Bulgaria and Macedonia: Dissertations Thread

**poiuytrewq0987** · 10-06-2016, 06:15 PM

I think it will be useful to have a thread where pro-Macedonian dissertations are posted to disprove Bulgarianness. The Bulgarians or others can post counterarguments with sources or their own texts. Using scientific sources whatever their accuracy or popularity, only. To begin, I'll post a Macedonian dissertation against the assumed Bulgarian ethnogenesis in the medieval era.

NATIONALISM AND THE MIDDLE AGES: The Myth of Creation of Slavic-Bulgarian Nation in 9th-10th Century
Internet scientists’ magazine: Hi-story, www. Hi-story.org. 2002

Spoiler!

The theme of this article is part of the broader issue about the influence of the modern thinking in the interpretation of the past. The nationalistic ideology was dominant for a long time, and even today, it has strong positions in the Balkan historiography. The misuse of history has been a key element in the creation of national myths, and through them in the modelling of the national consciousness. Developing in the national states framework, the historiography often was made to be a maid of the national doctrine. The consequences are huge in all areas of the historiography, but are especially hard in the research of those historical periods, in which there was no nationalism. We would not be wrong if we say that big part of the disputed and unsolved questions in the Balkan historiography are such, due to the insisting to “lay down” the history in appropriate Procrustean national bed at any cost.All those who have studied the medieval Balkan history know how difficult it is to divide the history into Macedonian, Bulgarian, Serbian etc. It is due not only to the mixing of the traditions and influences. The Balkan historiography in a great part, are established as histories of nations, which fight through the centuries “for freedom and national state”, and the medieval states on the Balkan are treated as ethnic’s. Nothing would have been wrong if the states on the Balkan in the Middle Ages were ethnic states and if the contemporary nations existed as nations or ethnicities at that time. That is the problem – they was not. The specific object for observation in this short article is only one of the many national myths. It has been selected because of the current preoccupation of the author, as well as because of its “scientific”, namely that is a myth, which at the moment continues to dominate in the science like a paradigm.The theory on creation of the Slavic-Bulgarian ethnos in the early Middle Ages was developed during the 19th century as a result of the confrontation between the pan-Slavic interpretation of the history (and of the ambitions on the new young Bulgarian nation and ideology) - with the scientific findings that the creator of the Bulgarian medieval state was one Turks ethnos. The formula for overcoming of the apparent contradiction between the Turkish belonging of the Bulgars ethnos versus the Slavic character of modern Bulgarian nation was presented for the first time by Shafaric, imitating one, already established hypothesis, of creating the Russian Slavic ethnos in Middle age through mixing of Russians – Varyags with Slavs. The Bulgars (improperly called proto-Bulgarians) were a minority and almost melted in the Slavic mass, giving them only their name. That solution was acceptable for all sides involved. Further, the key role was played by the Bulgarian scholars, who developed in detail and found arguments for the theory. From the very beginning, the problem has not been scientifically presented and analyzed. Instead of researches of the fate of the Turkish Bulgars and of their possible successors, the researches attempted to answer the question “how the Turkish-Bulgarian ethnos turned into the Slavic-Bulgarian ethnos and nation”. Without proving the connection between the two subjects, it has been accepted as an obvious fact and as axiomatic basis for future researches.There was many and serious reasons for checking the thesis for the connection between them, because except of the similar name and the wish of the young nation it did not have anything behind. Even the territory does not match. The Bulgarians settled in Dobrudza and in the part of Misia, where at the beginning of the 19th century there was no Slavic population, but Turkish Islamic and Turkish Christian population. Bulgarian nation was built in other place.From the notion that the Bulgarian nation is a successor to the medieval Bulgarian state and supposed ethnic entity, logically the other segments of the theory was derived. The Bulgarians should have melted in the Slavs and became the Slavic-Bulgarian ethnos. For that to have happened, the Bulgarians should have been in a small number, and to have settled mixing with the Slavs, so that there had been a physical possibility for mixed marriages. Even some absurd, thesis, was presented and was fiercely defended. Like the Slavic-Bulgarian character of the state from the moment of its establishment, Bulgarian Khan like a protector of the Slavic independence on the Balkan, the assertion of the Bulgarian Khans to “unite” the Slavs from the “Bulgarian group” and of the respective Slavs to unite with Bulgaria “their natural and ethnic centre”. Their purposes was not to explain historical processes, but to augment Bulgarian territorial climes and argument the Bulgarian national propaganda in the 19th-20th century in the big Balkan struggle for domination on Macedonia and on the Peninsula. None of the abovementioned claims is based on direct original data; on the contrary, they contradict very much with the sources and the spirit of the time. The number of the Bulgarians was not small, as it is seen from the big raid organized and led by the Byzantine Emperor against them in 681. Bulgarian victory in this war, subordinating of the several Slavic tribes, and occupation of Mysia undoubtedly speaks that the Bulgars were numerous. For the “character” of state, it is enough to be said that from 681 until 972 it has been exclusively