Introduction

It is, and always has been a hot topic amongst the Macedonian neighbours of who can get the rightful claim over the land and its people. The Serbs say that we are Serbs, and they call Macedonia, South Banovina – Banovina means dutchy – ; the Bulgarians say that we are Bulgarians and that our language is Bulgarian, and lastly the Greeks say that we are Greeks, or rather they claim the same as the Bulgarians, and that the ancient Macedonians were Greek.

In fact, if one were to do a quick Google search one would find these things right there in the foremost results, presented as facts; same goes for Wikipedia. However, all of those statements are paradoxes and are in themselves nothing more but a wishful thinking. Now, where do these fascistic and chauvinistic  claims come from? From skewing historical facts in their own political advantage.

Here I must explain two terms that will make things more easier to be understood – and that is ethnonym and politonym. Ethnonym refers to the name of the people or peoples that they themselves give to each other, or the way others call them based on their ethnicity, while on the other hand, politonym refers to a name given to people or peoples on an administrative basis; in other words it is a political denomination. An example of a politonym would be the Roman administrative unit Illyricum – hence all the tribes residing there irrespective of their ethnicity are labelled as Illyrians.

Now that we got that out of the way, we can delve in deeper.   Firstly, the Macedonians cannot be Serbians because the term “Serb” first appears around the 6^th century AD, and the kingdom of Serbia is only formed in the XII century. Stephan Dushan, their greatest king, ironically calls himself Macedonian King, and is crowned in the city of Skopje – the capital of modern day Republic of Macedonia. And just like that, because a Serbian king occupied the territory of Macedonia, the people therein were given the politonym – Serbs. Yet, in the kingdom itself, the term “Srble”, “Serb” was used to denote the population of Serbia proper, while for the Macedonians the term parik or church people was used.

The Curious Case of the Bulgarians

Second, the Macedonians cannot be Bulgarians because the Bulgarians are Turkic people that first appear in Europe at around the same time as the Serbs. The original Bulgars come from Bulgaria in the Caucasus, and speak a Turko-Mongolic language. Anyone is free to look up this language on YouTube and see for themselves how this language sounds. So the Bulgarians are actually Asiatic people that came along with the plundering hordes of Atilla, and for these reasons the “Byzantine” authors call them Huns; and that is why they also use the term Bulgar to denote other Mongolic peoples such as Mongols, Avars, Turks, Ugri etc – otherwise known as Scythians. When the term “Slav” was used, it was used to denote well, the “Slavs” naturally, but some erroneously (purposefully rather) conflate the term with “Bulgarian” and thus create the illusion that Bulgarians = Slavs, when clearly that was not the case.   

Just to clarify here, because someone might say “aren’t the Bulgarians, Thracians?” No, they are not – at least not all. Thracians can be called those from the western part of the country, namely in the region what was known as Pirin Macedonia – in the eastern and north-eastern part dwell the descendants of the Bulgars, and in the south of modern day Bulgaria live Turks. So, all of this means that modern day Bulgarians are not Slavs. They merely speak a Slavic language. Those that are, are the Macedonians that live in this region, today some 100,000, who are not acknowledged by the Bulgarian government as Macedonians. Their basic human rights of self determination and the usage of their native tongue are trampled and denied and they are forced to declare as Bulgarians, as part of their chauvinistic policy to prove that there are no other people living there but Bulgarians. This policy does not extend only to the Macedonians, but also to other minorities like the Turkish, who during the XX century were forced to Bulgarise their names; thus someone named Hasan, became Asen.  

Distorting the Facts

The Bulgarians in their deranged propaganda war use the fact that during the IX to XII centuries AD that the Macedonians were termed Bulgarians by the Romeian. authorities, but they conveniently disregard the fact that this was a politonym and not an ethnonym. The politonyms were derived from the nomenclature of the ruling elite, or the ruling force, in this case the Bulgarians who did occupy the territory of Macedonia at those times. It is also for this reason that after the fall of the Bulgarian kingdom, the Romei gave Macedonia the administrative name, thema Bulgaria, because there was already a thema Macedonia, located at the former Thrace region. The Romei here simply followed an older tradition where in ancient times the eastern seabed of Macedonia was sometimes erroneously called Thrace; so when some ancient author spoke of Thrace in that region, they actually described Macedonia. Thus, the inhabitants of what is today Bulgaria, were called Macedonians – another fact conveniently ignored by the Bulgarians.

