FAQ server : Bulgaria ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [ Table of Contents ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Macedonian Question (by John Bell) The "Macedonian Question" is actually a complex of questions, both historical and current. Geographically, the term "Macedonia" has designated different parts of the Balkans, a fact that often contributes to contemporary confusion and controversy. Since the Balkan Wars, which established today's political boundaries, the region of Macedonia is generally understood to include the territory of the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, the northern Greek province of the same name, and the Pirin region of Bulgaria, whose provincial capital is Blagoevgrad. The ethnic and linguistic identity of the Macedonians has a long and controversial history. Until the late nineteenth century, to nearly all investigators the term "Macedonia" designated a geographic area only; its population was considered primarily Bulgarian along with an admixture of Greeks, Serbs, and other nationalities. Many figures prominent in Bulgaria's national awakening and in its later cultural, political, and economic life were born in Macedonia and gave no evidence during their lives of considering themselves anything but Bulgarian. Macedonians were also active in the creation of the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870, and the population voted overwhelmingly to join it. When Macedonia was restored to Ottoman control by the Treaty of Berlin, Macedonian notables protested their separation from their "co-nationals." After the Balkan and First World Wars, however, Bulgaria received only the Pirin region, while the bulk of Macedonia was divided between Greece and Serbia. "Ethnic cleansing" and population transfers largely removed Slavophones from Greek Macedonia and Greek speakers from the rest of the territory. This, combined with Serbian efforts to denationalize the population led to a vast number of refugees resettling in Bulgaria, so that today approximately a quarter of the Bulgarian population traces its roots to Macedonia. During the period between the two world wars, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) conducted a campaign of terrorism against Serbian authorities, often abetted by the Bulgarian government or by sympathetic Bulgarian citizens. At the end of World War II, Tito's regime adopted the position that Macedonians were a distinct nationality and recognized the former "South Serbia" as the Macedonian Republic, one of the five republics of the Yugoslav federation, and sought to transfer to it the Pirin region from Bulgaria. Because Stalin favored this plan, the Bulgarian Communists carried out a census in 1946 that forced nearly seventy per cent of the Pirin region's inhabitants to declare themselves to be "Macedonian." Although Stalin's break with Tito ended the plan of detaching the Pirin region from Bulgaria, when Khrushchev sought a rapprochement with Yugoslavia in 1956, Bulgaria again was pressured to find a Macedonian nationality in the Pirin. This pressure disappeared by the early 1960s, and in the 1965 census only .5 per cent of the population of Pirin identified itself as "Macedonian." In the Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, authorities worked to foster a sense of Macedonian national feeling, creating a literary language, emphasizing orthographical, lexical, and syntactical differences with Bulgarian, to be taught in the schools and developing an official history that projected a separate Macedonian national identity into the past. Following the break-up of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria welcomed the creation of an independent Macedonia, and in January 1991 was the first country to extend it full diplomatic recognition, despite the objections of neighboring Greece. Bulgarians have been reluctant, however, to acknowledge the existence of a Macedonian nationality or that the Macedonian language is anything other than a dialect of Bulgarian, points that the Macedonian government has insisted on emphasizing. Some inhabitants of the Pirin region have asserted that they belong to a separate Macedonian nationality and have created the "United Macedonian Organization - Ilinden" to promote national consciousness. When the group was first formed in 1990, Bulgarian authorities subjected its member to harassment and blocked its attempt to publish a newspaper. Bulgarian courts refused to register UMO-Ilinden on the grounds that its activities were "directed against the sovereignty and territorial unity of the country" and were thus unconstitutional. State Prosecutor Ivan Tatarchev, himself born in the Pirin, was especially vigorous in using police powers to attempt to suppress the organization, bringing down the condemnation of international human rights organizations. Researchers at the American University in Blagoevgrad, find a strong regional identity, but little sense of belonging to a separate nationality. In the Pirin Mountains /photo/ Linguists differ on the criteria used to distinguish a dialect from a separate language. It is sometimes stated that "a language is a dialect with an army and navy." When Macedonian President Kiro Gligorov recently visited Bulgaria, he insisted on bringing an interpreter to his meeting with Bulgarian President Zhelev; for his part, Zhelev insisted that he understood everything without need for assistance. The signing of a protocol on this meeting also had to be abandoned when the Macedonian side insisted on a statement that it was written in "the Macedonian language." President Zhelev has called for a solution to the Macedonian Question through the establishment of open borders between the two states, and Bulgarian assistance has been vital during the Greek economic blockade. In a recent speech, Zhelev said that Bulgaria could not wish harm to Macedonia any more than a mother could wish harm to her children. This was, perhaps, less reassuring to the Macedonians than Zhelev intended. For its part, the Macedonian Republic has not been sympathetic toward its citizens who wish to express a Bulgarian ethnicity. The recently completed census found only 1,547 Bulgarians in the country, and those for the most part immigrants from Bulgaria outside the Pirin District. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [ Table of Contents ] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------