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On the other side of the world an ugly feud wages between ethnic Macedonians and ethnic Greeks—and the feud found its way to the U.
Most of the U department of language and literature’s conference on Macedonian culture, which ended Saturday, went without hiccups, but speakers’ accounts of their persecuted lives as Macedonians at the hands of Greeks stoked the flames of their old but ongoing identity crises.
Guest speaker Mary Rossova talked about how 60 years ago she was one of the tens of thousands of children the Macedonians peacefully relocated to Eastern Bloc countries to get them off the Greek Civil War’s battlefield.
But conference attendee Irene Karatzios said Macedonians tried to brainwash her after she was forcibly removed from her home.
“They are fabricating history,” said Nina Gatzoulis, supreme president of the Pan-Macedonian Association of USA, a Greek organization.
The Greeks, Macedonians and the academic conference participants launched into a heated debate about the facts of a war that helped tear a rift between the Greeks—who say the Macedonians kidnapped and brainwashed their children as one effort to damage Greece’s identity—and the Macedonians, who say the children were removed peacefully and accuse the Greeks of forcing them to give up their Macedonian language, culture and identities after the war through mass persecution.
U Police Sgt. Arb Nordgran and a uniformed security officer were on hand Friday, though they were never forced to break up any contention. Lindsay Adams, a U history professor in attendance, said he understood the law’s presence at what was merely an academic conference—he’s seen full-fledged riots break out in similar situations.
“Welcome to Balkan politics,” said Boban Jovanovski, as the aftermath of Friday’s conference wound down in the room behind him. Jovanovski is the co-founder and public policy director of United Macedonian Diaspora, an international nonprofit organization that looks out for Macedonians’ interests in outside countries. UMD sponsored Friday’s conference, which was organized by Jane Hacking, chairwoman of the U’s department of language and literature, to explore the lives of Greece’s Slavic northern neighbors.
Outraged Greeks from around the country e-mailed U President Michael Young, urging him to stop the conference. He refused and released a statement last month that defended any academic endeavor that attempts to make sense of the world and its tumultuous history.
At the end of the Greek Civil War in 1949, Greeks forced Macedonians to either leave Greece or adopt Greek language and surnames. Macedonians say they were discriminated against if they stayed—including having their native language banned, said Victor Friedman, linguistics professor at the University of Chicago.
Furthering the rift between the two groups, the Macedonians declared their independence from Greece in 1991 and formed the Republic of Macedonia. They want Greece to recognize it as constitutionally Macedonia and its people as national Macedonians, even though its population is historically Slavic, in an effort to separate themselves from a people they see as suppressors of their identity. But Greece doesn’t want another ethnic group usurping a name that belongs to Greece, which moved out of the region the Slavs now occupy and into modern-day Greece centuries ago. They see themselves as the true and historic Macedonians. The Republic of Macedonia’s government says its people deserve the Macedonia title after having lived in the region for centuries.
After decades that allowed the antagonism to spread from politics into culture and identity, the window for a quick solution closed a long time ago, Friedman said.
“Do I see an end in sight?” Jovanovski said. “Hopefully.”
24 comments
Mr Michael McFall must be more cautious when you write article that contain historical events.The problem is simple.
The geographical area of Macedonia is since the Middle Ages a multiethnic region. It is not the homeland of one single nation. The tort of FYROM is that while as a state and an ethnicity is a Part, it portrays itself as if it is the Whole. They call their country ‘Macedonia’, their ethnicity and language ‘macedonian’, because through these names they are trying to register mortgages in all of Macedonia. The rhetoric for the great macedonian dismembered homeland is serving this view. Solution
Greek side support a composite name with a geographical qualifier for the state that is for all uses, with the exclusive aim of the names to reflect the reality of the region so as to act as a factor of good neighborhood and not as a factor that poisons the bilateral relations and the climate in the wider region.
Actually good neighborly relations between countries are not built on outstanding issues.U conference
As native Macedonian ] my mother language is Greek and not Slavic as the postmodernists professors that participated in this Conference claimed arbitrarily.
This conference was a new link in the Slavmacedonism( a post modern nationalism ideology
) chain. The opposite opinion in this one-side conference was forbidden. The re-invention of history had been the selected terrain of action. The dispute is not a question of survival and grandeur but an issue of challenging territorial stability. This has led to the extreme position of discarding Slav origin and labeling it as a "derogatory term", an "insult". It is indeed dangerous not to cut ties with the Slav past because this brings the country closer to Bulgaria. At the same time it is convenient to baptize Bulgarian national heroes "Macedonians", to deny the Bulgarian origin of the language spoken, to usurp Greek history and to suppress Bulgarophilia and Grecophilia within the country. A visit to Vergina, Pella and tens of archaeological sites in Greece would be enough to ridicule those who suggest that ancient Macedonians spoke Greek because it was a fashionable thing to do. In effect what some suggest here is that ancient Macedonians did not speak their mother tongue but a "foreign language".Slavmacedonists supporters have suggested many ways to revise the teaching of European history and science. But if diversity does not apply to truth, then there are limits to academic freedom. That does not mean that we should try to keep students from knowing about erroneous theories or hypothetical possibilities, or from reading works like the Macedonians Slavs and the connection with the ancient Greek culture or the Slavic idiom that speak Greeks and Slavmavedonians is the same with the creation of the Slav Macedonian language that had as aim to de-Bulgarize the Slav Macedonians and create a separate national consciousness.Utah University administrators must to ask theirseved if we need historical lectures basing on facts or in political motives ?According the last conference is obvious that prefered historical lectures basing in political motives
Mr Michael McFall must be more cautious when you write article that contain historical events.The problem is simple.
