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BOX-FOLDER-REPORT: 118-2-86
TITLE:             The Yugoslavs Criticize Greece and Bulgaria Over Macedonia
BY:                Slobodan Stankovic
DATE:              1983-8-1
COUNTRY:           (n/a)
ORIGINAL SUBJECT:  RAD Background Report/177

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RFE-RL

RADIO FREE EUROPE Research

RAD Background Report/177
(Yugoslavia)
1 August 1983

THE YUGOSLAVS CRITICIZE GREECE AND BULGARIA OVER MACEDONIA
by Slobodan Stankovic

Summary: The Yugoslavs are at odds with both the
Bulgarians and the Greeks over Macedonia. The
progovernment Athens daily To Vima has been attacked by the
Belgrade daily Borba for refusing to acknowledge the
existence of the Macedonian nation and the Macedonian
language. Similar attacks have also been directed
against the Bulgarians, who are accused of trying "to
wash their hands in the Adriatic Sea, their legs in
the Black Sea, and their head in the Aegean." An
article published in the Zagreb weekly Oko deals with an
international conference in Moscow about compiling a
Slavic Linguistic Atlas which, according to the
Yugoslav author, was sabotaged by the Bulgarians, who
would not desist from their contention that neither a
separate Macedonian nationality nor a Macedonian
language exists.

* * *

The progovernment Athens daily To Vima was recently criticized
severely by the Belgrade daily Borba [1] for accepting the Bulgarian
view that there was neither a separate Macedonian nation nor a
Macedonian language. The author of the Borba article, Zoran Mandzuka,
also accused Andreas Papandreou's government of having taken "absurd
steps" against Yugoslavia, one of the latest being its "refusal to
send representatives to a session of the Commission for the
Regulation of the Vardar River, because the meeting was to have
been held in Skopje," the capital of the Socialist Republic of
Macedonia.

Mandzuka also complained that Papandreou's socialist government
had not been ready "to recognize Skopje University, which has a
great reputation throughout the world." What really prompted
Mandzuka's anti-Papandreou article was a report about a press
conference recently organized by Nikolaus Martis. Martis, according
to Mandzuka, had been a minister in the former rightist Greek
government and the author of The Falsification of Macedonia's
History.

--------------------------

(1) 9-10 July 1983.

This material was prepared for the use of the staff of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

[page 2]

RAD BR/177

Our correspondent in Athens, Lazar Carnic,
reported that Martis had tried to convince the
audience at his press conference that "now in
Yugoslavia and in the past in Bulgaria, some
people call themselves Macedonians." According
to Martis, "only a Greek and nobody else" has
the right to call himself Macedonian. The former
Greek minister added that after the Slavs had
come to this region they were called
Slavomacedonians; later the name "Slavo" was
dropped and only the name Macedonian remained.
Only the Greeks have the right to call themselves
Macedonians.

Mandzuka also criticized To Vima for claiming that Belgrade
had not abandoned its efforts "to create an artificial Macedonian
nation" by supporting the government in Skopje, which had been
trying to prove that the Macedonians were not Greeks. The Greek
paper also accused the Skopje government of having "falsified
historical facts" in its efforts to prove that "in the Pirin
region of Bulgaria and in the Greek part of Macedonia the
Slavomacedonians lived as a national minority, which is being
suppressed and which is demanding its rights."

Mandzuka said that it was necessary to grant all national
minorities their rights in the same way that Yugoslavia has done
for so long. He accused To Vima of "drastically violating" good
relations by denying the existence of the Macedonian nation.

"Bulgarians Are Not Macedonians." This was the title of an
article by Gligor Stojkovski, published in the Zagreb weekly
Oko. [2] If in the past the slogan in Yugoslavia was "Macedonians
are not Bulgarians," this time Stojkovski turned the whole thing
upside down. His article is so vitriolic that one wonders how
Belgrade and Sofia could come to any "fraternal agreement" at all.
A recent international conference in Moscow on the compilation of
a Slavic Linguistic Atlas and a Carpathian Dialect Atlas was used
by Stojkovski to castigate the Bulgarians. The following are only
a few "fraternal" examples:

The Bulgarian "politlinguists" . . . are masters of
manipulating things from the underground, having
thus far produced the following: "polithistorians,"
"politgeographers," "politwriters," as well as the
phenomenon of the Bulgarian Army, which has been
turned from being Hitler's bootblack into an army
of liberation, not only of its own people, but also
of other peoples.

