Macedonian nationalism

Social movement since the 19th and 20th century

"Macedonist" redirects here. For Other uses, see Macedonist (disambiguation).

Flag of North Macedonia.

Part of a series on the

History of
North Macedonia

Prehistory

* Starčevo culture
* Vinča culture
* Kokino
* Trebeništa
* Adam of Macedonia
* Neolithic Sites

Antiquity

* Paeonians
* Paeonia (kingdom)
* Pelagonia
* Achaemenid Empire
* Illyrian kingdom
* Kingdom of Macedon
* Kingdom of Dardania
* Macedonia (Roman province)
* Migration Period

Middle Ages

* Byzantine Empire
* (Slavic migrations to the Balkans)
* (Sclaveni)
* First Bulgarian Empire
* (Ohrid Literary School Archbishopric of Ohrid)
* Byzantine Empire
* (Byzantine conquest of Bulgaria Bulgaria (theme))
* Dobromir Chrysos
* Second Bulgarian Empire
* Serbian Empire
* (Lordship of Prilep District of Branković)
* League of Lezhë
* (Principality of Kastrioti Gropa family Principality of Muzaka)

Early Modern

* Ottoman North Macedonia
* (Sanjak of Uskup Sanjak of Salonica Sanjak of Monastir)
* Rumelia Eyalet
* Mariovo and Prilep rebellion
* Karposh's rebellion
* Congress of Berlin
* Razlovci uprising
* Brsjak revolt
* Macedonian Struggle
* Macedonian question
* National awakening
* Ilinden Uprising and Kruševo Republic
* Treaty of Bucharest (1913)
* Tikveš  and Ohrid uprising

Late Modern

* Bulgarian occupation zone of Serbia and Macedonian front during World War I
* South Serbia and Vardar Banovina
* World War II
* The Holocaust in North Macedonia
* Independent State (1944)
* Anti-Fascist Assembly (ASNOM)
* Bloody Christmas (1945)
* National Liberation Front
* Exodus from Northern Greece
* Socialist Republic
* 1963 Skopje earthquake

Contemporary

* Breakup of Yugoslavia
* 1991 Macedonian independence referendum
* Independent Republic
* 2001 insurgency
* Antiquization
* Naming dispute with Greece
* Republic of Vevčani
* 2012 Republic of Macedonia inter-ethnic violence
* 2015 Kumanovo clashes
* Prespa Agreement
* Historical and linguistic dispute with Bulgaria
* 2020 NATO accession
* Accession to the European Union (2005 - )

Topics

* Military
* Economy
* Demographics
* History of the ethnic Macedonian people
* Art of North Macedonia
* Religion in North Macedonia
* Assembly of North Macedonia
* Constitution of North Macedonia
* Economy of North Macedonia
* Naming dispute
* Public holidays

Timeline of the history of North Macedonia

* v
* t
* e

Macedonian nationalism (Macedonian: македонски национализам, pronounced [makɛdonski nat͡sionalizam]), sometimes referred to as Macedonianism,[1][2][3] is a general grouping of nationalist ideas and concepts among ethnic Macedonians that were first formed in the second half of the 19th century among separatists seeking the autonomy of the region of Macedonia from the Ottoman Empire. The idea evolved during the early 20th century alongside the first expressions of ethnic nationalism among the Slavs of Macedonia. The separate Macedonian nation gained recognition during World War II when the Socialist Republic of Macedonia was created as part of Yugoslavia. Macedonian historiography has since established links between the ethnic Macedonians and various historical events and individual figures that occurred in and originated from Macedonia, which range from the Middle Ages up to the 20th century. Following the independence of the Republic of Macedonia in the late 20th century, the country's neighbours have disputed the existence of the Macedonian national identity, which is referred to in a derogatory way as Macedonism. Also, issue arose over what they consider an aggressive Macedonian nationalism, which holds more extreme beliefs such as an unbroken continuity between ancient Macedonians and modern ethnic Macedonians, also views connected to the irredentist concept of a United Macedonia, which involves large portions of Greece and Bulgaria, alongside smaller portions of Albania, Kosovo and Serbia.

## The designation "Macedonian"

[edit]

In 1844, this "Alexander Romance" was published in Belgrade, translated from Greek into Bulgarian by Hristo Popvasilev from Karlovo. This book, according to Blaže Ristovski, played an essential role in awakening Macedonianism, which in the middle of the 19th century was still in its infancy.[4]

During the first half of the second millennium, the concept of Macedonia on the Balkans was associated by the Byzantines with their Macedonian province, centered around Adrianople in modern-day Turkey. After the conquest of the Balkans by the Ottomans in the late 14th and early 15th century, the Greek name Macedonia disappeared as a geographical designation for several centuries.[5] The background of the modern designation Macedonian can be found in the 19th century,[6] as well as the myth of "ancient Macedonian descent" among the Orthodox Slavs in the area, adopted mainly due to Greek cultural inputs. However, Greek education was not the only engine for such ideas. During the early modern era, some Dalmatian pan-Slavic ideologists like Mavro Orbini believed the ancient Macedonians were Slavs. Under these influences in the 19th century some intellectuals in the region developed the idea on direct link between the local Slavs, the early Slavs and the ancient Balkan populations.[7]

The local Slavs self-identified as "Bulgarian" on account of their language and socioeconomic status, thus the word Bulgarian had the connotation of poor, Slav-speaking peasant.[8][9] Also, the local Slavs considered themselves as "Rum", i.e. members of the community of Orthodox Christians. This community was a source of identity for all the ethnic groups inside it and most people identified mostly with it.

At that time, the Orthodox Christian community began to degrade with the continuous identification of the religious creed with ethnic identity,[10] while Bulgarian national activists started a debate on the establishment of their separate Orthodox church. Until the middle of the 19th century, the Greeks also called the Slavs in Macedonia "Bulgarians", and regarded them predominantly as Orthodox brethren, but the rise of Bulgarian nationalism changed the Greek position.[11] As a result, massive Greek religious and school propaganda occurred, and a process of Hellenization was implemented among the Slavic-speaking population of the area.[12][13] The very name Macedonia, revived during the early 19th century after the foundation of the modern Greek state, with its Western Europe-derived obsession with Ancient Greece, was applied to the local Slavs, [14] which led to some "Macedonization" among Slavic-speaking population of the area. The idea was to stimulate the development of close ties between them and the Greeks, linking both sides to the ancient Macedonians, as a counteract against the growing Bulgarian cultural influence and Bulgarian Exarchate propaganda in the region.[15][16] In 1845, for instance, the Alexander romance was published in Slavic Macedonian dialect typed with Greek letters.[17] At the same time the Russian ethnographer Victor Grigorovich described a recent change in the title of the Greek Patriarchist bishop of Bitola: from Exarch of all Bulgaria to Exarch of all Macedonia. He also noted the unusual popularity of Alexander the Great and that it appeared to be something that was recently instilled on the local Slavs.[18] However, Macedonian intellectuals, such as the Konstantin Miladinov, continued to call their land Western Bulgaria and worried that use of the new Macedonian name would imply identification with the Greek nation.[19][20][21][22]

The Macedonian Question an article from 1871 by Petko Slaveykov published in the newspaper Macedonia in Carigrad (now Istanbul). In this article, Petko Slaveykov writes: "We have many times heard from the Macedonists that they are not Bulgarians, but they are rather Macedonians, descendants of the Ancient Macedonians, and we have always waited to hear some proofs of this, but we have never heard them. The Macedonists have never shown us the bases of their attitude."

As a consequence, since the 1850s some Slavic intellectuals from the area adopted the designation Macedonian as a regional label, and it began to gain popularity.[7] In the 1860s, according to Petko Slaveykov, some young intellectuals from Macedonia were claiming that they are not Bulgarians, but they are rather Macedonians, descendants of the Ancient Macedonians. Another basis on which they distinguished themselves from Bulgarians was that Macedonians were pure Slavs while the Bulgarians were Tatars and so on.[23] Furthermore, they believed that the Bulgarian Exarchate is as oppressive as the Greek Patriarchate in terms of local ecclesiastic and scholarly matters.[24] In a letter written to the Bulgarian Exarch in February 1874, Slaveykov reports that discontent with the current situation "has given birth among local patriots to the disastrous idea of working independently on the advancement of their own local dialect and what’s more, of their own, separate Macedonian church leadership."[25][7] Per Slaveykov, the main task of his newspaper "Makedoniya" during 1870s, was to educate such misguided Grecomans there, who he called Macedonists.[26]

According to Kuzman Shapkarev, as a result of Macedonists' activity, the Slavs in Macedonia had started to use the ancient designation Macedonians alongside the traditional one Bulgarians by the 1870s.[27] However, Shapkarev notes that the name "Macedonians" had been "imposed on them by outsiders" (i.e., the Greeks), and that the Slavs in Macedonia were using the designation "Bulgarians" as peculiarly theirs, while referring to other Bulgarians as Shopi.[27] Similarly, they referred to their own Macedono-Bulgarian dialect as Bulgarian ("bugarski") in opposition to the other Bulgarian dialects, which they called "shopski".

During the 1880s, after recommendation by Stojan Novaković, the Serbian government also began to support those ideas to counteract the Bulgarian influence in Macedonia, claiming the Macedonian Slavs were in fact pure Slavs (i.e. Serbian Macedonians), while the Bulgarians, unlike them, were partially a mixture of Slavs and Bulgars (i.e. Tatars).[28] In accordance with Novaković's agenda this Serbian "Macedonism" was transformed in the 1890s, in a process of the gradual Serbianisation of the Macedonian Slavs.[29]

The first page of Orohydrography of Macedonia by Vasil Kanchov – 1911. Here he concluded that the local Bulgarians and Kutsovlachs who lived in the area, already called themselves Macedonians, and the surrounding nations also called them so. He also noted that the Turks, Albanians and Greeks do not call themselves Macedonians.

By the end of the 19th century, according to Vasil Kanchov, the local Bulgarians called themselves Macedonians, and the surrounding nations called them Macedonians.[30] In the early 20th century, Pavel Shatev witnessed this process of slow differentiation, describing people who insisted on their Bulgarian nationality, but felt themselves Macedonians above all.[31] However a similar paradox was observed at the eve of the 20th century and afterwards, when many Bulgarians from non-Macedonian descent, involved in the Macedonian affairs, espoused Macedonian identity.

During the interwar period, in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia ruled Vardar Macedonia, in the context of the Serbianization policy of the local Slavs, the name Macedonia was scorned, and the name South Serbia was imposed, while some also used simply South or Povardarie (after the Vardar river) as neutral names.[32][33] This was done intentionally to subvert any Macedonian national identity and to foster a common Yugoslav one.[34] Ultimately, the designation Macedonian changed its status in 1944, and went from being predominantly a regional, ethnographic denomination, to a national one.[35] However, when the anthropologist Keith Brown visited the Republic of Macedonia at the eve of the 21st century, he discovered that the local Aromanians, who also call themselves Macedonians, still label the ethnic Macedonians, and their eastern neighbors as "Bulgarians".[36][37]

## Origins

[edit]

Statue of Gjorgjija Pulevski, a major figure who endorsed the concept of an ethnic Macedonian identity, resulting in the foundation of Macedonian nationalism.[38] Cover of the "General History of the Macedonian Slavs", largely completed by 1893 in Sofia by Gjorgjija Pulevski. Its author claimed the ancient inhabitants of Macedonia were not Hellenic but Slav-Macedonian.

The first assertions of Macedonian nationalism arose in the second half of the 19th century.[7] The origins of the definition of an ethnic Slav Macedonian identity arose from the writings of Gjorgjija Pulevski in the 1870s and 1880s, who identified the existence of a distinct "Slavic Macedonian" language and expressed the idea that the Macedonians were a distinct people. Pulevski analyzed the folk histories of the Slavic Macedonian people, in which he concluded that Slavic Macedonians were ethnically linked to the people of the ancient Kingdom of Macedonia of Philip II and Alexander the Great, based on the claim that ancient Macedonians were Slavic, and modern-day Slavic Macedonians were their descendants. The Macedonian myth of Alexander the Great appeared in two documents related to the Kresna Uprising in 1878. In one of them the revolutionists, including Pulevski himself, saw themselves as heirs of the army of Alexander of Macedon and were prepared to shed their blood as he once did.[31][39] However, Slavic Macedonians' self-identification and nationalist loyalties remained ambiguous in the late 19th century.