 In any case, with the collapse of these themas after the XII century, more and more authors began to properly term the Macedonians as Macedonians in their narratives. Even western writers had the sense to differentiate between Macedonians and Bulgarians, but modern day Bulgarians with all of these sources available do not, and ignore these fact. This just shows you how far their schizophrenia has gone.

In this same manner they abuse the period during Ottoman rule when Macedonians were forbidden to declare themselves as Macedonian. In the early days of their rule, Bulgarian came to denote a Slav, and a Greek was someone who is an Orthodox Christian, so by that logic even a Russian could be termed either Bulgarian or Greek, when they clearly weren’t. In the period between the XVIII and the XIX century, Greek came to mean a merchant, and Bulgarian a vulgar, stupid person id est Vulgar, but this is ignored. When Macedonia came to be occupied by three forces – Serbian, Bulgarian and Greek, the enslaved Macedonian population was only allowed to declare themselves as one of these three. Since by that time Bulgarians spoke Macedonian and were Christian, many Macedonians declared themselves as Bulgarian since it was closer to them than Greek. Some declared as Serbs by that same logic.

The Unfortunate Role of Russia

In 1903 the name Macedonia and the term Macedonian were utterly banned by the Ottoman authorities, who were urged by the imperialistic powers of the West, including Austro-Hungary, and Imperial Russia, who were afraid of destabilising the status-quo in the region. Around that time the Macedonians were getting ready for a revolution and these powers wanted to prevent that at all costs. For the sake of truth, it must be said that even Russia at the time also played a big part in smothering the Macedonian identity.

 This same Russia created modern-day Bulgaria with the treaty of San Stefano in 1878, after they had defeated the Turks in the Russo-Turkish war that lasted about two years. They needed a player in the region that would protect their interests and so they created one. They codified their language, the alphabet (if you take a look at the Russian and Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet you will see that it is the same) and gave them thousand, new, Russian words. Meanwhile, while the Russians sorted out the language and script, their allies from the West, the Habsburgs, imported the kings. Thus, you have a new “Bulgarian” state but ruled by Germans and Russians.

The Unyielding Macedonian Consciousness

The Russians also wanted Macedonia to be absorbed in this newly formed state not as Macedonians, but Bulgarians, as part of the newly shaped Bulgarian identity, so they began their propaganda machine. They invited Macedonian students to study in Russian universities where they indoctrinated them with lies and falsehoods, trying to convince them that they are Bulgarians. There was much propaganda to convince the Macedonian that they are anything but Macedonian, and to some extend it worked. But as a whole the Macedonian never forgot who he is and who his forefathers were. Historical sources throughout the ages show time and time again that the Macedonian has known only two things about their identity: one, that they are Macedonian, and two, that they are Slav. Documents of Macedonian expatriates as far as the XIV century show that these people always declared as Macedonian.

 One such example is of Wolf Maczedonai, an Austrian Zhupan (ruler) from the village of Macedonia, which was established by Macedonian  migrants in the Habsburg monarchy. Macedonians who migrated to Russia formed whole communities too which grew to full-blown cities: for example, Makedonovka, Vinitsya etc … These historical circumstances are being ignored in favour of the Bulgarian chauvinistic propaganda, so that they can present a view of the events as it suits them. The average reader who reads this, presented in the manner of,  “Macedonia was called Bulgaria”, or, “Macedonians declared as Bulgarian” will go like, “oh, so the Bulgarians are right, Macedonia is Bulgaria” and like so be trapped in their web of lies. Sad to say their propaganda works because our academic apparatus is virtually non existent on the world stage to combat these lies. This lends to the rise of ignorant, western historians who regurgitate these fallacies as facts, and it’s not just individuals but it’s the official stance on whole institutions as well.

That’s it for now on the Bulgarians, we’ll talk about the Greeks on another occasion.