Krste Misirkov, On Macedonian Matters – National separatism, 1903

Chapter 3

National separatism – the soil on which it has grown and will continue to grow in the future.

At the first meeting of the Bulgarian Students Association in St. Petersburg this year I said a few words concerning the results of the recent uprising in Macedonia. I have summarized this under two points: 1. Since the uprising, Macedonia has become lost to the Bulgarian nation, and 2. The Macedonians will come to realize the mistakes which gave rise to this ill-fated uprising; they will renounce the orientation which their national awareness has taken in the past and will start a systematic battle against national and religious propaganda in Macedonia, against those who are inherently Bulgarian, so that, by divorcing their interests from those of the propagandists, they might bring about national unification amongst the Macedonians themselves.
At that time I said that the real state of affairs is one which will not appeal to many, but I cannot speak of what may appeal to some and not to others; I must speak of a matter which is already settled and which sooner or later all South Slavs will have to reckon with – and this is why one must know about the new trends in Macedonia in order to determine clearly the relations between the South Slavs and the Macedonians and so avoid a futile and injurious battle between them.
Many will say that my assertions concerning some of the latest trends in the development of national self-awareness among the Macedonians are simply an attempt at mystification by certain Macedonians, that this mystification is groundless and that it will vanish in the same way as it emerged.
In order to determine whether my conclusions concerning the outcome of the uprising are correct or whether the assertions of my opponents are right we would have to review these events in the light of recent Macedonian history, when national self-awareness reached its peak; we would in fact have to review the birth of Macedonia, the events which helped to awaken the national spirit of the Macedonians, and the scope and form of this awakening. What sort of relation has grown up, through the Macedonian national revival, between the Macedonians and the other Balkan nations and peoples, and is the position which the Internal Revolutionary Organization is at present taking over the question of the Macedonian Slavs such that it will not be possible to advance further, or will it be necessary to take yet another step for the Macedonians to emerge as the supporters of national separatism by accepting the central Macedonian dialect as the literary language for all Macedonia? And, finally, if the Organization and the Macedonian emigrants in Bulgaria are not prepared to help us particularly those of them who hold well-paid government posts or work as journalists and so pick up fat salaries and manage to exert such influence on Bulgarian public affairs that they are able to run for ministerial posts in Bulgaria – if, I say, we are not able to count on these expatriots, it should still be possible for us to give expression to our revival precisely in the way I have mentioned above, i.e. by divorcing our interests from those of the Balkan peoples and by spreading national self awareness amongst the Macedonian intelligentsia and the Macedonian people.
This review of the events, which preceded the uprising, shows us that the most powerful spur to national awakening amongst the Macedonians was in fact the Serbian propaganda movement in Macedonia. Up till that moment our national self-awareness had been only half aroused; nobody had bothered particularly with the question of our nationality. We did indeed call ourselves “Bulgarians” and “Christians” in the national sense; but why this was so, and whether it really had to be so, we did not very much care to ask.
Our relations with the Bulgarians have been extremely close as a result of the general situation in Turkey: we were brothers through destiny and our relations were equal towards the government and the Phanariot Order. We were given, in our common fate, the common name of Bulgarians right up to the liberation of Bulgaria, and even after the liberation of Bulgaria this remained a tradition in Macedonia. This was the basis on which the Bulgarians established their pretensions to Macedonia; but the Macedonians had expected to be liberated by the Bulgarians.
But the rivalry between the Serbs and the Bulgarians over the Macedonian question, both from the political and from the national point of view, brought the Macedonians themselves onto the political scene. The Macedonians began to step up their interest concerning the question of their nationality and destiny.
The course of this national revival and the consequences to which it led may be roughly described as follows: The Serbs and the Bulgarians began to contest each other’s right to Macedonia, each claiming that all Macedonia was hers, each calling upon one authority or another for confirmation of the justness of her pretensions.
In the midst of this endless dispute between these two brotherly neighboring states the Macedonian Slav population, on account of whom they were quarrelling, gradually began to develop their sense of national self-awareness and endeavored to liberate themselves from the influence of the neighboring peoples in order to be able to take their fate independently into their own hands.
The Macedonians were seeking for national unification among themselves while at the same time stipulating that this unification should not be on a new basis, that it should not encompass the new movement, because much time would be needed for this unification and because unification was important as a means of achieving political freedom. This is why the unification was centered upon what the Macedonians called the Macedonian Bulgarians. The idea of national unification for the Macedonians albeit under a Bulgarian mask began in 1890. At the end of 1889 thirty to forty Macedonian students from Belgrade moved to Sofia. These students were the heart and soul of all that has happened in Macedonia from that time till the present day. They were well acquainted with Serbia and Bulgaria, with their cultures and their aspirations in Macedonia. They were also aware of the danger that would arise if Macedonia were to be partitioned between these two state’s, that is, of course, if the Macedonians did not take to arms themselves and by their own strength and with their own means win freedom and so prevent the partition.
It was upon their initiative that in the eighteen nineties a nationalist-separatist movement was first formed with the aim of divorcing Macedonian interests from those of Bulgaria by introducing a Macedonian tongue which would serve as the literary language of all Macedonians. The organ of this Macedonian separatist movement in Bulgaria was the magazine Loza (The Vine); the authorities in Bulgaria and Istanbul, however, did not look favorably upon this spiritual movement and banned further publication of the magazine.
They also began to persecute the Macedonian separatists. One of those who made his escape at this time was Dame Gruev, who was one of the Macedonian students who had moved from Belgrade to Sofia, and was also one of the separatists.
Since they could not find favorable ground for their national separatist activity in Bulgaria, the Macedonians who had moved from Belgrade to Sofia turned to organizing revolutionary bodies in Bulgaria and Macedonia. The celebrated Macedonian revolutionary separatists, such as Gotsк Delchev, were simply the pupils of the first generation of Macedonians who had studied in Serbia and Bulgaria. So, too, Sarafov arid the revolutionaries who followed were simply the successors and heirs of these first revolutionaries but not the founders of the revolutionary organization.
Right from the very start of the revolutionary organization the Macedonians who were living in Bulgaria or who had been educated there began working under a Bulgarian mask. First, because the majority of the population was called Bulgarian and secondly because in this way they could gain the support of the Bulgarian authorities, the Bulgarian people, and the Bulgarian church.
The game they were playing had both positive and negative results, amongst which we should mention: 1. That the Macedonians who protected the interests of their country through unification gradually became an extremely important factor, as is evidenced by the fact that while they were in apparent alliance with the Bulgarian people and their official representatives and working for Bulgarian interests in Macedonia they were in fact making use of the Bulgarian people, their official representatives and institutions to serve their own, Macedonian, aims and interests; 2. That the Macedonians who were in league with the Bulgarians in trying to settle the Macedonian question gradually became the masterminds behind this league in which the Bulgarians were most solicitous, even fiery, supporters convinced that they were fulfilling all the Macedonians’ requirements.
But the Macedonians then began to declare that what they wanted was a Macedonia for the Macedonians, an autonomous Macedonia, and not unification with Bulgaria. The Bulgarians received this undoubtedly distressing news with a “heavy heart”. The Macedonians comforted them, however, saying: wait a while let them give us autonomy, after a few years you will see that Macedonia will become another Bulgaria because most of the Macedonian intelligentsia have been educated in Bulgaria. They even assured the world at large that the fate of Eastern Rumelia would not be repeated in Macedonia because there were many nationalities in Macedonia, not just two or three, and that all these nationalities, including all the neighboring Balkan states great and small alike, might upset the attempt to unite Macedonia and Bulgaria. Finally they demanded to know what interest the Macedonians could gain from unification with Bulgaria when it would clearly be far more in the interest of the Bulgarians than of the Macedonians.
The Macedonians did not limit this two-sided game to the various promises they held out to Bulgaria and to Europe; they shifted the center of the revolutionary organization, together with all the national and political questions it entailed, to Macedonia in order to he free from the interference of the Bulgarian administrators in all their actions.
Amongst the revolutionary committees in Bulgaria they began to propagate the idea of complete separation of the interests of the Macedonians from those of the Bulgarians.
Sarafov began working energetically in conjunction with the committees which he represented. As Chairman of the Supreme Committee in Sofia, Sarafov was working in direct opposition to the Bulgarian administration; neither the Bulgarian government officials nor the Bulgarian Prince shared Sarafov’s opinion; in other words the committee which Sarafov led was submitting itself, over the Macedonian question, to a program which was up till then only political, which had been worked out beforehand, and on which those who had been invited to defend Bulgarian interests had not been actively involved while those who represented the masses, that is the Bulgarian people, had participated. Thus it is clear that the Bulgarians had swallowed the pill and that it was too late to rectify the mistake. The government did what it could to recover what had been lost – but in vain! It was too late.
The Supreme Committee in Sofia was placed under the presidency of General Tsonchev, a Bulgarian and favorite of the Prince. But the Macedonians in Bulgaria convinced the Bulgarian people of the justness of their program as far as it concerned the complete separation of Macedonian interests from those of Bulgaria; they unmasked he political leaders, the Prince and the “General’s Committee”, or the committee of Tsonchev-Mihailov, as self-seeking and so won for themselves greater power in Bulgaria than that held by the “General’s Committee” and the political leaders over the Macedonian question. This power was substantially aided by the solidarity of “Stanishev’s Supreme Committee” together with the “Internal Organization”.
Thus the committees, together with the Macedonians as a whole, shook themselves free from the influence of the Bulgarian leaders and set up their own independent plan of operation; this was publicized in Bulgaria and so the committee won influence amongst he Bulgarian people and, through them, over their leaders.
Once the Macedonian “job” had been thus settled in Bulgaria the Macedonians began to move into Serbia where they once again set out their program, this time to the Serbian leaders and the Serbian people. Sarafov, Rбdev, and Yankov assured the Serbs that they were fighting under the banner of Macedonia for the Macedonians, for all Macedonians regardless of differences, and that they would never unite Macedonia with Bulgaria. It is surely clear from these actions that the Macedonians had, through their leaders, decided to settle the fate of Macedonia themselves and that through their efforts they were prepared to make their interests conform to and harmonize with those of the other Balkan states, including Bulgaria, provided these states would agree to aid Macedonia in her designs.
