Can Macedonia turn itself into a separate
ethnographical and political unit? Has it already done
so? Is it doing so now?
In the three previous papers I turned my attention to what
are the most important questions for me, and, I believe,
for all sincere patriots. I think the reader needs no commentary
to be able to understand what I meant by them.
But everything I have said would be groundless if we were
not to consider certain theoretical questions which must
be correctly formulated if we are to succeed in the work
we are doing for our country and our people.
Many people will want to know what sort of national separatism
we are concerned with; they will ask if we are not thinking
of creating a new Macedonian nation. Such a thing would
be artificial and short-lived. And, anyway, what sort of
new Macedonian nation can this be when we and our fathers
and grandfathers and great-grandfathers have always been
called Bulgarians? Have the Macedonians in their history
ever found any outward form of spiritual and political expression?
What have been their relations to the other Balkan nations
and vice versa?
In this section I shall attempt to give an answer to this
and to many other similar questions and also attempt, as
best I can, to explain the true foundations of national
separatism and to point out the unjustness of those who
criticise it, thereby compromising it as something artificial.
One of the first questions which will be posed by the opponents
of national unification and of the revival movement in Macedonia
will be: what is the Macedonian Slav nation? Macedonian
as a nationality has never existed, they will say, and it
does not exist now. There have always been two Slav nationalities
in Macedonia: Bulgarian and Serbian. So, any kind of Macedonian
Slav national revival is simply the empty concern of a number
of fantasists who have no concept of South Slav history.
Macedonia, they will argue further, is not a geographical,
an ethnic or an historical whole. It has never had any influence
on the fate of the neighbouring peoples; on the contrary
it has been the arena for political and cultural strife
between the various Balkan nations. We may hear similar
arguments from some of our fellow-countrymen, Macedonian
Slavs who call themselves Bulgarians, once they have exhausted
all other means of fighting against Macedonian national
unification. There is no single language in Macedonia; instead
there are several different dialects which have a close
affinity to the Bulgarian dialects and they all together
make up one language Bulgarian. And the remaining Macedonian
dialects are closer to Serbian, our opponents will conclude.
Even if these assertions were well-founded, even if there
were an argument against the claim that the Macedonian Slavs
exist and that they belong to an independent Slav unit,
it still seems to me that one could argue the opposite and
show that the national revival and the growth of self-awareness
among the Macedonian Slavs is something very ordinary and
understandable.
The first objection that a Macedonian Slav nationality
has never existed may be very simply answered as follows:
what has not existed in the past may still be brought into
existence later, provided that the appropriate historical
circumstances arise.
There was a time when all Indo-Europeans made up one people
and spoke one common language, as has now been established
by linguists through a comparison of the old and new Indo-European
languages. But the old situation, in which all Indo-Europeans
understood one another, gradually broke down and disappeared
and a new set of circumstances arose in which there came
about a splitting of the language, of the common national
awareness, the common language, into various languages,
beliefs, attitudes, traditions, etc. But this division took
place on a large scale, involving national groups such as
the Indo-Iranians, the Aryans, the Germano-Slavonic-Lithuanians,
etc. According to the dictates of historical circumstances,
these groups became divided into language families such
as Tndian, Tranian or Persian, Armenian, Greek, Thraco-Illyrian,
Italian, Celtic. Germanic. Slavonic and Baltic or Lithuanian.
The Slavonic group, somewhere around the birth of Christ,
was first divided into: the Eastern Slavonic or Russian.
West Slavonic and South Slavonic groups; it was only from
the last group that the Bulgarian Slav nation broke away,
becoming known as Bulgarians, the name attached to them
by the non-Slav Bulgarians.
If our opponents now admit that smaller ethnographic units
have been formed from larger groups as a result of historical
necessity, and if they have hitherto regarded Macedonians
as Bulgarians why is it that they cannot and will not agree
that from this larger ethnographic unit, which everybody
including themselves describes as the Bulgarian nation,
two smaller units might be formed: a Bulgarian and a Macedonian
one? Historical circumstances at present demand that this
division should be made, just as they once demanded that
Bulgarians. Serbs. Croats and Slovenes should emerge from
the South Slav group, or that Poles. Czechs, Slovaks and
Lusatian Serbs should emerge from the West Slav group.
The emergence of the Macedonians as a separate Slav people
is a perfectly normal historical process which is quite
in keeping with the process by which the Bulgarian, Croatian
and Serbian peoples emerged from the South Slav group.
Let us compare the two processes.
Certain historians and philologists claim that from the
very time when the South Slavs first came to the Balkans
differences existed among them, i.e. they were two separate
peoples: the Slavs (Bulgarians and Slovenes) and the Serbo-Croats.
This is the opinion of Kopitar73, Miklosic74 and Safarik75.
