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VARDARSKA YES, MACEDONIA NO!FALSIFYING GREEK HISTORY Demetrius Manolakos, B.A., LL.B. * The First Balkan War in 1912 saw the four countries of Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria allied against their long-time oppressor, the Ottoman Empire. The lands liberated from the Ottomans included the region of Macedonia in Greece and some smaller parts to the north in what is Bulgaria and Serbia. A short, brutal Second Balkan War that was fought in 1913, with Greece and Serbia teaming up against the uncooperative Bulgaria, finalized the borders between the three neighbours. Serbias small share of the area and the predominantly Bulgarian-speaking surrounding area, became the Serbian province of Vardarska. It remained part of Serbia, and then of the Yugoslavian federation, under the name Vardarska until August 1944. On the 4th of August 1944, right after the departure of Germans from Vardarska, Tito and Stalin took Vardarska and the Albanian-speaking region of Tetovo and created the Socialist Republic of Macedonia. In addition, they declared that the inhabitants of this new Yugoslav Republic were “Macedonians”, thus forging history in a vulgar way. It is the first appearance of the name “Macedonia” in modern times as a nation rather than an administrative division of Greece. Along with this forgery of modern history, the communist leader of Bulgaria, Dimitrof, had to agree to suppress Bulgarias claim on Vardarska. Furthermore, under Stalins probing, Tito and Dimitrof began drawing plans to unite Bulgaria and Yugoslavia in a Balkan Federation. They also let it be known that when Greek Macedonia would be “liberated” from the Greeks there would be a third member of the Federation, Greek Macedonia. Therefore, it is clear that the creation of “Macedonia” as a new national entity was a way for the northern/communist neighbours of Greece to put a claim on Greek Macedonia, and to gain access to the Aegean Sea. To advance their goal of splitting Greek Macedonia away from Greece, they offered multifaceted support to the communist side during the Greek Civil War of 1946-49. The Greek communists were defeated but Tito and the Vardarskans did not abandon their illicit designs against Greek Macedonia. Following the fall of communism in the 90s, the Yugoslav Province known as the Socialist Republic of Macedonia declared independence and took the name “Republic of Macedonia”. Greece and the international community objected very strongly to this name, and the United Nations brokered the adoption of the provisional name Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). The Government of FYROM still claims to represent “Macedonians”, descendants of the ancient Macedonians, speaking “Macedonian”, but their first President Ghligorov, in his book Memoirs admits that they are Bulgarians who came to the Balkans in the 6th and 7th century A.D. This is about 1000 years after Alexander the Great s death, the Greek hero who spread the Hellenic culture to the then known world, and who belonged to the same Greek tribe as the Spartans, the Dorians. It is also, centuries after Saint Paul the Apostle visited Greek cities in Macedonia, spoke Greek and wrote his New Testament Letters to the people of Thessaloniki and Philippoi in the Greek language. Saint Paul also clearly refers to Greek men and women that he met in Thessaloniki and Verria and who were baptized into Christianity. This reference alone reveals how the people and government of FYROM, primarily of Bulgarian-descent, are attempting to revise history by claiming to be Macedonians and descendants of Alexander the Great, and by claiming that there were no Greeks in ancient Macedonia! The so-called "Macedonian” language is a very recent creation. This language was completely unknown until 1944 and no matter how hard one may try will find nothing to prove its existence. It is just an idiom within the self-contained Bulgarian language. The fact that there is not even one text, not one inscription, in this language before 1944 proves without doubt that this language has nothing to do with the ancient Macedonians and their descendants who always spoke Greek. The language used by the Bulgarian-speaking inhabitants of the Southern Yugoslavia and southwestern Bulgaria is a Bulgarian language. After the foundation of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia in 1944, Tito employed an army of philologists and scholars to create a separate written language. Taking a Bulgarian dialect spoken in Vardarska as starting point and enhancing it widely from Greek, Serbian, and other neighboring languages, a "literary language", the so-called "Macedonian” language was created. Now we come to the Canadian involvement into this dispute. On September 19th last, the day of the swearing in of a newly elected government in Greece, the Canadian Government announced that the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (F.Y.R.O.M.) would hereinafter be recognized with its self-given name Macedonia. Greece rejects this name, as it revives the irredentist Bulgarian claims on the Greek province with the same name. Furthermore, it usurps the historical Greek name Macedonia and the entire heritage this name holds. This unfriendly act by the Canadian Government towards Greece and the community of 400,000 Canadians of Greek origin reverses a pledge of a previous Conservative Government in the 90s not to proceed with such recognition until UN-sponsored talks between FYROM and Greece to resolve the name dispute are finalized. The obvious question that arises is why Canada would reverse this sensible position at this particular time? (*) President of Canadian Hellenic Congress e-mail: manolakos@bellnet.ca Tel: 514-288-8640 Fax: 514-288-8175
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