called Bulgaria, and was not mentioned like Sclavinia, neither was treated like a Slavic state and its rulers was exclusively Bulgars. There is no example neither of a Slav as a Bulgarian appointee, nor of a Slav as a candidate for the throne. What is of key importance in this case is that there is no confirmation for the sources for none of the key moments of the theory. There is no mentions in the sources about the melting of the Bulgarians with the Slavs, or about the appearance of a new Slavic-Bulgarian ethnos. It is improbable that such process would have stayed completely aside from the attention of the medieval authors, especially when in parallel with Danube Bulgaria there was Turkic Bulgaria on Volga - the difference between the two should have caught someone’s attention, but it did not. In the Byzantine, Latin, Arabic, and Jewish sources from the 10th century, the Danube Bulgarians are correctly marked as Turkic ethnos, which lived in Dobrudza, and had its own (non-Slavic) language and clothing.There are no examples of the Slavic-Bulgarian ethnic self-conciseness in the sources. The sources clearly refer to the parallel existence of the Slavic and Bulgarian self-consciousness in Bulgaria in the 10th century. The Slavs called themselves Slavs, their language was called Slavic and they considered themselves as part of the united Slavic ethnos. In parallel with that, in the small number of preserved Bulgarian texts, the Bulgarian ethnic self-consciousness is being expressed clear enough. It is symptomatic that in the only Slavic text which talks about the relation Slavs - Bulgarians, the latest are called “tyrans of the Slavs”, and in the unique Bulgarian text in which Slavs are mentioned, they are included among the Bulgarian enemies.The Bulgarians in the Northeast Bulgaria have not disappeared despite of the attacks from their relatives Turkish nations (Pechenegs, Uzes, Kumans). In any case, in the short Biography of the Cyril, and the lost Biography of Methodius (13th century), the term Bulgar(ian)s and Slavs are clearly distinguished, and in the Biography of Isaya (12th century) the Turkish origin of the Bulgarian people is clearly emphasized. At the beginning of the 19th century Northeast Bulgaria and Dobrudza were populated with Turkish Muslim and Turkish Christian population, large part of which were with a Bulgarian ethnic self-consciousness. The Slavic population settled in this region during the 19th-20th century. There is not a more serious way to explain the origin of that population except to see in them the ancestors of the Turkic Bulgars, for which there are numerous proofs.The Inscription of Joan Vladislav from 1015 is unjustifiably taken as an argument for the existence of the Slavic-Bulgarian ethnic self-consciousness at the beginning of the 11th century. The title “Bulgarian autocrator” and the referring to the citizens as “Bulgarians” expresses the very well known fact of taking over of the Bulgarian state tradition by the Komitopoulous, and not of the ethnic self-consciousness of the ruler, or the population. The phrase “Bulgarian by birth” which is taken as a main argument, do not have the substance given to them. The word “by birth” in the old Slavic languages shows the origin (geographical, ethnic, confessional, religious), whose character depends on the accompanying noun. The term “Bulgarian” also has more then one meaning: state and ethnic (Turkic). The possibility that in these cases it denotes the state is more than acceptable. But even when it is accepted that the content is ethnic it can not be concluded that it is Slavic-Bulgarian, and not the Turkic Bulgars. As for the origin of the Komitopouli, it is known that they are partly from Armenian origin (which is in line with the explanation of the words in a sense of state belongings), and the high position Komes, held by Nikola the founder of the kin, at the time of the Tzar Petar could be a result of his (Turkic) Bulgars origin. The thinking that the Slav-Bulgarian etnos was created in the 10th century is supported by the argument and by using the term Bulgarians in the following centuries in the Byzantine and Western sources for the population of the former Bulgarian territories, including the Slavs. However, this argument is wrong. In the Byzantine and Western sources from the 11th-12th century, the term “Bulgarians” was not used neither for the territories in Thrace and Misia, nor for the north of Danube; “Bulgarian” is called the population on the theme Bulgaria, or wider - the diocese of Ohrid Archbishopric, called in the sources as Bulgarian. Therefore, the term Bulgarians in this period had not an ethnic meaning and cannot fit the pretended territory of supposed Slavic Bulgarian ethnos: Mizia Thrace and Macedonia. However, it fit very well the borders of planed and dreamed Bulgarian national state in 19^th and 20^th century when the theory itself was created. In fact, the Slavic sources from 9th-10th century demonstrate strong and clear Slavic ethnic self-consciousness, while the consciousness about the existence of several Slavic nations could not be noticed - “Slavic Ethnic entity is the only one”. As a result, we could not speak about the existence of Slavic-Bulgarian ethnic entity in that period, but neither in general about separate Slavic ethnic entities. The breakup of the very idea of Slavic ethnic entity was a long lasting process, while the contemporary South Slav nations were differentiated on a political and religious basis, and not on an ethnic basis.The theory about the creation of the Slavic-Bulgarian ethnic entity in the 9th-10th century is a classic national myth, circulus vitiosus launched in the scientific form. Unfortunately, if one strives for objectivity, one has to conclude that the ethnic problems on the Balkan, are poorly investigated. The ethno-genetic processes are studied from national(istic) and not from scientific position. Their scientific investigation is probably left for the future.

A more readable copy at link: https://www.academia.edu/8640952/NAT...h-10th_Century