Other historians, and particularly linguists, claim that
all the South Slavs when they came to the Balkan Peninsula
spoke different dialects (speech-forms) of a single language
and that they were known by a common name: Slavs. The Serbo-Croats
were also known as Slavs; the names Serb and Croat originated
from the smaller South Slav groups and were tribal names
which became national names only when the people who shared
these names, i.e. the Serbs and the Croats, began to form
larger states. All the Slavs who were subjects of the state
of Serbia called themselves Serbs instead of Slavs, and
all those who were subjects of the state of Croatia called
themselves Croats. This is the opinion of Prof. Jagic76
and of many of his students. He regards the present South
Slav languages not as three units strictly separated from
one another but as a stream of individual speech-forms all
running into one another, and forming, as it were, links
in a chain.
If we are inclined to accept the first theory, i.e. that
the Bulgarians and the Serbo-Croats settled in the Balkans
as ready-formed, individual units, then we must ask how
far these individual nations spread at the time when they
were beginning to settle the land; we must also ask whether
all the Bulgarians who came to the peninsula remained as
they were or whether some of them became Serbianised. And
did all the Serbo-Croats who came to the Balkans remain
as they were. or did of them become Bulgarian ised? If we
accept the claim that the South Slav nations came ready-formed
to the Balkans we are left completely in the dark concerning
the question of the boundary between Bulgarians and Serbs,
and particularly the question of which peoples settled the
Morava, Kucevo and Branicevo regions in the Middle Ages,
in other words the present kingdom of Serbia. Safarik, basing
his opinion on the works of Byzantine historians, particularly
those of Constantine Porphyrogenitus77, claims that these
areas were settled by Bulgarian Slavs who became Serbianised
in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. If we accept
this as a correct explanation it will be clear that a nation
cannot always resist pressure from neighbouring foreign
nations and that it will lose part of its territory to the
stronger neighbour; furthermore, it can be seen from this
theory that nations can be made up of two closely connected
peoples and that historical necessity may weld them into
one whole.
Why should the events of the Middle Ages not be repeated
now? The Bulgarians have lost almost all of present-day
Serbia to the Serbs and have come to accept their loss,
indeed they no longer look on it as a loss. Why should they
not then be able to reconcile themselves to the loss of
Macedonia when it is as much an inescapable necessity as
was the loss of Serbia? History remorselessly led Bulgaria
into losing Serbia to the Nemanja dynasty and to the Serbian
spirit, first in the political and then in the national
sense; and the historical circumstances which arose from
the Berlin Treaty required that Macedonia should be lost
to Bulgaria first in the political and then in the national
sense.
Yet another comparison with the history of Serbia: if Serbia
had been dissatisfied with her fate in the state of the
Nemanja dynasty she would have tried to gain her liberty
by offering opposition and by attempting to unite with Bulgaria;
but this attempt would have been made and would have had
the desired result only if the historical circumstances
had been favourable and allowed it to happen, which they
did not and so Serbia became reconciled to the facts and
was lost to the Bulgarians. The situation is the same and
will be the same for Macedonia. Macedonia first attempted
to gain liberation from Turkey but unfortunately the attempt
was ineffectual. It might have been possible after such
a liberation to think of unification with Bulgaria but this
year has shown us that historical circumstances will never
allow all of Macedonia to unite with Bulgaria. The Macedonians
and Bulgarians are now left with a choice between two possibilities:
either Macedonia will be divided among the neighbouring
Balkan states, which would mean a loss of two thirds of
Macedonia both for the Bulgarians and for the Macedonians,
or else all relations with Bulgaria will be severed and
the Macedonian question will be regarded on a purely neutral,
Macedonian basis. When necessity phrases the issue thus
it is clear that the second choice is the one which will
always be preferred by everybody, for what honest Macedonian
patriot would be prepared to sacrifice Kostur, Lerin*, Bitola,
Ohrid, Resen, Prilep, Veles, Tetovo, Skopje, etc. for the
unification of Macedonia up to the left bank of the River
Vardar with Bulgaria? Is there a greater affinity between
a Macedonian from Eastern Macedonia with a citizen of Ruse,
on the Romanian border, or with a Macedonian from eastern,
western, northern or southern Macedonia? When historical
necessity categorically tells us: Macedonians, you must
either unite and cut yourselves off from the other Balkan
peoples or be prepared to see your country divided, all
true Macedonian patriots will choose the former course.
This will require humanity from the Macedonians; but can
one describe as humane the situation which the propagandists
have set up in Macedonia? In one and the same home the father
belongs to one nationality, one of the sons to another,
the second son to yet another, and God alone knows how long
this will continue? Humanity requires that we should root
out this abnormal situation from our land and reconcile
brother with brother and father with child. This unification
is a necessity and there is no need for us to tolerate enmity
in our families for the sake of some unification with Bulgaria,
which will never be countenanced either by the other small
Balkan states or by the great powers.
Thus, under the present political conditions, the loss
of Macedonia for Bulgaria is no less justifiable than was
the loss of Serbia for Bulgaria in the Middle Ages. And
just as the loss of Serbia in the political sense inevitably
resulted in a loss in the national sense, so too the fragmentation
of San Stefano Bulgaria will bring an ethnographic division
in the train of the political division. Circumstances create
cultural and national ties between people, but circumstances
can also split close connections.
