leaders of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which resulted in Yugoslavia's expulsion from the Communist Information Bureau in 1948...

in June 1948, when Bulgaria, being subordinated to the interests of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

took a stance against Yugoslavia. This policy for projection and recognition of regional countries and nations since 1930s as for example Macedonia, had been the norm in Comintern policies, displaying Soviet resentment of the nation-state

Nation-state

The nation state is a state that self-identifies as deriving its political legitimacy from serving as a sovereign entity for a nation as a sovereign territorial unit. The state is a political and geopolitical entity; the nation is a cultural and/or ethnic entity...

in Eastern Europe and of the consequences of Paris Peace Conference

Paris Peace Conference, 1919

The Paris Peace Conference was the meeting of the Allied victors following the end of World War I to set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers following the armistices of 1918. It took place in Paris in 1919 and involved diplomats from more than 32 countries and nationalities...

. With the 1943 dissolution of Comintern and the subsequent advent of the Cominform

Cominform

Founded in 1947, Cominform is the common name for what was officially referred to as the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties...

in 1948 came Joseph Stalin's dismissal of the previous ideology, and adaptation to the conditions created for Soviet hegemony

Hegemony

Hegemony is an indirect form of imperial dominance in which the hegemon rules sub-ordinate states by the implied means of power rather than direct military force. In Ancient Greece , hegemony denoted the politico–military dominance of a city-state over other city-states...

during the Cold War

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

. The Dimitrov's sudden death in July 1949 was followed by a "Titoists

Titoism

Titoism is a variant of Marxism–Leninism named after Josip Broz Tito, leader of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, primarily used to describe the specific socialist system built in Yugoslavia after its refusal of the 1948 Resolution of the Cominform, when the Communist Party of...

" witchhunt in Bulgaria.

After Greek Communists lost Greek Civil War, many Slav - speakers were expelled from Greece. Although the People's Republic of Bulgaria originally accepted very few refugees, government policy changed and the Bulgarian government actively sought out Aegean Macedonian refugees. It is estimated that approximately 2,500 children were sent to Bulgaria and 3,000 partisans fled there in the closing period of the war. There was a larger flow into Bulgaria of refugees as the Bulgarian Army pulled out of the Drama-Serres region in 1944. A large proportion of Slavic speakers emigrated there. The "Slavic Committee" in Sofia helped to attract refugees that had settled in other parts of the Eastern Bloc

Eastern bloc

The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...

. According to a political report in 1962 the number of political emigrants from Greece numbered at 6,529. The policy of communist Bulgaria towards the refugees from Greece was, at least initially, not discriminative with regard to their ethnic origin: Greek- and Slav-speakers were both categorized as Greek political emigrants and received equal treatment by state authorities. However, the end of the 1950s was marked by adecisive turn in the “Macedonistic” policy of Bulgaria, "which did not recognize anymore the existence of a Macedonian ethnicity different from the Bulgarian one". As a result, the trend to a discriminative policy, the refugees from Greece – more targeted at the Slav-speakers and less to “ethnic Greeks

Greeks

” – was given a certain proselytizing aspect. Eventually many of these migrants were assimilated into Bulgarian society.

At the end of the 1950s the Communist Party repealed its previous decision and adopted a position denying the existence of a “Macedonian” nation. The inconsistent Bulgarian policy has thrown most independent observers ever since into a state of confusion as to the real origin of the population in Bulgarian Macedonia. In 1960, the Bulgarian Communist Party

Bulgarian Communist Party

The Bulgarian Communist Party was the communist and Marxist-Leninist ruling party of the People's Republic of Bulgaria from 1946 until 1990 when the country ceased to be a communist state...

voted a special resolution explained “with the fact that almost all of the Macedonians have a clear Bulgarian national consciousness and consider Bulgaria their homeland. As result international relations upon the Sofia - Belgrade line deteriorated, and in fact were broken. This led to a final victory of the anti-Bulgarian and pro-Yugoslav oriented Macedonian political circles and signified a definite decline of the very notion of a south Slavonic federation. In Macedonia the Bulgarophobia increased almost to the level of state ideology.

After the Fall of Communism and a brief upsurge of Macedonian nationalism

Macedonian nationalism

at the beginning of the 1990s, sometimes resulting in clashes between nationalist Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) and ethnic Macedonian separatist organization UMO Ilinden-Pirin

UMO Ilinden-Pirin

United Macedonian Organisation: Ilinden–Pirin is an ethnic Macedonian organisation in Bulgaria, whose self-declared aims are protection of the human rights, language and nationality of the Macedonian minority in the country...

, the commotion has largely subsided in recent time and the ethnic Macedonian idea has become strongly marginalized. A total of 3,100 people in the Blagoevgrad District declared themselves Macedonian in the 2001 census (0,9% of the population of the region).

