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

The Macedonians (also often referred to as Macedonian Slavs) 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 . It is presumed by some historians (Kunchov; Weigand) that these Slavic tribes probably absorbed some indigenous populations that they came upon in the area. Later groups such as the Bulgars mixed with the Slavonic-speakers in the region, as stated by the Byzantine chroniclers Theophanes and Nicephorus.

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

See also: The present situation of Macedonians in neighboring countries

• Republic of Macedonia: 1,297,981 (2002 census)
• Serbia and Montenegro: 25,847 (2002 census)
• Bulgaria: 5,071 self-declared Macedonians (2001 census), but Krassimir Kanev, chairman of the NGO Bulgarian Helsinki Commitee, claimed 15,000 - 25,000 in 1998
• Albania: 5,000 (1989 census) - Neutral estimates vary from 10,000 to 30,000 .
• 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 geographical region of Macedonia, which is divided between Bulgaria, Greece and the Republic of Macedonia, has been inhabited by a variety of other peoples including Albanians, Bulgarians, Jews, Turks, Serbs, Roma (Gypsies), Greeks and Vlachs.

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 controversial, as many scholars believe that they are merely a subset of another people, usually the Bulgarians. Linguistically and culturally, there is not a great distinction between Macedonians and Bulgarians, but due to political and historic circumstances, the Macedonians have come to consider themselves a separate people from the Bulgarians.

The Macedonians had little or no political and national identity of their own until the 20th century. Medieval sources traditionally 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.

19th century ethnographers and travellers were also generally united in identifying them as Bulgarians until the period between 1878 and 1912 when 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.

The key events in the formation of a distinctive "Macedonian" identity thus came during the first half of the 20th century in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 and especially following the Second World War.

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 persecuted 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 that stayed 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; as a result many emigrated, for the most part to Canada, Australia, USA and eastern European countries like Bulgaria. A large number of Macedonian Slavic and Turkish place names and Slavic personal surnames were renamed during this period as part of a government-sponsored process called "Hellenization". (e.g. Lerin becoming Florina, Atanasoski becoming Atanopoulos) 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.

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, repeatedly 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., which has also been stated by former prime minister Ljubco Georgievski . The critics of these claims question the number as it would implied roughly a third of the male Christian population at that time; and the reasons of imprisonment, they argue, were multiple as there were Macedonian nationalists, Stalinists, Middle class members, Albanian nationalists and everybody else who was either against the post war regime or denounced as one for whatever reasons. Unlike the time before WWII, when Macedonia was hotbed for unrest and terror and about 60% of the entire royal Yugoslav police force was stationed there, after the war there were no signs of disturbances comparable with pre-war times or post war times in other parts of former Yugoslavia, such as Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia. Whatever the truth, it was certainly the case that most Macedonians embraced their official recognition as a separate nationality. Even so, some pro-Bulgarian sentiment persisted despite government suppression; even as late as 1991, convictions were still being handed down for pro-Bulgarian statements.

In Greece, they faced considerably tighter restrictions as its government saw them as a potentially disloyal minority. Greeks were resettled in the region in two occasions, firstly following the Bulgarian loss of the Second Balkan War when Bulgaria and Greece mutually deported their populations (1913), and secondly 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 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, ethnic Macedonians living in the region continue to complain of official harassment. This was confirmed in 2005 by the European Court of Human Rights with a judgement whereby Bulgaria was sentenced to pay damages for a violation of Article 11 (freedom of assembly and association) of the European Convention on Human Rights for its refusal to give court registration to "UMO Ilinden" and "UMO Ilinden-Pirin", the two Macedonian political parties in Bulgaria.

A similar judgement was passed against Greece for also violating Article 11 in regards of the members of the Rainbow party, the registered 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 primary 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. Some say that in last 15 years their have been disagreement among the Slavophone Albanian citizens about their being members of a Macedonian nation.

• 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. The 5000-strong Macedonian population in Bulgaria claims to have experienced a period of intensive assimilation and repression.

• 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 last (2004) election tally amounted to 6,176 votes (or 0.098 %) nationwide (2,955 in the region of Macedonia - out of which 1,200 in the Prefecture of Florina - and the rest 3,221 at Crete and Peloponnese).

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

See also

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

External links

• 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
  • faq.macedonia.org Macedonians In Greece
• History of Macedonia according to Macedonians

• Ethnic groups in Albania
• Ethnic groups in Bulgaria
• Ethnic groups of Europe
• Ethnic groups in Greece
• Ethnic groups in Macedonia
• Ethnic groups of Serbia
• Ethnic groups of Vojvodina
• Slavic nations