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Essay or Report. I don't know either. A rant how one conspiracy could have made a country. |
So...The Macedonian Language. It's emergence is a unique phenomenon in the European linguistics of the mid-twentieth century. Because it was somewhere back in 1944 when it was invented. And "invented" is the stronger word here. Because this now internationally recognized language was not developed naturally over time by the native people of (North) Macedonia. (Note: This supposed essay is not about the historical geo-political controversy around the republic's chosen representing name, as it's using the name of the former greek province Macedonia dating as far back as 356 to 28 BC as there are very little known about Macedon' during that period, at least as much as I'm aware of.) That aside, as back in BC, so up to 1991, Macedonia was never before in history really been treated as a country. The best that it ever got was that it was recognized as a significantly large parcel, or chunk of land that has been inhabited by many peoples and tribes through the ages. There have been albanians, bulgarians, serbs, greeks, byzantians, romanians and a few others. Throughout it's "turbulent" history, Macedonia, the region, has never been recognized as a singular entity, as it has always been an object of some other country's property, multiple all at once for the most of it. When this begins is a debate of its own. Keeping to the point, we begin with the Macedonian Renascence and the Bulgarian exarchate, as it's the "closest to present time" period in which Macedonia is technically considered its own land, just being there - as many times before that, fragmented into pieces of property to the countries around it. Mid-nineteenth century, the territory of the region is separated into three 'vilayeta'(the biggest administrative unit for territory ownership used within the Ottoman Empire, Present Turkey and a few arabian countries) - Kosovo Vilayet, Bitolya Vilayet, Salonica Vilayet. With Kosovo being under Astro-Hungarian occupation, Salonica being seperated in two parts - Greek Macedonia for Greece(duh...) and Pirin Macedonia for Bulgaria, Bitolya seperated into parts for respectively Greece, Serbia and Albania. According to the Bulgaro-Serbian Treaty, made in secret in 1912 between the Serbian Kingdom and Bulgarian Tsardom, just before the Balkan Wars(1912-1913), for military cooperation for their future plan to retake Macedonia. From salvaged documentation, the plan was to specifically - During the First Balkan War of the The Balkan Union to free Europe from any Ottoman influence, they will take Macedonia under their jurisdiction and after the war's ended they will deliver the territory to Bulgaria with a little piece of it will go to russian interests. They had had splitted the region in "debatable sharing" zones and "non-debatable" zones - this plan was to be considered if Macedonia didn't establish autonomy. During the war the serbian forces occupy the entirety of the debatable zone and a huge chunk of the non-debatable one, with Greece taking South Macedonia and Bulgaria taking the east of Macedonia. And despite the treaty laying down the groundwork for The Union, as the taking got complicated, so did the distribution of Macedonia - which led to the Second Balkan War - The Inner War. From which came an inconclusive debacle so grand that it's basically continuing to this day. The Inner War or The In-Union War was between Bulgaria and the rest of the union(that being Serbia, Greece, Cherna gora, Romania and the last remains of the Ottomans(Yes they came back to aid the people that drove them to an inevitable fall from which they never recovered(A YEAR LATER!!!))). Was the decision in any way "good" from a socio-political stand point, nobody really wants to say. However this heavy act of "double-sided sword"-like violation cemented the relationships between Bulgaria and the rest of the union even after it's functional life had ended. Bulgarians were jerks that couldn't have freed themselves from slavery without outside help and when their neighbors came to help them, they acted out stubborn and claimed right over most of the land, using all the arguments to get the biggest piece, despite the country had barely stepped on its feet for the first time in nearly five centuries - going as far as using ancient history, claiming they have succession rights over the territory, it being a part of old bulgarian kingdoms pre-slavery times. So the second war ended, with Bulgaria being put in its place (with casualties by the way), Macedonia getting sliced in three - Vardar Macedonia for Serbia, Pirin Macedonia remaining to Bulgaria and Aegean Macedonia for Greece. So the dispute was resolved at the end, Bulgaria got to keep the Pirin and you would think because the rest was distributed too, they would choose to forget about that one time Bulgaria tried to cheat its allies out of there promised payment. But no, no they didn't. After the little war, there was an obvious grudge left from the bad taste in choices on Bulgaria's part, for which the parts under serbian and greek control underwent debulgariazation campagnes - schools, churches, magazines, newspapers, books, teachers, clergyman, the dialect itself - everything bulgarian is chased out and forbidden on serbian grounds. And as WWI kicks in and Bulgaria joins the Central Powers, the serbian forces start dismantling any bulgarian work forces and organizations on their turf. After the war ends, Yugoslavia rises and the serbization begins. The Kingdom has just risen to power and needs more to sustain its position on the Peninsula. But for the first time in a very long time, Macedonia has had it and after serbian military oppression towards bulgarian activists start brewing along with systematically forced colonization of Vardar Macedonia in response to the really uncalled for cruelty to the bulgarian population, in Skopje people rise in defense of people's living rights, against Yugoslavia's military enforced regime and openly anti-bulgarian propaganda. And like a lot of other times in this region, a lot of infighting happened between macedonian