Early Macedonian nationalists were encouraged by several foreign governments that held interests in the region. The Serbian government came to believe that any attempt to forcibly assimilate Slavic Macedonians into Serbs in order to incorporate Macedonia would be unsuccessful, given the strong Bulgarian influence in the region. Instead, the Serbian government believed that providing support to Macedonian nationalists would stimulate opposition to incorporation into Bulgaria and favourable attitudes to Serbia. Another country that encouraged Macedonian nationalism was Austria-Hungary that sought to deny both Serbia and Bulgaria the ability to annex Macedonia, and asserted a distinct ethnic character of Slavic Macedonians. In the 1890s, Russian supporters of a Slavic Macedonian ethnicity emerged, Russian-made ethnic maps began showing a Slavic Macedonian ethnicity, and Macedonian nationalists began to move to Russia to mobilize.[31]

The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) grew up as the major Macedonian separatist organization in the 1890s, seeking the autonomy of Macedonia from the Ottoman Empire.[40] It devised the slogan "Macedonia for the Macedonians" and called for a supranational Macedonia, consisting of different nationalities and eventually included in a future Balkan Federation. The IMRO initially opposed being dependent on any of the neighbouring states, and especially tried to hold back the influence of Greece and Serbia in the area. However, its relationship with Bulgaria was more ambiguous, but there was a fraction which firmly opposed any annexation from Bulgaria.[40] Despite that the autonomism and separatism of IMRO members were supranational, they undoubtedly stimulated the development of Macedonian nationalism, particularly from the leftist activists.[31][24]

In the late 19th and early 20th century the international community viewed the Macedonian Slavs predominantly as a regional variety of the Bulgarians. At the end of the First World War there were very few ethnographers who agreed that a separate Macedonian nation existed. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Allies sanctioned Serbian control of Vardar Macedonia[41] and accepted the belief that Macedonian Slavs were in fact Southern Serbs. This change in opinion can largely be attributed to the Serbian geographer Jovan Cvijić.[42] Nevertheless, Macedonian national ideas increased during the interbellum in Yugoslav Vardar Macedonia and among the left diaspora in Bulgaria, and were supported by the Comintern.[43] During the Second World War Macedonian national ideas were further developed by the Macedonian Partisans, but even at that time it is questionable to which extent Macedonian Slavs had any nationality.[44][45][46][47][48][49] The turning point for the Macedonian ethnogenesis was the creation of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia as part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia following World War II.[49][50]

## History

[edit]

See also: Slavic speakers in Ottoman Macedonia

### Early and middle 19th century

[edit]

Ogledalo issued by Kiril Peychinovich and printed in 1816 in Budapest. It was inspired by a movement on Mount Athos that was fighting for a liturgical renewal within the Orthodox Church. According to the book's title page, it was written in the "most common Bulgarian language of Lower Moesia". Then geographic Macedonia was traditionally called by the local Slavic-speakers either 'Bulgaria' or 'Lower Moesia', but after the Greek War of Independence these names were gradually replaced by 'Macedonia'.

With the conquest of the Balkans by the Ottomans in the late 14th century, the name of Macedonia disappeared for several centuries and was rarely displayed on geographic maps.[51] The central and northern areas of modern Macedonia were often called "Bulgaria" or "Lower Moesia" during Ottoman rule. The name "Macedonia" was rediscovered during the Renaissance by western researchers, who introduced ancient Greek geographical names in their work, although used in a rather loose manner[52] and gained popularity parallel to the ascendance of rival nationalism.[53] As per Raymond Detrez "Indeed, until the 1860s, as there are no documents or inscriptions mentioning the Macedonians as a separate ethnic group, all Slavs in Macedonia used to call themselves "Bulgarians".[54] Some authors consider that after the rise of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire, labels reflecting collective identity, such as "Bulgarian", changed into national labels from being broad terms that were without political significance.[55] Before that, the designation 'Bulgarian' referred to all the Slavs living in Rumelia and meant nothing more than a Vlach-speaking or Slav-speaking peasant.[49][56] In the 1870s, the region of Macedonia became the object of competition by rival nationalisms, initially Greek nationalists, Serbian nationalists and Bulgarian nationalists that each made claims about the Slavic-speaking population as being ethnically linked to their nation and asserted the right to seek their integration.[57] Rival nationalisms used religious and educational institutions to tie the population to their respective national cause by means of intense propaganda campaigns, so that the territorial claims over Macedonia can be validated.[58][49] Nationalist propaganda put a difficult choice before the Macedonian Slav peasant to be a Rum millet or Bulgarian millet, this choice was interpreted as choice of nationality a way of thinking that was foreign to most peasants.[59] The Bulgarian Exarchate launched a educational campaign, which managed to implant in Macedonian Slavs a Bulgarian national ideology.[60] The name "Macedonia" was revived to mean a separate geographical region on the Balkans, this occurring in the early 19th century, after the foundation of the modern Greek state, with its Western Europe-derived obsession with the Ancient world.[14] However, as a result of the massive Greek religious and school propaganda, a kind of Macedonization occurred among the Greek and non-Greek speaking population of the area. The name Macedonian Slavs was also introduced by the Greek clergy and teachers among the local Slavs with an aim to stimulate the development of close ties between them and the Greeks, linking both sides to the ancient Macedonians, as a counteract against the growing Bulgarian influence and propaganda there.[15]

### Late 19th and early 20th century

[edit]

See also: Ilinden Uprising and Macedonian Struggle

The first attempts for creation of the Macedonian ethnicity[61] can be said to have begun in the second half of the 19th and early 20th century.[62][7][63] This was the time of the first expressions of Macedonian nationalism by limited groups of intellectuals in Belgrade, Sofia, Thessaloniki and St. Petersburg.[49] However, up until the 20th century and beyond, the majority of the Slavic-speaking population of the region was identified as Macedono-Bulgarian or simply as Bulgarians[64][65][66][67][68] and after 1870 joined the Bulgarian Exarchate.[69] Per John Van Antwerp Fine, from the 9th century until the late 19th century, the outside observers and those Slavic Macedonians who had clear ethnic consciousness, believed they were Bulgarians.[70] However, national consciousness existed among small number of educated people, often called intelligentsia, on the other hand the peasantry was not involved in national debates, they were meaningless to their concern.[71] Thus, as seen by observers, the affiliation of Macedonian Slavs to different national camps was not indeed belonging to a ethnic group, but rather political and flexible option.[60] Furthermore, any expression of national identity among the majority of Macedonian Slavs was purely superficial and was imposed by the nationalist educational and religious propaganda or by terrorism from guerrilla bands.[49] Also, more astute foreign observers who visited Macedonia at the time concluded that Macedonian Slavs linguistically were not Bulgarians nor Serbs.[72] Considering all of the previous circumstances, it is possible to argue that the Macedonian Slavs formed a separate nationality.[14]

The Alexander Romance translated into Slav Macedonian by the Greek nationalist Athanasios Souliotis (Megali Idea advocates) in 1907 and issued in Thessaloniki.[73][74][75] It was typed with Greek letters and implied to the local Slavs (which were regarded by Greek nationalists as Slavophone Greeks) that they were heirs to the ancient Macedonians and, as such, a part of the Greek world which had forgotten its native language. In the late 19th and early 20th century, Greek nationalists began to classify the Greek Orthodox Patriarchist Slavic-speakers of Macedonia (which had already been labeled "Slavophone Greeks" at the time) as "Macedonians" in order to detach them from the Bulgarian National Movement and attach them to its Greek counterpart.[76]

Although he was appointed Bulgarian metropolitan bishop, in 1891 Theodosius of Skopje attempted to restore the Archbishopric of Ohrid as an autonomous Macedonian church, but his idea failed.[77][78][79] In this period, he thought that there was an ethnic difference between Macedonians and their Orthodox Christian neighbors.[80]

On the eve of the 20th century the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (IMARO) tried to unite all unsatisfied elements in the Ottoman Europe and struggled for political autonomy in the regions of Macedonia and Adrianople Thrace.[81] But this manifestation of political separatism by the IMARO was a phenomenon without ethnic affiliation and the Bulgarian ethnic provenance of the revolutionaries can not be put under question.[82] However, Boris Sarafov in 1902 had a statement in which he claimed "We the Macedonians are neither Serbs nor Bulgarians, but simply Macedonians... Macedonia exists only for the Macedonians."[83]

The front page of the book Za makedonckite raboti, Sofia 1903 by Krste Petkov Misirkov.

The first major manifestation of ethnic Macedonian nationalism was the book On Macedonian Matters, published in Sofia in 1903 by Krste Misirkov. In the book Misirkov advocated for affirmation of the Macedonians as a separate people.[84] Misirkov considered that the term "Macedonian" should be used to define the whole Slavic population of Macedonia, obliterating the existing division between Greeks, Bulgarians and Serbians. The adoption of a separate "Macedonian language" was also advocated and he outlined an overview of the Macedonian grammar and expressed the ultimate goal of codifying the language and using it as the language of instruction in the education system. The book was written in the dialect of central Macedonia (Veles-Prilep-Bitola-Ohrid) which was proposed by Misirkov as the basis for the future language, and, as Misirkov says, a dialect which is most different from all other neighboring languages (Bulgarian and Serbian).

Map of Macedonia on the basis of an earlier publication in the newspaper "Македонский Голосъ" by the Saint Petersburg Macedonian Colony, the map was part of the Memorandum of Independence of Macedonia in 1913.

Another significant activist for the ethnic Macedonian national revival was Dimitrija Čupovski, who was one of the founders and the president of the Macedonian Literary Society established in 1902 in Saint Petersburg. One of the members was also Krste Misirkov. In 1905 the Society published Vardar, the first scholarly, scientific and literary journal in the central dialects of Macedonia, which later would contribute in the standardization of Macedonian language.[85] During the 1913–14 period, Čupovski published the newspaper Makedonski Golos' (Македонскi Голосъ) (meaning Macedonian voice) in which he and fellow members of the Petersburg Macedonian Colony propagandized the existence of a separate Macedonian people different from Greeks, Bulgarians and Serbs, and sought to popularize the idea for an independent Macedonian state. Some of its articles were written by Krste Misirkov.[86]

### Balkan Wars and First World War

[edit]

During the Balkan Wars and the First World War the area was exchanged several times between Bulgaria and Serbia. The IMARO supported the Bulgarian army and authorities when they took temporary control over Vardar Macedonia. During this period, the political autonomism was abandoned as tactics, and annexation by Bulgaria was supported. On the other hand, Serbian authorities put pressure on local people to declare themselves Serbs: they disbanded local governments, established by IMARO in Ohrid, Veles and other cities and persecuted Bulgarian Excharchist priests and teachers, forcing them to flee and replacing them with Serbians.[87] Serbian troops enforced a policy of disarming the local militia, accompanied by beatings and threats.[88] The wars arguably even reinforced the rival Macedonian and Bulgarian narratives of national consciousness in the region, the first one consequently being adopted in the interwar period by the left-wing of IMARO.[89]

A World War I era ethnographic map of the Balkans by Serbian ethnologist Jovan Cvijić, depicting "Slavic Macedonians" in shades of green, distinct from Bulgarians and Serbs. The western parts of Bulgaria and northeastern Macedonia are shown as populated by Serbs. In this way he promoted the idea that Macedonians were in fact Southern Serbs.[90]

### Interwar period and WWII

[edit]

Despite the repressive Serbianisation policy during the interwar period in Vardar Macedonia, the Macedonian national consciousness was growing.[91] Also, some of the leftist activists of Macedonian Federative Organization, IMRO (United) and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia expressed Macedonian national ideas. In 1934 the Comintern in accordance with IMRO (United) issued a resolution about the recognition of a separate Macedonian ethnicity.[92] However, the existence of considerable Macedonian national consciousness prior to the 1940s is disputed, most of the people were unable to precisely identify what they were.[91][93][94][95] This confusion is illustrated by Robert Newman in 1935, who recounts discovering in a village in Vardar Macedonia two brothers, one who considered himself a Serb, and the other a Bulgarian. In another village he met a man who had been "a Macedonian peasant all his life" but who had been at various times called a Turk, a Serb and a Bulgarian.[96]

German ethnic map of Yugoslavia from 1940. Macedonians are depicted as a separate community, and described as claimed by Serbs and Bulgarians, but generally attributed to the last ones.

During the Second World War the area was annexed by Bulgaria and pro-Bulgarian feelings among the local population prevailed as a result of the previous oppressive Serbian rule.[97][98] Thus, Vardar Macedonia remained the only region where Yugoslav communist leader Josip Broz Tito had not developed a strong partisan movement in 1941, because the population feared reestablishment of the suffering Serbian rule. In order to enforce the Bulgarisation campaign over the Slavs, the new provinces were quickly staffed with officials from Bulgaria proper who behaved with typical official arrogance to the local inhabitants.[91][99] The wartime national chauvinism and suffering backlash generated sizable support for the Macedonian Partisans.[100] Their power started to grow after Tito ordered the establishment of the Communist Party of Macedonia in March 1943 and the second AVNOJ congress on 29 November 1943 did recognise the Macedonian nation as separate entity. The Communist Party of Macedonia stressed that the struggle is not for the restoration of the old Yugoslavia, but above all for the liberation and unification of Macedonia and a new federal union of Yugoslav peoples with an extension of its prewar territory. Thus attracting more and more young Macedonians to the armed resistance.[101] The communists' power started further to grow with the capitulation of Italy and the Soviet victories over Nazi Germany in 1943. The Greek communists, similar to their fraternal parties in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, had already been influenced by the Comintern and were the only political party in Greece to recognize Macedonian national identity.[102] During this time, the ethnic Macedonians in Greece were permitted to publish newspapers in Macedonian and run schools.[5] The Slavomacedonian National Liberation Front (SNOF) was formed in October 1943. After the end of the Greek Resistance against the Axis occupation, the SNOF was dissolved in 1944 on the orders of the KKE Central Committee and through British intervention. Headed by Vangel Ajanovski - Oche, some SNOF commanders, dissatisfied with the KKE decision, crossed into Vardar Macedonia and participated in the National Liberation Struggle of Macedonia.[6] The resistance movement grew and in August 1944 the Macedonian Partisans set up the Anti-fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia. They proclaimed a Macedonian nation-state of the ethnic Macedonians and the Macedonian as official language. After the German troops left the area in November, the new Macedonian government started the codification of the Macedonian language.[103][101] The state was later incorporated in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. However, some observers argued that by the end of the war, the Bulgarophile sentiments were still distinguishable, other observers in the 1950's wrote that Macedonian national consciousness is of recent growth and it derived from the general conviction gained from bitter experience, that rule from Sofia was as unacceptable as that from Belgrade.[104]

### Post-World War II

[edit]

See also: Bloody Christmas 1945 and Law for the Protection of Macedonian National Honour

Flag of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia.