Stojkovski charged the Bulgarians with trying "to wash their
hands in the Adriatic Sea, their legs in the Black Sea, and their
head in the Aegean." They are now waiting for a miracle, with
their "century-long loyalty and commentable patience, something
that began under the Turks, continued under the Russians, together
with their Balkan neighbors, and twice under the Germans."
Stojkovskii then went on:

-----------------

(2) 9 June 1983.

[page 3]

RAD BR/177

The Bulgarians are now waiting calmly for
the Japanese, the Lilliputians, the Eskimos,
or anyone else who would come and ask them
to become their servants in return for a
single fee: Macedonia.

Bulgarian Veto of the Atlas, stojkovski went to some length to show how
in 1982 the Bulgarians had vetoed "any further work on the
preparation of the Slavic Linguistic Atlas" because the Macedonian language
was going to be mentioned in it. The conference, however, "did
not accept the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences' request to eradicate
the Macedonian language," Stojkovski claimed. He added that "as long
as 1,500 years ago the Bulgarians could not conceive that they were
not Macedonians." The Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts in
Skopje had lodged a protest in Moscow against the Bulgarians,
demanding that "the necessary steps be taken against those who
have been undermining the publication of the two atlases" -- the
the Slavic and the Carpathian. Stojkovski then explained
current situation in the following terms:

The present stalemate in the preparation of
the atlas falls into two phases: the first
lasted from 1959 to 1971; the second, from
1971 until now. This second phase is the era
of the "Sofia kitchen," which has been cooking
bitter dishes to serve Slavicists from a
dozen European countries. . . . Since 1971
Bulgarian representatives on various
commissions have been using sabotage and
subversive acts, attacking the Macedonian language
both publicly and covertly.

The first thing they did, Stojkovski said, was "to deny the
Macedonian language in Pirin Macedonia." He added that "they were
not disturbed by the fact that Macedonian is also spoken
in Albania and Greece and that Skopje University has been studying
it." The Bulgarians refused to take part in the conferences on the
atlas in Skopje and Ohrid, and in 1972 they demanded that "four
additional Bulgarian areas be recognized in Thrace" in Greece.

In 1973, during [the conference in Warsaw, the
Bulgarian "politlinguists" were very noisy,
impudent, and uncultured, and were publicly
reprimanded for their rude behavior. In 1974,
at the conference in Dresden, the Bulgarians
presented a new map with several Bulgarian areas
-- this time in Turkey. The conference rejected
the map after a protest by the Yugoslav commission.
In 1976, however, at the conference in Warsaw, the
map was accepted after some unpleasant discussion,
the "controversial" areas having been removed from
the Bulgarian document and published as separate,
linguistically neutral, areas.

[page 4]

RAD BR/177

In 1977, Stojovski claimed, the situation had deteriorated,
because at the conference in Moscow "the Bulgarian 'politlinguists'
supported by the Soviet representatives, tried to eliminate the
Macedonian language." In the introduction to volume one of the
Slavic Linguistic Atlas "an article was published in which Macedonian
areas were mentioned, precisely in the places where the [Macedonian]
dialects in Greece and Albania" are spoken. Stojkovski then went
on:

The book was approved and signed by all the
national commissions after the Bulgarian
proposal had been rejected. In 1978, however,
the book was published with the following
changed formulation: the Macedonian dialects
in Greece and Albania are called "the
South-Slavic dialects on the territory of Greece,
Albania, and Turkey." This forgery has no
precedence in the whole history of research.

The Yugoslavs protested and another conference was convened in
Moscow, the Bulgarians again repeated their anti-Macedonian demands,
but they were rejected. "The decisions were once again not
going to be respected," however. At the conference in Warsaw in
1982, the Bulgarians demanded that "the second edition of the
inaugurating volume should include the formulation that 'the
Bulgarian national collective is not willing to take part in the
formulation of certain items accepted in the Atlas' and said that
the text The Unity of the Bulgarian Language should be quoted."
According to Stojkovski, other delegations rejected the Bulgarian
request. In turn, the Bulgarians addressed their protests to
various Soviet institutions. Having commented that the Bulgarians
"should be sympathized with" because so many people had promised
them Macedonia, Stojkovski concluded that "We are happy to establish
that the Bulgarians are not Macedonians."

- end -

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