„А вие (што сте)? Македонци, едногласно како од пиштол“. - Странски дописници во разговор со локалното население
ВО моите пребарувања на интернет, забележав една интересна книга од Nada Boskovska, професор по историја на Универзитетот во Цирих (Швајцарија). Претставена е како специјалист Централна и Југоисточна Европа.
Ја има напишано книгата „Југославска Македонија 1918-1941, еден маргинален регион меѓу репресијата и интеграцијата“ во Виена 2009. Во истата, има интересни извори/документи за идентитетот на Македонците од овој период. Ви пренесува дел од нив, на англиски јазик (книгата е инаку на германски), преземени од интернет. Ги приложувам и цитираните страници, во оригинал.
"Das jugoslawische Makedonien 1918-1941: eine Randregion zwischen Repression und Integration" by Nada Boškovska, Böhlau Verlag Wien, 2009, pages 14-20:
Ја има напишано книгата „Југославска Македонија 1918-1941, еден маргинален регион меѓу репресијата и интеграцијата“ во Виена 2009. Во истата, има интересни извори/документи за идентитетот на Македонците од овој период. Ви пренесува дел од нив, на англиски јазик (книгата е инаку на германски), преземени од интернет. Ги приложувам и цитираните страници, во оригинал.
"Das jugoslawische Makedonien 1918-1941: eine Randregion zwischen Repression und Integration" by Nada Boškovska, Böhlau Verlag Wien, 2009, pages 14-20:
...Serbs, Bulgarians and Greeks could historically evenly legitimize their claims. That is why they looked into another legitimization of their claims, which is more contemporary: the Nationality of the population. At first, it was Bulgaria and Greece who started their propagandas in Macedonia to persuade the Christians of Macedonia (and the public in Europe) that they are Bulgarians or Greecs. Beside the churches, they started building schools. Also guerrilla groups penetrated the theritorry of Macedonia, which were pushing their National agendas by force. Not much later, the Serbs joined this game as a third power. Until 1875 the Serb interest was focusing on Bosnia and Hercegovina and it's Serb population. After the occupation of the province through double-monarchy (1878)
and especially after the annexion (1908), they started focusing on Macedonia. The Serbian kingdom followed the same pattern. They opened schools and sent guerrila.
In 1912 rivals came together, and together with Montenegro they fought the Ottomans and eventually drove them out of the Balkans. This war was followed by another war, a one to divide the pray.
The war was put to an end with the treaty of Bukarest on 10 August 1913, where the kingdoms agreed to divide Macedonia between themselves. The borders which were agreed upon at the time are almost the same as todays.
After the division, they had full juristdiction over their parts and teritory, so that they could proceed with the assimilation of the Slavic population, making them into Greeks, Serbs and Bulgarians.
It happened that this assimilation did not went so good as they expected. After decades of different indoctrinations, especially for the peasant poplulation, there was an obvious confisuion about what they are in Nation sense - if they even understood what that meant, and if this aspect was still not confused with the Church affiliation.
Others have developed new conscience - a Macedonian conscience, which most probably has it's origins as answear to the neighbours' propaganda: We are nothing from all that, what the others are claiming we are; we are the inhabitants of Macedonia, so we are Macedonians.
Even previously there were representatives, similar to another national movments, who researched the Macedonian language and culture and it's tradition, and explicitly talked about "Macedonian Folk". The most explicite definition is found by Gorgi Pulevski (1838-1895), a mason and selftought man from Galichnik a village in the mountanious west Macedonia, who as a migrant worker, traveled quite a lot douring his youth. Puleski is active in phase A (according to Hroch) in a manner typical of a national development, among other things as a linguist. He constituted a grammar of the Macedonian language and published it in 1875 in Belgrade as the "Dictionary of the three languages"(S.[lavic] Macedonian, Albanian [arbanski] and Turkish). Of his mother tongue which he called "Macedonian" and sometimes "Slavo- Macedonian", he wrote: "Folk(people) are people who belong to one race, who speak the same language, who live together and are friends, who cherish the same customs, who have the same music and festivity, this are called Folk, and the teritory that this Folk is living on is called Fatherland of this folk. Therfore the Macedonians are also a folk(people), and their theritorry is Macedonia".
This deffinition from Pulevski includes all the important elements, that characterize one Nation, for example according to Benedict Andersons' definition. It is all about the featured, bordered (Descent-) comunity, with common language and culture, friendly relation between equals, and a teritory. Whether the striving for a state of its own belongs to the nation is a matter of controversy. Hroch argued that the newest theories about Nationhood (Gellner, Hobsbawm, Brueilly) are connecting Nationhood with political Statehood, while the empirical research is not confirming this. Most of the movments of the 19 Century were striving towards Autonomy.
