Macedonians (ethnic group)

This article is about the Slavic-speaking ethnic group. For other meanings, see Macedonian (disambiguation).

Macedonians

File:McdSlvs2.JPG
Regions with significant populations
Republic of Macedonia¤:    1,297,981 Serbia and Montenegro:    25,847 (2002) Bulgaria:    5,071 Albania:    5,000 (1989 census) Greece:    Unknown; See below Australia:    85,000 (1996 census) Canada:    32,000 (2002 census) United States:    38,000[1] Rest of the world:    100,000 (est.)
Languages
Macedonian
Religion
Macedonian¤ Orthodox, Muslim, Other, None
Related ethnic groups
Bulgarians, Serbs, Croatians, Bosniaks, Slovenes; and other Slavic peoples

The Macedonians (also often referred to as Macedonian Slavs, a name strongly resented by the Macedonians themselves) are a South Slavic ethnic group forming about 64.18% of the population of the Republic of Macedonia^¤, and about a third of the population of the geographical region of Macedonia in southeastern Europe. They speak the Slavic Macedonian language and are generally associated with the Macedonian Orthodox Church. The Macedonians are primarily the descendants of the Slavic tribes which settled Macedonia during the Middle Ages, but it is likely that their ancestry includes an element of autochthonous groups such as the Thracians, Illyrians and Antique Macedonians and of later invaders, such as the Bulgars.

Areas of settlement

The vast majority of this ethnic group live in the valley of the river Vardar, the central region of the Republic of Macedonia. Smaller numbers live in eastern Albania, south-western Bulgaria, northern Greece, and southern Serbia and Montenegro, mostly abutting the border areas of the Republic of Macedonia.

Major Populations of Macedonians by country

• Republic of Macedonia: 1,297,981 (2002 census)
• Serbia and Montenegro: 25,847 (2002 2002 census)
• Bulgaria: 5,071 (2001 census)
• Albania: 5,000 (1989 census)
• Greece: Unknown - The Hutchinson Educational Encyclopedia estimates the number of the Macedonian speakers living in Greece between 100,000-200,000 (1994). Also Ethnologue lists 180,180 speakers of Slavic in Greece, but makes no claims as to their ethnic affiliation, nor to the methods used to obtain that figure - Greece has not conducted a census on the question of mother tongue since 1951, when 41,017 speakers of the Slavic language were recorded.

Origins and identities

The origin of the Macedonians is primarily Slavic, but it also includes elements of autochthonous groups such as the Thracians, Illyrians, Antique Macedonians and Bulgars.

Historians generally date the arrival of the Slavs in Macedonia and the Balkans to the 6th or 7th centuries AD. The question of whether the Macedonians constitute a distinct ethnic group is disputed, as many Bulgarians and Greeks believe that they are merely a subset of another people, usually the Bulgarians. Linguistically and culturally, there are strong similarities between Macedonians and Bulgarians, but the vast majority of the Macedonians consider themselves a separate people from the Bulgarians.

A separate Macedonian ethnicity is mentioned in several neutral sources of the period of Ottoman rule which started at the end of the 15th century and lasted untill the beggining of the 20th century. The 15th century travel-writer Bertradon de la Broquier lists the Macedonians among the other "many Christians who perforce serve the Turk". Among others, a separate Macedonian nation is also mentioned in the Russian royal edict of January 11, 1752 granting the formation of brigades from the "orthodox Serbian, Macedonian, Bulgarian and Vlach peoples".

Anyway, the Macedonians had little national identity of their own until the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Many medieval sources describe them as Bulgarians, a definition which survived well into the period of Ottoman rule as attested by the Ottoman archives and by descriptions of historians and travellers, for example Evliya Celebi and his Book of Travels. This position was also supported by many 19th century ethnographers and travellers.

During the period between 1878 and 1912 the rival propaganda machines of Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria succeeded in effectively splitting the Slavophone population of Macedonia into three distinct parties, a pro-Serbian, pro-Greek and pro-Bulgarian one. Regardless of these propagandas, the Macedonian national identity got stronger during this period which finally resulted in a formation of a distinctive "Macedonian" ethnicity.

The Macedonian national identity increased even more in the period through and following the Second World War, when the Macedonians were allowed a republic of their own as a part of Socialistic Yugoslavia.

The Balkan Wars

The Balkan Wars resulted in drastic changes to Macedonia's demographics after the Ottomans were forced out of the region. Ottoman Macedonia was carved up between the Balkan nations, with its northern parts coming under Serbian rule, the southern under Greece and the northeastern under Bulgaria.

