Origin and identity of the Macedonian people

[CommonSense]

Serbs should not be included in a discussion when it comes to macedonian identity.

Your People in Macedonia were those few hundred people Who studied in Belgrade and got brainwashed. The large mass of people were Bulgarian oriented. Then Greek.

Allright, I will cease with the replies. Enjoy your echo chamber and the trolls gloating on it.

[Archduke]

Allright, I will cease with the replies. Enjoy your echo chamber and the trolls gloating on it.

Sorry didnt want it to sound that way.

But as I said at the beginning, I would like to see posts that are not influenced from national feelings.

I want to know the truth and I am sure that it hides somewhere between the different versions. Were part of my ancestors really Bulgarian or Slavic that is different from Bulgarian.

[pulstar]

How would you know if we would have been better off if assimilated?

First of all, the Macedonians of Greece are already assimilated and most of them are perfect Greeks, look at Darknesswin, Kaido or some others.
They all mentioned that they had some Slavic speaking ancestors in the past.

The same with the Macedonians of Bulgaria.
They are perfect Bulgarians today.

The Macedonians of today Rep. of Macedonia should have been perfect Serbs but it didn't happen...

But my question is, why we would have been better off with some Slavic speaking nations and not some non Slavic speaking?

I don't feel someone close automatically to me if he is a Slavic speaker!

Its because of strong anti-Serbian sentiments that exist even today through whole ex-Yugoslavia, but Macedonians however have no reason to feel it. You got what you got because of Serbs, and Bulgarians couldn't liberate you. They were incapable and they proved it a couple of times.

[Aspar]

Its because of strong anti-Serbian sentiments that exist even today through whole ex-Yugoslavia, but Macedonians however have no reason to feel it. You got what you got because of Serbs, and Bulgarians couldn't liberate you. They were incapable and they proved it a couple of times.

It's because the Serbian identity wasn't that strong as the Bulgarian and the Greek one.
The Serbian identity back then was limited mostly on some North-Western and north-eastern parts of today Rep. of Macedonia.

That's why most of the Macedonians don't think of liberation when talking about Serbs entering Macedonia after the Turks departed.
The real liberation happened in 1945 and ASNOM!

[Crn Volk]

The Macedonian project was the most succesful it seems. As far as I see statistics, half of the population of Montenegro view their language as Serbian. And the Montenegrin language itself is not artificially separated from Serbian as Macedonian is from Bulgarian. One Macedonian told me that the older generations speak exactly like Bulgarians, but those People are dying or are already dead.

Serbs are everywhere in ex Yugoslavia. From Macedonia till Slovenia. I am not sure if the yugoslav government was also anti Serb.

Btw I think that the relations between Serbia and montenegro are quite natural. I believe that if Macedonia remained part of Bulgaria, the situation between us would have been the same.

Both my grandfathers spoke the exact same language that I speak today. One was born in 1917 and the other in 1918. The language is different to Bulgarian.

[Crn Volk]

Allright, I will cease with the replies. Enjoy your echo chamber and the trolls gloating on it.

The Ottoman census results consistently showed Serbs to be a small minority in Macedonia.

[pulstar]

It's because the Serbian identity wasn't that strong as the Bulgarian and the Greek one.
The Serbian identity back then was limited mostly on some North-Western and north-eastern parts of today Rep. of Macedonia.

That's why most of the Macedonians don't think of liberation when talking about Serbs entering Macedonia after the Turks departed.
The real liberation happened in 1945 and ASNOM!

But today you would be part Albania, part Greece and part Bulgaria if Serbs didn't intervene. Also Bulgarian Exharchate was sort of punishment to the Serbs living eastern and southern of Serbia for lifting uprisings and later seceding from Ottomans. I don't want to disrespect Macedonian partisan WW2 effort but it was small in comparison to Serbian in Balkan wars.

[Vojnik]

Communism. Tito. Yugoslavia. Blah blah blah.

Georgi Pulevski, 1879:

What do we call a nation? – People who are of the same origin and who speak the same words and who live and make friends of each other, who have the same customs and songs and entertainment are what we call a nation, and the place where that people lives is called the people's country. Thus the Macedonians also are a nation and the place which is theirs is called Macedonia.

Forty years of diplomacy, by Baron Rosen, 1922:



Henry Baerlein, What is happening in Macedonia, fortnightly review, 1928:

It happens that Macedonians who come to Bulgaria continue to call themselves Macedonians ...

In Bulgaria, whether they are descended from a Macedonian who travelled eastward in 1878, or whether they are quite recent emigrants, they call themselves Macedonians ...

From the own mouth of a Bulgarian ethnographer, Vasil Kanchov, 1911:

Bulgarians and Kutsovlachs (of Macedonia) call themselves Macedonians and the surrounding nations call them Macedonians.

Sister Augustine Bewicke on the Macedoinan autonomy, 1919:

the inhabitants of Macedonia are in the great majority Slavs; they call themselves Macedonians, and what they desire and what we ardently desire for them is an autonomy under European control

Edmond Bouchie, 1922:

In the district of Ostrovo / Bitola nine times out of ten these people, despite being the subject of dispute by three adjoining countries – Serbia, Bulgarian and Greece – would reply in response to the question as to their nationality that they were Macedonians

Oliver C.Harvey, 1926, wrote:

The slavophone population of Serbian (occupied) Macedonia definitely regard themselves as distinct from the Serbs. If asked their nationality they say that they are Macedonians, and they speak the Macedonian dialect.