But the goal of this text is not to research the National building of the Macedonians. It tends to show that during the State building of Yugoslavia (1918) the self identification "Macedonians was already established within the Slavic population. There is abudance of evidence for that, specialy by foreign observers. The German Social Democrat Hermann Wendel, visited Macedonia in August and September of 1920, asking the people systematically what they were. ln Bitola, he noted: "The Slavs, as everywhere, call themselves Makedonci, standing between Serbs and Bulgarians, can be like this or like that." In Prilep: "On the bridge young boys are playing; one is not embarrassed when questioned. "I am Serb, but those "he points to the others" are Macedonians" - "Where are you from?" - "From Nish". And in Resen: "Swarms of boys around the car. "Well, what are you? "He looks up shy and uncomprehending. "He is a Turk", yelled the Chore. "Aha? and you (to the Chore)?"-"Macedonians!", strike out, like straight out of the gun." Also Edmond Bouchie de Belle stated in 1920, that, if a slavic peasant from the region of Ostrovo (in Greece) or Monastir (Bitola) was questioned what he is, in nine out of ten cases the answear was Makedon. His conclusion was: "Un observateur de bonne foi classera donc a part cette population a laquelle le non de "Slaves Macedoniens" ou simplement de "Macedoniens" parait le mieux convenir". (Translation: An honest observer will classify this population as "Slav Macedonians" or simply "Macedonians" as best suited.)
R.A. Gallop, the third Secretary of the british embassy in Belgrade spent one week in April 1926 in Vardar-Macedonia and wrote: "those of the later [Macedo-Slavs] that I met were equally insistent on calling themselfs neither Serbs nor Bulgarians, but Macedonians. [...] There seemed to be no love lost for Bulgars in most places. Their (Bulgarian) brutality during the war had lost the affection even of those who before the Balkan War had been their friends." Oliver C. Harvey from the british foreign office visited the Greek and Yugoslav part of Macedonia on April and May 1926 and concluded: "The slavophone population of Serb Macedonia definitely regard themself as distinct from the Serbs. If asked their nationality they say they are "Macedonians", and they speak the Macedonian dialect. Nor do they identifiy themself with the Bulgars, although the later seem undoubtedly to be regarded as closer relatives than the Serbs". To the slavic population in the nord-west of Greece he concluded: "They of course constitute the much advertised "Serb minority" [...] But they are no more Serb than the Macedonians of Serbia - they speak Macedonian, and call themselfs Macedonians and sentimentally look to Bulgaria rather than to Serbia."
A correspondent of the Neuen Zürricher Newspaper, Gerhard Christoph, in February 1931 has shed some extraordinary light to the complex structure of the national question in Vardar-Macedonia, so that we will cover him here in some extent. Christoph has given himself an objective to find out how the ordinary people were seeing themselves. In a hotel near the border with Albania, he got in a relaxed conversation with the hotel host, a peasant and asked him: "Tell me" he asked along the way, "what are you originally?" "I am a Pravoslav" was his answear. "But I did not ask you of your confession", I said. "I am now a Serb", he answeared. - i.e. since when the Serbs took this land over. "I was not interested in your Citizenship, but about your Nationality". Then the correspondent aksed him about what was he during Ottoman times. The answear was: "We were Exarchists here" Christoph wanted to know exactly and was chopping further: "So you were Bulgarian?" - "Yes we were working for the Begs- we were Bulgarian" But the Journalist was not satisfied, cause Bulgarian in this case meant dependent peasant, similar to Vlach "untill the introuction of the Romanian Propaganda", which identified as a nomadic herdsmen. So the correspondent changed his tactics and asked: "What is your language?" I asked the peasant. [...] "I am Macedonian" was his answear, " you know, the Serbs claim that our language is a serb dialect, the Bulgarians claim, we speak bulgarian. What can you do about that..." He seemed untouched from the whole thing. "Look at it" he continued, "do you see the hat on the wall, I wore that before. The serbs say it is a bulgarian hat, therefore I wear a serb cap now. Even the turks of today can't wear their Fes, because the land now belongs to the Serbs. What can you do about it." The testemony of the host of the hotel is clear enough, even though from the beginning he wasn't straightforward: he percieved himself as Macedonian, it was the others who wanted to make him to believe that he speaks serbian or bulgarian, and claimed that they can determine who he is, which kind of hat he ought to wear.
