16.03.2006
The Macedonia-Bulgaria Dispute or Endless Torment of Clio
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Can Karpat, AIA Balkanian section
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Both Bulgaria and Macedonia keep harassing poor Clio, Apollo’s Muse of History. Although Bulgaria was the first to recognise the Macedonian State, it still questions the authenticity of the Macedonian nation and language, for its own national historical identity is at stake. With the birth of Macedonia, Bulgaria runs the risk of losing the “most romantic part of its history”: Its heroic freedom fight against the Ottoman rule in Macedonia during the 19th century …
The “Macedonian Question” revived
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| The outcome of the Russian-Turkish war 1877-78 |
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Bulgaria was the first to recognise Macedonia after its independence in 1991. In 1992, however, former Bulgarian President Zhelyu Zhelev emphasised that his country recognised the Macedonian State, but not the nation and its language. According to Bulgaria, Macedonia is no more than a geographical term, and the Macedonians are no more than “lost Bulgarians” through “historical accidents”. However, the Bulgarian position is not just the political caprice of a powerful neighbour. If Bulgaria admits the authenticity of the Macedonian nation, it runs the risk of losing the most glorious pages of its own history: Its freedom fight against the Ottomans in Macedonia during the 19th century. Bulgaria worries that the Bulgarian heroes of the “Macedonian Question” be replaced by Macedonian ones.
The “Macedonian Question”, which was the quintessence of the wider “Question d’Orient”, can be summoned up as the delicate partition problem of the Ottoman territories in Eastern Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries. Under the Ottoman Empire, Macedonia was a large territory, including Skopje, Bitola and
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Macedonian rebels, 1903 |
Thessaloniki. Macedonia’s diverse ethnic and religious composition ensured that it became a battlefield for the nationalistic interests of its neighbours. One of those neighbours was Bulgaria.
In 1878, Russia defeated the Ottoman Empire. With the Treaty of San Stefano, Bulgaria became independent and annexed Macedonia and Thrace (southern Bulgaria and northeastern Greece of today). Western powers, which were most irritated by this Russo-Slav hegemony in the Balkans, gathered a congress in Berlin. There Bulgaria’s “Greater Bulgaria dream” shattered: Macedonia was given back to the Ottomans. From that date on, the autonomous Bulgarian principality along with the Bulgarians of Macedonia started a guerrilla fight. In 1893, a revolutionary committee called the Internal Macedonian
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| Goce Delcev |
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Revolutionary Organisation (IMRO) was founded in Macedonia. At that time, the founders of IMRO probably did not know what problems the paternity of the Committee was to cause these days. The ethnicity of the mythical leaders like Goce Delcev or Jane Sandanski keep causing serious problems: Are they Bulgarian or Macedonian? Today the main Macedonian organisation in Bulgaria, the United Macedonian Organisation (OMO-Ilinden) organises every year a commemorative assembly at Rozhen Monastery to commemorate the death of Jane Sandanski or the “Pirin Tsar”. Violent clashes with the Bulgarian police are inevitable, for Sandanski’s nationality is far from being clear.
Unfortunately today historians are deprived of an objective census concerning the Ottoman Macedonia. The Ottomans used to identify their Slav subjects in the Balkans in terms of their religious affiliation. Towards the end of 18th century, the Macedonian Orthodox Church was banned in favour of the Greek Orthodox Church. When during the 1870s the Bulgarian Orthodox Church was permitted in Bulgaria, it immediately attracted Slav speakers in Macedonia, including the Macedonians. Therefore to identify the Orthodox Macedonians, who affiliated with the Bulgarian Church as Bulgarians, or those, who attended the Greek Church as Greeks would not be historically convincing...
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