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...
(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