Such a comparison may well exist between the first theory,
i.e. that of the settlement of the Balkan Peninsula by the
South Slavs, their division into two nationalities, their
strict separation in the ethnographic and geographic sense
and the gradual alteration of the ethnographic map of the
Balkan Peninsula, and the process of national differentiation
taking place in Macedonia today.
Let us now see whether from the point of view of the other
theory, i.e. that of Jagic, concerning the formation of
the South Slav nations, the formation of a new Macedonian
Slav nation can be explained in the present political circumstances?
Jagic tells us that the South Slav languages are. and
have been, a chain of dialects; he also says that all the
South Slavs, up till the formation of the Bulgarian, Serbian,
Croatian and Slovenian states, had been designated by the
same name Slavs. It seems that over the length of this
chain of South Slav tribes and dialects, four strong units
were formed, one might say four states with separate names,
i.e. the Slovene. Croat, Serb and Bulgarian states. These
units, or states, according to the strength they had when
they were formed, divided up all the tribal and dialectical
features of the South Slav ethnographic complex and called
them by their own names. These units were centred round
the people who bore the national name, and as their political
power increased or decreased so the centre widened or narrowed.
Thus the names Serb and Croat became national names after
having been tribal names; thus the neighbouring tribes with
their dialects mechanically attached themselves to these
centres so that together they made up one people and gradually
became assimilated by those who had subdued or incorporated
them.
If the formation of the South Slav peoples was a mechanical
and political process it would not be impossible that it
might recur in present times. Within the South Slav language
complex there arc several branches outside the Serbian and
Bulgarian political units; these are the Macedonian dialects.
These branches, since they are closely allied, naturally
have some connection linking them more closely with Bulgarian
in the east and Serbian in the north. These branches have
been given various names at various times but it was not
until the last quarter of the nineteenth century that these
names overlapped so much as to displace one another. These
various names did not properly catch on, and gradually they
began to give way until finally they were replaced by the
natural description ''Slav" with a "Macedonian"
reflection from the geographical area in which they were
distributed. The people who spoke these dialects had once
been called "Slavs" and later either "Serbs"
or "Bulgarians" until the rivalry between these
two names made them both alien to the Macedonian Slavs,
who started calling themselves after the old geographical
name of their country. The name Macedonian was first used
by the Macedonian Slavs as a geographical term to indicate
their origin. This name is well known to the Macedonian
Slavs and all of them use it to describe themselves. Since
the formation of nationalities is a political and mechanical
process, all the necessary conditions exist for Macedonia
to break off as an independent ethnographic region. The
Macedonians have a common country which is gradually, with
the reforms, breaking off into an independent political
whole in which there are "several branches of the South
Slav chain of languages": these branches can easily
be united through a general recognition of the central one
as the means of expression of the literary language of all
intelligent people in Macedonia and as the language of books
and schools. Thus all the conditions for the national revival
of the Macedonians are clearly visible, and, even from the
point of view of the other historical theory (concerning
the formation of small ethnographic units from a larger
unit on the Balkan Peninsula), this is completely logical.
Here is what one might say to those who claim that Macedonian
as a nationality has never existed: it may not have existed
in the past, but it exists today and will exist in the future.
Let us now ask another question: would it be correct to
say that there are two nationalities in Macedonia or, if
there is only one, can it be called Serbian or Bulgarian?
In Macedonia, as in all other countries, there are many
dialects which are very close to one another. This similarity
among the dialects of Macedonia can be seen on the one hand
in their general phonetic, phonemic, morphological, formal
and lexical features; and on the other hand each dialect
is very close to its neighbouring dialects and shares with
them common characteristics which do not occur in the dialects
of more distant parts. The western dialects are closest
to each other and, so to speak, flow together, as do the
east-em dialects; these dialects are linked in the same
chain.
Now the question arises: which of the branches of our
language chain should be called Serbian and which Bulgarian,
and on what basis?
In settling this question one should not forget the following
consideration: which of the dialects of the Serbian and
Bulgarian languages should be accepted as most typical of
those languages and what are the qualities which are considered
most characteristic of the one language or the other? Do
these most characteristic features also exist in the Macedonian
dialects? Do the Macedonian dialects have their own common
features which do not exist in Serbian or Bulgarian? In
the Macedonian dialects do the Macedonian expressions outweigh
the Serbian and Bulgarian expressions, or is the reverse
true? Finally, do the qualities of extreme or peripheral
Macedonian dialects and speech-forms permit us to consider
them closer to the central and most typical Macedonian dialect
of Veles, Priiep and Bitola or are they closer to the central
dialects of Serbian and Bulgarian?
The most typical and most extensive of the Serbian dialects
is either that of Bosnia-Hercegovina or of southern Serbia,
and it has been the literary language of the Serbs and Croats
since the time of Vuk Karadic. The central Macedonian dialect,
i.e. that of Veles and Prilep, can never in its essence
be oriented towards Serbian because the difference between
this language and the central dialect of Serbo-Croatian,
i.e. the current Serbo-Croatian language, is as great as
that between Czech and Polish. This is as much as to say
that there are no Serbs in the central part of Macedonia.