Hence it is clear that the battle between Serbia and Bulgaria for influence over Macedonia led to the growing awareness that the fate of Macedonia should rest in the hands of the Macedonians. The Macedonians organized themselves around their motherland, their duty towards their country and their understanding of their rights. Through this organization it was the Macedonians themselves who became the chief factor in settling the Macedonian question, not only in their own eyes but also in the eyes of all Europe. Now that the uprising is over we are looked at with respect; before the uprising we were looked upon as a formless mass.
These are the results of our recent upsurge of self-awareness. By gradually separating Macedonian interests from those of Bulgaria, by taking the Macedonian question into their own hands, and, most of all, by launching the recent uprising the Organization has achieved the following result: contrary to its expectations many in Macedonia, instead of seeking freedom, are now convinced that we need to cut off our connections with all Balkan nations and that we should cultivate in Macedonia everything that is original and that belongs to us our language, our customs, our history, our literacy, our Slav nationality, etc.
This was not expected because it was felt that the name “Bulgarian” would bring us everything we had expected from the national movement. But we were deceived in our expectations: the name “Bulgarian” was not only not beneficial to Macedonian interests, it also had a negative effect on the revolutionary “work”. The name Bulgarian and the various assurances made to Europe and Bulgaria concerning the fate of Macedonia after its liberation gave rise to great mistrust towards our revolution, on the part of the peoples of Europe, who considered it a piece of cunning, not Macedonian but Bulgarian, a maneuver by the Bulgarian leaders to get the Macedonian question settled more quickly. The unfortunate Bulgarian leaders found themselves in a fix over the Macedonian question: the Macedonians had outmaneuvered them and used them for their own ends, and the Europeans were accusing them of cunning a cunning they could have little claim to possess. So the name “Bulgarian”, which the Committee and the Organization took over for the Macedonian Slavs, and the unification of our interests with those of Bulgaria in the agitation caused by the Committee in Bulgaria were among the reasons for attributing to Bulgaria the whole Macedonian question and the relations between Europe and Bulgaria, and for considering it as Bulgarian foreign policy which should not be accepted.
Furthermore, the name “Bulgarian” drove the Europeans to mistrust the work of the Organization and look upon it as an ambition on the part of the Bulgarians to upset the balance in the Balkans by revolution; moreover, the instability of Bulgarian foreign policy, which was constantly vacillating between pro- and anti-Russian, was one of the reasons why Russia agreed with Austria-Hungary to find a joint solution to the Balkan questions. This agreement was concluded in 1897 against Bulgaria as the agitating force behind the Macedonians, but the results of this agreement were harmful not to Bulgaria itself, for nobody had the right to interfere in Bulgaria’s internal affairs, but to us Macedonians. This is the negative side of the first period of out national self-awareness, and here lies the reason for the failure of our uprising. The failure, then, is basically focused around the name “Bulgarian” which the revolutionaries took over and publicized.
The revolution, however, does mark an epoch in the life and the growth of self-awareness of the Macedonian Slavs. It will make our people and our intellectuals look back upon those actions which brought about the unsuccessful uprising. It will force the Macedonian intelligentsia of all backgrounds to unite so that the people might be united, but not on the basis it formerly chose when it demonstrated its lack of tenacity; it will be on a new, purely Macedonian basis. The uprising has shown that we Macedonians cannot expect help from any of the Balkan states because the resolution of our question lies mainly in the hands of the Great Powers, and so we do not need to unite and join our interests with any of the Slav peoples in the Balkans. What is most essential for us is internal unity, mutual unity in Macedonia we do not need Serbs, Bulgarians or Greeks, for we are none of these; we do not need patriarchists, or exarchists because we are only Orthodox Christians. The partition has been artificially made by the Balkan states which intended to partition Macedonia according to the existing situation. But the Macedonians, at their present level of national development, are not merely material in the hands of the small Balkan states but a powerful ethnographic and political factor, and it is on them that the fate of Macedonia depends and not on the small Balkan states. These Macedonians who have shown such skill in their national-political organization, who have been so exemplary in sacrificing their interests to the interests of their motherland, will be no less successful in organizing all preventative measures against the nationalist and religious propaganda which today is splitting our people into hostile camps.
The Revolutionary Organization and the Macedonians have so far set the interests of the Macedonians far apart from those of the Bulgarians. It is only one step from this situation to complete separation from Bulgaria and to the proclamation of Macedonia as a special ethnographic region, separate from Bulgaria and Serbia. This step is the essential second phase in the failure of our recent uprising: it has already been half taken. Macedonia’s complete secession from the Balkan states in the ethnographic sense will come to the attention of the public once Macedonia settles down.
The intervention of the Bulgarians and Serbs in Macedonia was the result of various circumstances: the Macedonians had gone hand in hand with the Bulgarians as far as the Church was concerned, which explains why the power of the Exarchate had spread in Macedonia. Serbia became involved in Macedonia when she lost hope of incorporating Bosnia and Herzegovina into her territory.
But now new circumstances have arisen for us Macedonians as well, circumstances which will shake us and show us the new paths we should follow in the future. The pretensions of the Serbs and the Bulgarians, on the one hand, have shown us that the rivalry of these two states alone has been enough to condemn us to slavery for some time still to come; on the other hand, these pretensions of theirs have, in spite of this, assured us of a certain truth – that in all Macedonia there exists only one Slav nationality and not several.
So, the partition is artificial and in the battle against it we should first begin with completely new work on the further development of our national self-awareness.
Thus the terms Serb, Bulgarian, and Greek have served their time in Macedonia and there is no longer any place for them. It is time for them to be changed for a name common to all Macedonian Slavs, the name Macedonian. This exchange is simply the logical outcome of the work of the Macedonian Committees, the Organization, and the intelligentsia, and it is conditioned by new circumstances. This exchange has already been partially affected and the time is not far off when it will celebrate its full success.
In all that has been said above of the new trends in the development of our national self-awareness I have the impression that many of you will again find in my thoughts and words nothing but mystification. Some of you may ask: 1. If the Committees have so far been playing a double role – telling the Bulgarians that the Macedonians are Bulgarians and that Macedonia will one day be attached to Bulgaria, and telling the Europeans that they are seeking an autonomous Macedonia for the Macedonians only because they have no intention of uniting with the Bulgarians – how is it that I know the Committees are lying to the Bulgarians and not to Europe? This may be quite the contrary of what I said above about the Committees, i.e. that they are ready to give Europe every guarantee that Macedonia will not unite with Bulgaria and will never allow the Bulgarian language and the Bulgarian name to be used in Macedonia to the detriment of the central Macedonian dialect and the name Macedonian, in other words what I said – that there is only one step from the position held by the Macedonians and the Macedonian Committees concerning the Macedonian question with relation to Bulgaria to the complete secession of Macedonia and the Macedonians from Bulgarian national interests is not true, because it is not one step but a whole gulf which divides the one from the other, and the Committees will show the most powerful opposition to the new trends; 2. If it is accepted that the committees will not agree to using the Bulgarian language and the name Bulgarian in Macedonia, and if all Macedonian intellectuals who have been brought up as Bulgarians are to join them in opposing all new trends, where would the new trends in this case draw their strength from? Who is to be the theoretician of the new trend, where will the theoreticians develop their activity, what sort of auditorium will they have and where will it be, where will the finances be found for publicizing the new ideas, how will they get through to the people and how will they survive? Where will the money be found for new textbooks, who will prepare them and whose money will be used for running schools in Macedonian? It is clear that if the Committees and the Macedonian intelligentsia in Bulgaria begin to resist the new tends, or, if they do not resist, simply refuse to support them, nothing will be left of all this is the fantasy of a handful of Macedonians will be laughed to scorn, and that is all.
Is this, in effect, how matters stand? Let us now examine how well grounded these suppositions are.
First we must consider what attitude the Committees and the Macedonian intelligentsia will take towards the new national trend in Macedonia, a trend which demands not only the political but also the national and religious liberation of Macedonia; i.e. what will be their attitude towards a trend which has as its slogan Macedonia for the Macedonians and is set against all other rival ideologies in Macedonia, and against Bulgaria and the Bulgarians at the same time. Let us assume that this new trend is of no significance: if so, we must settle the question of our attitude towards it. If, from the point of view of the Committee, the new trend is undesirable and dangerous it should be rooted out from the very start; if it does not rest on sufficiently firm ground one may expect that it will die out of its own accord; but if it is in fact useful for Macedonia then the Macedonians should support it.
The question of whether this new trend has a future or not will be considered later when it will be seen that if left to itself and ignored it will develop on its own and not die out. So, if we accept that the new trend will develop on its own, we must now ask whether the Committees will fight against it or give it their support.
First we must ask whether the Committees, if they are to assess the situation logically, can declare war against the new trend? One might admit that such a war could be expected, for there are people in the Committees who are not just Macedonians but also Bulgarians, and the latter will never agree with the new trend because it would mean burying the interests of the Bulgarians in Macedonia; there are also Macedonian committee members who will reason as follows: now that we are old we cannot learn a new language Bulgarian is the language we know and we shall speak Bulgarian; we are Bulgarians.
This will be the feeling of the minority; the majority of the Macedonian emigrants in Bulgaria, however, will be opposed to the new trend for purely egoistic reasons. More than five thousand Macedonians hold government posts in Sofia alone, and the number of candidates for the civil service is no less. The majority of these Macedonian emigrant intellectuals have held, or will hold, high functions in the government or expect to be promoted to such positions – even to rise to the rank of cabinet ministers. It is well known that most of these gentlemen think above all of their own interests; the interests of Macedonia are simply a means of getting promotion in the civil service and of retaining office. And God alone knows what the interests of the Bulgarians mean. Furthermore, in order to carry out their egoistic designs and land themselves with a cushy job, they are prepared to show themselves greater Bulgarians than the Bulgarians themselves, they are ready to take on the role of Bulgarian chauvinists, to exploit the Bulgarian Prince, the interests of the Macedonians, the interests of the Bulgarian people and European public opinion; in short, to lie all round and to hide their lies behind the excuse that they are performing some patriotic duty while they are in fact bent on getting a good job and on winning power and popularity. The Macedonian intellectual emigrants are on the whole people of this sort who have set their own interests on the same plane as those of the Bulgarians and who flock round the Bulgarian Prince, who makes and breaks ministers as the mood takes him and who is capable of appointing ministers from among those people who not only have no popularity among the Bulgarians but also belong to no party, those who are “independent”, i.e. “who ride with the wind”. So, we have people who think that man’s basic dignity lies not in serving his own people honorably but in outwitting everyone, i.e. in telling lies all round. It is natural, then, that the new trend in the national self-awareness of the Macedonians will meet with no support amongst the Macedonian emigrants in Bulgaria.