After 1944 the People's Republic of Bulgaria and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia began a policy of making Macedonia into the connecting link for the establishment of a future Balkan Federative Republic and of supporting a distinct Slav Macedonian consciousness.[105] The region received the status of a constituent republic within Yugoslavia and in 1945 a separate Macedonian language was codified. The population was proclaimed to be ethnic Macedonian, a nationality different from both Serbs and Bulgarians, in thay way the Bulgarian irredentism towards Yugoslav Macedonia was subverted, as well the claims that Macedonians are Bulgarians were denied, the same applying to the Serbian claims that Macedonians were Serbs, and their Greater Serbia idea that had dominated interwar Yugoslavia.[91] With the proclamation of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia as part of the Yugoslav federation, the new authorities also enforced measures that would overcome the pro-Bulgarian feeling among parts of its population.[106] On the other hand, the Yugoslav authorities forcibly suppressed the ideologists of an independent Macedonian country.

In the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) held territory, newspapers and books were published by the new organization formed by Macedonians called National Liberation Front (NOF), public speeches made and the schools opened, helping the consolidation of Macedonian conscience and identity among the population. According to information announced by Paskal Mitrevski on the I plenum of NOF in August 1948, about 85% of the Macedonian-speaking population in Aegean Macedonia identified themselves as ethnic Macedonian. The language that was taught in the schools was the official language of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia. About 20,000 young ethnic Macedonians learned to read and write using that language, and learned their own history.

Ethnic Macedonians fought in the Greek Civil War and made a significant contribution to the initial victories of the DSE.[7] Their significance, however, rose as the conflict progressed due to their increased numbers within the DSE. However, when the Tito–Stalin split arose, Yugoslavia (and the Socialist Republic of Macedonia) closed its border to the DSE, as both the NOF and the DSE supported the Soviet line.[8] At the beginning of the war Markos Vafiadis had an efficient guerilla strategy, and controlled territories from Florina to Attica, and for a short period there were DSE-controlled territories in the Peloponnese.

However, the situation deteriorated after they lost the Greek Civil War. Thousands of Aegean Macedonians were expelled and fled to the newly established Socialist Republic of Macedonia, while thousands of more children took refuge in other Eastern Bloc countries.

At the end of the 1950s the Bulgarian Communist Party repealed its previous decision and adopted a position denying the existence of a Macedonian ethnicity. As a result, the Bulgarophobia in Macedonia increased almost to the level of State ideology.[107] This put an end to the idea of a Balkan Communist Federation. During the post-Informbiro period, a separate Macedonian Orthodox Church was established, splitting off from the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1967. The encouragement and evolution of the culture of the Republic of Macedonia has had a far greater and more permanent impact on Macedonian nationalism than has any other aspect of Yugoslav policy. While the development of national music, films and graphic arts had been encouraged in the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, the greatest cultural effect came from the codification of the Macedonian language and literature, the new Macedonian national interpretation of history and the establishment of a Macedonian Orthodox Church.[108] Most Macedonians' attitude to Communist Yugoslavia, where they were recognized as a distinct nation for the first time, became positive.[109]

After the Second World War, Macedonian and Serbian scholars usually defined the ancient local tribes in the area of the Central Balkans as Daco-Moesian. Previously these entities were traditionally regarded in Yugoslavia as Illyrian, in accordance with the romantic early-20th-century interests in the Illyrian movement. At first, the Daco-Moesian tribes were separated through linguistic research. Later, Yugoslav archaeologists and historians came to an agreement that Daco-Moesians should be located in the areas of modern-day Serbia and North Macedonia. The most popular Daco-Moesian tribes described in Yugoslav literature were the Triballians, the Dardanians and the Paeonians.[110] The leading research goal in the Republic of Macedonia during Yugoslav times was the establishment of some kind of Paionian identity and to separate it from the western "Illyrian" and the eastern "Thracian" entities. The idea of Paionian identity was constructed to conceptualize that Vardar Macedonia was neither Illyrian nor Thracian, favouring a more complex division, contrary to scientific claims about strict Thraco-Illyrian Balkan separation in neighbouring Bulgaria and Albania. Mainstream Yugoslav Macedonian historiography was cautious and argued that the link between the Slav Macedonians and their ancient namesakes was, at best, accidental.[111]

### Post-independence period

[edit]

Macedonian flag from 1992 to 1995 Monument of Alexander The Great on the Macedonia Square in Skopje.

On 8 September 1991, the Socialist Republic of Macedonia held a referendum that established its independence from Yugoslavia. With the fall of Communism, the breakup of Yugoslavia and the consequent lack of a Great power in the region, the Republic of Macedonia came into permanent conflicts with its neighbors. As seen by them the Yugoslav historiography borrowed certain parts of the histories of its neighboring states in order to construct the Macedonian identity, having reached not only the times of medieval Bulgaria, but even as far back as Alexander the Great. The Republic of Macedonia became hard pressed from all sides, Bulgaria contested its national identity and language, Greece contested its name and symbols, and Serbia its religious identity. On the other hand, the ethnic Albanians in the country insisted on being recognised as a nation, equal to the ethnic Macedonians. As a response, a more assertive and uncompromising form of Macedonian nationalism emerged.[112][113][114] At that time the concept of ancient Paionian identity was changed to a kind of mixed Paionian-Macedonian identity which was later transformed to a separate ancient Macedonian identity, establishing a direct link to the modern ethnic Macedonians.[115] After the Greek veto on the 21st NATO Summit in 2008, the nationalistic[116][117][118][119][120][121][122] ruling party VMRO-DPMNE pursued the so-called "Antiquisation" policy, as a way of putting pressure on Greece, as well as for the purposes of domestic identity-building.[123][124][125][126][127] Its supporters claim that the ethnic Macedonians are not descendants of the Slavs only, but of the ancient Macedonians too, who, according to them, were not Greeks.[128] Antiquisation is also spreading due to a very intensive lobbying of the Macedonian diaspora, particularly those originating from Aegean Macedonia, in the US, Canada, Germany and Australia.[129][126] Some members of the Macedonian diaspora even believe, without basis, that certain modern historians, namely Ernst Badian, Peter Green, and Eugene Borza, possess a pro-Macedonian bias in the Macedonian-Greek conflict, although per Borza they do share certain similarities in their views.[130]

As part of this policy, statues of Alexander the Great and Philip II of Macedon have been built in several cities across the country.[123] In 2011, a massive, 22-meter-tall statue of Alexander the Great (called "Warrior on a horse" because of the dispute with Greece[131][132]) was inaugurated in Macedonia Square in Skopje, as part of the Skopje 2014 remodelling of the city.[123] An even larger statue of Philip II is also constructed at the other end of the square. A triumphal arch named Porta Macedonia, constructed in the same square, featuring images of historical figures including Alexander the Great, caused the Greek Foreign Ministry to lodge an official complaint to authorities in the Republic of Macedonia.[133] Statues of Alexander are also on display in the town squares of Prilep and Štip, while a statue to Philip II of Macedon was recently built in Bitola.[123] Additionally, many pieces of public infrastructure, such as airports, highways, and stadiums have been named after ancient historical figures or entities. Skopje's airport was renamed "Alexander the Great Airport" and features antique objects moved from Skopje's archeological museum. One of Skopje's main squares has been renamed Pella Square (after Pella, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Macedon), while the main highway to Greece has been renamed to "Alexander of Macedon" and Skopje's largest stadium has been renamed "Philip II Arena".[123] These actions are seen as deliberate provocations in neighboring Greece, exacerbating the dispute and further stalling Macedonia's EU and NATO applications.[134] In 2008 a visit by Hunza Prince was organized in the Republic of Macedonia. The Hunza people of Northern Pakistan trace their descent to the army of Alexander the Great.[135] The Hunza delegation led by Mir Ghazanfar Ali Khan was welcomed at the Skopje Airport by the country's prime minister Nikola Gruevski, the head of the Macedonian Orthodox Church Archbishop Stephen and the mayor of Skopje, Trifun Kostovski.

Such antiquization is facing criticism by academics as it demonstrates feebleness of archaeology and of other historical disciplines in public discourse, as well as a danger of marginalization.[126] The policy has also attracted criticism domestically, by ethnic Macedonians within the country, who see it as dangerously dividing the country between those who identify with classical antiquity and those who identify with the country's Slavic culture.[123][136] Ethnic Albanians in North Macedonia see it as an attempt to marginalize them and exclude them from the national narrative.[123] The policy, which also claims as ethnic Macedonians figures considered national heroes in Bulgaria, such as Dame Gruev and Gotse Delchev, has also drawn criticism from Bulgaria.[123] Foreign diplomats had warned that the policy reduced international sympathy for the Republic of Macedonia in the then-naming dispute with Greece.[123]

The background of this antiquization can be found in the 19th century and the myth of ancient descent among Orthodox Slavic-speakers in Macedonia. It was adopted partially due to Greek cultural inputs. This idea was also included in the national mythology during the post-WWII Yugoslavia. An additional factor for its preservation has been the influence of the Macedonian Diaspora. Contemporary antiquization has been revived as an efficient tool for political mobilization and has been reinforced by the VMRO-DPMNE.[137] This ultra-nationalism accompanied by the emphasizing of North Macedonia's ancient roots has raised concerns internationally about growing a kind of authoritarianism by the governing party.[138] There have also been attempts at scientific claims about ancient nationhood, but they have had a negative impact on the international position of the country.[137] On the other hand, there is still strong Yugonostalgia among the ethnic Macedonian population, that has swept also over other ex-Yugoslav states.

On 27 April 2017, when about 200 Macedonian nationalists (some of whom were members and sympathizers of VMRO-DPMNE) stormed the Macedonian Parliament in reaction to the election of Talat Xhaferi, an ethnic Albanian and a former NLA commander, as Speaker of the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia.[139][140] It was the biggest attack in history on a Macedonian institution.

Macedonian nationalism also has support among high-ranking diplomats of North Macedonia who are serving abroad, and this continues to affect the relations with neighbors, especially Greece. In August 2017, the Consul of the Republic of Macedonia to Canada attended a nationalist Macedonian event in Toronto and delivered a speech against the backdrop of an irredentist map of Greater Macedonia. This has triggered strong protests from the Greek side,[141][142][143] which regards this as a sign that irredentism remains the dominant state ideology and everyday political practice in the neighboring country.[144] Following strong diplomatic protests, however, the Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Macedonia condemned the incident and recalled its diplomat back to Skopje for consultations.[145]

## Macedonism

[edit]

Damaged inscription on the Holy Sunday church (Sveta Nedela) in Bitola. It reads: This holy church was erected with the contribution of the Bulgarians in Bitola on October 13, 1863. The part of the inscription that reads "Bulgarians" has been erased. There are many other deliberately destroyed Bulgarian monuments in the Republic of North Macedonia.[146] The Bitola inscription of 1016/1017. The medieval stone contains instances of the word Bulgarian. In 2006 the French consulate in Bitola sponsored and prepared a tourist catalogue and printed on its front cover the inscription. News about it had spread prior to the official presentation and was a cause for confusion among the officials of the municipality. The printing of the new catalogue was stopped because of its "Bulgarian" cover.[147] Front cover of the original edition of Bulgarian Folk Songs collected by the Macedonia-born Miladinov Brothers. When the Macedonian State Archive displayed a photocopy of the book, the upper part of the page showing "Bulgarian" had been cut off.[148] There is a similar case with the national museum of the Republic of North Macedonia which, apparently, refuses to display original works by the two brothers, because of the Bulgarian labels on some of them.[149]

See also: Historiography in North Macedonia and ancient Macedonism

"Macedonist" redirects here. For Other uses, see Macedonist (disambiguation).

Macedonism (Macedonian and Serbian: Македонизам, Makedonizam; Bulgarian: Македонизъм, Makedonizam and Greek: Μακεδονισμός, Makedonismós), is a political and historical term used predominantly by Bulgarians and Greeks in a polemic sense to refer to the Macedonian national identity and a set of ideas perceived as characteristic of aggressive Macedonian nationalism.[150][151][152][153][154][155]

The term is used in Bulgaria in an insulting and derogatory manner, to discredit the existence of Macedonian national identity. In 1992 the president of Bulgaria Zhelyu Zhelev declared that only the "political" formation Republic of Macedonia is recognized and that Bulgaria would never affirm the existence of a Macedonian nation and language. Consequently, Bulgaria continued to repeat the views established during the communist regime of Todor Zhivkov previously. According to which the Macedonian nation was "artificially created" on the basis of the Bulgarian ethnic majority in the former SR Macedonia, and the Macedonian language is "artificial" as well, it is in fact a Bulgarian dialect, modified through a politically motivated Serbification. For Bulgarian historians, Macedonism is widely seen as a Greater Serbian aspiration, aiming to split the Bulgarian people on anti-Bulgarian grounds. If someone identifies as Macedonian, this is because a Serbian chauvinist strategy has manipulated them in the past. Thus the Macedonian nation is explicitly rejected as a denationalizing product of Serbian propaganda. Another view added is that the Macedonian nation was a communist plot, particularly of Josip Broz Tito and the Yugoslav Communists.[156] This view that the Macedonian identity was the product of "Titoist brainwashing" is also supported by Greek scholars, and some Serbian scholars as well. Most prominent in these views are the Macedonian Scientific Institute and the VMRO-BND. Less academic and more provocative publications are issued intended for a wider national audience, rather than for scholarly work, such as "The Ten Lies of Macedonism" by Bozhidar Dimitrov.[157] The term Macedonism is first believed to have been used in a derogatory manner by Petko Slaveykov in 1871, when he dismissed Macedonian nationalists as "Macedonists",[158] who he regarded a misguided (sic): Grecomans.[159]

The term is occasionally used in an apologetic sense by some Macedonian authors,[160][161][162][163] but has also faced strong criticism from moderate political views in North Macedonia and international scholars.[164][165]

Before the Balkan Wars Macedonist ideas were shared by a limited circle of intellectuals. They grew in significance during the interbellum, both in Vardar Macedonia and among the left-leaning diaspora in Bulgaria, and were endorsed by the Comintern. During the Second World War, these ideas were supported by the Communist Partisans, who founded the Yugoslav Macedonian Republic in 1944.[43] Following the Second World War, Macedonism became the basis of Yugoslav Macedonia's state ideology, aimed at transforming the Slavic and, to a certain extent, non-Slavic parts of its population into ethnic Macedonians.[166] This state policy is still current in today's Republic of North Macedonia,[167] where it was developed in several directions. One of them maintains the connection of the modern ethnic Macedonians with the ancient Macedonians, rather than with the South Slavs, while others have sought to incorporate into the national pantheon the right-wing Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) activists, previously dismissed as Bulgarophiles.