From the current acknowledgement that from the very beginning
there were only three Slav nations in the Balkans Slovenes,
Serbo-Croats and Bulgarians and from a denial of the presence
of Serbs in central Macedonia, there is an indirect acknowledgement
that there are Bulgarians there. But is this current attitude,
that if there are no Serbs it means that there are Bulgarians,
correct? Does the fact that there are no Serbs really mean
that there are Bulgarians?
In the central Macedonian dialects the following phonetic
features can be found: the old Macedonian sounds and ,
have been turned into o and e in those places where the
sound has been preserved, e.g. from the old Macedonian
, through from ; instead of the old j and j
we have and or and , for example 弝, ,
instead of we have , e.g. , instead of , instead
of x - a, for example , etc. Not all these features
are Serbian, nor are they Bulgarian. They do not exist in
the main Bulgarian dialect, eastern Bulgarian, which serves
as the literary language of the Bulgarians.
If the east Bulgarian dialect is taken as being the most
typical Bulgarian speech-form, it is very clear that the
distance alone which separates it from the centre of Macedonia
is sufficient proof that the Macedonian tongue cannot be
Bulgarian.
The east Bulgarian dialect is now considered the most
typical Bulgarian tongue, free from all foreign influence.
Its extent is greater than that of west Bulgaria. The west
Bulgarian dialect is very different from that of the east
and one can feel the influence of Serbian, despite the fact
that it is an original dialect. The Macedonian dialects,
however, also have their own characteristic forms, while
the fact that they are close to Serbia means that they are
not free from Serbianisms. These dialects, what is more,
are found in the extreme west. For all these reasons, and
above all because the Macedonians, up till the last Russo-Turkish
war, had fought together with the Bulgarians, under the
Bulgarian name, for their freedom from the Greek Patriarch
and from Turkey, and because the sites of the battles were
around Bulgaria, i.e. Istanbul, Wallachia, southwest Russia
and Serbia, these places were mostly represented in the
war of liberation by the Bulgarians and this helped to make
eastern Bulgarian become the literary language of the Bulgarians
and the Macedonians.
Let us accept for the moment that the Macedonians are
Bulgarians and that the characteristics of the Macedonian
central dialect are just as much Bulgarian as are the east
Bulgarian ones; even then we cannot speak of an ethnographic
unit existing between Bulgaria and Macedonia. Even if such
a unit had once existed it would have had to be destroyed
by the pressure of historical events. In any case, common
interests can be maintained only by mutual agreement between
the members of the whole unit. The interests of the unit
should be equally valued by all its members; all should
have the same benefit from it and all should be prepared
to make equal sacrifices on its behalf. If this state of
affairs does not exist, and if some have great advantages
without making any sacrifices while others are making great
and useless sacrifices, the whole falls apart. The national
Bulgarian unit, including Bulgaria, Thrace and Macedonia,
cannot be maintained because there is no ethnographic centre
to unite these three countries completely in the way the
Serbs and Croats are united.
There is no language in the centre of these countries that
is sufficiently widespread and sufficiently distant from
all parts of the region to be able to attract the peripheral
dialects and disperse a common national self-awareness among
all those who speak these dialects. In this case everyone
would realise that not only the Macedonians but also the
Bulgarians from Thrace were ceding as much as each other,
to the advantage of the centre.
Now the situation has raised the east Bulgarian dialect,
which is as far as it could be from Macedonia, to the level
of the literary language of the Bulgarians. This dialect
cannot serve as the literary language of both the Bulgarians
and Ihe Macedonians because it cannot unite all three of
the regions mentioned on an equal footing. This task might
have been fulfilled by the west Bulgarian, or Shopski, dialect78
if it were more widely diffused than it is and did not have
so many specific features which do not exist in the other
dialects of Bulgaria. Thrace and Macedonia. And finally,
as far as the preservation of a national unit between Bulgaria
and Macedonia is concerned, Bulgaria would not agree to
choosing the central Macedonian dialect instead of the East
Bulgarian as the common literary language of the Bulgarians
and the Macedonians79. This is why the question of which
language should be accepted as the common literary language
of the Macedonians and the Bulgarians if the Macedonians
are to be called Bulgarians in the first place cannot
come up for consideration because the minds of the Macedonians
are at present filled with the revolutionary movement. But
the day will inevitably come when Macedonia breaks away
from Bulgaria with the creation of a Macedonian literary
language.
And is not the creation of a separate Macedonian language,
on a par with Serbian and Bulgarian, commensurate with the
formation of a separate Macedonian Slav nation which is
neither Serbian nor Bulgarian? The Bulgarians may claim
that this new Slav nation with its own literary language
will still be Bulgarian, but simply with a different name.
We Macedonians will naturally have nothing against the Bulgarians
even if they choose to consider us Bulgarian, nor against
the Serbs and Croats if they consider us pure Serbs or Croats.