There is no need to speak of Macedonians educated in Bulgaria: they will unanimously pronounce the new trend as absurd for, they will say, the Macedonian nation has never existed and does not exist now, and the Macedonians are Bulgarians, etc. This has always been the case everywhere, and so it will be in Macedonia. The educated, the aristocracy, the intelligentsia, and in general all classes of society with personal interests, traditions, and prejudices will fight against new trends which embody truth and justice.
These trends first take root in the lower classes and among people who are free from prejudice and who are ready to fight against prejudice to protect the new ideas which must be realized in order to ensure their happiness and the happiness of the people. As an illustration of the course and final outcome of the battle between the old and the new we need only recall the battle of Christianity against Jesuitism, the reforms in Russia introduced by Peter the Great, the rebirth of the Czechs and the Lithuanians, the language reforms of Vuk Karadzhich, etc.
Let us leave aside for the moment the battle between the old and the new trends in Macedonian national feeling; let us continue to consider the question of the Committee’s attitude towards the trend. A short while ago I said that most members of the Committee would be in favor of fighting against the new trend. But do you think that they will be victorious in this battle? No. They will simply be digging their own graves and, moreover, compromising Bulgarian policy in Macedonia. And this is why: Up till now the Committees have been assuring the world at large that they are working only for a Macedonia for the Macedonians and that they are ready to offer any guarantee that there will be no unification between Bulgaria and Macedonia. Bulgaria has been promulgating the same policy with regard to the Macedonian question. The Committees say that the general Macedonian uprising was planned and launched by all the Macedonian nations together and not just by the “Bulgarians”. But when you ask them how it could have been a general uprising of all the Macedonian nations and why the Committee had its headquarters in Bulgaria and not in Serbia, Wallachia, and other places they will answer that although the Committee did have its headquarters in Bulgaria one should not allow oneself to draw the wrong conclusion that the Macedonian Committees were Bulgarian; as far as the Macedonian Committees were concerned, Bulgaria was no more than a country which had offered hospitality to the Macedonians and had permitted them to work freely as long as their work did not cause harm to the country; i.e. in the Macedonian uprising Bulgaria simply played the role of Kara-Wallachia in the Bulgarian uprising. And the Bulgarians say the same.
The Europeans, of course, did not believe this. And now how false will these assurances of the Committee and of the Bulgarians seem if both of them – on account of their passive attitude towards a movement which demands Macedonia for the Macedonians and not for the Bulgarians, or because they have discounted the movement should join battle against it? This battle will remove the mask from both of them and will awaken the sympathy of European society and of the European leaders in favor of the new trend and against the deceivers. But without Europe and Russia neither the Committees nor the Bulgarians will be able to alter the fate of Macedonia by one jot.
One thing is certain: that the Committees, thanks to their disdainful and passive attitude towards the new trend, will have to do an about-turn and begin supporting it. And that is the answer to the question of what attitude the Committee will have towards the new movement.
Let us now pass on to the second question: where will this new movement draw its strength from if the Macedonian intelligentsia and the Committees in Bulgaria begin to oppose it? What forces and means can the new movement draw on? In order to answer this question we must give a brief outline of the role of Serbia in the Macedonian revival. It would be very shortsighted to neglect the attitude of Serbia towards the Macedonian question and to ignore the role it has played in the Macedonian national revival. One may even say that, in the recent history of Macedonia, Serbia has played a greater role than Bulgaria. When Bulgaria was making a great fuss about her intention to settle the Macedonian question, and while she was being led a merry dance by the Macedonian emigrants, Serbia kept quiet and went on working with great success in Macedonia, in true keeping with the saying: “still waters runs deep”. There were times when the roles of these two countries were reversed: Serbia fussed and Bulgaria worked, Let us be more precise: Up till the Serbian-Bulgarian war of 1885 the Bulgarians had been working quietly in Macedonia. Slivnitsa proved to Serbia that if Bulgaria, together with Eastern Rumelia, could defeat Serbia at Slivnitsa, the unification of Bulgaria with the subjugated Macedonia would in the future mean complete defeat and subjugation for Serbia. Slivnitsa forced Serbia to begin a new battle with Bulgaria for Macedonia. This battle was at first on paper: the Serbs began with thunderous empty phrases to claim that they had a greater right to Macedonia than the Bulgarians. From here they moved on to high-powered but unsuccessful propaganda in Macedonia, promising the Macedonians, the young students from the Bulgarian and Greek schools, golden hills in Serbia. After 1888 the patriotic St. Sava society opened a hail of residence for its scholarship holders. In 1889 the number of scholarship-holders increased, only to drop again a few months later; in November of this year about forty Macedonian students, some secretly, some publicly and openly, made a mass move from Belgrade to Sofia where they continued their schooling (with Bulgarian money, needless to say). This failure did not dishearten the courageous Serbs; the St. Sava society opened a patriotic subscription in Serbia for the construction of a new building for the society, which would serve as a hail of residence and school building. In 1890 a three-storied building was erected and in January 1891 the Theological Seminary College was opened, only to be shut half a year later. But during this half year the society of St. Sava kicked up quite a dust: in addition to the teaching of science, the curriculum included cadet parades and marches through the streets of Belgrade and the suburbs, as well as summer excursions through Serbia. All this involved much self-aggrandizement. This marked the end of the Serbs’ dust-raising and thereafter the Serbs began to work quietly and thoroughly: the propaganda passed on from the patriotic society to the Ministry of Forei
The work of the Serbs was not without result in settling the Macedonian question.
Through their schools in Macedonia the Serbs managed to bring the other Europeans and the Russians round to thinking that there was a Serb population in Macedonia. This illusion was even passed off as a tact to the leaders of the Great Powers. Hence it is clear that in settling the Macedonian question one must also bear in mind the demands of the Serbian rulers. Serbia, then, achieved more than Bulgaria in this battle because Bulgaria kicked up a fuss and found herself on the losing side. If the course of national self-awareness among the Macedonians had not taken a new turn, leveling the loses of the Serbs with those of the Bulgarians, one might have said with certainty that after the uprising the Bulgarian interests had been simply destroyed while those of Serbia had been advanced. But Serbian propaganda, in addition to the illusion it spread concerning the Serbs in Macedonia and the endeavor to prevent the Macedonian question being settled in Bulgaria’s favor, had further results.
In their propaganda campaign the Serbs had no intention of trying to turn the Macedonians into Serbs; they wanted simply to get as much out of Macedonia as they could when the time came for the Macedonian question to be settled. They attempted to achieve this aim first of all by stressing historical and other rights and then by giving a different slant to the question of the nationality of the Macedonian Slavs. These Slavs had to be regarded either as a kind of mean between the Bulgarians and the Serbs, i.e. as neither Serb nor Bulgarian but simply Macedonian or Macedonian Slav, or else as Serbs. The first theory attracted fewer supporters and was set aside to be presented to European public opinion.
But the way into Macedonia was closed to the protagonists of this theory and also to all those places from whence the propagandists came. This theory was dangerous for Serbian interests in Macedonia because it would have entailed Serbia’s agreement to the formation of a separate Macedonian state, and so Serbia would not have been able to get even a part of it.
The second theory, i.e. that all Macedonian Slavs are Serbs, just like the Bosnians, Montenegrins, and others, had its roots in Serbia. The Serbs used this theory to deceive not only European public opinion and the Macedonians, but also themselves: they began to spread the same idea among their own people through their schools and books. These schools and books were tendentious as far as the nationality of the Macedonians was concerned. The illusion which the Serbs spread in Europe concerning their interests was not unfruitful; nor was the illusion that had been spread amongst the Serbs themselves entirely without effect: if war was to break out over Macedonia, no matter with whom, the Serbs would present a united front to the enemy the Serbian army would fight with the strongest feelings of patriotism for Macedonia.
The Serbian efforts to have the Macedonian question properly studied were crowned with success. The Bulgarians could console themselves that the question of the nationality of the Macedonians had been settled in their favor. They could consider it settled. But the scholars are not all in accord with this. There are several, such as Prof. J. A. Baudouin de Courtenay, P. A. Lavrov and V. Jagich who consider the Macedonian dialects as special forms of the Slav family of languages. This study and this conclusion mark a victory for the Serbs.
The Serbs brought about a reversal in both the aspirations and the ideas of the Macedonians, a reversal which was not even to their own advantage and far less to that of the Bulgarians. They wanted to turn the Macedonians into Serbs by insisting that in all forms of propaganda and publicity they should be referred to exclusively as “real, true” Serbs. This, however, did not happen. The Macedonians began to delve more deeply into the question of their nationality and their interests and reached the conclusion that they were neither Serbs nor Bulgarians, that the only interests that mattered to them were those of Macedonia, and that they had nothing to do with Serbian, Bulgarian or Greek interests. The Serbs did not manage to fulfill all their aspirations but they did reach a point from which it would have been very hard to go back; they also managed to pacify the less intractable elements among the Serbian people.
The influence of Serbia on the development of Macedonian self-awareness and the results of this influence may be seen from the following: In 1899 there were between fifty and sixty young Macedonians staying at the hostel of the St. Sava Society in Kosmajska Street, Belgrade. And among them there were even “old Serbs”, although they were all exclusively from Macedonia and were divided on the grounds of their education, right up till their arrival in Serbia, into “Bulgarophiles” and “Hellenophiles”; there were no “Serbophiles” among them.
The old “Bulgarophiles”, together with the new arrivals that year and a number of “Hellenophiles” (between thirty and forty altogether), set off for Bulgaria, some secretly, some openly and demonstratively. These young Macedonians, educated in Serbia in the national spirit, i.e. to love first their country and their people, and then mankind, set off for a country where was no national self-awareness, where there was simply there complete indifference towards national interests, bringing with them a new wave of national enthusiasm, a will to work for the liberation of Macedonia. It was they who were the initiators in Bulgaria of the work that was to be carried out on behalf of Macedonia.
The “Hellenophiles” in Belgrade gradually increased their numbers over the years as they were joined by new “Hellenophiles” or “Bulgarophiles”, but both these groups, while living in the interior of Serbia, found it extremely hard to turn themselves into “Serbophiles”. It was only those who had been sent as off officials to Macedonia, as part of the Serbian propaganda program, that managed to become “Serbophiles”. But these Macedonians were “Serbophiles” only for the sake of outward appearances and for those who represented rival propaganda programs in Macedonia; these disseminators of Serbian propaganda never felt themselves to be spiritually “Serbian” or “Serbophile”, particularly during the first ten years, although they were living in Serbia.