### Macedonism as an ethno-political conception

[edit]

The roots of the concept were first developed in the second half of the 19th century, in the context of Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian initiatives to take control over the region of Macedonia, which was at that time ruled by the Ottoman Empire. It was originally used in a contemptuous manner to refer to Slav Macedonians, who believed they constituted a distinct ethnic group, separate from their neighbours. The first to use the term "Macedonist" was the Bulgarian author Petko Slaveykov, who coined the term in his article "The Macedonian Question", published in the newspaper Makedoniya in 1871. However, he pointed out that he had heard for the first time of such ideas as early as 10 years prior, i.e. around 1860. Slaveykov sharply criticised those Macedonians espousing such views, as they had never shown a substantial basis for their attitudes, calling them "Macedonists".[168] Nevertheless, those accused of Slaveikov as Macedonists were representative of the movement aiming at the construction of the Bulgarian standard literary language primarily on the Macedonian dialects, such as Kuzman Shapkarev, Dimitar Makedonski and Veniamin Machukovski.[169] Another early recorded use of the term "Macedonism" is found in a report by the Serbian politician Stojan Novaković from 1887. He proposed to employ the Macedonistic ideology as a means to counteract the Bulgarian influence in Macedonia, thereby promoting Serbian interests in the region.[170] Novaković's diplomatic activity in Istanbul and St. Petersburg played a significant role in the realization of his ideas, especially through the "Association of Serbo-Macedonians" formed by him in Istanbul and through his support for the Macedonian Scientific and Literary Society in St. Petersburg.[171] The geopolitics of the Serbs evidently played a crucial role in the ethnogenesis by promoting a separate Macedonian consciousness at the expense of the Bulgarians (it is worth mentioning that 19th century Serbian propaganda mostly adhered to direct Serbianization, including post-WWI policy of Belgrade in Vardar Macedonia). In 1888 the Macedono-Bulgarian ethnographer Kuzman Shapkarev noted that, as a result of this activity, a strange, ancient ethnonym "Makedonci" (Macedonians) was imposed 10–15 years prior by outside intellectuals, introduced with a "cunning aim" to replace the traditional "Bugari" (Bulgarians).[27]

One of the founding figures of Macedonism, Georgi Pulevski for instance viewed Macedonians' identity as being a regional phenomenon (similar to Herzegovinians and Thracians). Once calling himself a "Serbian patriot", another time a "Bulgarian from the village of Galicnik",[172] he also identified the Slavic Macedonian language as being related to the "Old Bulgarian language" as well as being a "Serbo-Albanian language".[31] Pulevski's numerous identifications reveal the absence of a clear ethnic sense in a part of the local Slavic population. In 1892, Pulevski completed the first "Slavic-Macedonian General History", with a manuscript of over 1,700 pages.[173] According to the book, the ancient Macedonians were Slavic people and the Macedonian Slavs were native to the Balkans, in contrast of the Bulgarians and the Serbs, who came there centuries later. The root of such indigenous mixture of Illyrism and Pan-Slavism can be seen in "Concise history of the Slav Bulgarian People" (1792), written by Spyridon Gabrovski, whose original manuscript was found in 1868 by the Russian scientist Alexander Hilferding on his journey in Macedonia.[174] Gabrovski tried to establish a link between the Bulgaro-Macedonians on the one hand, and the Illyrians and ancient Macedonians on the other, whom he also regarded as Slavs. The main agenda of this story about the mythical Bulgaro-Illyro-Macedonians was to assert that the Macedonian and Bulgarian Slavs were among the indigenous inhabitants of the Balkans.[175]

Other proponents of the Macedonist ideas in the early 20th century were two Serbian scholars, the geographer Jovan Cvijić[176] and the linguist Aleksandar Belić.[177] They claimed the Slavs of Macedonia were "Macedonian Slavs", an amorphous Slavic mass that was neither Bulgarian, nor Serbian. Cvijić further argued that the traditional ethnonym Bugari (Bulgarians) used by the Slavic population of Macedonia to refer to themselves actually meant only rayah, and in no case affiliations to the Bulgarian ethnicity. In his ethnographic studies of the Balkan Slavs, Cvijic devised a "Central Type" (Slav Macedonians and Torlaks), dissimilar at the same time to the "Dinaric Type" (the principal "Serb" ethnographic variant) and the "East Balkan Type" (representing the Bulgarians, but excluding even Western Bulgaria). The true Bulgarians belonged only to the "East Balkan Type" and were a mixture of Slavs, "Turanian" groups (Bulgars, Cumans, and Turks) and Vlachs, and as such, were different from the other South Slavs in their ethnic composition. More importantly, their national character was decidedly un-Slavic. Bulgarians were industrious and coarse. They were a people without imagination and therefore necessarily without art and culture. This caricature of the Bulgarians permitted their clear differentiation from the "Central Type," within which Cvijic included Macedonian Slavs, western Bulgarians (Shopi), and Torlaks, a type that was eminently Slavic (i.e. old-Serbian) and therefore non-Bulgarian. Nowadays, these outdated Serbian views have been propagandized by some contemporary Macedonian scholars and politicians.[178][179]

Some panslavic ideologists in Russia, former supporter of Greater Bulgaria, also adopted these ideas as opposing Bulgaria's Russophobic policy at the beginning of the 20th century, as for example Alexandr Rittikh[180] and Aleksandr Amfiteatrov. At the beginning of the 20th century, the continued Serbian propaganda efforts had managed to firmly entrench the concept of the Macedonian Slavs in European public opinion and the name was used almost as frequently as Bulgarians. Simultaneously, the proponents of the Greek Struggle for Macedonia, such as Germanos Karavangelis, openly popularized the Hellenic idea about a direct link between the local Slavs and the ancient Macedonians.[181] Nevertheless, in 1914 the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs report states that the Serbs and Greeks classified the Slavs of Macedonia as a distinct ethnic group "Macedonians Slavs" for political purposes and to conceal the existence of Bulgarians in the area.[182] However, after the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) Ottoman Macedonia was mostly divided between Greece and Serbia, which began a process of Hellenization and Serbianisation of the Slavic population and led in general to a cease in the use of this term in both countries.[citation needed]

On the other hand, Serbian and Bulgarian left-wing intellectuals envisioned in the early 20th century some sort of "Balkan confederation" including Macedonia, should the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman Empire dissolve. This view was accepted from the Socialist International. In 1910, the First Balkan Socialist Conference was held in Belgrade, then within the Kingdom of Serbia.[183] The main platform at the first conference was the call for a solution to the Macedonian Question. The creation of a Balkan Socialist Federation was proposed, in which Macedonia would be a constituent state. In 1915, after the Balkan Wars had concluded, the Balkan Socialist Conference in Bucharest agreed to create a Balkan Socialist Federation, and that divided from the "imperialists" Macedonia would be united into its framework. This ideology later found fruition with the support of the Soviet Union as a project of the Yugoslav communist federation. Various declarations were made during the 1920s and 1930s seeing the official adoption of Macedonism by the Comintern. In turn declarations were made by the Greek, Yugoslav and Bulgarian communist parties, as they agreed on its adoption as their official policy for the region. Also, the demise of the IMRO and its ideology for much of the interwar period led a part of the young local intellectuals in Vardar Macedonia, regarded at that time as Serbs, to find a solution in the ideology of Macedonism.[citation needed] This issue was supported during the Second World War by the Communist Resistance and in 1944 the wartime Communist leader Josip Broz Tito proclaimed the People's Republic of Macedonia as part of the Yugoslav Federation, thus partially fulfilling the Comintern's pre-war policy. He was supported by the Bulgarian leader from Macedonian descent and former General Secretary of the Comintern Georgi Dimitrov, in anticipation of an ultimately failed incorporation of the Bulgarian part of Macedonia (Pirin Macedonia) into the People's Republic of Macedonia, and of Bulgaria itself into Communist Yugoslavia.[citation needed]

### Early adherents

[edit]

The first Macedonian nationalists appeared in the late 19th and early 20th century outside Macedonia. At different points in their lives, most of them expressed conflicting statements about the ethnicity of the Slavs living in Macedonia, including their own nationality. They formed their pro-Macedonian conceptions after contacts with some panslavic circles in Serbia and Russia.[citation needed] The lack of diverse ethnic motivations seems to be confirmed by the fact that in their works they often used the designations Bulgaro-Macedonians, Macedonian Bulgarians and Macedonian Slavs in order to name their compatriots. Representatives of this circle were Georgi Pulevski, Theodosius of Skopje, Krste Misirkov, Stefan Dedov, Atanas Razdolov, Dimitrija Chupovski and others. Nearly all of them died in Bulgaria. Most of the next wave Macedonists were left-wing politicians, who changed their ethnic affiliations from Bulgarian to Macedonian during the 1930s, after the recognition of the Macedonian ethnicity by the Comintern, as for example Dimitar Vlahov, Pavel Shatev, Panko Brashnarov, Venko Markovski, Georgi Pirinski, Sr. and others. Such Macedonian activists, who came from the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (United) and the Bulgarian Communist Party never managed to get rid of their pro-Bulgarian bias.[184]

## See also

[edit]

* North Macedonia portal

* Macedonia (terminology)
* United Macedonia
* World Macedonian Congress
* Macedonian Question
* History of the Macedonians (ethnic group)
* Demographic history of Macedonia
* Rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire
* Albanian nationalism in North Macedonia

## References and notes

[edit]