The central Macedonian dialect is, then, equally removed
from both the Serbo-Croatian and the Bulgarian literary
languages and may be regarded as something apart from both
of these. This means that we have found a neutral link in
the chain of dialects. Now it is necessary to decide whether
this neutral link is in fact isolated and different from
the other links in the chain of the Slav languages or whether
there are other links in that chain with similar features,
and which are closer to Macedonian than to other tongues.
If we compare the dialects from all parts of Macedonia with
the central Macedonian dialect on the one hand and with
the eastern Bulgarian dialect or the Serbian of Vuk Karadic
on the other hand, we will realise that all the Macedonian
dialects are closer to central Macedonian than to the kernel
dialects of the other South Slavs.
This means that there is a Slav population in Macedonia
but not a Serbian or Bulgarian population.
The Serbian and Bulgarian propagandists both admit this,
despite the fact that they both claim in public that there
are two nationalities in Macedonia: the Serbs and the Bulgarians.
Serbian propaganda has been disseminated all over Macedonia
except in the regions of Kostur, Ser (Today's Castoria,
Seres), Petrich and Drama, i.e. except in the extreme south
and the extreme east. The reason why Serbian propaganda
has not penetrated to the Kostur region is not that there
are no Serbs in the area but that the Serbs have voluntarily
allowed the Greeks to spread their propaganda in these parts;
and in eastern Macedonia they have generously allowed the
Bulgarians to pursue their own interests.
Bulgaria has been no less magnanimous towards Serbia concerning
the Macedonian question: Bulgaria acknowledges the presence
of the Serbs north-west of the Sar Mountains; but all the
rest of Macedonia is Bulgarian according to the Bulgarians.
So, Serbia and Bulgaria do not dispute these areas north-west
of the Sar Mountains and the parts of the Ser region which
are close to the Bulgarian border. The former is populated
by people who are unanimously Serbian and the latter by
people who are unanimously Bulgarian. Serbia's magnanimity
is in fact merely a ruse to prove the restraint of her appetites
and the justness of her claims: as much as to say you
see, we won't lay a finger on anything that is not ours.
Bulgaria is governed by the same motives in her dealings
with Serbia; in fact the Bulgarians even turn out to be
the more tolerant of the two, looking upon the region beyond
the Sar Mountains as "Old Serbia".
But, once these two regions have been excluded, the rest
of Macedonia is called Serbian by the Serbs and Bulgarian
by the Bulgarians.
The motives behind Serbian and Bulgarian pretensions are,
of course, purely political; but there is also an ulterior
motive: the Macedonian dialects are very close to one another
and they merge so easily, almost unnoticed, into one another
that, if one is to accept one of them as Serbian or Bulgarian,
one is obliged to include all the neighbouring dialects
one after the other in the same group. The conclusion is
clear: the propagandists themselves admit that there exists
only one Slav nation in Macedonia, hence the assertion that
Macedonia does not make up an ethnographic unit is contradictory
to their assumptions and to their manner of proceeding.
* * *
After all that has already been said there will be many
who will say: it may be true that if a Macedonian Slav nation
has not existed in the past it may still emerge in time,
particularly given the present historical conditions. The
truth is that the Macedonians, if one is to judge by their
language, cannot be really called Bulgarians or Serbs
they are a people apart, i.e. they form an independent ethnographic
unit. But how can we now begin calling ourselves Macedonians
and claim that we are an independent Macedonian nation when
we, our fathers and grandfathers have always been called
Bulgarians? We cannot renounce this name, because it is
as holy to us as our faith.
Let us see if this is the case.
We call ourselves Bulgarians just in the same way as a
man uses a name, Peter for instance. Now we must ask who
gave us this name, what he wanted to show by it when he
"christened" us and what we understand by the
name Bulgarian when we use it. The answer to this question
is to be found in the reasons for the "christening"
and in the meaning of the name, both for the person who
bears it and for others.
Someone called Peter is not responsible for his own name,
it was given to him by others, by his godparents. The godparents
give their godchild a name in order to distinguish it from
other people. A child called Peter will not answer to the
name of Ivan. Lazar. Velika, etc. Therefore, a man's name
is less important to him than to others because he does
not christen himself, but is christened by others. In speaking
of himself he does not even use the word "Peter";
he says "I". He will use his name only to distinguish
himself from other people similar to himself.
So, too, a nation may remain nameless for long enough
if there is no other nation nearby from which it differs
sufficiently to feel the need for using a separate national
name. But this national name is not thought up by the nation
for its own use, it is used by the neighbouring nations
and taken from them. This means that it is quite natural
for the name of a nation to occur in the neighbouring nation
as well; neighbouring nations contact one another, and their
relation is close to that of godparent and god-child.
According to Prof. Jean Baudouin de Courtenay the Slavs
acquired their name from the Romans. Most Slavonic names
end in -slav: Svetislav, Venceslav. Borislav, etc. The Slavs
were used by the Romans as slaves and gladiators and amongst
them the word slav was extremely common; thus this word
came to mean on the one hand a man who performed the hardest
physical work. i.e. a slave, and on the other hand a Slav,
because most of the slaves were taken from the Slavonic
tribes so that they became known by the Romans as Slavi,
which they took upon themselves turning it into cAoe-in-ii,
i.e. Slavs. Our distant ancestors, then, were christened
with this name at a time when they scarcely came into contact
with the more cultured Roman peoples. The name Slav was
then used in order to differentiate the Slavonic peoples
from the Romans and Germans. It was not
used everywhere exclusively. Be this as it may, it is perfectly
clear that nobody can state what exactly the name meant
or why it should not have been replaced by another name.