The life of the young Macedonians in Serbia had always been beneficial for the interests of Macedonia. While in Serbia the Young Macedonians began to take up the question of their nationality with Serbian philologists, to examine the historical arguments concerning their nationality, to discuss Serbian patriotism, and, in its extreme form, chauvinism or the blind preference of things Serbian to anything foreign, to question the reasons for Serbian chauvinism, to consider the role of Serbia, past and present, in relation to the Macedonian question, and to discuss many other important and interesting matters.
From past experience they were able to judge clearly how Serbia had been promoting her own interests in Macedonia; but the Macedonians now also learnt that Serbia was a state with military and diplomatic power, and that the Serbs were a people who would defend their own interests in Macedonia by both exemplary devotion and extreme fanaticism.
The battle being waged against Serbian interests in Macedonia was no less exacting for liberated Bulgaria than for the Macedonians, who had no state, no national budget, no army and no diplomatic corps, and so the Macedonians in Serbia gave up the idea of open conflict with the Serbs though this did not mean that they renounced the interests of their motherland. After the flight of the first group of Macedonian students in 1889 there were constant escapes right up to 1895/96; occasionally these were small groups of five or six but sometimes they fled alone or in twos. Nevertheless most of the Macedonians stayed in Serbia and strove to find a way of working for the interests of Macedonia without entering into open conflict with the Serbs.
In order to work out this program the Macedonian students in Belgrade in 1893/94, while subject to the supervision of the Head of the Men’s College, Djuro Milijashevich, decided to found a Macedonian Society in Belgrade. The aim of this society was to acquaint its members with a program, which was yet to be worked out, but which would be carried out in Macedonia without the knowledge of the Serbs. The explicit aims of this program were to study Macedonian ethnography, geography, philology and history.
This Society, of course, came to nothing because the Serbs showed no trust in the Macedonians and began to fill up the society with “old Serbs”, i.e. Montenegrins, Bosnians, Herzegovinians, etc. This lack of confidence on the part of the Serbs, followed by the attempt to fill the Society with non-Macedonian “Serbs”, was particularly evident in the second year of the Society’s life, when Professor Jarishich was in charge of the College. But although the Society was practically disbanded, the feelings and aspirations of the Macedonians in Serbia did not alter. The Macedonians began to be drawn towards the Revolutionary Organization, which had been set up by those with Bulgarian and Serbian educational backgrounds; thus they also accepted the attitude of the Serbs towards this Organization. They took up a stand over Serbia’s role in connection with the Macedonian question, both in the past and the future, because they had the honor of being the instigators of national separatism amongst the Macedonians. They were, in fact, the main supporters of this separatism and amongst them were people with a strong sense of patriotism and a sound understanding of Macedonian national interests.
These Macedonians gave open expression to their beliefs concerning the Macedonian question through a paper, the Balkanski Glasnik, which began to appear in Belgrade in 1902. The publication of this paper could not have pleased the Serbian chauvinists, and the Serbian newspapers began to react to it, criticizing the editor for collaborating with the Macedonian revolutionary Committees; as a result the editor was expelled from Serbia.
Such were the effects of Serbian propaganda on the students and fledgling administrators who had been born in Macedonia. As far as the nationality of the Macedonians was concerned, the Serbs stuck to the second of the two theories mentioned, i.e. that the Macedonians were in fact Serbs, and it was precisely because of this that they achieved the opposite effect to the one they had intended: the Serbs had hoped to persuade the Macedonians to serve Serbian interests, i.e. to consider themselves Serbs and to present themselves as Serbs to their fellow countrymen. But instead of doing so, the Macedonians began to consider themselves Macedonian, with their own special aims; and they wanted to bend Serbian policy to enable them to achieve purely Macedonian aims instead of having to serve as instruments in the hands of the Serbs.
There was not a single Macedonian with a Serbian education, especially if he had lived in Serbia, who believed the Serbs when they said that he was a Serb. Indeed, most of them began to hate the Serbs for their chauvinism, and did all they could to pull the wool over their eyes in order to achieve their aim – acquiring an education. After leaving school some of them may have gone on to become officials in the Serbian propaganda system but at the same time they hated the Serbs and cursed their fate for having to pay lip-service to a propaganda which was aimed directly against the interests of their fatherland – Macedonia. This kind of Macedonian had usually attended a Greek or Bulgarian school, or both, before entering the Serbian school, and he could well remember how they had constantly tried to convince him at his previous school that he was Greek or Bulgarian; now they tried convince him that he was a Serb. The question he now had to ask was where the truth lay, for all sides had been ready with their persuasive arguments. Counterargument did not help the Macedonian to work out which of the persuasions was correct and so he began realize that they were all false and that there was only one incontrovertible truth: that the Macedonian Slavs were Macedonians and Slavs, and so each Macedonian was bound to consider the interests of his country and his people, and not those of the nations who were trying to spread their propaganda.
Let us consider another type of Macedonian educated under the Serbs: he may still consider himself a Bulgarian even after spending four or five years in Serbia. After completing his schooling in Serbia, where should he go – to Bulgaria or to Macedonia? What would he do in either Bulgaria or Macedonia? Bulgaria and the Bulgarian church in Macedonia have more officials than they need, but even if there were any openings they would not be given to anyone who had finished his schooling in Serbia; a vacant post would be given to some other candidate. Now, even if we concede that he might be given a post in the Bulgarian government service, can we be sure that he would feel at home there? No.
During the time he spent in Serbia he was influenced by numerous circumstances which did not exist in Bulgaria and so his view of the world would differ greatly from that of someone educated in Bulgaria where he would not have been subjected to foreign thoughts and prejudices; in these new social surroundings he would be least likely to feel at home.
Thus Serbia, by interfering in the Macedonian question, achieved great success and we should admit that we are fortunate that this success is more to our advantage than to Serbia’s. Serbia opened schools, set up consulates, and appointed Firmilyan, so giving a new turn to the Macedonian question. Serbia deluded public opinion in Europe into thinking that there were Serbs in Macedonia and this delusion passed for fact in Europe. Serbia put a stop to any further consideration of the question of the Macedonians’ nationality and any resolution of the problem in favor not of Bulgaria or Serbia but of Macedonia as a separate nation. Serbia educated a whole generation of Macedonians who had, still have, and will have a decisive effect on Macedonian history. Those people, educated by the Serbs, have played an important role in the Macedonian question, paying scant regard to whether they were labeled Bulgarian, Serb or Macedonian and making no distinction between those who had a high sense of morals and those who did not. Those educated by the Serbs belonged to all possible categories and in all of them the Serbian influence proved beneficial for Macedonia.
Those who were treated as Bulgarians (or considered themselves Bulgarian), who founded and supported the Macedonian revolutionary movement, deserve credit for achieving separatism. It is the idealists working under Serbian guise, while remaining at heart Macedonian, who are to be credited for bringing about national separatism; those who were educated in Serbia were brought up in the active national spirit instead of in the mood of national indifference which prevailed in Bulgaria, although some of them did not fully agree to calling themselves Bulgarians; but a vast gap developed between them, between the Macedonians who had been educated in the pure Bulgarian tradition, and the Bulgarians themselves. On account of their education they held a middle position between the Bulgarians and the Serbs; this means that by tradition they considered themselves Bulgarian although in their hearts they had ceased to be Bulgarians and felt themselves to be Macedonian. And last of all, the lowest and most wretched cogs in the Serbian propaganda wheel, those who were born in Macedonia, were also of service to their country because they formed the class of those who were dissatisfied with Serbian propaganda, those for whom there was no path towards the Bulgarians; and they were to enlarge the class of national separatists.
So, if we are deluded in assuming that national separatism can be supported by the Revolutionary Committee, by the Organization, and by the Macedonian expatriate colony in Bulgaria, it would still be sufficient to have a powerful Serbian propaganda drive in Macedonia for national separatism to reach the highest peak.
Fortunately, however, the new trend has been warmly received and will continue to be warmly received by the most intelligent and uncorrupted amongst the Macedonian intellectuals thanks to their natural mental development. There are many Macedonian intellectuals, and there will be more, who are ready to give their lives for their country and their people and who will ask themselves: what is most important for Macedonia the interests of the Bulgarians, the Serbs, the Greeks, or the Macedonians? And their answer will be that the interests of their country always come before general national interests, that general national interests are simply a means towards the realization of the interests of the country and that the reverse is not true. One does not need to reflect deeply to realize the truth of this. First and foremost, everybody knows that we love our country, Macedonia, and our people; we are constantly thinking about Macedonia and we feel that this is the country to which we belong. Ever since our childhood we have felt that whatever is dear to others is dear to us as well; whatever gives pleasure to other people gives pleasure to us as well they weep, so do we, they laugh, so do we. It is this universal happiness and sorrow, together with the customs and habits we share, that makes us one nation, one whole. But if we cross the borders of Macedonia to the northeast, to the south or to the north, that is to Bulgaria, to Greece or to Serbia, we will immediately feel that a different wind is blowing; we will feel that we are uninvited guests and if they want to make it seem that we are brothers they will do so in order to mislead us and expose us to exploitation by the Greeks, Bulgarians or Serbs. All our neighbors are constantly assuring us that we are of their nationality and that our only hope of salvation lies in uniting the whole of Macedonia, or at least the greater part of it, with their countries. We will all realize that these people, of whom we have learnt only from books and whom we have grown to look upon as people willing to help us win our freedom, will approach us as friends and fellow-countrymen and will, to all appearances, be our protectors, not because we are Greeks or Bulgarians or Serbs, and not because they are concerned with any universal human interests which include us as well, and not because they wish to help us and rescue us from peril, but because they have purely egoistic aims which lead them to exploit the fact that we use their names to describe ourselves. They use this fact – that the people of Macedonia are described variously as Serbs, Greeks, and Bulgarians – as an excuse for expanding their states and securing their interests by taking over, if not all, at least the greater part of Macedonia. Does this not prove that the small states by pursuing universal aims also pursue inhuman aims which are not directed towards the liberation of the subjugated nations but are in fact a purely material egoistic expansion of their own interests in which no thought is given to whether the fa
National separatism, then, will find the places and the people that will look on things from the practical point of view without bothering much about the theory of our nationality.