1. ^ Raymond Detrez; Pieter Plas (13 December 2003). Developing Cultural Identity in the Balkans: Convergence Vs. Divergence. Peter Lang. p. 184\. ISBN 9789052012971. Retrieved 4 September 2015.
2. ^ Dimitris Keridis (1 July 2009). Historical Dictionary of Modern Greece. Scarecrow Press. p. 101\. ISBN 9780810863125. Retrieved 4 September 2015.
3. ^ Rossos, Andrew (2008). Macedonia and the Macedonians (PDF). Hoover Institution Press. pp. 155, 165. ISBN 978-0817948832. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 January 2019. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
4. ^ “Историа на велики Александра македонца”, во 1844 година во Белград!“ во Весник “Вечер” от 23 ноември 2011 година.
5. ^ John S. Koliopoulos, Thanos M. Veremis, Modern Greece: A History since 1821. A New History of Modern Europe, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, ISBN 1444314831, p. 48.
6. ^ Bonner, Raymond (14 May 1995). "The World; The Land That Can't Be Named". The New York Times. New York. Archived from the original on 29 January 2019. Retrieved 29 January 2019. "Macedonian nationalism did not arise until the end of the last century."
7. ^ a b c d e Roumen Daskalov, Tchavdar Marinov, Entangled Histories of the Balkans, Volume One: National Ideologies and Language Policies, BRILL, 2013, ISBN 900425076X, pp. 276–287.
8. ^ Vermeulen, Hans (1984). "Greek cultural dominance among the Orthodox population of Macedonia during the last period of Ottoman rule". In Blok, Anton; Driessen, Henk (eds.). Cultural Dominance in the Mediterranean Area. Nijmegen: Katholieke Universiteit. pp. 225–255.
9. ^ "Until the late 19th century both outside observers and those Bulgaro-Macedonians who had an ethnic consciousness believed that their group, which is now two separate nationalities, comprised a single people, the Bulgarians. Thus the reader should ignore references to ethnic Macedonians in the Middle ages which appear in some modern works. In the Middle Ages and into the 19th century, the term 'Macedonian' was used entirely in reference to a geographical region. Anyone who lived within its confines, regardless of nationality could be called a Macedonian...Nevertheless, the absence of a national consciousness in the past is no grounds to reject the Macedonians as a nationality today." "The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century," John Van Antwerp Fine, University of Michigan Press, 1991, ISBN 0472081497, pp. 36–37.
10. ^ Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict: Shadows of Modernity, Andreas Wimmer, Cambridge University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-521-01185-X, pp. 171–172.
11. ^ Modern Greece: John S. Koliopoulos, Thanos M. Veremis, A History since 1821, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, ISBN 1444314831, p. 48.
12. ^ Richard Clogg, Minorities in Greece: Aspects of a Plural Society. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 2002, ISBN 1850657068, p. 160.
13. ^ Dimitar Bechev, Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia, Scarecrow Press, 2009, ISBN 0810862956, Introduction, pp. VII–VIII.
14. ^ a b c Jelavich Barbara, History of the Balkans, Vol. 2: Twentieth Century, 1983, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521274591, p. 91.
15. ^ a b J. Pettifer, The New Macedonian Question, St Antony's group, Springer, 1999, ISBN 0230535798, pp. 49–51.
16. ^ Anastas Vangeli, Nation-building ancient Macedonian style: the origins and the effects of the so-called antiquization in Macedonia. Nationalities Papers, the Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity, Volume 39, 2011 pp. 13–32.
17. ^ Dimitar Bechev, Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia, Scarecrow Press, 2009, ISBN 0810862956, Introduction, p. VII.
18. ^ Kyril Drezov, “Macedonian identity: an overview of the major claims,” in The New Macedonian Question, ed. James Pettifer (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 47–59.
19. ^ On 8 January 1861, K. Miladinov wrote to the Bulgarian wakener G. Rakovski to explain his use of the term ‘‘Bulgarian’’ in the title of his and his brother’s collection of Macedonian folk songs: ‘‘In the announcement I called Macedonia West Bulgaria (as it should be called) because in Vienna the Greeks treat us like sheep. They consider Macedonia a Greek land and cannot understand that [Macedonia] is not Greek.’’ Miladinov and other educated Macedonians worried that use of the Macedonian name would imply attachment to or identification with the Greek nation For more see: Andrew Rossos Macedonia and the Macedonians: A History. Hoover Institution Press, 2008, ISBN 0817948813, p. 84.
20. ^ Miladinov suggested that Macedonia should be called “Western Bulgaria”. Obviously, he was aware that the classical designation was received via Greek schooling and culture. As the Macedonian historian Taskovski claims, the Macedonian Slavs initially rejected the Macedonian designation as Greek. For more see: Tchavdar Marinov, Famous Macedonia, the Land of Alexander: Macedonian identity at the crossroads of Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian nationalism, p. 285; in Entangled Histories of the Balkans – Volume One: National Ideologies and Language Policies with Roumen Daskalov and Tchavdar Marinov as ed., BRILL, 2013, ISBN 900425076X, pp. 273–330.
21. ^ Dimitar Miladinov's most famous literary achievement was the publishing of a large collection of Bulgarian folk songs in Zagreb in 1861 under the title Bulgarian Folk Songs. He published the volume with his brother Konstantin (1830–1862) and even though most of the songs were from Macedonia, the authors disliked this term as too Hellenic and preferred to refer to Macedonia as the "Western Bulgarian lands". For more see: Chris Kostov, Contested Ethnic Identity: The Case of Macedonian Immigrants in Toronto, Peter Lang, 2010, ISBN 3034301960, p. 72.
22. ^ The struggle over the historical legacy of the name "Macedonia" was already underway in the nineteenth century, as the Greeks contested its appropriation by the Slavs. This is reflected in a letter from Konstantin Miladinov, who published Bulgarian folk songs from Macedonia, to Georgi Rakovski, dated 31 January 1861:On my order form I have called Macedonia “Western Bulgaria”, as it should be called, because the Greeks in Vienna are ordering us around like sheep. They want Macedonia to be Greek territory and still do not realize that it cannot be Greek. But what are we to do with the more than two million Bulgarians there? Shall the Bulgarians still be sheep and a few Greeks the shepherds? Those days are gone and the Greeks shall be left with no more than their sweet dream. I believe the songs will be distributed among the Bulgarians, and have therefore set a low price for them. For more see: Spyridon Sfetas, The image of the Greeks in the work of the Bulgarian revolutionary and intellectual Georgi Rakovski. Balkan Studies, [S.l.], v. 42, n. 1, p. 89-107, Jan. 2001. ISSN 2241-1674. Available at: <https://ojs.lib.uom.gr/index.php/BalkanStudies/article/view/3313/3338>.
23. ^ The Macedonian Question an article from 1871 by Petko Slaveykov published in the newspaper Macedonia in Carigrad (now Istanbul). In this article, Petko Slaveykov writes: "We have many times heard from the Macedonists that they are not Bulgarians, but they are rather Macedonians, descendants of the Ancient Macedonians, and we have always waited to hear some proofs of this, but we have never heard them. The Macedonists have never shown us the bases of their attitude... We have also heard other argumentation. Some Macedonists distinguish themselves from the Bulgarians upon another basis - they are pure Slavs, while the Bulgarians are Tartars and so on."
24. ^ a b Alexis Heraclides (2021). The Macedonian Question and the Macedonians: A History. Routledge. pp. 47, 70–71\. ISBN 9780367218263.
25. ^ A letter from Slaveykov to the Bulgarian Exarch written in Solun in February 1874
26. ^ Речник на българската литература, том 2 Е-О. София, Издателство на Българската академия на науките, 1977. с. 324.
27. ^ a b c In a letter to Prof. Marin Drinov of 25 May 1888 Kuzman Shapkarev writes: "But even stranger is the name Macedonians, which was imposed on us only 10–15 years ago by outsiders, and not as some think by our own intellectuals.... Yet the people in Macedonia know nothing of that ancient name, reintroduced today with a cunning aim on the one hand and a stupid one on the other. They know the older word: "Bugari", although mispronounced: they have even adopted it as peculiarly theirs, inapplicable to other Bulgarians. You can find more about this in the introduction to the booklets I am sending you. They call their own Macedono-Bulgarian dialect the "Bugarski language", while the rest of the Bulgarian dialects they refer to as the "Shopski language". (Makedonski pregled, IX, 2, 1934, p. 55; the original letter is kept in the Marin Drinov Museum in Sofia, and it is available for examination and study)
28. ^ Claudia-Florentina Dobre, Cristian Emilian ed., Quest for a Suitable Past: Myths and Memory in Central and Eastern Europe, Central European University Press, 2018, ISBN 9633861365, p. 139.
29. ^ Contested Ethnic Identity: The Case of Macedonian Immigrants in Toronto, 1900–1996, Chris Kostov, Peter Lang, 2010, ISBN 3034301960, p. 65.
30. ^ According to Vasil Kanchov: "The local Bulgarians and Kucovlachs who live in the area of Macedonia call themselves Macedonians, and the surrounding nations also call them so. Turks and Arnauts from Macedonia do not call themselves Macedonians, but when asked where they are from, they respond: from Macedonia. Arnauts from the north and northwest limits of the area, who also call their country Anautluk, and Greeks who live in the southern areas, do not call themselves Macedonians, hence the borders in these areas according to the peoples’ perception are not clearly defined." Vasil Kanchov – 1911. Original: Орохидрография на Македония, wiki translation: Orohydrography of Macedonia. For more see: E. Damianopoulos, The Macedonians: Their Past and Present, Springer, 2012, ISBN 1137011904, p. 185.
31. ^ a b c d e Tchavdar Marinov, Famous Macedonia, the Land of Alexander: Macedonian Identity at the Crossroads of Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian Nationalism in Entangled Histories of the Balkans – Volume One, BRILL, 2013, ISBN 900425076X, pp. 292-319.
32. ^ Donald Bloxham, The Final Solution: A Genocide, OUP Oxford, 2009, ISBN 0199550336, p. 65.
33. ^ Boškovska, Nada (2017). Yugoslavia and Macedonia Before Tito: Between Repression and Integration. I. B. Tauris. pp. 3–4\. ISBN 978-1784533380.
34. ^ Dawisha, Karen; Parrott, Bruce (13 June 1997). Politics, power, and the struggle for democracy in South-East Europe, Volume 2 of Authoritarianism and Democratization and authoritarianism in postcommunist societies, p. 229. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521597333. Retrieved 20 November 2011.
35. ^ Raymond Detrez, Pieter Plas, Developing cultural identity in the Balkans: convergence vs divergence, Volume 34 of Multiple Europesq Peter Lang, 2005, ISBN 9052012970, p. 173.
36. ^ Chris Kostov, Contested Ethnic Identity: The Case of Macedonian Immigrants in Toronto, 1900–1996, Peter Lang, 2010, ISBN 3034301960, p. 71.
37. ^ Keith Brown, The Past in Question: Modern Macedonia and the Uncertainties of Nation, Princeton University Press, 2003, ISBN 0691099952, p. 110.
38. ^ Friedman Victor A (1975). "Macedonian language and nationalism during the 19th and early 20th centuries" (PDF). Balkanistica. 2: 83–98\. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 September 2006.
39. ^ Mitko B. Panov (2019). The Blinded State: Historiographic Debates about Samuel Cometopoulos and His State (10th-11th Century). BRILL. p. 276\. ISBN 9789004394292.
40. ^ a b Viktor Meier (1999). Yugoslavia: A History of Its Demise. Routledge. p. 179. ISBN 9780415185967.
41. ^ The term "Vardar Macedonia" is a geographic term which refers to the portion of the region of Macedonia currently occupied by the Republic of Macedonia.
42. ^ Nationalism and Territory: Constructing Group Identity in Southeastern Europe, Geographical perspectives on the human past, George W. White, Rowman & Littlefield, 2000, ISBN 0847698092, p. 236.
43. ^ a b Dimitar Bechev (2009). Historical dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia. Scarecrow Press. pp. 139–140\. ISBN 978-0-8108-5565-6.
44. ^ "It seemed, however, that there was no contradiction between British political considerations and their actual views on the nationality of the Macedonians. For the Foreign Office, the Macedonians had no national affiliations whatsoever, nor would they be able to choose one, even if asked to do so. 'The majority of the Slavs do not care to what nationality they belong', read a memorandum of 1925, adding that 'it is incorrect to refer to them as other than Macedo-Slavs. To this extent both the Serbian claim that they are Southern Serbs and the Bulgar claim that they are Bulgars are unjustified'." For more see: The Macedonian Question: Britain and the Southern Balkans 1939-1949, Dimitris Livanios, Oxford University Press, 2008, ISBN 0-19-923768-9, p. 65.
45. ^ As David Fromkin (1993, p. 71) confirms: “even as late as 1945, Slavic Macedonia had no national identity of its own." Nikolaos Zahariadis (2005) Essence of Political Manipulation: Emotion, Institutions, & Greek Foreign Policy, Peter Lang, p. 85, ISBN 0820479039.
46. ^ Dawisha, Karen; Parrott, Bruce (13 June 1997). Politics, power, and the struggle for democracy in South-East Europe, Volume 2 of Authoritarianism and Democratization and authoritarianism in postcommunist societies, p. 229. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521597333. Retrieved 20 November 2011.
47. ^ "All of the rest - those who considered themselves Serbs or Turks or Albanians, and especially the great majority who considered themselves Macedonians - resisted the new policies and remained passive. The latter in particular saw no difference between the wartime Bulgarian regime and the interwar Yugoslav (in fact Serbian) government: both denied them their nationality, their language, political autonomy and free developmnet as a national unit." For more see: Jozo Tomasevich (2002). War and Revolution in Yugoslavia 1941–1945, Stanford University Press, ISBN 0804736154, pp.163–165.
48. ^ "Most of the Slavophone inhabitants in all parts of divided Macedonia, perhaps a million and a half in all – had a Bulgarian national consciousness at the beginning of the Occupation; and most Bulgarians, whether they supported the Communists, VMRO, or the collaborating government, assumed that all Macedonia would fall to Bulgaria after the WWII. Tito was determined that this should not happen. The first Congress of AVNOJ in November 1942 had parented equal rights to all the 'peoples of Yugoslavia', and specified the Macedonians among them."The struggle for Greece, 1941–1949, Christopher Montague Woodhouse, C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 2002, ISBN 1-85065-492-1, p. 67.
49. ^ a b c d e f Danforth, Loring M. (1997). The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World. Princeton University Press. pp. 55–66\. ISBN 0-691-04356-6. Retrieved 14 November 2011.
50. ^ Modern hatreds: the symbolic politics of ethnic war. New York: Cornell University Press. Kaufman, Stuart J. (2001), p. 193, ISBN 0-8014-8736-6.
51. ^ John Breuilly, The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism, Oxford University Press, 2013, ISBN 0199209197, p. 192.
52. ^ Robin J. Fox, Robin Lane Fox, Brill's Companion to Ancient Macedon: Studies in the Archaeology and History of Macedon, 650 BC – 300 AD, BRILL, 2011, ISBN 9004206507, p. 35.
53. ^ Victor Roudometof, Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict: Greece, Bulgaria, and the Macedonian Question, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002, ISBN 0275976483, p. 89.
54. ^ Detrez, Raymond (18 December 2014). Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 315\. ISBN 978-1-4422-4180-0.
55. ^ Roth, Klaus; Brunnbauer, Ulf (2008). Region, Regional Identity and Regionalism in Southeastern Europe. LIT Verlag Münster. pp. 129, n. 1. ISBN 978-3-8258-1387-1. "Duncan Perry (1988: 19) summarized that "studies using linguistic, cultural, historical and religious criteria usually yield different results and various combinations of these modes of measurement and only new permutations each... inspired by the nationalist prejudices and preferences of the individuals making the assessments"."
56. ^ Kamusella, Tomasz (16 December 2008). The Politics of Language and Nationalism in Modern Central Europe. Springer. p. 249\. ISBN 978-0-230-58347-4.
57. ^ Roumen Daskalov and Tchavdar Marinov. Entangled Histories of the Balkans: Volume One: National Ideologies and Language Policies. 2013. p. 318.
58. ^ Roudometof, Victor (2002). Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict: Greece, Bulgaria, and the Macedonian Question. p. 91.
59. ^ Vermeulen, Hans (1984). "Greek cultural dominance among the Orthodox population of Macedonia during the last period of Ottoman rule". In Blok, Anton; Driessen, Henk (eds.). Cultural Dominance in the Mediterranean Area. Nijmegen: Katholieke Universiteit. pp. 225–255.