And so we became the Slavs. But we know most about this
name and about our people not from any of our own traditions
or from the Romans but from the Byzantine historians.
The chief reason why the Byzantines spoke about the Slavs,
our ancestors, was that they were frequently at war with
them. The devastation wrought by our ancestors in Byzantium
was a fact that could not be passed over in silence; and
in describing the devastation it was also necessary to describe
the devastators, towards whom the Byzantines behaved with
great disdain and hauteur, treating them as barbarians.
The Byzantines spoke only of the barbarians who represented
a danger to them. The more destructive a barbarian, i.e.
a non-Greek nation, was towards the Byzantine state the
more it was hated and the lower its name sank and the more
it was utterly scorned.
Attacks by the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, the Huns, the
Avars, the Antae, the Slavs, the Serbs, Croats and Bulgarians
on Byzantium followed hard on one another and for these
same reasons the Byzantine historians speak of all these
peoples, even identifying the Slavs and the Antae. It should
also be remembered that the Visigoth, Ostrogoth and Hun
forces were not made up exclusively of Visigoths, Ostrogoths,
Huns or Slavs, that there was not one dominant nation among
them but rather several nations joined together. What matters,
however, is that the Byzantines speak of the ruling nation
and not about the others. They have more to say about the
Slavs than about any other nations except the Serbs, Croats
and Bulgarians because all the other tribes really came
from beyond the Balkan peninsula and eventually disappeared
whence they had come. But the Slavs settled themselves firmly
in the Balkans, especially in Macedonia where, in the seventh
century, they formed a powerful state against which Byzantium
sent a great army.
Byzantium, however, was worst devastated by the Bulgarians,
of Mongolian tribal origin, who razed to the ground all
they came across in Byzantium. Fighting in these forces
there were Slavs whom the Byzantines considered Bulgarians.
The greatest blow delivered to Byzantium by the Bulgarians
was when they overran a great part of the Empire which was
settled by Slavs. Out of these Slavs they formed a great
and powerful state and from the seventh century until the
arrival of the Turks in the Balkans this state struck blow
after blow against Byzantium.
The Bulgarian state was on the whole inhabited by Slavs
but their name was that of the founders of the state, the
Mongol Bulgarians.
The Slavs from Bulgaria and Macedonia were at first allies
of the Bulgarians in the wars with Byzantium but these Slav
troops allied to the Bulgarians were considered by the enemy,
i.e. Byzantium, as purely Bulgarian. So, the Byzantines
began "christening" the Slavs as far back as the
time of Asparuh's hordes80. The constant fighting shoulder
to shoulder at very close quarters meant that they became
one nation with a Bulgarian name but speaking a Slav language.
The name Bulgarian for the Slavs was popularised by the
Greeks; at first it had meant only the Mongol Bulgarians
but later it came to include their military allies, the
Bulgarian subjects, and finally became the ethnographic
term for the Bulgarian Slavs. But this name had yet another
particular meaning in the eyes and speech of the Greeks:
these Bulgars were for the Greeks the most notorious barbarians,
uncouth and uncivilized, people who differed little from
wild beasts. For the Greeks all that was Slav was uncouth
and Bulgarian.
We Macedonians were also "christened" Bulgarians;
but this "christening" was not the only one because
the Serbs also "christened" us Serbs.
In the second half of the twelfth century, at the time
of the Serbian Grand Zhupan Nemanja81 and the Bulgarian
Tsars Asen or Asan82, Byzantium was attacked by the Crusaders
and various other enemy forces. It was then that the Bulgarians
began to prepare a revolt and to reach an agreement with
Serbia against Byzantium. Byzantium was their joint enemy
and the two nations decided to fall upon her, each taking
what it could get. There were no Bulgarian or Serbian lands
in Byzantium, nor was there any national self-awareness
amongst the South Slavs. On the basis of this agreement
the Bulgarians attacked the eastern part of the Balkan Peninsula,
i.e. Thrace, and the Serbs attacked the western part, i.e.
present-day Serbia, West Bulgaria and Macedonia, and gradually
they began to divide them up between themselves. Over a
period of two centuries the Serbian kings annexed parts
of Byzantium to their state, but they always referred to
themselves only as the kings of Serbia. Tsar Dusan called
himself Tsar of the Serbs, Greeks and Albanians but not
of the Bulgarians. Tsar Dusan's title can be explained as
follows: on the Balkan Peninsula he recognized two Slav
states, Bulgaria and Serbia, and one non-Slav state, Byzantium.
By taking over lands from Byzantium, Serbia hoped to become
the successor to Byzantium and so she took lands which might
have been either Serbian or Bulgarian and lands which were
not Bulgarian.