The territory of the present-day Republic of Macedonia came under the direct rule of Serbia (and later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia), and was termed "southern Serbia" or the "Vardar banovina" (district). An intense programme of "Serbianization" was implemented during the 1920s and 1930s, during which time the local population were forcibly assimilated into Serbian culture. Only the Serbian language was permitted and taught, while Macedonian families found their names being modified into Serbian forms (e.g. Atanasoski becoming Atanacković Krstev becoming Krstić). Other ethnic minorities in Serbian Macedonia were also suppressed during the inter-war period, with thousands being arrested.

Greece adopted strongly repressive policies towards the Slav population of Macedonian and Bulgarian origin in its northern regions. Those that inhabited northeastern Greece were expelled. Those living in northwestern Greece were regarded as potentially disloyal "Slavophone Greeks" and came under severe pressure, with restrictions on their movements, cultural activities and political rights; many were forced to emigrate, for the most part to Canada, Australia, USA and other eastern European countries. Many of the border villages were closed to outsiders, ostensibly for security reasons. Even today, the Greek government denies their existence as a national minority.

The Macedonian population in Bulgarian Macedonia also experienced a period of intensive assimilation and repression.

Macedonians after the Second World War

After the Second World War, the Communist Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito decided that the policy of Serbianization in Macedonia had failed - it had led to strong resentment of Belgrade. In addition, the Macedonians had been strong supporters of Tito's Partisan resistance movement, fighting the occupying Bulgarians, Germans and Italians as well as opposing the Serbian royalist Chetniks, who were, until midway through the war, the West's favorite rebels in Serbia. The Macedonian resistance had a strongly nationalist character, not least as a reaction to Serbia's pre-war repression, same as to the Bulgarian repression during the beginning of the Bulgarian occupation of the region. It was clear well before the end of the war that Tito would seek major changes to the region's political balance.

Following the war, Tito supported the separation of Yugoslav Macedonia from Serbia, making it a republic of the new federal Yugoslavia (as the Socialist Republic of Macedonia) in 1946. He also supported the concept of a separate Macedonian nation, as a means of further severing the ties of the Slav population of Yugoslav Macedonia with Bulgaria, which were already questionable after the strong Macedonian resistance to the Bulgarian occupation. The differences between the Macedonian and Bulgarian language were emphasized and the region's historical figures were promoted as being uniquely Macedonian (rather than Serbian or Bulgarian). A separate Macedonian Orthodox Church was established, splitting off from the Serbian Orthodox Church. The ideologists of a separate and independent Macedonian country, same as the pro-Bulgarian and pro-Serbian sentiment was forcibly suppressed.

Tito had a number of reasons for doing this. First, he wanted to reduce Serbia's dominance in Yugoslavia; establishing a territory formerly considered Serbian as an equal to Serbia within Yugoslavia achieved this effect. Secondly, he wanted to sever the ties of the Macedonian population with Bulgaria, which could undermined the unity of the Yugoslav federation. Thirdly, Tito sought to justify future Yugoslav claims towards the rest of geographical Macedonia; in August 1944, he claimed that his goal was to reunify "all parts of Macedonia, divided in 1915 and 1918 by Balkan imperialists." To this end, he opened negotiations with Bulgaria for a new federal state, which would also probably have included Albania, and supported the Greek Communists in the Greek Civil War. The idea of reunification of all of Macedonia under Communist rule was abandoned in 1948 when the Greek Communists lost and Tito fell out with the Soviet Union and pro-Soviet Bulgaria.

Tito's actions had a number of important consequences for the Macedonian. The most important was, obviously, the promotion of a distinctive Macedonian identity as a part of the multiethnic society of Yugoslavia. It may be only the subject of speculations whether Tito forced the Macedonian consciousness on the population of Yugoslav Macedonia or simply lifted the last restrictions to an already existing national sentiment. There have been numerous accounts from northern Macedonia from the late 1940s that the policy of Bulgarisation during the Bulgarian occupation (1941-1944) was as abhorrent for the ordinary Macedonian as the policy of Serbisation until then. IMRO's leader in exile, Ivan Mihailov, and the renewed Bulgarian IMRO after 1990 have, on the other hand, consistently argued that between 120,000 and 130,000 people went through the concentration camps of Idrizovo and Goli Otok for pro-Bulgarian sympathies or ideas for independent Macedonia in the late 1940s. Whatever the truth, it was certainly the case that most Macedonians embraced their official recognition as a separate nationality.