In Bulgaria today, the Macedonian question has been understood largely as a result of the violation of national integrity, beginning with the revision of the Treaty of San Stefano

Treaty of San Stefano

The Preliminary Treaty of San Stefano was a treaty between Russia and the Ottoman Empire signed at the end of the Russo-Turkish War, 1877–78...

from 1878. Bulgaria denies the existence of a separate Macedonian identity. The Bulgarian denouncement is based on the strong sense of loss of the territory, history and language which it shared with Macedonia in the past. After the collapse of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia and the consequent independence of the Macedonian state in 1991, Bulgaria continued to question of the legitimacy of Macedonian nationhood, yet at the same time recognised the Republic of Macedonia

Republic of Macedonia

. The Bulgarian government of 1991 promoted this political compromise as a constructive way of living with the national question, rather than suppressing them. Yet none of the fundamental tensions over the Macedonian question have been fully resolved, and the issue remains an important undercurrent in Sofia politics.

Albania

The Slavic

Slavic peoples

minority in Albania is concentrated in two regions, Mala Prespa and Golo Bardo. In the 1930s the orthodox Slavs living in Albania were regarded as Bulgarians by the local Albanian population. The new Albanian state did not attempt to assimilate this minority or to forcibly change the names of local towns and villages. During the second Balkan Conference in 1932 the Bulgarian and Albanian delegations signed a Protocol about the recognition of the ethnic Bulgarian minority in Albania. After World War II, the creation of People's Republic of Macedonia and the policy of the new communist states about the founding of Balkan Federative Republic changed the situation and an ethnic Macedonian minority was officially recognized. Schools and radio stations in Macedonian were founded in the area.
Albania has recognised around 5,000 strong Macedonian Slav minority. In Albania are both Bulgarian and ethnic Macedonian organizations. Each of them claims that the local Slavic population is Bulgarian/Macedonian. The population itself, which is predominantly Muslim

Muslim

A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...

, has, however, preferred to call itself Albanian in official censuses.

Republic of Macedonia

The Republic of Macedonia

Republic of Macedonia

officially celebrates 1991 with regard to the referendum endorsing independence from Yugoslavia, albeit legalizing participation in "future union of the former states of Yugoslavia". The Macedonian Slavs of the Republic of Macedonia have demonstrated without any exception a strong and even aggressive at times Macedonian consciousness. Any ties with the Bulgarians have been denounced. During this period it has been claimed by Macedonian scholars that there exist large and oppressed ethnic Macedonian minorities in the region of Macedonia, located in neighboring states. Because of those claims, irredentist proposals are being made calling for the expansion of the borders of the Republic of Macedonia to encompass the territories allegedly populated with ethnic Macedonians. The population of the neighboring regions is presented as "subdued" to the propaganda of the governments of those neighbouring countries, and in need their incorporation into a United Macedonia

United Macedonia

. The supporters of these ideas, so called Macedonists generally ignore censuses conducted in Albania, Bulgaria and Greece, which show minimal presence of ethnic Macedonians. They consider those censuses flawed, without presenting evidence in support, and accusing the governments of neighboring countries of continued propaganda. By the time the Republic of Macedonia proclaimed its independence those who continued to look to Bulgaria were very few. Some 3,000 - 4,000 people that stuck to their Bulgarian identity met great hostility among the authorities and the rest of the population. Occasional trials against "Bulgarophiles

Bulgarophiles

Bulgarophiles - , ; ; ; is a term used for people from region of Macedonia and region of Pomoravlje who regard themselves as Bulgarians. It is most often used pejoratively, as the term implies that these people are not really Bulgarian....

" have continued until today. The Constitutional Court of Republic of Macedonia banned the organization of the Bulgarians in the Republic of Macedonia

Bulgarians in the Republic of Macedonia

Bulgarians are a non-recognised ethnic minority in the Republic of Macedonia. Bulgarians are mostly found in the Strumica area, but over the years, the absolute majority of southwestern Republic of Macedonia have declared themselves Macedonian...

-Radko as "promoting racial and religious hate and intolerance". In 2009 the European Court of Human Rights

European Court of Human Rights

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is a supra-national court established by the European Convention on Human Rights and hears complaints that a contracting state has violated the human rights enshrined in the Convention and its protocols. Complaints can be brought by individuals or...

in Strasbourg

Strasbourg

Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...

, condemned Republic of Macedonia

Republic of Macedonia

because of violations of the European Convention of Human Rights in this case. Nevertheless during the last few years, rising economic prosperity and the EU membership of Bulgaria has seen around 60,000 Macedonians applying for Bulgarian citizenship

Citizenship

; in order to obtain it they must sign a statement declaring they are Bulgarians by origin. Probably the most prominent Macedonian that applied for and was granted Bulgarian citizenship is former Prime Minister Ljubčo Georgievski. An estimated 500 Macedonians receive Bulgarian citizenship every week. This aggregates to about 50,000 Macedonian nationals who have received Bulgarian citizenship in the past 20 years. The Bulgarian governments justifies this policy because they regard Macedonians as ethnopolitically disoriented Bulgarians.

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