The people of Macedonia showed no hatred towards the Serbs.
Even as far back as the time of the fall of Samuil's Empire
the Macedonians launched uprisings against Byzantium, far
more powerful than that of the Bulgarians at the time of
the brothers Asan, but they could not liberate themselves
because their geographical situation was different from
that of the Bulgarians. All the Bulgarians needed to do
to win their freedom was to overcome the Byzantine garrisons
in Upper Bulgaria, which is separated by the Balkan Mountains81
from Lower Bulgaria, and then capture the valleys so that
another Byzantine army could not enter it. But in Macedonia
the situation was quite different; there was no wall like
the Balkan Mountains to defend the rebel forces. There are
in Macedonia many high mountains running in various directions
with valleys separated from one another. The mountains made
it more difficult for the Macedonians to unite in their
fight against the enemy and also simplified the work of
the Byzantine forces because, by setting up their garrisons
in the mountains, they were able to keep the Macedonians
under control. The Byzantines were further aided in this
by the roads which had been built in Roman times for military
purposes and which ran across Macedonia from east to west,
i.e. from the Aegean to the Adriatic, and from south to
north along the River Vardar. i.e. from the Aegean Sea to
the Danube. Given such geographical conditions it is clear
that the Macedonians were not able to win their freedom
from Byzantium and that they were ready to ally themselves
with any enemy who might choose to fight against Byzantium.
Up till the tenth century this all}' was Bulgaria and from
the thirteenth century it was Serbia.
The Macedonians became allies of the Serbs and thus succeeded
in liberating themselves from Byzantium. They allied themselves
to Serbia but this alliance was not forced upon them, it
was brought about by means of an agreement between the Macedonian
chiefs and the Serbian kings. This was the result of a compromise
on both sides, a compromise of benefit to both parties.
Under the Serbian kings, particularly under Dusan84, Macedonia
had complete independence in her internal affairs, an independence
such as was not enjoyed by any other part of Dusan's great
empire. This can be seen by the titles which the Macedonian
leaders bore and by their influence on the running of the
empire. It can also be seen from the great loyalty shown
by the Macedonians to the Serbian crown. If further proof
is needed one need only look at the history of the Nemanja
state from the time of Tsar Dusan to the death of Volkasin85,
particularly the period when Dusan's empire was disintegrating.
This shows convincingly that the centre of the empire and
the focal point of activity was in Macedonia. After Dusan's
death the empire broke up along its boi'ders bit by bit.
Macedonia supported Uros's throne and the Macedonian noble,
King Volkasin, was the chief counsellor and right hand man
of Uros86. All hated Volkasin for his role and his influence
on Uros. but the Tsar had faith in him. The Macedonian nobles,
seventy kings or princes and barons, as the folk-songs recount,
gave the king seventy thousand soldiers as a mark of their
faith and died with them at Maritsa for the Tsar and in
"the name of Serbia".
Seventy thousand soldiers and seventy kings or princes and
nobles! What was this army called? What name did it bear
and who gave it this name? All the soldiers were called
"Serbs" but there were only as many Serbs in this
army as there had been Mongol Bulgarians in the army of
Tsar Simeon, or even less I think. So, in the fourteenth
centuiy the Macedonians were officially called Serbs, for
the Serbs were a people whom they had no reason to hate
or despise; they found nothing evil in this name.
The Serbs were the chief military force against the Byzantines.
Our forefathers were their allies. The Byzantines branded
all their enemies, i.e. the Serbs and the Macedonians, with
the same name Serbs. Gradually they began to re-christen
us Serbs instead of Bulgarians. This process of re-christening
was strengthened by the acknowledgement of Dusan"s
sovereignty in Macedonia and by the role of our nobility
in his kingdom. In the eyes of the world we had become Serbs;
we then became Serbian subjects, and finally the term Serb
came to mean Macedonian as well, but not Greek. Vlach or
Albanian.
There was only one event which did not help to keep the
name of Serbia bound to that of Macedonia and this was the
quarrel between Prince Marko87 and Prince Lazar58. The latter
fought against the Turks in the name of Serbia and so the
Turks linked the concept of Serbia and of the Serbs with
the present kingdom and its people. Marko and his subjects
were not Serbs in the eyes of the Turks because they did
not show the same warlike opposition as was shown by Prince
Lazar and his subjects.
Thus, by the time of the Turkish invasion, we had already
been thrice christened; first as Slavs, then as Bulgarians
and finally as Serbs.
But this was not the end of it all. Soon the Turks came
and the battle began between Christians and Muslims, between
the cross and the crescent moon. This meant that an end
was brought to the battle between the Slav world and the
Greek world. The rulership of the Turks in the Balkans marked
the beginning of an historical period in which the subject
nations hoped to preserve their historical heritage. Naturally,
we succeeded in preserving only what it was possible to
preserve, i.e. whatever the Turks did not wish to take from
us either because they did not need it or because it was
not dangerous for them. The Turks took our land and divided
it among themselves; we had to reconcile ourselves to this
loss. They then began to take our children to bring them
up as Turks and to turn them into Janissaries. Even then
we kept silent. The Turks felt it would be difficult to
subdue Serbia because the name Serb meant much the same
as brigand for them. We bowed our heads and ceased calling
ourselves Serbs so as not to anger the Aga. But he did not
want us to call ourselves Bulgarians either; so we did not
call ourselves Bulgarians. The Turk would come to our house,
eat our food, drink our drink and tell us: You giaour. bring
me this or bring me that! And we would answer:...