60. ^ a b Gounaris, Basil G. (1995). "Social Cleavages and National 'Awakening' in Ottoman Macedonia". East European Quarterly. 29 (4): 409–426.
61. ^ Throughout this article, the term "Macedonian" will refer to ethnic Macedonians. There are many other uses of the term, and comprehensive coverage of this topic may be found in the article Macedonia (terminology).
62. ^ Eugene N. Borza, "Macedonia Redux", in "The Eye Expanded: life and the arts in Greco-Roman Antiquity", ed. Frances B. Tichener & Richard F. Moorton, University of California Press, 1999: "Thus it is clear that Tito did not invent either a Macedonian ethnicity or a Macedonian language—as has been alleged—when he created a Macedonian Republic as a part of the postwar Yugoslav federal state. He rather provided legitimacy and support for a movement that had been under way since at least the late nineteenth century."
63. ^ Social cleavages and national "awakening" in Ottoman Macedonia by Basil C. Gounaris, East European Quarterly 29 (1995), 409–426
64. ^ Cousinéry, Esprit Marie (1831). Voyage dans la Macédoine: contenant des recherches sur l'histoire, la géographie, les antiquités de ce pay, Paris. Vol. II. pp. 15–17.
65. ^ "French consul in 1831: Macedonia consists of Greeks and Bulgarians". History-of-macedonia.com. Retrieved 4 September 2015.
66. ^ Engin Deniz Tanir (2005). "The Mid-Nineteenth century Ottoman Bulgaria from the viewpoints of the French Travelers, A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate School of Social Sciences of Middle East Technical University" (PDF). pp. 99, 142.
67. ^ "I. The Middle Ages 1". Promacedonia.org. Retrieved 4 September 2015.
68. ^ "II. The National Revival Period 1". Promacedonia.org. Retrieved 4 September 2015.
69. ^ "Center for Documentation and Information on Minorities in Europe – Southeast Europe (CEDIME-SE)- Macedonians of Bulgaria" (PDF). Greekhelsinki.gr. p. 4\. Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 July 2006. Retrieved 4 September 2015.
70. ^ Most of the Balkans were settled by Slavs of one of the two types. (excluding the smaller groups of Slavic Slovenes and Turkic Avars in the western Balkans). Each one of these two main Slavic groups was to be named for a second conquering group who appeared later in the seventh century. The first of these two groups was the Bulgaro-Macedonians, whose Slavic component the Bulgarian historian Zlatarski derives from the Antes. They were conquered in the late 7th century by the Turkic Bulgars. The Slavs eventually assimilated them, but the Bulgars' name survived. It denoted this Slavic group from the 9th century through the rest of the medieval period into modern days. Until the late nineteenth century both outside observers and those Bulgaro-Macedonians who had an ethnic consciousness believed that their group, which is now two separate nationalities, comprised a single people, the Bulgarians. Thus the reader should ignore references to ethnic Macedonians in the Middle Ages which appear in some modern works. In the Middle Ages and into the nineteenth century, the term Macedonian was used entirely in reference to a geographical region. Anyone who lived within its confines, regardless of nationality, could be called a Macedonian. Nevertheless, the absence of a national consciousness in the past is no grounds to reject the Macedonians as a nationality today. For more see: John Van Antwerp Fine, The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century, University of Michigan Press, 1991, ISBN 0472081497, pp. 36-37.
71. ^ Roth, Klaus; Brunnbauer, Ulf (2008). Region, Regional Identity and Regionalism in Southeastern Europe. LIT Verlag Münster. p. 129\. ISBN 978-3-8258-1387-1.
72. ^ Mark Biondich (2011). The Balkans: Revolution, War, and Political Violence Since 1878. Oxford University Press. p. 67\. ISBN 978-0-19-929905-8.
73. ^ John Athanasios Mazis (2022) Athanasios Souliotis-Nikolaidis and Greek Irredentism: A Life in the Shadows, Rowman & Littlefield, p. 62, ISBN 1793634459.
74. ^ Roumen Daskalov, Tchavdar Marinov, Entangled Histories of the Balkans – Volume One: National Ideologies and Language Policies, BRILL, 2013, ISBN 978-90-04-25076-5, p. 293.
75. ^ Anastasia N. Karakasidou (2009) Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood: Passages to Nationhood in Greek Macedonia, 1870–1990; University of Chicago Press, p. 96, ISBN 0226424995.
76. ^ Dedikousi, Stamatia. (2013) Η διένεξη για την ονομασία της Δημοκρατίας της Μακεδονίας μέσα από τις στήλες των αναγνωστών του αθηναϊκού τύπου (1991–1995 & 2004–2005) [The dispute over the name of the Republic of Macedonia through the columns of the readers of the Athenian press (1991–1995 & 2004–2005)]. p. 15. Mytilene: University of the Aegean. (in Greek) "Στις αρχές του εικοστού αιώνα, μεσούντος του μακεδονικού αγώνα, ο ελληνικός εθνικισμός ενθάρρυνε την ταύτιση των ντόπιων σλαβόφωνων με τους αρχαίους Μακεδόνες, για να τους αποσπάσει από το βουλγαρικό εθνικό κίνημα. Οι ιθύνοντες της ελληνικής προπαγάνδας λοιπόν αποφασίζουν την εισαγωγή του όρου ‘Μακεδόνας’ για το σύνολο των ‘σλαβόφωνων ελλήνων’. Ακραίο παράδειγμα αυτής της προσπάθειας, συνιστά η συγγραφή ‘πλαστών προφητειών του Μεγαλεξάνδρου’ στα σλαβομακεδονικά (με ελληνικούς χαρακτήρες) – Πρεσκαζάνιε να Γκόλεμ Αλεξάντρ – και η διασπορά τους από τον ελληνικό μηχανισμό στη μακεδονική ενδοχώρα".
77. ^ Teodosij Gologanov established contacts with the patriarchate in Constantinople in an attempt to persuade its leadership to accept and promote the revival of the Ohrid archbishopric under the patriarchate of Constantinople but with an autonomous status. After the Greek newspapers prematurely broke (and distorted) the news, the Exarchate started proceedings for Teodosij’s dismissal. Teodosij’s last attempt was to contact the Vatican representative Augusto Bonetti with the aim of negotiating a Greek Catholic (Uniate) archbishopric in Ohrid to serve the territory of Macedonia. The Exarchate, however, with the help of the local Turkish administrative authorities arranged his expulsion from Skopje (1892). For more see: Nikola Iordanovski, Letter on the renewal of the Archbishopric of Ohrid, Teodosij Gologanov. pp. 188–193 in Balazs Trencsenyi, Michal Kopecek as ed., National Romanticism: The Formation of National Movements: Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe 1770–1945, Vol. 2. Central European University Press, 2006, ISBN 963732660X, p. 187.
78. ^ Although he was named Bulgarian metropolitan bishop in Skopje, in 1890–1892 Gologanov tried to establish a separate Macedonian Church, an activity that resulted in his dismissal and temporary marginalization. Thus after his short period as an early Macedonian national ideologist, Gologanov again became a Bulgarian bishop, as well as a writer and a member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He contributed significantly to the construction of the image of Macedonia as cradle of the Bulgarian National Revival. For more see: Roumen Daskalov, Alexander Vezenkov as ed., Entangled Histories of the Balkans – Volume Three: Shared Pasts, Disputed Legacies, BRILL, 2015, ISBN 9004290362, p. 451.
79. ^ Theodosius, the metropolitan of Skopje, to Pope Leo XIII I, the undersigned Metropolitan of Skopje, Theodosius, by Gods Mercy head of the Skopje eparchy, am submitting this request both in my name and in the name of the whole Orthodox flock of Macedonia, with which we are begging His Holiness to accept us under the wing of the Roman Catholic Church, after he has restored the ancient Archbishopric of Ohrid, unlawfully abolished by Sultan Mustapha III in 1767, and put it in canonical unity with the Roman Catholic Church. Our desire springs from the historical right of the Orthodox Macedonian people to be freed from the jurisdiction of foreign Churches – the Bulgarian Exarchate and Constantinople Patriarchate – and be united in its own Orthodox Church, acquiring all the characteristic features of a people who have a right to independent spiritual and cultural life and education.
80. ^ Diana Mishkova, ed. (2009). We, the People: Politics of National Peculiarity in Southeastern Europe. Central European University Press. p. 132\. ISBN 9786155211669.
81. ^ Спомени, И. Х. Николов, Д. Груев, Б. Сарафов, Ј. Сандански, М. Герџиков, д-р. Х. Татарчев. Култура, Скопје. 1995. ISBN 978-9989-32-022-4.
82. ^ "Иван Катарџиев. "Верувам во националниот имунитет на македонецот", весник Форум". Bugarash.blog.bg. Retrieved 4 September 2015.
83. ^ Alexis Heraclides (2020). The Macedonian Question and the Macedonians. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781000289404. "Sarafov, while travelling in Europe for the Macedonian cause, had asserted, when chairman of the Supreme Revolutionary Committee, in an interview to a Viennese newspaper (in 1901), that the Macedonians possessed a distinct 'national character'. And a year later, when he was no more chairman, he claimed that 'We the Macedonians are neither Serbs nor Bulgarians, but simply Macedonians. The Macedonian people exist independently of the Bulgarian and Serbian [people]. . .. Macedonia exists only for the Macedonians'."
84. ^ Loring Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World, Princeton University Press, December 1995, p. 63: "Finally, Krste Misirkov, who had clearly developed a strong sense of his own personal national identity as a Macedonian and who outspokenly and unambiguously called for Macedonian linguistic and national separatism, acknowledged that a 'Macedonian' national identity was a relatively recent historical development."
85. ^ Iz istorii makedonskogo literaturnogo iazyka, R.P. Usikova, 2004
86. ^ Ersoy, Ahmet; Górny, Maciej; Kechriotis, Vangelis, eds. (2010). Modernism: Representations of National Culture. Central European University Press. p. 351\. ISBN 9786155211942.
87. ^ "Report of the International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan War : International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars: Free Download & Streaming: Internet Archive". Retrieved 4 September 2015.
88. ^ Carnegie Report, p. 177
89. ^ James Walter Frusetta (2006). Bulgaria's Macedonia: Nation-building and state-building, centralization and autonomy in Pirin Macedonia, 1903–1952. University of Maryland, College Park. pp. 137–140, 179–180\. ISBN 978-0-542-96184-7. Retrieved 14 November 2011 - via Google Books.
90. ^ Up until the early twentieth century, the international community viewed Macedonians as a regional variety of Bulgarians, i.e. Western Bulgarians. However, during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 the Allies sanctioned Serbian control of much of Macedonia because they accepted the belief that Macedonians were in fact Southern Serbs. This extraordinary change in opinion can largely be attributed to one man, Jovan Cvijić, a prominent geographer at the University of Belgrade. Nationalism and Territory: Constructing Group Identity in Southeastern Europe, Geographical perspectives on the human past, George W. White, Rowman & Littlefield, 2000, ISBN 0847698092, p. 236.
91. ^ a b c d Karen Dawisha; Bruce Parrott (1997). Politics, power, and the struggle for democracy in South-East Europe. Cambridge University Press. pp. 228–230\. ISBN 978-0-521-59733-3.
92. ^ "Резолюция о македонской нации (принятой Балканском секретариате Коминтерна" – Февраль 1934 г, Москва
93. ^ Loring M. Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World, 1995, Princeton University Press, p. 65, ISBN 0-691-04356-6
94. ^ Stephen Palmer, Robert King, Yugoslav Communism and the Macedonian question, Hamden, CT Archon Books, 1971, pp. 199–200
95. ^ Dimitris Livanios (2008). The Macedonian Question: Britain and the Southern Balkans 1939–1949. Oxford University Press. p. 65. ISBN 978-0-19-923768-5. "The Macedonian Question, Britain and the Southern Balkans 1939–1949."
96. ^ Newman, R. (1952) Tito's Yugoslavia (London)
97. ^ Christopher Montague Woodhouse (2002). The struggle for Greece, 1941–1949. C. Hurst & Co. p. 67\. ISBN 978-1-85065-492-6.
98. ^ Hugh Poulton (1995). Who are the Macedonians?. Hurst & Co. p. 101\. ISBN 978-1-85065-238-0.
99. ^ Who are the Macedonians? Hugh Poulton, Hurst & Co. Publishers, 2000, p. 101.
100. ^ Roth, Klaus; Brunnbauer, Ulf (2008). Region, Regional Identity and Regionalism in Southeastern Europe. LIT Verlag Münster. p. 144\. ISBN 978-3-8258-1387-1.
101. ^ a b Andrew Rossos (2013). Macedonia and the Macedonians: A History. Hoover Press. pp. 193–197, 264. ISBN 9780817948832.
102. ^ "Incompatible Allies: Greek Communism and Macedonian Nationalism in the Civil War in Greece, 1943–1949", Andrew Rossos – The Journal of Modern History 69 (March 1997): 42
103. ^ Hugh Poulton (2000). Who are the Macedonians?. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. p. 105\. ISBN 9781850655343.
104. ^ Loring M. Danforth (1997). The Macedonian conflict: ethnic nationalism in a transnational world. Princeton University Press. pp. 65–66\. ISBN 978-0-691-04356-2.
105. ^ Cook, Bernard A. (2001). Europe Since 1945: An Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. p. 808\. ISBN 9780815340584. Retrieved 4 September 2015.
106. ^ Djokić, Dejan (2003). Yugoslavism: Histories of a Failed Idea, 1918–1992. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. p. 122\. ISBN 978-1-85065-663-0.
107. ^ [1] Archived 24 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine
108. ^ Palmer, Ir., E. Stephen and Robert King, R. Yugoslav Communism and the Macedonian Question. 1971.
109. ^ Yugoslavism: histories of a failed idea, 1918–1992, Dejan Djokić, Hurst, 2003, ISBN 1-85065-663-0, p. 123.
110. ^ 'Kuzmanovic Z, Vranic I, 2013: On the reflexive nature of archaeologies of the Western Balkan Iron Age: a case study of the "Illyrian argument". Anthropologie (Brno) 51, 2: 249–259, International Journal of Human Diversity and Evolution, ISSN 0323-1119, p. 6.
111. ^ Bechev Dimitar, Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia, Publisher Scarecrow Press, 2009, ISBN 0810862956, p. 12.
112. ^ Anton Kojouharov (2004). "Bulgarian "Macedonian" Nationalism: a conceptual overview" (PDF). The Online Journal of Peace and Conflict Resolution. 6 (1): 288. ISSN 1522-211X.
113. ^ Jenny Engström, London School of Economics and Political Science (March 2002). "The Power of Perception: The Impact of the Macedonian Question on Inter-ethnic Relations in the Republic of Macedonia" (PDF). The Global Review of Ethnopolitics. 1: 6. Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 March 2009. Retrieved 7 September 2008.
114. ^ Floudas, Demetrius Andreas; "FYROM's Dispute with Greece Revisited" (PDF). in: Kourvetaris et al. (eds.), The New Balkans, East European Monographs: Columbia University Press, 2002, p. 85. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 March 2009. Retrieved 26 October 2008.
115. ^ Fingerprinting the Iron Age: Approaches to identity in the European Iron Age: Integrating South-Eastern Europe into the debate. Oxbow Books, 2014, ISBN 1782976752, Vranic. I., Hellenisation and Ethnicity in the Continental Balkan Iron Age, pp. 169–170.
116. ^ Alan John Day, Political parties of the world, 2002
117. ^ Hugh Poulton, Who are the Macedonians?, Hurst & Company, 2000
118. ^ Loring M. Danforth, The Macedonian conflict: ethnic nationalism in a transnational world, Princeton University Press, 1997
119. ^ Christopher K. Lamont, International Criminal Justice and the Politics of Compliance, Ashgate, 2010
120. ^ Human Rights Watch World Report, 1999
121. ^ Imogen Bell, Central and South-Eastern Europe 2004, Routledge
122. ^ Keith Brown, The past in question: modern Macedonia and the uncertainties of nation, Princeton University Press, 2003
123. ^ a b c d e f g h i Georgievski, Boris (3 May 2013). "Ghosts of the Past Endanger Macedonia's Future". Balkan Insight. Retrieved 4 September 2015.
124. ^ Stephanie Herold, Benjamin Langer, Julia Lechler, Reading the City: Urban Space and Memory in Skopje, Technischen Universität Berlin, Taschenbuch, 2011, p. 43
125. ^ Langer Benjamin; Lechler Julia (Hrsg.); Herold Stephanie (2010). Reading the City: Urban Space and Memory in Skopje, Sonderpublikation des Instituts für Stadt- und Regionalplanung. Technische Universität Berlin. pp. 42–43\. ISBN 978-3798321298.
126. ^ a b c Ludomir R. Lozny (2011). Comparative Archaeologies: A Sociological View of the Science of the Past. Springer. p. 427\. ISBN 978-1441982247.
127. ^ Joseph Roisman; Ian Worthington (2010). A Companion to Ancient Macedonia, Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. John Wiley & Sons. p. 583\. ISBN 978-1405179362.
128. ^ Danforth, Loring M. (6 April 1997). The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World – Loring M. Danforth. Princeton University Press. p. 45\. ISBN 978-0691043562. Retrieved 4 September 2015.
129. ^ Drezov, Kyril (1999). Macedonian identity: an overview of the major claims. In: Pettifer, James. (eds) The New Macedonian Question. St Antony's Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London, ISBN 0230535798, pp. 50–51.