The geographical area of Macedonia is since the Middle Ages a multiethnic region. It is not the homeland of one single nation. The tort of FYROM is that while as a state and an ethnicity is a Part, it portrays itself as if it is the Whole. They call their country ‘Macedonia’, their ethnicity and language ‘macedonian’, because through these names they are trying to register mortgages in all of Macedonia. The rhetoric for the great macedonian dismembered homeland is serving this view. Solution
Greek side support a composite name with a geographical qualifier for the state that is for all uses, with the exclusive aim of the names to reflect the reality of the region so as to act as a factor of good neighborhood and not as a factor that poisons the bilateral relations and the climate in the wider region.
Actually good neighborly relations between countries are not built on outstanding issues.U conference
As native Macedonian ] my mother language is Greek and not Slavic as the postmodernists professors that participated in this Conference claimed arbitrarily.
This conference was a new link in the Slavmacedonism( a post modern nationalism ideology
) chain. The opposite opinion in this one-side conference was forbidden. The re-invention of history had been the selected terrain of action. The dispute is not a question of survival and grandeur but an issue of challenging territorial stability. This has led to the extreme position of discarding Slav origin and labeling it as a "derogatory term", an "insult". It is indeed dangerous not to cut ties with the Slav past because this brings the country closer to Bulgaria. At the same time it is convenient to baptize Bulgarian national heroes "Macedonians", to deny the Bulgarian origin of the language spoken, to usurp Greek history and to suppress Bulgarophilia and Grecophilia within the country. A visit to Vergina, Pella and tens of archaeological sites in Greece would be enough to ridicule those who suggest that ancient Macedonians spoke Greek because it was a fashionable thing to do. In effect what some suggest here is that ancient Macedonians did not speak their mother tongue but a "foreign language".Slavmacedonists supporters have suggested many ways to revise the teaching of European history and science. But if diversity does not apply to truth, then there are limits to academic freedom. That does not mean that we should try to keep students from knowing about erroneous theories or hypothetical possibilities, or from reading works like the Macedonians Slavs and the connection with the ancient Greek culture or the Slavic idiom that speak Greeks and Slavmavedonians is the same with the creation of the Slav Macedonian language that had as aim to de-Bulgarize the Slav Macedonians and create a separate national consciousness.Utah University administrators must to ask theirseved if we need historical lectures basing on facts or in political motives ?According the last conference is obvious that prefered historical lectures basing in political motives.
Slavists have for a long time used the term “Macedonian” in its geographical context, in order to describe a number of Southwestern Bulgarian dialects, spoken in the broader geographic area of ancient Macedonia. From the beginning of the 20th century to the 1940s, a series of international scholars have written on this subject: Tracts and scientific papers have been written by such linguists as V. Oblak (Macedonische Studien. Die slavischen Dialekte des suedlichen und nordwestlichen Macedoniens, Wien 1896), A. Mazon (Conte slaves de la Macedoine sud-occidentale, Paris 1923), A. Vaillant (“Le probleme du slave macedonien” In: Bulettin de la societe de la linguistique de Paris, 1938, No. 39, pp.195-210), A. Belic’ (La Macedoine, etudes ethnographiques et politiques, avec cartes Paris & Barcelone, 1949), A. Selischchev (Ocherki po makedonskoj dialektologij. Spb 1918, Sofia 1981. They all refer to the slavic dialects of Vardarska/FYROM* as Bulgarian.”
macedonia-evidence.org/obama-letter.html
macedonia-evidence.org/documentation.html
www.macedonian-heritage.gr/HellenicMacedonia/en/topic_5_1.html
historyofmacedonia.wordpress.com/
www.helleniccomserve.com/fyromlomis.html
Over 70% !!! of the Macedonian REGION lies OUTSIDE OF FYROM's borders! So how can they claim exclusivity to the name WITHOUT threatening the security & integrity of its neighbours??
Over half of the population of FYROM is either Albanian, Greek, Turk, Serb.
Most of the Self Proclaimed "Macedonians" in FYROM hold Bulgarian passports.
The language of FYROM didn't exist pre WW2 it was slightly altered from Bulgarian!
Only 5 letters differ from FYROM's language to Bulgarian!
Their National Hero Goce Delchev was a Bulgarian! He was born in Kilkis, and went to a Bulgarian school!!
Only about 10% of FYROM actually falls within Ancient Macedonia's borders.
It was then called Paeonia(southern part) & Dardania(Northern Part) p.s. 2 perfectly good names for them to choose!
The star of Vergina wasn't adpoted by the hard liners until after the break up of Yugoslavia, before that their "Macedonian" flag had the Bulgarian lion on it!
FYROM's pre WW2 name was Vardarska, only 70 years ago.
Northern Greece has been called MACEDONIA for over 4,000 years!There is no such thing as "ethnic Macedonians". Its like saying I'm "Ethnic Californian" or "Ethnic Texan" but not American!
It was all a failed communist plan to annex Northern Greece but failed so they made up stories of abductions. Instead they where the war criminals! My dad is from Kilkis, CENTRAL MACEDONIA & he lived through it! These slavs just wanted Northern Greece & since the breakup of Yugoslavia they have had an identity crisis. Some of them even deny they are slavs!! They think they are "Pure descendants of the "Anceint Macedonians!" but can't read any inscriptions from the Macedonian artifacts!
Greece has had many aggressors over the years but always comes through!