revolutionary groups, and serbian paramilitary co-ops put together specifically to stomp any revolution-like activities they see can become a threat to the militia established there and by extension the Kingdom. And despite being outnumbered, the organization persevered, and a lot of murders on the streets, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians acknowledged Vardar Macedonia as a thing and backed off. Let's analyze this: Macedonia isn't really anyone's country, anyone's property, neither by right of succession nor occupation of the dominating power at the moment, colonization doesn't scare it, it wanted to stay independent, something(s) compelled the people there to fight for that independence when the peace is threatened, it doesn't want Bulgaria to shove it's weight on it and it doesn't stand for it... and yet it does favoures - it aids Bulgaria when there’s actions taken against it, while at the same time is allows the thousands of foreigners that settled down in their country to stay there, despite those people’s militia having attempted a massive colonization campagne and after that establishing a system of Serbian police forces, there gendarmerie and the paramilitary organization “Association against the bulgarian bandits”, whose main objective was to stand up to the armed forces of the Inner-Macedonian revolutionary organization, ending up oppressing the native population of The Vardar anyway. What is going on ? Well, this might be because, this whole time Yugoslavia may have had more power over Macedonia at the time then we think. Let’s take a step back to August 2, 1944, at the first meeting of the ASNOM (Antifascist Assembly of the People's Liberation of Macedonia) in the Prokhor Pchinski Monastery a decree was issued for the proclamation of Vardar Macedonia as a composite federation unit of Yugoslavia and the creation of a “service” language that was to come into force immediately that same day. A few months later this language was finalized and approved, mostly by vote of a 12 men assembly – at least one of which must of been a representative of the ASNOM - at a meeting in the Municipality of Skopje (27.XI.-3.XII. 1944). But how is this possible ? How did the “service” language finalized as the Macedonian literary language was even developed so fast ? Months later, in the span of a week the Macedonian alphabet was commissioned. This may be, because the basis of this “language” was already in the works from a long time. As early as 1887, Stoyan Novakovic (Serbian politician and president of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Serbian ambassador in Constantinople), in a report to the minister of education in Belgrade outlined a plan for a new Macedonian identity. In a collective effort with Naum Evrovic and Kosta Grupecevic, he agreed on the investment and publication of the short lived newspaper "Macedonian Voice". Macedonism was integrated as an ideological current of Serbianism in science and linguistics. The next step in the establishment of the new language was made by his follower Krastyo Misirkov(Bulgarian philologist and publicist). In 1903, while in Sofia, he published the book "On Macedonian Affairs". According to the book, the dialects spoken by the population in the central parts of Vardar Macedonia should be used as the basis for the new Macedonian language. In 1934, the Balkan Secretariat of the Executive Committee of the Communist International in Moscow, officially introduced the terms "Macedonism" and "Macedonian nation". A linguistic forum was convened, again by the Anti-Fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia, of the Communist Organization, at which the future alphabet of the Macedonian nation was to be specified. A member of the presidium is Venko Markovski. Together with other prominent grammarians, they reformed the work of Cyril and Methodius and in May 1945 the new alphabet was ready. After 1944, when Vardar Macedonia became part of Tito's Yugoslavia, the culmination of this process of erasing the Bulgarian and tearing apart the Bulgarian people and language was reached. The Bulgarians of Macedonia were subjected to unprecedented terror and repression by the Yugoslav State Security Service (UDBA) if they did not agree to the creation of the so-called "Macedonian nation and language". Over 150,000 Bulgarians passed through camps and prisons in the SFRY, many of them never leaving. So... yeah... what a trip history can be. We have here a language that isn't really what it is, and a whole bunch of countries that have sought stable relationships in there corner of the world, who have been also ploting against them at the same time, constantly. And there are written evidence to support the the reality of the movement and it's true intentions. It's not a lot, but there is evidence. In a special program, as an independent article in "Macedonian Voice", are mentioned many times, the use of Macedonian dialect without Bulgarian articulation and an increased mixing with serbish. Novakovich writes: "Since the Bulgarian idea, as is known to all,has taken deep roots in Macedonia, I think it is almost impossible to undermine it by bringing against it the Serbian idea alone. This idea, I am afraid, will not be able alone to dislodge the Bulgarian idea, and for this reason the Serbian idea will need some ally who is firmly against Bulgarianism and who contains in himself elements which can attract the people and popular feeling, separating it from Bulgarianism. This ally I see in Macedonism, or within reasonable limits a reflection of the Macedonian dialect and Macedonian specificity." And a few more in which he writes in detail how they should do it: "In this direction it seems to me most necessary to compile a special Macedonian dialect book for Macedonia. In this primer, the Serbian primer should be united with the Macedonian, but in such a way that the Macedonian primer is two-thirds and the Serbian one-third, and that in its second half. The booklet should be written with the Serbian orthography and with care for a good transcription of the Macedonian dialect. ". (If this interests anyone, in some way, write back and give me some feedback.) |