In Greece, they faced considerably tighter restrictions as its government saw them as a potentially disloyal minority. Greeks were resettled in the region in 1923 as a result of the population exchange with Turkey that followed the Greek military defeat in Asia minor. After the second world war many of the Macedonians who lived in Greece either chose to emigrate to Communist countries to avoid prosecution for fighting on the side of the Greek communists (see: Greek Civil War), or were forced to do so. Although there was some liberalization between 1959 and 1967, the Greek military dictatorship re-imposed harsh restrictions. The situation gradually eased after Greece's return to democracy, but Greece still get's many critics about the poor treatment of its minorities. The Macedonians in Albania faced restrictions under the paranoid Stalinist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, though ordinary Albanians were little better off. Their existence as a separate minority group was recognised as early as 1945 and a degree of cultural expression was permitted.

As ethnographers and linguists tended to identify the population of the Bulgarian part of Macedonia as Bulgarian in the interwar period, the issue of a Macedonian minority in the country came up as late as the 1940s. In 1946, the population of Pirin Macedonia was declared Macedonian and teachers were brought in from Yugoslavia to teach the Macedonian language. The census of 1946 was accompanied by mass repressions, the result of which was the complete destruction of the local organisations of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization and mass internments of people at the Belene concentration camp. The policy was reverted at the end of the 1950s and later Bulgarian governments argued that the two censuses of 1946 and 1956 were the result of pressure from Moscow. Western governments remained, however, mistrustful and continued to list the population of Pirin Macedonia as Macedonian until the beginning of the 1990s despite the 1965 census which put Macedonians in the country at 9,000. The two latest censuses after the fall of communism (in 1992 and 2001) have, however, confirmed the results from previous censuses with some 3,000 people declaring themselves as "Macedonians" in Pirin Macedonia in 2001 (<1.0% of the population of the region) out of 5,000 in the whole of Bulgaria.

During this period the Macedonians living in the region continue to report constant represion towards anyone who identify himself as Macedonian. This was confirmed by the European Court of Human Rights with a judgement issued against Bulgaria for its repression against the members of "UMO Ilinden" and "UMO Ilinden-Pirin", the two Macedonian political parties in Bulgaria.

Similar judgement is made against Greece for represions against the members of the Rainbow party, a political party of the Macedonians living in Greece.

The situation today

The secession of the Republic of Macedonia from the former Yugoslavia in 1991 led to an intense nationalist dispute with Greece which has not yet fully been resolved. The position of the Macedonians has improved somewhat across the region, although significant problems do still remain.

• Within the Republic of Macedonia, Macedonians comprise two-thirds (65.2%) of the population. Following a brief conflict with ethnic Albanians in 2001, a Macedonian-Albanian power-sharing agreement is now in place.

• Albania continues to recognise the Macedonians as a legitimate minority and delivers education in the Macedonian language in the border regions where most Macedonians live. However, Macedonian organizations complain that the government undercounts the number of Macedonians in Albania and that they are politically underrepresented - there are no ethnic Macedonians in the Albanian parliament.

• Bulgaria maintains generally cordial relations with the Macedonians, recognizing them as a distinct ethnic group and last counting them in the 2001 census. However, Macedonian groups in the country have reported official harassment, with the Bulgarian Constitutional Court banning a small Macedonian political party in 2000 as separatist and Bulgarian local authorities banning political rallies.

• Greece does not recognise any ethnic minorities. Legally, Greece only recognises a "religious minority", the Greek Muslim minority, in Thrace, and opposes the use of the term "Macedonians" to refer to the country's Slav minority, which is centred on the northern Greek town of Florina. The term "Slavomacedonians" is sometimes used instead, to distinguish them from the various other ethnic groups who inhabit Macedonia. There is a (Slavo)macedonian political party in Greece, the "Rainbow Party": their most recent election tally amounted to 6,000 votes (or 0.098 %) nationwide (about half of them in the Prefecture of Florina), because there are strong repressions from the Greek government to the (Slavo)macedonian voters not to vote for a "Macedonian party".

• Serbia and Montenegro recognizes the Macedonian minority on its territory as a distinct ethnic group and counts them in its annual census.

• macedonia.org, a site representing the views of the Macedonians
• Online Journal on Macedonian History and Culture, including relevant sources, documents and texts, pro-Macedonian
• Documents and Maps regarding Macedonia, pro-Bulgarian
• On-line books about Macedonia, pro-Bulgarian
  • faq.macedonia.org Macedonians In Greece
• History of Macedonia according to Macedonians

See also

• A list of famous Macedonians
• Rainbow Party, a Macedonian party in Greece
• UMO Ilinden-Pirin, a Macedonian organisation in Bulgaria