They will reason as follows: if Canada can anger England because it has sacrificed the interests of Canada to the United States in order to maintain good relations with North America, and if Canada now wishes to break free from England and defend her own state interests because she understands them best, why should Macedonia not anger Bulgaria when the Bulgarians not only cannot protect Macedonian interests but even exploit them? And why should Macedonia not be able to say: we have spilt the blood of our sons and they should defend only our interests and not those of Nachovich, Tsakov and Stanchev.
Many will, moreover, remark that the small states re distrustful towards the role of Bulgaria in Macedonia just as the Great Powers were distrustful of the role of Russia in the liberation of Bulgaria; they were afraid of a San Stefano Bulgaria because they thought Russia would take it over. So, too, the small states now think that Bulgaria wants to liberate Macedonia in order to occupy it and take it over. But when the Western countries realized that they had been deceived and that Bulgaria was producing people such as the late Stambolov, such as Svircho, they calmed down and began to blame Russia for what they themselves had ruined in Berlin. Will there not be people in Macedonia as well who will come to realize that the trust of the small states with regard to Macedonia will depend an our Stamblovs and Svirchevs or on those who will see the danger to our interests in Bulgaria and not in Russia? One should have more faith in the possibility of finding such people – and they will be the extreme separatists.
Finally, many will point out that our greatest misfortune lies in the fact that we have no local Macedonian patriotism. If there were patriotism in Macedonia, no matter where, we would think and work only or Macedonia. But now some of us still consider ourselves Bulgarian and link our interests with those of Bulgaria instead of studying our own country, Macedonia, in all its aspects; for, instead of studying the history of Macedonia from all times, we study Bulgarian interests and Bulgarian history and often these periods have nothing to do with Macedonia. So, for example, Mr. Balasachev, who was born in Ohrid, instead of making a special study of the history arid interests of Macedonia, began to take up the study of Bulgarian interests and Bulgarian history, which has the same meaning for Macedonia as the history of Abyssinia up to the time when the Abyssinians were Christianized. Other Macedonians in Greece have studied Greek interests and Greek history. Yet another Macedonian from Ohrid, Dimitsa, ranges over Greece and for him the history of Macedonia is of importance only up to the time when it was conquered by the Romans. The other Macedonians in Serbia put on a show of Serbian patriotism and work not for Macedonian but for Serbian interests, A rich fur-trader called Kosta Shumenkowich, for example, left 500,000 francs after his death to Serbian school. These wretched instances of what happens when we ally our interests with those of others should suffice to convince most people that our salvation lays only in national and religious separatism.
The driving force 61 the new movement will lie in people who hold such convictions and, indeed, in all Macedonians who are dissatisfied with the foreign propaganda work in their country. But this is how it will be only in the beginning; later the number of supporters, open and secret, will increase not just from day to day but even from hour to hour. It is clear that as there is a Bulgarian propaganda movement in Macedonia we shall also have to put up with Serbian propaganda. Both propaganda movements are being supported by Bulgarian and Serbian money. Up till the time of the uprising the number of those who disapproved of Serbian propaganda was far greater; after the uprising people in Macedonia turned against Serbian arid Bulgarian propaganda alike. But even if this were not the case, Serbian propaganda alone would be sufficient to set up the necessary counter-reaction which would precede the new movement. All Macedonians who were involved in Serbian propaganda would be in favor of the new movement: the organs of propaganda would work in secret and the unpaid Serbs would publicly acknowledge their Macedonian nationality.
Finally, many Macedonian Slavs educated in the Greek tradition will count themselves as Slavs. At present they will not do so because they are supposed to call themselves Bulgarians, and the name Bulgarian has considerably dropped in status in Greece.
Thus all Macedonians are ready on their part to do what they can to unite and form a national whole, but not one of the supporters of the three forms of national propaganda will give up the side he supports and capitulate before the others. The national unification of the Macedonians can be brought about only by mutual compromise and not by capitulation; and this compromise is the new Macedonian national movement.
Hence it is clear that even if the new movement does not receive any support from the numerous Macedonian intellectuals living in the Bulgarian colony it will still progress, but it will then develop along lines directed specifically against Bulgarian interests in Macedonia.
If this new movement were to take on massive proportions and if strong opposition were shown by Bulgaria one might expect support from the Serbs. Even if it should turn out to be dangerous and unreal for Serbia it would still not run counter to Serbian interests. What matters for Serbia is that if Macedonia cannot be Serbian it should not be Bulgarian either. It has been seen for once and for all that Macedonia can never be Serbian the Serbs have had to desist from claiming that Macedonians are really Serbs and must now recognize them as a Slav race in their own right, equally close to both Bulgarians and Serbs.
Thus the Macedonian National Revival Movement is developing as a historical process with a firm foundation and a great future; it is basically the result of the competition between Bulgaria and Serbia over the Macedonian question. The revolutionary political organizations and the policy of political separatism which they are pursuing represent a transition stage in the movement towards completely divorcing Macedonian interests from those of Bulgaria and Serbia, i.e. towards national separatism. The increasing rivalry between Bulgarian and Serbian propagandists and the number of people dissatisfied with this propaganda will prove to be the main factor behind the growing support for national separatism. National separatism will also attract those who are now coming to appreciate the true implications of the various forms of national and religious propaganda in Macedonia, those who claim to be defending our interests while they are in fact blatantly exploiting them and who will, in the end, come round to fighting for the national unification of the Macedonians against all these forms of propaganda. The battle will be dangerous, not for those who support national unification but for their opponents. It is the supporters of national unification who will triumph and their triumph will be all the greater because the reforms in Macedonia will give Macedonia the opportunity to free itself from foreign influence and to transfer the core of the revival movement inside the borders of Macedonia

Krste Misirkov, On Macedonian Matters – Can Macedonia turn itself into a separate ethnographical and political unit, 1903

Chapter 4

Can Macedonia turn itself into a separate ethnographical and political unit? Has it already done so? Is it doing so now?

In the three previous papers I turned my attention to what are the most important questions for me, and, I believe, for all sincere patriots. I think the reader needs no commentary to be able to understand what I meant by them.
But everything I have said would be groundless if we were not to consider certain theoretical questions which must be correctly formulated if we are to succeed in the work we are doing for our country and our people.
Many people will want to know what sort of national separatism we are concerned with; they will ask if we are not thinking of creating a new Macedonian nation. Such a thing would be artificial and short-lived. And, anyway, what sort of new Macedonian nation can this be when we and our fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers have always been called Bulgarians? Have the Macedonians in their history ever found any outward form of spiritual and political expression? What have been their relations to the other Balkan nations and vice versa?
In this section I shall attempt to give an answer to this and to many other similar questions and also attempt, as best I can, to explain the true foundations of national separatism and to point out the unjustness of those who criticise it, thereby compromising it as something artificial.
One of the first questions which will be posed by the opponents of national unification and of the revival movement in Macedonia will be: what is the Macedonian Slav nation? Macedonian as a nationality has never existed, they will say, and it does not exist now. There have always been two Slav nationalities in Macedonia: Bulgarian and Serbian. So, any kind of Macedonian Slav national revival is simply the empty concern of a number of fantasists who have no concept of South Slav history.
Macedonia, they will argue further, is not a geographical, an ethnic or an historical whole. It has never had any influence on the fate of the neighbouring peoples; on the contrary it has been the arena for political and cultural strife between the various Balkan nations. We may hear similar arguments from some of our fellow-countrymen, Macedonian Slavs who call themselves Bulgarians, once they have exhausted all other means of fighting against Macedonian national unification. There is no single language in Macedonia; instead there are several different dialects which have a close affinity to the Bulgarian dialects and they all together make up one language — Bulgarian. And the remaining Macedonian dialects are closer to Serbian, our opponents will conclude.
Even if these assertions were well-founded, even if there were an argument against the claim that the Macedonian Slavs exist and that they belong to an independent Slav unit, it still seems to me that one could argue the opposite and show that the national revival and the growth of self-awareness among the Macedonian Slavs is something very ordinary and understandable.
The first objection — that a Macedonian Slav nationality has never existed — may be very simply answered as follows: what has not existed in the past may still be brought into existence later, provided that the appropriate historical circumstances arise.
There was a time when all Indo-Europeans made up one people and spoke one common language, as has now been established by linguists through a comparison of the old and new Indo-European languages. But the old situation, in which all Indo-Europeans understood one another, gradually broke down and disappeared and a new set of circumstances arose in which there came about a splitting of the language, of the common national awareness, the common language, into various languages, beliefs, attitudes, traditions, etc. But this division took place on a large scale, involving national groups such as the Indo-Iranians, the Aryans, the Germano-Slavonic-Lithuanians, etc. According to the dictates of historical circumstances, these groups became divided into language families such as Tndian, Tranian or Persian, Armenian, Greek, Thraco-Illyrian, Italian, Celtic. Germanic. Slavonic and Baltic or Lithuanian. The Slavonic group, somewhere around the birth of Christ, was first divided into: the Eastern Slavonic or Russian. West Slavonic and South Slavonic groups; it was only from the last group that the Bulgarian Slav nation broke away, becoming known as Bulgarians, the name attached to them by the non-Slav Bulgarians.
If our opponents now admit that smaller ethnographic units have been formed from larger groups as a result of historical necessity, and if they have hitherto regarded Macedonians as Bulgarians why is it that they cannot and will not agree that from this larger ethnographic unit, which everybody including themselves describes as the Bulgarian nation, two smaller units might be formed: a Bulgarian and a Macedonian one? Historical circumstances at present demand that this division should be made, just as they once demanded that Bulgarians. Serbs. Croats and Slovenes should emerge from the South Slav group, or that Poles. Czechs, Slovaks and Lusatian Serbs should emerge from the West Slav group.
The emergence of the Macedonians as a separate Slav people is a perfectly normal historical process which is quite in keeping with the process by which the Bulgarian, Croatian and Serbian peoples emerged from the South Slav group.
Let us compare the two processes.