130. ^ Eugene N. Borza, "Macedonia Redux", in "The Eye Expanded: life and the arts in Greco-Roman Antiquity", ed. Frances B. Tichener & Richard F. Moorton, University of California Press, 1999, pp.264–265: "Some of the Macedonian émigré community in North America have adopted Ernst Badian, Peter Green, and me as “their” scholarly authorities, believing (without basis) that we possess a pro-Macedonian bias in this conflict. While it is true we share certain similarities in our views about the ancient Macedonians, none of us has, to the best of my knowledge, publicly expressed any political opinions on the modern Macedonian Question. Thus, in a recent telephone conversation initiated by a fervent Macedonian nationalist from Toronto who saw in me a potential ally, the caller expressed astonishment when I said that I thought his views on the languages of ancient and modern Macedonia were without scholarly merit and bordered on the absurd. He never called back."
131. ^ Helena Smith (14 August 2011). "Macedonia statue: Alexander the Great or a warrior on a horse? | World news". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 September 2015.
132. ^ Davies, Catriona (10 October 2011). "Is Macedonia's capital being turned into a theme park? - CNN.com". CNN. Retrieved 4 September 2015.
133. ^ "Athens complains about Skopje arch | News". ekathimerini.com. 30 June 2015. Retrieved 4 September 2015.
134. ^ Sinisa Jakov Marusic (3 May 2013). "Greece Slates Skopje's 'Provocative' Alexander Statue". Balkan Insight. Retrieved 4 September 2015.
135. ^ [2] Archived 12 December 2008 at the Wayback Machine
136. ^ Academic G. Stardelov and first President of the Republic of Macedonia Kiro Gligorov against antiquisation, on YouTube
137. ^ a b Vangeli, Anastas (2011). "Nation-building ancient Macedonian style: the origins and the effects of the so-called antiquization in Macedonia". Nationalities Papers. 39: 13–32\. doi:10.1080/00905992.2010.532775. S2CID 154923343.
138. ^ Matthew Brunnwasser (13 October 2011). "Concerns Grow About Authoritarianism in Macedonia". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 September 2015.
139. ^ "Macedonia: protesters storm parliament and attack MPs". The Guardian. 27 April 2017. Retrieved 27 April 2017.
140. ^ Hopkins, Valerie (28 April 2017). "What Happened in Macedonia, and Why". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on 28 April 2017.
141. ^ "Another diplomatic incident between Greece and Macedonia". Macedonia's Top-Channel TV. Archived from the original on 23 August 2017. Retrieved 23 August 2017.
142. ^ "Σε αλυτρωτική εκδήλωση συμμετείχε Σκοπιανός πρόξενος – Σφοδρή απάντηση από το ΥΠΕΞ (English: Macedonian consul participated in an irredentist event – Foreign Ministry)". Aixmi.gr. 16 August 2017. Retrieved 23 August 2017.
143. ^ "Σκοπιανός πρόξενος με φόντο χάρτη της ΠΓΔΜ με ελληνικά εδάφη – ΥΠΕΞ: Ο αλυτρωτισμός εξακολουθεί (English: Macedonian Consul against a backdrop of Greater Macedonia – Greek MoFA: "Macedonian irredentism continues")". Real.gr. Retrieved 23 August 2017.
144. ^ "ΥΠΕΞ: Καταδίκη της συμμετοχής του σκοπιανού πρόξενου σε αλυτρωτική εκδήλωση στο Τορόντο (English: Greek MoFA condemns the participation of Macedonian Consul in an irredentist event at Toronto)". 16 August 2017. Retrieved 23 August 2017.
145. ^ "Dimitrov says MoFA won't tolerate 'excursions' like the diplomatic blunder in Toronto". Macedonian Information Agency. Retrieved 23 August 2017.
146. ^ Focus information Agency Archived 18 January 2016 at the Wayback Machine, June 01, 2010 – UNESCO has send a letter to the Bulgarian Cultural Club – Skopje about the alarming condition of Bulgarian monuments in Macedonia.
147. ^ Исправена печатарска грешка, Битола за малку ќе се претставуваше како бугарска. Дневник-online, 2006. Archived 2012-02-24 at the Wayback Machine
148. ^ [3] Archived April 5, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
149. ^ Phillips, John (2004). Macedonia: Warlords and Rebels in the Balkans. I.B.Tauris. p. 41. ISBN 978-1-86064-841-0.
150. ^ John D. Bell, edited by Sabrina P Ramet – (1999) The Radical Right in Central and Eastern Europe Since 1989, ISBN 0271018119, p. 252.
151. ^ Лабаури, Дмитрий Олегович. Болгарское национальное движение в Македонии и Фракии в 1894–1908 гг: Идеология, программа, практика политической борьбы, София 2008
152. ^ Nikolaĭ Genov, Anna Krŭsteva, (2001) Recent Social Trends in Bulgaria, 1960–1995, ISBN 0773520228, p. 74.
153. ^ Society for Macedonian Studies Archived 2007-05-27 at archive.today, Macedonianism FYROM'S Expansionist Designs against Greece, 1944–2006, Ephesus – Society for Macedonian Studies, 2007 ISBN 978-960-8326-30-9, Retrieved on 2007-12-05.
154. ^ Gillespie, Richard (1994). Mediterranean Politics – Richard Gillespie. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. p. 99\. ISBN 978-0-8386-3609-1. Retrieved 4 September 2015.
155. ^ [4] Archived 26 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine
156. ^ Marinov, Tchavdar (2013). "Famous Macedonia, the Land of Alexander: Macedonian Identity at the Crossroads of Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian Nationalism". Entangled Histories of the Balkans : National Ideologies and Language Policies. Leiden: BRILL. pp. 274–275, 420. ISBN 978-90-04-25075-8. "Here is how a Bulgarian historian nowadays interprets the existence of Macedonian national identity (usually stigmatized in Bulgaria under the derogatory term "Macedonism"—makedonizăm): "As an offspring of Greater Serbian propaganda and aspirations in Macedonia, Macedonism was meant to split the Bulgarian people, to denationalize a part of it on anti-Bulgarian grounds. Macedonism sought to destroy the sentiment of the Bulgarians from Macedonia of having historical roots identical with those of the Bulgarians from Moesia [northern Bulgaria] and Thrace, to destroy the feeling of belonging to the Bulgarian nation."
157. ^ James Frusetta (2004). "Common Heroes, Divided Claims: IMRO Between Macedonia and Bulgaria". In John R. Lampe, Mark Mazower (ed.). Ideologies and national identities: the case of twentieth-century Southeastern Europe. Central European University Press. pp. 116–120\. ISBN 978-963-9241-82-4.
158. ^ Marinov, Tchavdar (2013). "Famous Macedonia, the Land of Alexander: Macedonian Identity at the Crossroads of Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian Nationalism". Entangled Histories of the Balkans : National Ideologies and Language Policies. Leiden: BRILL. p. 286\. ISBN 978-90-04-25075-8. "The historians from Skopje refer in particular to an 1871 article published by Petko Slaveykov in his Makedoniya. He describes the ideology of some "young patriots" whom he labels "Macedonists" (makedonisti)— without a doubt, this is the first instance of the derogatory term. According to Slaveykov, the "Macedonists" claimed they were "not Bulgarians but Macedonians, descendants of ancient Macedonians. Though, the Macedonists have never shown the bases of their attitude. They believed they had "Macedonian blood," and, at the same time, they were "pure Slavs"— in any case, different from the Bulgarians. These patriots even had ethnoracist stereotypes about the latter: for them, the Bulgarians were "Tatars.""
159. ^ Речник на българската литература, том 2 Е-О. София, Издателство на Българската академия на науките, 1977. с. 324.
160. ^ "IIS7". Utrinskivesnik.com.mk. Retrieved 4 September 2015.
161. ^ "The Macedonian (Old-New) Issue". Archived from the original on 4 May 2012. Retrieved 20 February 2016.
162. ^ Loring Danforth (1995), The Macedonian Conflict: ethnic nationalism in a transnational world, ISBN 0691043566, p. 45.
163. ^ Џамбазовски, Климент. Стоjан Новаковић и Македонизам, Историјски часопис, 1963–1965, књига XIV–XV, с. 133–156
164. ^ "The lack of capability by Macedonists in condition of democracy, also contributes to the vision of their opponents. The creation of the Macedonian nation, for almost half of a century, was done in a condition of single-party dictatorship. In those times, there was no difference between science and ideology, so the Macedonian historiography, unopposed by anybody, comfortably performed a selection of the historic material from which the Macedonian identity was created. There is nothing atypical here for the process of the creation of any modern nation, except when falsification from the type of substitution of the word "Bulgarian" with the word "Macedonian" were made. In a case which that was not possible, the persons from history were proclaimed for Bulgarian agents who crossed into some imaginary pure Macedonian space. But when we had to encourage the moderate Greek political variant and move into a direction of reconciliation among peoples, our nationalism was modelled according to the Greek one. The direct descendants of Alexander the Great raised the fallen flag on which the constitutional name of the Republic of Macedonia was written and led the people in the final confrontation with the Greeks, the direct descendants of Greek gods. This warlike attitude of the "winners" which was a consequence of the fear of politicians from heavy and unpopular compromises had its price. In those years, we lost our capability for strategic dialog. With Greeks? No, with ourselves. Since then, namely, we reach towards some fictional ethnic purity which we seek in the depths of the history and we are angry at those which dare to call us Slavs and our language and culture Slavic!? We are angry when they name us what we -if we have to define ourselves in such categories- are, showing that we are people full with complexes which are ashamed for ourselves. We lost our capability for reasonable judgment, someone shall say, because the past of the Balkans teaches us that to be wise among fools is foolish. Maybe. Maybe the British historians are right when they say that in history one can find confirmation for every modern thesis, so, we could say, also for the one that we are descendants of the Ancient Macedonians...." Denko Maleski, politician of the Republic of Macedonia (foreign minister from 1991 to 1993 and ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 1997), Utrinski Vesnik newspaper, 16 October 2006.
165. ^ "Macedonia was also an attempt at a multicultural society. Here the fragments are just about holding together, although the cement that binds them is an unreliable mixture of propaganda and myth. The Macedonian language has been created, some rather misty history involving Tsar Samuel, probably a Bulgarian, and Alexander the Great, almost certainly a Greek, has been invented, and the name Macedonia has been adopted. Do we destroy these myths or live with them? Apparently these radical Slavic factions decided to live with their myths and lies for the constant amusement of the rest of the world!..." T.J. Winnifrith, Shattered Eagles, Balkan Fragments, Duckworth, 1995
166. ^ Greece and the new Balkans: challenges and opportunities, Van Coufoudakis, Harry J. Psomiades, André Gerolymatos, Pella Pub. Co., 1999, ISBN 0-918618-72-X, p. 361.
167. ^ Mediterranean politics, Richard Gillespie, Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 1994, ISBN 0-8386-3609-8, p. 97.
168. ^ "We have many times heard from the Macedonists that they are not Bulgarians but Macedonians, descendants of the ancient Macedonians, and we have always waited to hear some proofs of this, but we have never heard them. The Macedonists have never shown us the bases of their attitude. They insist on their Macedonian origin, which they cannot prove in any satisfactory way. We have read in the history that in Macedonia existed a small nation – Macedonians; but nowhere do we find in it neither what were those Macedonians, nor of what tribe is their origin, and the few Macedonian words, preserved through some Greek writers, completely deny such a possibility....", "The Macedonian question" by Petko R. Slaveikov, published 18 January 1871 in the Macedonia newspaper in Constantinople.
169. ^ Ц. Билярски, Из българския възрожденски печат от 70-те години на XIX в. за македонския въпрос, сп. "Македонски преглед", г. XXIII, София, 2009, кн. 4, с. 103–120.
170. ^ "Since the Bulgarian idea, as it is well-known, is deeply rooted in Macedonia, I think it is almost impossible to shake it completely by opposing it merely with the Serbian idea. This idea, we fear, would be incapable, as opposition pure and simple, of suppressing the Bulgarian idea. That is why the Serbian idea will need an ally that could stand in direct opposition to Bulgarianism and would contain in itself the elements which could attract the people and their feelings and thus sever them from Bulgarianism. This ally I see in Macedonism...." from the report of S. Novakovic to the Minister of Education in Belgrade about "Macedonism" as a transitional stage in Serbianization of the Macedonian Bulgarians; see idem. Cultural and Public Relations of the Macedonians with Serbia in the XIXth c.), Skopje, 1960, p. 178.
171. ^ He was sent as the Serbian envoy to Constantinople, considered as one of the most important posts in that period. The diplomatic convention with Ottoman Turkey signed in 1886, due to Novaković's skillful negotiations, made possible the opening of Serbian consulates in Skopje and Thessaloniki. He was instrumental in organizing a huge network of Serbian consulates, secular and religious Serbian schools and Serb religious institutions throughout Turkey in Europe, in particular in Macedonia, where he aided Macedonistic intellectuals as K. Grupchevic and N. Evrovic. Furthermore, Novaković initiated the establishment of closer Serbian-Russian relations as consul in St. Petersburg, where he supported the local Macedonists as Misirkov and Chupovski. Angel G. Angelov, The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms, 1470–1316, Volume 2, Issue 3, 1997, pp. 411–417.; Memoirs of Hristo Shaldev, Macedonian revolutionary (1876–1962), Macedonian Patriotic Organization "TA" (Adelaide, Australia, 1993), The Slav Macedonian Student Society in St. Petersburg, pp. 14–21. Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine
172. ^ Peter Lang (2010). Contested Ethnic Identity: The Case of Macedonian Immigrants in Toronto, 1900–1996. Peter Lang. p. 67\. ISBN 978-3034301961.
173. ^ One Nineteenth Century Macedonian History Book (Historical Data and Mythology) Biljana Ristovska-Josifovska Institute of National History (Macedonia) Summary Archived 2015-01-10 at the Wayback Machine
174. ^ Multiple Antiquities – Multiple Modernities: Ancient Histories in Nineteenth Century European Cultures, Gábor Klaniczay, Michael Werner, Ottó Gecser, Campus Verlag, 2011, ISBN 3593391015, p. 224.
175. ^ An Agenda for the Western Balkans: From Elite Politics to Social Sustainability, Nikolaos Papakostas, Nikolaos Passamitros, Columbia University Press, 2014, ISBN 3838266986, p. 121.
176. ^ Јован Цвијић, Основе за географију и геологију Македоније и Старе Србије I-III, 1906–1911.
177. ^ Дијалекти источне и јужне Србије, Александар Белић, Српски дијалектолошки зборник, 1, 1905.
178. ^ Стефан Дечев: За българските и македонските учебници, за удобния и неудобния „оригинален език". 31.12.2018, Marginalis.
179. ^ Проф. Драги Георгиев: Да признаем, че е имало и фалшифициране – вместо "българин" са писали "македонец"- това е истината. 21.03.2020 Factor.bg.
180. ^ 20.11.1914 "Македонскiй Голосъ" – Кто такие Македонцы?
181. ^ This theory has its deep roots into the Greek policy on Macedonia, which may be noticed in the address of Archbishop Germanos Karavangelis and his advice to Konstantinos Christou. In his memories entitled as "Macedonian Struggle", Archbishop Karavangelis, wrote: "You have been Greeks since the time of Alexander the Great, but the Slavs came and slavicized you. Your appearance is Greek and the land we step on is Greek. This is witnessed by the monuments that are hidden in it, they are Greek, too, and the coins that we found are also Greek, and the inscriptions are Greek...." Каравангелис, Германос. "Македонската борба (спомени)", Васил Чекаларов, Дневник 1901–1903 г., Съставителство Ива Бурилкова, Цочо Билярски, ИК "Синева" София, 2001, стр. 327.
182. ^ "A comparison of the ethnographic and linguistic maps drawn up by Messrs, Kantchev, Cvijic and Belic, with the new frontiers of the treaty of Bucharest reveals the gravity of the task undertaken by the Servians. They have not merely resumed possession of their ancient domain, the Sandjak of Novi-Bazar and Old Servia proper (Kosovo Pole and Metchia), despite the fact that this historic domain was strongly Albanian; they have not merely added thereto the tract described by patriotic Servian ethnographers as "Enlarged Old Servia" fan ancient geographical term which we have seen twice enlarged, once by Mr. Cvijic and again by Mr. Belic; [See chapter I, p. 29.] over and above all this, their facile generosity impelled them to share with the Greeks the population described on their maps as "Slav-Macedonian", a euphemism designed to conceal the existence of Bulgarians in Macedonia."
183. ^ Stavrianos, L. S. (1942) The Balkan Federation Movement. A Neglected Aspect in The American Historical Review, Vol. 48, No. 1. pp. 30–51.
184. ^ Palmer, S. and R. King Yugoslav Communism and the Macedonian Question, Archon Books (June 1971), p. 137.