Nada Boskovska is Professor of History at the University of Zurich. She is a member of the editorial board of the journal Jahrbucher fur Geschichte Osteuropas and has led several research projects funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. She is a member of the board of the Foundation for the Advancement of Studies in Hungarian History, Language and Culture, a member of the advisory board of the Felix Kanitz Society and has organized several international conferences on the Yugoslav/Balkan region. A specialist in Central European and Southeast European history, she is the Editor of two book series' (Beitrage zur Geschichte der Russlandschweizer; Die Schweiz und der Osten Europas) and a Co-editor of the book series Zurcher Beitrage zur Geschichtswissenschaft. She has also authored two German-language monographs.
and especially after the annexion (1908), they started focusing on Macedonia. The Serbian kingdom followed the same pattern. They opened schools and sent guerrila.
In 1912 rivals came together, and together with Montenegro they fought the Ottomans and eventually drove them out of the Balkans. This war was followed by another war, a one to divide the pray.
The war was put to an end with the treaty of Bukarest on 10 August 1913, where the kingdoms agreed to divide Macedonia between themselves. The borders which were agreed upon at the time are almost the same as todays.
After the division, they had full juristdiction over their parts and teritory, so that they could proceed with the assimilation of the Slavic population, making them into Greeks, Serbs and Bulgarians.
It happened that this assimilation did not went so good as they expected. After decades of different indoctrinations, especially for the peasant poplulation, there was an obvious confisuion about what they are in Nation sense - if they even understood what that meant, and if this aspect was still not confused with the Church affiliation.
Others have developed new conscience - a Macedonian conscience, which most probably has it's origins as answear to the neighbours' propaganda: We are nothing from all that, what the others are claiming we are; we are the inhabitants of Macedonia, so we are Macedonians.
Even previously there were representatives, similar to another national movments, who researched the Macedonian language and culture and it's tradition, and explicitly talked about "Macedonian Folk". The most explicite definition is found by Gorgi Pulevski (1838-1895), a mason and selftought man from Galichnik a village in the mountanious west Macedonia, who as a migrant worker, traveled quite a lot douring his youth. Puleski is active in phase A (according to Hroch) in a manner typical of a national development, among other things as a linguist. He constituted a grammar of the Macedonian language and published it in 1875 in Belgrade as the "Dictionary of the three languages"(S.[lavic] Macedonian, Albanian [arbanski] and Turkish). Of his mother tongue which he called "Macedonian" and sometimes "Slavo- Macedonian", he wrote: "Folk(people) are people who belong to one race, who speak the same language, who live together and are friends, who cherish the same customs, who have the same music and festivity, this are called Folk, and the teritory that this Folk is living on is called Fatherland of this folk. Therfore the Macedonians are also a folk(people), and their theritorry is Macedonia".
This deffinition from Pulevski includes all the important elements, that characterize one Nation, for example according to Benedict Andersons' definition. It is all about the featured, bordered (Descent-) comunity, with common language and culture, friendly relation between equals, and a teritory. Whether the striving for a state of its own belongs to the nation is a matter of controversy. Hroch argued that the newest theories about Nationhood (Gellner, Hobsbawm, Brueilly) are connecting Nationhood with political Statehood, while the empirical research is not confirming this. Most of the movments of the 19 Century were striving towards Autonomy.
But the goal of this text is not to research the National building of the Macedonians. It tends to show that during the State building of Yugoslavia (1918) the self identification "Macedonians was already established within the Slavic population. There is abudance of evidence for that, specialy by foreign observers. The German Social Democrat Hermann Wendel, visited Macedonia in August and September of 1920, asking the people systematically what they were. ln Bitola, he noted: "The Slavs, as everywhere, call themselves Makedonci, standing between Serbs and Bulgarians, can be like this or like that." In Prilep: "On the bridge young boys are playing; one is not embarrassed when questioned. "I am Serb, but those "he points to the others" are Macedonians" - "Where are you from?" - "From Nish". And in Resen: "Swarms of boys around the car. "Well, what are you? "He looks up shy and uncomprehending. "He is a Turk", yelled the Chore. "Aha? and you (to the Chore)?"-"Macedonians!", strike out, like straight out of the gun." Also Edmond Bouchie de Belle stated in 1920, that, if a slavic peasant from the region of Ostrovo (in Greece) or Monastir (Bitola) was questioned what he is, in nine out of ten cases the answear was Makedon. His conclusion was: "Un observateur de bonne foi classera donc a part cette population a laquelle le non de "Slaves Macedoniens" ou simplement de "Macedoniens" parait le mieux convenir". (Translation: An honest observer will classify this population as "Slav Macedonians" or simply "Macedonians" as best suited.)