Certain historians and philologists claim that from the very time when the South Slavs first came to the Balkans differences existed among them, i.e. they were two separate peoples: the Slavs (Bulgarians and Slovenes) and the Serbo-Croats. This is the opinion of Kopitar73, Miklosic74 and Safarik75. Other historians, and particularly linguists, claim that all the South Slavs when they came to the Balkan Peninsula spoke different dialects (speech-forms) of a single language and that they were known by a common name: Slavs. The Serbo-Croats were also known as Slavs; the names Serb and Croat originated from the smaller South Slav groups and were tribal names which became national names only when the people who shared these names, i.e. the Serbs and the Croats, began to form larger states. All the Slavs who were subjects of the state of Serbia called themselves Serbs instead of Slavs, and all those who were subjects of the state of Croatia called themselves Croats. This is the opinion of Prof. Jagic76 and of many of his students. He regards the present South Slav languages not as three units strictly separated from one another but as a stream of individual speech-forms all running into one another, and forming, as it were, links in a chain.
If we are inclined to accept the first theory, i.e. that the Bulgarians and the Serbo-Croats settled in the Balkans as ready-formed, individual units, then we must ask how far these individual nations spread at the time when they were beginning to settle the land; we must also ask whether all the Bulgarians who came to the peninsula remained as they were or whether some of them became Serbianised. And did all the Serbo-Croats who came to the Balkans remain as they were. or did of them become Bulgarian ised? If we accept the claim that the South Slav nations came ready-formed to the Balkans we are left completely in the dark concerning the question of the boundary between Bulgarians and Serbs, and particularly the question of which peoples settled the Morava, Kucevo and Branicevo regions in the Middle Ages, in other words the present kingdom of Serbia. Safarik, basing his opinion on the works of Byzantine historians, particularly those of Constantine Porphyrogenitus77, claims that these areas were settled by Bulgarian Slavs who became Serbianised in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. If we accept this as a correct explanation it will be clear that a nation cannot always resist pressure from neighbouring foreign nations and that it will lose part of its territory to the stronger neighbour; furthermore, it can be seen from this theory that nations can be made up of two closely connected peoples and that historical necessity may weld them into one whole.
Why should the events of the Middle Ages not be repeated now? The Bulgarians have lost almost all of present-day Serbia to the Serbs and have come to accept their loss, indeed they no longer look on it as a loss. Why should they not then be able to reconcile themselves to the loss of Macedonia when it is as much an inescapable necessity as was the loss of Serbia? History remorselessly led Bulgaria into losing Serbia to the Nemanja dynasty and to the Serbian spirit, first in the political and then in the national sense; and the historical circumstances which arose from the Berlin Treaty required that Macedonia should be lost to Bulgaria first in the political and then in the national sense.
Yet another comparison with the history of Serbia: if Serbia had been dissatisfied with her fate in the state of the Nemanja dynasty she would have tried to gain her liberty by offering opposition and by attempting to unite with Bulgaria; but this attempt would have been made and would have had the desired result only if the historical circumstances had been favourable and allowed it to happen, which they did not and so Serbia became reconciled to the facts and was lost to the Bulgarians. The situation is the same and will be the same for Macedonia. Macedonia first attempted to gain liberation from Turkey but unfortunately the attempt was ineffectual. It might have been possible after such a liberation to think of unification with Bulgaria but this year has shown us that historical circumstances will never allow all of Macedonia to unite with Bulgaria. The Macedonians and Bulgarians are now left with a choice between two possibilities: either Macedonia will be divided among the neighbouring Balkan states, which would mean a loss of two thirds of Macedonia both for the Bulgarians and for the Macedonians, or else all relations with Bulgaria will be severed and the Macedonian question will be regarded on a purely neutral, Macedonian basis. When necessity phrases the issue thus it is clear that the second choice is the one which will always be preferred by everybody, for what honest Macedonian patriot would be prepared to sacrifice Kostur, Lerin*, Bitola, Ohrid, Resen, Prilep, Veles, Tetovo, Skopje, etc. for the unification of Macedonia up to the left bank of the River Vardar with Bulgaria? Is there a greater affinity between a Macedonian from Eastern Macedonia with a citizen of Ruse, on the Romanian border, or with a Macedonian from eastern, western, northern or southern Macedonia? When historical necessity categorically tells us: Macedonians, you must either unite and cut yourselves off from the other Balkan peoples or be prepared to see your country divided, all true Macedonian patriots will choose the former course. This will require humanity from the Macedonians; but can one describe as humane the situation which the propagandists have set up in Macedonia? In one and the same home the father belongs to one nationality, one of the sons to another, the second son to yet another, and God alone knows how long this will continue? Humanity requires that we should root out this abnormal situation from our land and reconcile brother with brother and father with child. This unification is a necessity and there is no need for us to tolerate enmity in our families for the sake of some unification with Bulgaria, which will never be countenanced either by the other small Balkan states or by the great powers.
Thus, under the present political conditions, the loss of Macedonia for Bulgaria is no less justifiable than was the loss of Serbia for Bulgaria in the Middle Ages. And just as the loss of Serbia in the political sense inevitably resulted in a loss in the national sense, so too the fragmentation of San Stefano Bulgaria will bring an ethnographic division in the train of the political division. Circumstances create cultural and national ties between people, but circumstances can also split close connections.
Such a comparison may well exist between the first theory, i.e. that of the settlement of the Balkan Peninsula by the South Slavs, their division into two nationalities, their strict separation in the ethnographic and geographic sense and the gradual alteration of the ethnographic map of the Balkan Peninsula, and the process of national differentiation taking place in Macedonia today.
Let us now see whether from the point of view of the other theory, i.e. that of Jagic, concerning the formation of the South Slav nations, the formation of a new Macedonian Slav nation can be explained in the present political circumstances?
Jagic tells us that the South Slav languages are. and have been, a chain of dialects; he also says that all the South Slavs, up till the formation of the Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian states, had been designated by the same name — Slavs. It seems that over the length of this chain of South Slav tribes and dialects, four strong units were formed, one might say four states with separate names, i.e. the Slovene. Croat, Serb and Bulgarian states. These units, or states, according to the strength they had when they were formed, divided up all the tribal and dialectical features of the South Slav ethnographic complex and called them by their own names. These units were centred round the people who bore the national name, and as their political power increased or decreased so the centre widened or narrowed. Thus the names Serb and Croat became national names after having been tribal names; thus the neighbouring tribes with their dialects mechanically attached themselves to these centres so that together they made up one people and gradually became assimilated by those who had subdued or incorporated them.
If the formation of the South Slav peoples was a mechanical and political process it would not be impossible that it might recur in present times. Within the South Slav language complex there arc several branches outside the Serbian and Bulgarian political units; these are the Macedonian dialects. These branches, since they are closely allied, naturally have some connection linking them more closely with Bulgarian in the east and Serbian in the north. These branches have been given various names at various times but it was not until the last quarter of the nineteenth century that these names overlapped so much as to displace one another. These various names did not properly catch on, and gradually they began to give way until finally they were replaced by the natural description ”Slav” with a “Macedonian” reflection from the geographical area in which they were distributed. The people who spoke these dialects had once been called “Slavs” and later either “Serbs” or “Bulgarians” until the rivalry between these two names made them both alien to the Macedonian Slavs, who started calling themselves after the old geographical name of their country. The name Macedonian was first used by the Macedonian Slavs as a geographical term to indicate their origin. This name is well known to the Macedonian Slavs and all of them use it to describe themselves. Since the formation of nationalities is a political and mechanical process, all the necessary conditions exist for Macedonia to break off as an independent ethnographic region. The Macedonians have a common country which is gradually, with the reforms, breaking off into an independent political whole in which there are “several branches of the South Slav chain of languages”: these branches can easily be united through a general recognition of the central one as the means of expression of the literary language of all intelligent people in Macedonia and as the language of books and schools. Thus all the conditions for the national revival of the Macedonians are clearly visible, and, even from the point of view of the other historical theory (concerning the formation of small ethnographic units from a larger unit on the Balkan Peninsula), this is completely logical.
Here is what one might say to those who claim that Macedonian as a nationality has never existed: it may not have existed in the past, but it exists today and will exist in the future.
Let us now ask another question: would it be correct to say that there are two nationalities in Macedonia or, if there is only one, can it be called Serbian or Bulgarian?
In Macedonia, as in all other countries, there are many dialects which are very close to one another. This similarity among the dialects of Macedonia can be seen on the one hand in their general phonetic, phonemic, morphological, formal and lexical features; and on the other hand each dialect is very close to its neighbouring dialects and shares with them common characteristics which do not occur in the dialects of more distant parts. The western dialects are closest to each other and, so to speak, flow together, as do the east-em dialects; these dialects are linked in the same chain.
Now the question arises: which of the branches of our language chain should be called Serbian and which Bulgarian, and on what basis?
In settling this question one should not forget the following consideration: which of the dialects of the Serbian and Bulgarian languages should be accepted as most typical of those languages and what are the qualities which are considered most characteristic of the one language or the other? Do these most characteristic features also exist in the Macedonian dialects? Do the Macedonian dialects have their own common features which do not exist in Serbian or Bulgarian? In the Macedonian dialects do the Macedonian expressions outweigh the Serbian and Bulgarian expressions, or is the reverse true? Finally, do the qualities of extreme or peripheral Macedonian dialects and speech-forms permit us to consider them closer to the central and most typical Macedonian dialect of Veles, Priiep and Bitola or are they closer to the central dialects of Serbian and Bulgarian?
The most typical and most extensive of the Serbian dialects is either that of Bosnia-Hercegovina or of southern Serbia, and it has been the literary language of the Serbs and Croats since the time of Vuk Karadic. The central Macedonian dialect, i.e. that of Veles and Prilep, can never in its essence be oriented towards Serbian because the difference between this language and the central dialect of Serbo-Croatian, i.e. the current Serbo-Croatian language, is as great as that between Czech and Polish. This is as much as to say that there are no Serbs in the central part of Macedonia. From the current acknowledgement that from the very beginning there were only three Slav nations in the Balkans — Slovenes, Serbo-Croats and Bulgarians — and from a denial of the presence of Serbs in central Macedonia, there is an indirect acknowledgement that there are Bulgarians there. But is this current attitude, that if there are no Serbs it means that there are Bulgarians, correct? Does the fact that there are no Serbs really mean that there are Bulgarians?
In the central Macedonian dialects the following phonetic features can be found: the old Macedonian sounds ъ and ь, have been turned into o and e in those places where the sound has been preserved, e.g. денот from the old Macedonian дьньтъ, through from дьнът; instead of the old тj and дj we have ќ and ѓ or јќ and јѓ, for example врејќа, туѓа, instead of нј we have јњ, e.g. којњ, instead of конј, instead of x – a, for example рака, etc. Not all these features are Serbian, nor are they Bulgarian. They do not exist in the main Bulgarian dialect, eastern Bulgarian, which serves as the literary language of the Bulgarians.