* v
* t
* e

Ethnic nationalism

Nationalisms
in|

| Africa|

| North|

* Arab
* Berber
* Coptic
* Egyptian
* Pharaonism
* Kabyle
* Sahrawi

|

East|

* Acholi
* Amhara
* Hutu
* Oromo
* Somali
* Tigrayan

Nigeria & West|

* Igbo
* Ogoni
* Ewe

Southern|

* Afrikaner

Americas|

| North|

* American
* Chicano
* Greenlandic
* Indigenous Canadian
* Lakota
* Québécois
* Sequoyahan

|

Caribbean|

* Haitian
* Puerto Rican

South|

* Criollo
* Mapuche
* Peruvian

Asia|

| Middle East|

* Arab
* Assyrian
* Iranian
* Iraqi
* Jewish
* Diaspora
* Zionism
* Jordanian
* Kurdish
* Lebanese
* Palestinian
* Syrian
* Turkish
* in Cyprus
* Zaza

|

Eastern|

* Ainu
* Cantonese
* Chinese
* Han
* chauvinist
* Hongkonger
* Japanese
* Korean
* Manchu
* Okinawan
* Ryukyu
* Taiwanese
* Tibetan

South|

* Assamese
* Bengali
* in Bangladesh
* Bodo
* Dravidian
* Hazara
* Meitei
* Naga
* Punjabi
* Sindhi
* Sinhalese
* Sylheti
* Tamil
* in Sri Lanka
* Tripuri

Southeast|

* Filipino
* Khmer
* Malay
* Mon
* Shan
* Thai
* Vietnamese

North
& Central|

* Baloch
* Buryat
* Mongolian
* South Mongolia
* Pan-Turkism
* Pashtun
* Siberian
* Uyghur
* Yakut

South Caucasus|

* Armenian
* Azerbaijani
* Georgian
* Laz

Europe|

| Southeastern|

* Albanian
* in Albania
* in Kosovo
* in North Macedonia
* Aromanian
* Bosniak
* Croatian
* Greek
* in Cyprus
* Macedonian
* Moldovan
* Montenegrin
* Romani (Gypsy)
* Romanian
* Serbian

|

Central|

* Austrian
* Bavarian
* Czech
* Frisian
* German
* in Austria
* Völkisch
* Hungarian
* Polish
* Silesian
* Slovak
* Slovenian

Eastern|

* Belarusian
* Crimean
* Russian
* Ukrainian
* Yiddish

North Caucasus|

* Balkar and Karachay
* Circassian
* Ingush
* Lezgin
* Ossetian

Volga Region|

* Bashkir
* Chuvash
* Tatar

Western|

* Breton
* Dutch
* Flemish
* French
* Irish
* Occitan
* Walloon

United Kingdom|

* British
* Cornish
* English
* Scottish
* Ulster
* Welsh

Southern|

* Arpitan
* Basque
* Corsican

Italy|

* Italian
* Lombard
* Padanian
* Sardinian
* Sicilian
* Venetian

Spain|

* Spanish
* Andalusian
* Aragonese
* Asturian
* Basque
* Canarian
* Castilian
* Catalan
* Galician
* Navarrese
* Valencian

Northern|

* Danish
* Estonian
* Faroese
* Finnish
* Icelandic
* Latvian
* Lithuanian
* Norwegian

Oceania|

* Australian
* Hawaiian
* Indigenous Australian
* Māori

Pan-nationalism|

* African
* Arab
* Asian
* Bangladeshi
* Caucasian
* Celtic
* Chinese
* Congolese
* Czechoslovak
* European
* Finnic
* Germanic
* Hispanic
* Hui
* Iberian
* Indian
* Iranian
* Iraqi
* Korean
* Latin
* Libyan
* Mongolian
* Native American
* Nigerian
* Nordic
* Oceanian
* Pakistani
* Russian
* Scandinavian
* Slavic
* South Slavic
* Tunisian
* Turanian
* Turkic
* Ugandan

Movements|

| Americas
& Oceania|

* Greenland
* Hawaii
* Māori
* Mapuche
* Wallmapuwen

|

Asia|

* Aceh
* Assam
* Assyrian
* Champa
* East Turkestan
* Guangdong
* Inner Mongolian
* Muslim (Philippines)
* Papua
* Pasundan
* Patani
* Riau
* Ryukyu
* Siberian
* Taiwan
* Tibetan

Europe|

* Alsace
* Catalan
* Faroese
* Flemish
* Åland
* Galician (Spain)
* Kashubian
* Corsican
* Scottish
* Silesian
* Székely
* Vojvodina
* Walloon
* Welsh

Projects|

* Arakan
* Assyria
* Azawad
* Balawaristan
* Balochistan
* Bangsamoro
* Basque Country (greater region)
* Catalan Countries
* Chameria
* Champa
* Chechen Republic of Ichkeria
* Circassia
* Crimea
* Hatay State
* Hazarajat
* Danzig
* Donetsk
* East Turkestan
* Herzeg-Bosnia
* Hutu Power
* Ilirida
* Karakalpakstan
* Karelia
* Katarism
* Ketuanan Melayu
* Kurdistan
* Lezgistan
* Luhansk
* Manchukuo
* Marathi Abhimaangeet
* Northern Epirus
* Occitania
* Ossetia
* Pashtunistan
* Republika Srpska
* Santa Cruz
* Sápmi
* Saraikistan
* Silesia
* Sindhudesh
* Székely Land
* Tamil Eelam
* Tibet
* Timor Raya

Other|

* Local (China)
* Racial
* American Indigenous
* Black
* German
* Indigenous
* White

* Note: Forms of nationalism based primarily on ethnic groups are listed above. This does not imply that all nationalists with a given ethnicity subscribe to that form of ethnic nationalism.

Authority control databases

National|

* United States

Other|

* Yale LUX

*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template