The same Oliver C. Harvey of the British foriegn office visited the Lerin-Voden district of Greek occupied Macedonia in 1926, and noted:

The inhabitants here are no more Serb than the Macedonians of Serbia - they speak Macedonian, and they call themselves Macedonians.

Conditions of Macedonia, 1926:

Those people whom I had met were insistent on calling themselves neither Serbs nor Bulgars, but Macedonians. There seemed to be no love lost for the Bulgarians.

Colonel A. Corfe, 1923:

But in the evenings in their own houses or when we had given the officials the slip, we encouraged them to speak to us. Then we in-variably heard the same story as "Bad administration. They want to force us to become Greeks, in language, in religion, in sentiment, in every way. We have served in the Greek army and we have fought for them: now they insult us by calling us 'damned Bulgars"' … To my question "WHAT DO YOU WANT, AN AUTHONOMOUS MACEDONIA OR A MACEDONIA UNDER BULGARIA?" the answer was generally the same: "WE WANT GOOD ADMINISTRATION. WE ARE MACEDONIANS, NOT GREEKS OR BULGARS.

Another coming from a Bulgarian mouth. Slaveykov, 1871:

We have many times heard from the Macedonists that they are not Bulgarians but Macedonians,descendants of the Ancient Macedonians

Allen Upward, The East End of Europe. London, 1908, pp. 204-205.:

I asked him what language they spoke, and my Greek interpreter carelessly
rendered the answer Bulgare. The man himself had said Makedonski. I drew
attention to this word and the witness explained that he did not consider the rural dialect used in Macedonia the same as Bulgarian, and refused to call it by that name.

Greek Infantry Lieutenant Dim. Kamburas in his report about the situation in the Village Armensko of January 25, 1925:

Being shocked and increasingly concerned, I struck the village mayor when I heard him speak Bulgarian, which he wishes to call Macedonian, and I recommended that in the future he should always and everywhere speak only Greek, and that he should recommend that his villagers do the same.

Temko Popov (1855-1931), Macedonian Publicist
May 9, 1888 Salonika:

In the introduction to this letter I will tell you in advance that I will take the trouble to write you, inasfar as it is possible, in our tongue, substituting for those words which I do not know with Bulgarian ones. What else can be done, Despot! This tongue of ours, which could have dictated to the other Slavic tongues, has remained the poorest, and, like a beggar, must stretch out its hand to the Bulgarian, or the Serbian or even the Russian tongue! I do not deny that all of the Slavic tongues are similar to each other and that it is natural that they should borrow from each other, but not to the state to which our miserable tongue has come, so that a man can not express his thoughts without using Bulgarian words, if he has lived in Bulgaria, Serbian - if in Serbia. It is true that our tongue, being most similar to Serbian, should gather from it those words which it does not have in its own dictionary, but where is our dictionary, where are our philologists, who might concern themselves with these important questions, i.e. the compilation of a grammar and other most urgently needed textbooks, at least for elementary schools? If we have no philologists, where are the Serbian ones, who might know our tongue and might write those elementary and necessary books with such impassionate scholarship as to use Serbian words as supplementary words only where they can not find Macedonian ones, and not to be led by blind patriotism and instead of writing Macedonian textbooks, writing purely Serbian ones. Don't fool yourself, Despot, the national spirit in Macedonia has attained such a state that Jesus Christ himself, if he were to descend from heaven, could not convince a Macedonian that he is a Bulgarian or a Serb, except for those Macedonians in whom Bulgarian propaganda has already taken root.

The National Geographic Magazine in 1917:

"Neither Bulgar nor Serb" said one such old woman, defiantly, when we left the Monastir road at Dobraveni, " I am Macedonian only and I am sick of war "

In August-September 1907, M. Petraiev, a Russian consular official and keen Balkan observer, accompanied Hilmi Pasha, inspector general for Macedonia, and an Austro-Hungarian representative on a tour of Macedonia. Afterward he reported to his Ministry of foreign affairs:

In the Kastoria(Kostur) Kaza, delegations from the villages came to see us and declared that they wanted neither Greek nor Bulgarian teachers and priests;rather they insisted that they be Macedonians. When questioned about their nationality, they replied that they are Macedonians.These declarations, which are far from being isolated, demonstrate that the Christian population of Macedonia is fed-up with the oppression of the various propagandas, and that in them is beginning to awaken a national consciousness different from those being imposed on them from outside.

Emmanuel Duvillard (born 1887) est le presidente du Comite de Geneve pour la Defense des victimes de la terreur blanche dans les Balkans:

"Are you a Serb? Are you Bulgarian? Grecian or Albanian? On this series of questions, the Macedonian people, today as yesterday, were giving the same answer - I am Macedonian ".

How much more do you want Dushmani? I have much much more.

[Vojnik]

[Vojnik]

I'm sick of all you dogs.