If the east Bulgarian dialect is taken as being the most typical Bulgarian speech-form, it is very clear that the distance alone which separates it from the centre of Macedonia is sufficient proof that the Macedonian tongue cannot be Bulgarian.
The east Bulgarian dialect is now considered the most typical Bulgarian tongue, free from all foreign influence. Its extent is greater than that of west Bulgaria. The west Bulgarian dialect is very different from that of the east and one can feel the influence of Serbian, despite the fact that it is an original dialect. The Macedonian dialects, however, also have their own characteristic forms, while the fact that they are close to Serbia means that they are not free from Serbianisms. These dialects, what is more, are found in the extreme west. For all these reasons, and above all because the Macedonians, up till the last Russo-Turkish war, had fought together with the Bulgarians, under the Bulgarian name, for their freedom from the Greek Patriarch and from Turkey, and because the sites of the battles were around Bulgaria, i.e. Istanbul, Wallachia, southwest Russia and Serbia, these places were mostly represented in the war of liberation by the Bulgarians and this helped to make eastern Bulgarian become the literary language of the Bulgarians and the Macedonians.
Let us accept for the moment that the Macedonians are Bulgarians and that the characteristics of the Macedonian central dialect are just as much Bulgarian as are the east Bulgarian ones; even then we cannot speak of an ethnographic unit existing between Bulgaria and Macedonia. Even if such a unit had once existed it would have had to be destroyed by the pressure…
(the missing part will be added shortly)
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74 Jernej Kopitar (1780-1844) was a figure in the Slovene revival and a distinguished Austrian Slavicist. the author of the first scholarly and scientific Slovene grammar, publisher of old Slavonic memoirs and a significant helper in the philological work of Vuk. St. Karadic.
75 The Slovene Frank Miklosic (1813-91) was one of the most eminent 19″” century Slavic scholars, author of a Comparative Grammar of the Slavonic Languages, an Old-Slavonic-Greek-Latin Dictionary and an Etymological Dictionary of the Slavonic Languages.
76 The Slovak Pavel Safarik (1795-1861) was a distinguished Slovakian and Czech philologist and ethnologist, whose most important works are: History of the Slavonic Language and All Its Dialects. Slavonic Antiquities and Slavonic Ethnography.
76 The Croat Vatroslav Jagic was one of the greatest Slavonic scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For many years Professor of Slavonic Philology at Odessa, Berlin, St. Petersburg and Vienna, he is the author of numerous studies in Slavistics, editor of Old Slavonic texts and publisher of the periodical Archive of Slavonic Philology in Vienna, as well as of the unfinished Encyclopaedia of Slavonic Philology.
77 Constantine Porphyrogenitus (905-959). Byzantine Emperor and author of various historical documents including On [lie Rule of the Empire, where he provides much information about the settlemeni and life of the Slavs on the Balkan Peninsula.
* Today’s Castoria, Florina

Krste Misirkov, On Macedonian Matters – A few words on the Macedonian literary language, 1903

Chapter 5

A few words on the Macedonian literary language

In the previous four sections of this book my aim was to draw the attention of my compatriots to the need for making a radical change in the process of our spiritual development, and also to point out that in this respect my views are by no means something new and unsubstantiated but rather an advance in the development of our national self-awareness, and hence perfectly natural and justifiable.
It is, of course, not possible in a book as small as this to enter into more detailed consideration of all the questions involved, for each by itself might merit a whole book. At present, however, there is no great or pressing need for such detailed consideration of these matters; nevertheless, it has been necessary to say a few words about each of them, because if they are taken independent of one another they become unclear and confusing. But if the appearance of this book is to be justified, we must now, in addition to considering these matters, say a few words about the topical importance of the book and about our literary language.
Many people will perhaps say that although the problems raised in this book are indeed worthy of consideration, the moment is not yet opportune. For this book, they would say, brings us strife and discord instead of the unity which we so dearly need at present. We can start thinking about the Macedonian nation, Macedonian literature and the Macedonian literary language only when we finally begin to lead a free political life, and until then we ought to be united and leave aside the national question.
In answer to this I can only say that in my opinion the present, i.e. Mьrzsteg, reforms are the most that the revolution can hope to get out of Europe. The most foolish thing we could do would be to launch a spring revolution; it would be of benefit to no one but our enemies who are working against our national interests. A spring revolution would bring about only our own ruin and destroy all that has been so far achieved through the Revolution, because it would be directed not against the Turks but against the Reform Powers. For this would all happen not in accordance with our interests but in compliance with the calculations of certain Great Powers and small Balkan states which would force us into action and then abandon us in the middle of the road. And finally, if, in spite of all the dictates of common sense, we were to launch an uprising we would simply become the prop for a diplomatic battle against the reform states and some third force, and this would result in our destruction. This is why we should give up all idea of a spring revolution, all the more so since the reforms must be introduced, because they are bound up with the honor of two Great Powers who are capable of arranging everything as they think fit. And this is why we should rather engage in the cultural struggle in which priority shall be given to the question of our nationality and our national and religious development. So, then, now is the time to start thinking about our language, about our national literature and about our education in the national spirit1 Now is the time for interest in national and religious questions.
This interest is somewhat belated, but this does not mean that it is out of place or that it might prove injurious to us.
If we are to be consistent we must admit that the autonomy of Macedonia, for which the revolutionaries have been fighting, makes sense only if the revolutionaries have found in our people qualities which cannot be found among the other Balkan peoples, qualities pe-culiar in the Macedonians. It is only through the recognition of the specific features in the character, nature, customs, life, traditions, and language of our people that we can give tangible proof of our opposition to the partition of our country, and our desire for autonomy; for partition will destroy all that is dear to us and inflict upon us something that runs directly counter to our national spirit. Only a distinctive national consciousness can furnish us with the moral right to fight against the demands of the young Balkan states for the partition of our country and the strength to stand up against the propaganda which is paving the way for this partition. And if autonomy cannot be won, can we choose to ignore this propaganda and find some other way of fighting against those who disseminate it, in the hope that we would thereby be able to undermine even the most powerful forms of propaganda? Certainly not, because no form of propaganda – no matter how powerful it might be could offer us exactly what we have been led to expect from it. All forms of propa-ganda are designed to promote their own interests, never ours; and the people have never enjoyed any particular benefits from propaganda. Our salvation will never come through propaganda, because although today one form of propaganda may be strong, tomorrow it will be another, and the first will consequently begin to lose strength. Propaganda can only attain its ultimate objective – partition – which is not desired even by those in favor of national separatism. And national separatism, under present conditions, is not impracticable; it might even be beneficial to us, and, at all events, it would probably cause no harm.
National separatism is worthwhile for one reason only: that it must show attachment to all that is national and, above all, sympathy for the national language.
Language is the means by which we are enabled to understand the thoughts, feelings, and desires of others1 Language contains individual sounds, signs, or words for all man’s thoughts, feelings, and desires. This is why language is the spiritual heritage and treasure of a nation through which all the thoughts, feelings, and desires the people have experienced in the past are unlocked and released through words and sounds to be handed down as something sacred from one generation to another. Preserving one’s national language and defending it as something sacred means remaining faithful to the spirit of one’s forefathers and respecting all that they have done for posterity. Renouncing one’s national language means renouncing one’s national spirit. This may explain the wishes and endeavors of the subjugators, who set out with the deliberate intention of forcing the subject nations to renounce their own language and take up that of the oppressor; it so reflects the de-termination of the subject nations to preserve their national spiritual heritage, and particularly their language.
We, too, should be loyal in this way to our national language if we wish to remain faithful to the spirit of our forefathers. Loyalty towards our language is both our duty and our right. We are bound to be loyal to our language because it is ours, just as much as the country in which we live. The first voices we heard were those of our fathers and mothers – the sounds and words of our national language. Through them we were given our first spiritual nourishment, because they gave meaning to all that we saw with our own eyes.
Through the national language we are brought closer to the way of thinking of our fathers and forefathers, and we become their spiritual heirs in the same way as – through our physical strength – we perpetuate them in body. If we show contempt towards our national language we are also showing our lack of gratitude towards our parents for passing on to us their spiritual beliefs and for giving us our upbringing. Yet we have not only the duty but also the right to defend our language, and this right must be sacred to us. Whoever attacks our language is our enemy just as much as anyone who attacks our religion. Religion and language are the soul of a nation, and if the people change them they bring about a radical spiritual transformation by relinquishing the past and adopting something new. This transformation, if it takes place gradually over the centuries, is not dangerous because part will belong to one generation and part to another. Thus, part of the transformation will belong to the heritage of the nation, and only a small part will be new. Such radical changes are not dangerous only if they result from the independent development of a nation.
If, however, a nation changes the language and religion over a brief period of time and under strong influence from outside, allowing itself to be drawn unawares into this change, it is renouncing itself and its interests and surrendering both itself and its interests to the stronger nation, which will treat it as it sees fit. In other words, if a nation renounces its language, it renounces both itself and its interests, which means that it ceases to see itself through its own eyes, to judge itself and others with its own mind, and instead waits for intervention from without. A nation that has lost its language is like a man who has lost his path and does not know which way he is coming or going, and who therefore does not know why he is going one way rather than another. The faster a nation changes its language the more dangerous and desperate its position becomes.
The people of Macedonia and their interests are in grave danger from foreign propagandists who are using all means, fair arid foul, to root out our language and, hence, our spiritual interests, and foist on us instead their own languages and their own interests.
This menace not only obliges us, it gives us the full right to use every means, legal or illegal, to preserve our national language and1 through the language, our national interests. In so doing, we would not be asking for what is not ours, but simply protecting what belongs to us.
Language is the acoustic result of the physiological functioning of the human organs of speech to which a certain meaning is ascribed. The principle elements of language or human speech are: the speech organs, their physiological functioning, hearing, the psychological reception of the physiological effects of the organs of speech through hearing, and the assimilation of this process from the functioning of the organs of speech through the voice towards a certain meaning. Accordingly, language is primarily a physiological and psychological ability and, as such, depends on all that enables man to change, i.e. through the development of an individual man or of a people one may also come to understand the development of their language, and vice – versa. Man changes in time and space; so too does his language. The changes occurring in the language of a people gradually become the history of that people’s language, while the changes that take place in the various regions represent contemporary variants or dialects, sub-dialects, accents, etc.