(the missing part will be added shortly)
-
74 Jernej Kopitar (1780-1844) was a figure
in the Slovene revival and a distinguished Austrian Slavicist.
the author of the first scholarly and scientific Slovene
grammar, publisher of old Slavonic memoirs and a significant
helper in the philological work of Vuk. St. Karadic.
75 The Slovene Frank Miklosic (1813-91) was one of the most
eminent 19"" century Slavic scholars, author of
a Comparative Grammar of the Slavonic Languages, an Old-Slavonic-Greek-Latin
Dictionary and an Etymological Dictionary of the Slavonic
Languages.
76 The Slovak Pavel Safarik (1795-1861) was a distinguished
Slovakian and Czech philologist and ethnologist, whose most
important works are: History of the Slavonic Language and
All Its Dialects. Slavonic Antiquities and Slavonic Ethnography.
76 The Croat Vatroslav Jagic was one of the greatest Slavonic
scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For
many years Professor of Slavonic Philology at Odessa, Berlin,
St. Petersburg and Vienna, he is the author of numerous
studies in Slavistics, editor of Old Slavonic texts and
publisher of the periodical Archive of Slavonic Philology
in Vienna, as well as of the unfinished Encyclopaedia of
Slavonic Philology.
77 Constantine Porphyrogenitus (905-959). Byzantine Emperor
and author of various historical documents including On
[lie Rule of the Empire, where he provides much information
about the settlemeni and life of the Slavs on the Balkan
Peninsula.
* Todays Castoria, Florina
78 In his first scholarly work, On the Significance
of the Moravian or Resavan Dialect for the Contemporary
and Historical Ethnography of the Balkan Peninsula (1897),
Misirkov turned his attention to the Moravian dialect of
the Serbian language and to the Sop region as a border area
of three ethnicities - Serbian, Bulgarian and Macedonian.
One of the most significant attempts to elevate the Sopski
dialect to the level of a literary language for Bulgarians
and Macedonians, as a comparative solution, was made by
Josif Kovacev (1839-98) from Stip in his Bulgarian Primer
(1875), claiming thai this dialect, centred on K'ustendil,
was a central and very well preserved speech form, between
the northern Bulgarian, or Balkan and southern Bulgarian,
or Macedonian dialects.
79 Such an attempt on the part of Partenija Zografski in
1857-58 was met with a fierce reaction on the part of the
Bulgarian activists.
80 Khan Asparuh (c. 644-701) came with one of his hordes
from the east to the Danube estuary and, having pacified
the Slav tribes, he crushed the Byzantine forces and formed
the first Bulgarian state (681) on the Balkan Peninsula
with its seat at Pliska.
81 Stefan Nemanja (c. 1168-96) was the Grand Zhupan of Raska
and united the medieval Serbian state that was then ruled
by the Nemanja dynasty.
82 The brothers Asen I (d. 11%), Petar II (d. 1197) and
Kaloyan (d. 1207) were the founders of the Bulgarian Empire
who succeeded in heavily defeating Byzantium and expanding
their state.
83 The Turkish name for the Old Mountain(s) which was used
for the name of the peninsula.
84 The King and Emperor of medieval Serbia. Stefan Dusan
(1308-55).
85 The ruler of the north-west part of Macedonia, King Volkasin,
with his seat in Prilep, together with his brother Jovan
Uglesa, was killed at the Battle of Maritsa. fought near
the village of Cernomen in the Odrin (Edirne) district on
26.XI. 1371. This marked the start of the Turkish penetration
of the Balkans.
86The Serbian emperor Uros (1355-71) ruled during the period
of the intensive decline and fall of the united feudal state:
his death marked the end of the illusory central power of
the state.
87 Prince Marko (c. 1335-95) was the last ruler to reign
over the greater part of Macedonia before the advent ofthe
centuries-long rule of the Turkish Sultans. He was to become
the best-known hero in folklore not only for the Macedonians
but also for all the South Slavs. In fact, after 1371, Marko
became a Turkish vassal and died as such in the battle asainst
the Wallachian Duke Mirce. opposed also to the Serbian Prince
Lazar who defied the Turks.
88 The antagonism between the Macedonian ruler Marko and
the Serbian Prince Lazar Hrebljanovic (1329-89) was based
largely on the different positions and practical policies
ofthe two rulers: while Marko was a Turkish vassal, Lazar
was an independent ruler who, defying the Turks, was also
in opposition to Marko. Marko did not take part in the Battle
of Kosovo and not merely did he not come to Lazar's aid
but took over some of his territories.