R.A. Gallop, the third Secretary of the british embassy in Belgrade spent one week in April 1926 in Vardar-Macedonia and wrote: "those of the later [Macedo-Slavs] that I met were equally insistent on calling themselfs neither Serbs nor Bulgarians, but Macedonians. [...] There seemed to be no love lost for Bulgars in most places. Their (Bulgarian) brutality during the war had lost the affection even of those who before the Balkan War had been their friends." Oliver C. Harvey from the british foreign office visited the Greek and Yugoslav part of Macedonia on April and May 1926 and concluded: "The slavophone population of Serb Macedonia definitely regard themself as distinct from the Serbs. If asked their nationality they say they are "Macedonians", and they speak the Macedonian dialect. Nor do they identifiy themself with the Bulgars, although the later seem undoubtedly to be regarded as closer relatives than the Serbs". To the slavic population in the nord-west of Greece he concluded: "They of course constitute the much advertised "Serb minority" [...] But they are no more Serb than the Macedonians of Serbia - they speak Macedonian, and call themselfs Macedonians and sentimentally look to Bulgaria rather than to Serbia."
Colonel A.C. Corfe, the president of the mixed commission of the League of Nations (from New Zeeland) who was asisting the Greek-Bulgarian population exchange in 1923, has repored, after his trip through the west Aegean-Macedonia (Greece), that the people there usualy were saying:"We are Macedonians, not Greeks or Bulgars. Give us a good father and we will be good children. We don't want bands of any sort coming to our villages. We want to be left in peace". Even a Greek army report from 1925 confirmed the self-identification of the large parts of the population as "Macedonians". The author have reported that the population in the area of Florina (Macedonian Lerin), are largely slavic and they could have been put in three groups: fanatic bulgarian followers (bulgarofrone), fanatic greek followers (elinofrones) and the ones who are "indifferent to nationality" and in first place want to live in peace. The last group , which constituted half till the three quarters of the population were calling themselves Makedhones i.e Macedonians. One quarter till the half were Bulgarian followers, while only scattered families were found to have Greek consciousness. Here we see for the first time a national confession which does not fit in the predetermined pattern, which was not recognized and was classified as indifference.
A correspondent of the Neuen Zürricher Newspaper, Gerhard Christoph, in February 1931 has shed some extraordinary light to the complex structure of the national question in Vardar-Macedonia, so that we will cover him here in some extent. Christoph has given himself an objective to find out how the ordinary people were seeing themselves. In a hotel near the border with Albania, he got in a relaxed conversation with the hotel host, a peasant and asked him: "Tell me" he asked along the way, "what are you originally?" "I am a Pravoslav" was his answear. "But I did not ask you of your confession", I said. "I am now a Serb", he answeared. - i.e. since when the Serbs took this land over. "I was not interested in your Citizenship, but about your Nationality". Then the correspondent aksed him about what was he during Ottoman times. The answear was: "We were Exarchists here" Christoph wanted to know exactly and was chopping further: "So you were Bulgarian?" - "Yes we were working for the Begs- we were Bulgarian" But the Journalist was not satisfied, cause Bulgarian in this case meant dependent peasant, similar to Vlach "untill the introuction of the Romanian Propaganda", which identified as a nomadic herdsmen. So the correspondent changed his tactics and asked: "What is your language?" I asked the peasant. [...] "I am Macedonian" was his answear, " you know, the Serbs claim that our language is a serb dialect, the Bulgarians claim, we speak bulgarian. What can you do about that..." He seemed untouched from the whole thing. "Look at it" he continued, "do you see the hat on the wall, I wore that before. The serbs say it is a bulgarian hat, therefore I wear a serb cap now. Even the turks of today can't wear their Fes, because the land now belongs to the Serbs. What can you do about it." The testemony of the host of the hotel is clear enough, even though from the beginning he wasn't straightforward: he percieved himself as Macedonian, it was the others who wanted to make him to believe that he speaks serbian or bulgarian, and claimed that they can determine who he is, which kind of hat he ought to wear.
Nada Boskovska is Professor of History at the University of Zurich. She is a member of the editorial board of the journal Jahrbucher fur Geschichte Osteuropas and has led several research projects funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. She is a member of the board of the Foundation for the Advancement of Studies in Hungarian History, Language and Culture, a member of the advisory board of the Felix Kanitz Society and has organized several international conferences on the Yugoslav/Balkan region. A specialist in Central European and Southeast European history, she is the Editor of two book series' (Beitrage zur Geschichte der Russlandschweizer; Die Schweiz und der Osten Europas) and a Co-editor of the book series Zurcher Beitrage zur Geschichtswissenschaft. She has also authored two German-language monographs.
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