Each national language has its history and its contemporary variants, dialects, sub-dialects, etc., and our language is no exceptions The history of our language shows that the present variants are derived from older ones, which is proof that they originate from a common Macedonian language, and that Macedonian comes from the South-Slav group, and so on. On this basis one may determine which variant or dialect in any particular period was most used in the written language.
The history of Macedonian, like the history of other languages, shows that any dialect, regional variant or accent may be used in literature. The privilege any dialect or regional, accent may enjoy through being made the vehicle of literature as historians of the language might say is not granted on the basis of any aesthetic superiority it may have, but for purely practical considerations, i.e. as a result of historical and cultural circumstances.
These circumstances can raise one dialect to the level of a literary language today, and another tomorrow.
Historical and cultural factors have always been influential in forming a literary language. For this reason we have lately been neglecting to choose the speech of one of our own regions as the general literary language, and instead we have been writing and learning in a foreign, neighboring tongue, chiefly Bulgarian. Now, however, thanks to circumstances, we are taking the dialect of central Macedonia (Veles-Prilep-Bitola-Ohrid) as our general literary language.
What historical and cultural factors, then, have been preventing us from creating our own literary language and from choosing our own dialect, e.g. the central Macedonian dialect? They are as follows: We have already seen how closely national interests are bound up with language, and language with the character and spirit of the nation. We have also seen that three nations are struggling one against the other in our country to force us to accept their religious and national propaganda, and that all three together are battling against us and our interests, hoping to deal us a mortal blow by taking church and school activities into their own hands so that through these institutions they might subjugate our interests, stifle our national cons-ciousness, and force us to accept their language instead of our own But our national interests require us to keep these others at bay and defend our language against the onslaught of propaganda. This defense will be successful and will help to lay bare the propagandists’ schemes only if it is a united and general resistance. But in order to achieve this it is necessary that we should be unanimous in choosing one of our dialects as the general Macedonian literary language. And unanimity will be reached if each of us makes his choice neither according to aesthetic standards nor to local attachment, but on the grounds of common interest. Common interest demands that the peripheral dialects give way to the central dialect. Just as in any country there is a center, which is best situated in the middle of the country, towards which all aspects of life should flow, so too in the field of language there should be a center which, by virtue of its importance, would be related to the peripheral dialects in the same way as the center and capital of a state is connected to the outlying districts. All our scientists, academics, and writers should group themselves around the central dialect in order to cleanse it from the influence of other Macedonian dialects and turn it into a fine literary language. This dialect should serve to create rich and attractive scientific, academic, and literary works through which the literary language might be spread throughout Macedonia, thus eradicating all the influences from the languages of the propagandists. And while eradicating these influences and establishing our own literary language we will also force out the interests of the small Balkan states and replace them with a language embodying the interests of Macedonia.
Thus the advantages we will gain from having a common literary language will serve as a yardstick in choosing the dialect, all of which is germane to the formation of our new literary language.
When a dialect is raised to the level of a literary language, aesthetic qualities never play any part because practical application is far more important than aesthetic considerations, which are more relative and subjective.
This is why one normally feels that the dialects and accents which one is accustomed to hear are the most beautiful. This is why one cannot speak of the aesthetic when discussing language, dialects, and sub-dialects.
So, a Macedonian from the eastern, southern, western or northern part of Macedonia would have no right to object to the choice of the central Macedonian dialect as the literary language simply on the grounds that it did not appeal to his ear. There would be no reason for Kim to object to the central dialect, because the choice has been made for practical reasons.
Let us now see whether the choice of the central dialect as the literary language is, in fact, practically us t if jab le.
Bitola was chosen as the residence of the General Inspector of Macedonia and his civilian advisors, and became the capital of Macedonia. The new capital was not far from the old ones, Prespa and Prilep, and from the seat of the, until recently autocephalous, Archbishopric of Ohrid. One may say, therefore, that the central dialect is historically justified because the capitals are situated in the center, both geographically and ethno-graphically.
The central town of Macedonia is Veles, and one need go only a short distance from there to reach Bitola and Ohrid via Prilep. This movement away from the geographical center can be explained by the fact that Prilep, Bitola, and Ohrid are of greater historical importance in Macedonia and, moreover, sufficiently distant from the Serbian and Bulgarian language centers to be able to form the Macedonian language center. The Veles-Prilep-Bitola- Ohrid dialect is truly the core of the Macedonian language because to the west one finds the Debar dialect in which, for example, the word arm (raka) is pronounced roka, while in the south (the Kostur dialect) it becomes ronka, in the east (the Salonica dialect) r’ka, and in the north (the Skopje dialect) ruka.
For us, in Macedonia, the creation of a literary language is a spiritual need, for this would put an end to the abuse of our interests by the propagandists and would enable us to form our own literary and academic center so that we would no longer be dependent on Belgrade and Sofia. This, however, is no easy task, and it can only be accomplished if the Macedonian of the north will offer his hand to his brother in the south, and if the Macedonian from the east will do the same to his brother in the west. And their meeting-place will be around Prilep and Bitola.
Thus the Macedonians will create a cultural center of their own, which will come to be what Bitola now is as the capital of Macedonia, or what Ohrid, Prilep and Bitola have been in the history of Macedonia. It will, like all these places, become a geographical and language center, and all this helps towards the creation of a common Macedonian literary language with its central dialect.
In making our choice of a dialect to represent the Macedonian literary language, we should also consider the question of Macedonian orthography.
To begin with, a few remarks should be made concerning orthography and the direction of our cultural development. The orthography of a language should, like the formation of a literary language, develop gradually and consciously. For an illiterate man is capable of learning the alphabet of a nation more cultured than his own and of expressing his thoughts through this foreign alphabet or else applying it to the sounds of his own language. But if his own language contains sounds which do not exist in the language from which he has borrowed the alphabet, he will amend it in order to distinguish between the sounds of the two languages. This borrowed and amended alphabet is handed down from generation to generation, changing in the process until it is made to suit the language of the borrower. Thus, gradually and imperceptibly, we see the formation of an alphabet belonging to a nation at a low cultural level in contact with nations at e higher level. But this process of assimilation can be justified only if the two neighboring nations are politically unequal, i.e. the more cultured nation ruling, and the other, less cultured, subject or deprived of even the minimum political freedom. It is a different matter, however, if both nations have their own states. In such a case the borrowing is gradual and insignificant. Thus Christianity and literacy were introduced in Macedonia earlier than in any other Slav country; they expanded over the centuries, moving constantly upwards, i.e. progressively. This is why there are no historical references to the conversion of the Macedonians to Christianity. But the conversion of a nation to Christianity entails a change in its level of literacy; and failure to mention our conversion means bypassing the process of our development towards literacy.
This is why our spiritual revival, and the spread and development of literacy in Macedonia, which took place for geographical and historical reasons in the first millennium A.D., did not follow the direction taken by other Slav nations. In Macedonia the process was gradual and imperceptible, while with the other Slav nations it was quicker and more clearly defined.
At the time when Turkey overran the Balkan peninsula, a certain change occurred: the Turkish rulers severed all our links with the past. Macedonia, being the central province of the empire, was hardest hit by this abrupt break, and, therefore, at the time when the other Slav Orthodox nations were gradually developing their own literary language and orthography, we were losing our linguistic coherence and had almost completely renounced our language for the purposes of literature. From time to time, during the 19 th century, attempts were made to write in Macedonian, but for historical reasons these attempts were not nearly as successful as might have been expected.
The efforts of Macedonian writers in the 19 th century failed, unfortunately, to attract much following. This is why any attempts that may be made now, in the 20th century, to write in Macedonian are more likely to be made for amusement’s sake than for patriotic reasons or out of the desire to set about the language in a systematic way. Here lies the essence of our Macedonian national and spiritual revival in comparison with the development of the other Orthodox Slav nations; i.e. just as we were once the first of all Slav peoples to accept Christianity and the alphabet, so, later, when all the Orthodox Slavs were gradually developing their literary language, their literature and orthography, we were left lagging behind without any literary tradition. And not because we do not have one, but because we have come to forget our tradition through learning in a foreign tongue. We should now hasten to work out our literary language, fix our orthography, and set about creating a literature which would meet all our requirements. Through our present national revival we are setting ourselves against the other Orthodox Slavs, just as we did in the past; only, in the past we led the spiritual revival, which took place slowly in Macedonia but quickly elsewhere, and now the opposite is true: in the past they were hard pressed to catch up with us and they went about it with speed and purpose, now we should do the same.
The development of a nation’s language and orthography depends on the development of the nation itself. If a nation gradually builds up its alphabet and gradually alters it, and if this process is not impeded or interrupted by any historical events, the literary language and the orthography will then contain many elements which do not truly correspond to the sounds of the language as it is spoken at that moment. But if the cultural development of the nation spans two periods, between which there is a third – forming a barrier, an insurmountable obstacle – then the new period in the development of the national consciousness brings about a revival of the national spirit, which, though perpetua-ting the old principles, now embraces new aspirations in keeping with the spirit of the time and the specific needs of life. This revival is also reflected in the literary language and the orthography, thus both are in a sense freed of those elements of tradition which no longer accord with the state of the spoken language.
Hence, the history of the cultural development of a people, in accordance with its progress, is completed either through a purely etymological or historical orthography or through a mixed etymological-phonetic, historical-phonetic, or simply phonetic orthography.
These three types of orthography depend on the degree of attachment to the old or new forms of the spoken or the literary language. One of the three orthographies comes to be used for the literary language of an awakening nation, depending on the tendency dominant at the time of revival.
One thing is sure: our orthography and the development of our literary language should be entirely dependent on the tendency guiding us in our national awakening. And in this book one may see what sort of tendency this might be. However, I should like to take the liberty of repeating it: firstly, Macedonia should take up a neutral attitude to Bulgaria and Serbia, and remain at an equal distance from both these states; secondly, Macedonia should be linguistically united. These principles should guide us in creating our literary language and orthography.
These principles entail: 1. The adoption of the Prilep-Bitola dialect, as the central dialect in Macedonia for the purpose of creating a literary language equally different from Serbian and Bulgarian, 2. The adoption of a phonetic orthography with letters as used in this back and with minor concessions to etymology, 3. The collection of lexical material from all the regions of Macedonia.
(Page 132-145)