Macedonian Slavs Claiming the Ancients is Not a Recent Phenomenon

Ethnic Macedonians are sometimes subject to ridicule when claiming ancient Macedonian heritage. After all, this is just “antiquization” that simply came out of nowhere after the Republic of Macedonia’s independence in the 1990s, right?

Nope. It actually seems to have coincided with the general rise of nationalism in Europe and the first clear expressions of Macedonian national identity. This article outlines major expressions of ethnic Macedonian identity from prior to 1903.

What do we call a nation? — Gjorgi Pulevski (public domain)

Prior to the 19th century

There are limited mentions of Macedonians distinct from their neighboring groups prior to the 1800s.

• Vatican archives from 1619 state that scholarships were provided to Macedonian bishops. In the documents, “Bosnians, Serbs, Bulgarians, and Macedonians” are mentioned. (link)
• The Macedonian Hussar Regiment was a military unit of the Russian Imperial Army, established in 1759. It was made up of Bulgarians, Greeks, Serbs, and Vlachs, though many were also listed as “Macedonians”. (link)

1840s

As nationalism begins to rise across Europe, we see the first clear expressions from the Slavs of Macedonia that they are their own nation.

Radibuš is a village in northeast Macedonia, near Kriva Palanka. In 1846, the local teacher, Gjorgi Makedonski, stated he was one of twelve children born to Dimitrija and Varskija. His father, Dimitrija Makedonski got the nickname “Makedonski” because “we are Macedonians, not Greeks” and Gjorgi’s grandfather also had the nickname. Gjorgi states he took the name Makedonski, not simply because his father and grandfather did, but “so that it would be known that we are Slavs from Macedonia”. (book)

1860s

Beginning in the 1860s, reports from individuals like Petko Slaveykov and Stojan Novaković stated that young intellectuals from Macedonia were claiming that they were not Bulgarians, rather that they were Macedonians descended from the ancient Macedonians. In 1871, Slaveykov wrote an article called “The Macedonian Question” in which he writes that the Macedonians believe they have nothing in common with Bulgarians. In 1874, Slaveykov alerted the Bulgarian Exarch that these people were working on the advancement of their local dialect and their own Macedonian church leadership. (link) (link) (link)

1870s and 1880s

• Gjorgi Pulevski is well-known as one of the first to publicly exclaim that the Macedonian nation and its language is distinct from the Bulgarian. Born in 1817, in historic Galičnik, Pulevski published in 1875 Dictionary of Three Languages, written in three parallel columns, with Macedonian, Albanian, and Turkish written side-by-side in Cyrillic (pretty interesting to see the latter two written in this alphabet). In it, he states the following:

What do we call a nation? — People who are of the same origin and who speak the same words and who live and make friends of each other, who have the same customs and songs and entertainment are what we call a nation, and the place where that people lives is called the people’s country. Thus, the Macedonians also are a nation and the place which is theirs is called Macedonia.

• Pulevski followed his 1875 book with A Macedonian Fairy (1878) and A Macedonian Songbook (1879). His Grammar of the language of the Slavic Macedonian population (1880) was the first Macedonian grammar book. He contrasted the language in this book with both Bulgarian and Serbian. General History of the Macedonian Slavs followed in 1892.
• In 1878 in the region today known as Pirin Macedonia (Blagoevgrad Province, Bulgaria), an uprising against Ottoman rule occurred. It was named the Macedonian Uprising by the insurgents. A constitutional document proclaiming the social, national, and philosophical aims of the uprising states that the ultimate goal of the rebels was to create an independent Macedonia. Bulgarian academics consider this document to be a forgery. Nonetheless, the document glorifies the army of Alexander of Macedon. (link)
• In 1885, writer Grigor Prličev describes “Mother Macedonia” as having birthed Alexander the Great and Saints Cyril and Methodius, and that she will again birth great sons like them. (book)
• The Secret Macedonian Society was established in 1885 in Sofia to promote the ethnic Macedonian identity, language, and establish a church. The Bulgarian government disbanded it the following year. (book)
• Temko Popov, born in 1855, was one of the founders of the Secret Macedonian Society. In 1888, he wrote in a letter that:

even if Jesus Christ had descended from heaven, he could not persuade the Macedonian that he is a Bulgarian or a Serb, other than Macedonians in which Bulgarian propaganda has already taken root.

• Kosta Šahov on multiple occasions distinguished Macedonians from Bulgarians, expressing desire for an independent Macedonia, beginning with his newspaper Macedonia in 1888. In issue no. 4, he writes of Alexander the Great being a point of national pride for every Macedonian.
• Isaija Mažovski published his life’s memoirs in 1922. He describes his 1888 speech in Kiev in which he stated that Philip II and Alexander the Great were pure Slavs. He also writes that, when asked of his nationality in Russia in 1897, he replied that his people are Old Slavs who came to the region from “Mother Russia” much earlier than the Serbs and Bulgarians. (link)
• At the end of the 1880s, Ivan Hadži Nikolov expressed offense at Bulgarian initiatives in Macedonia, stating “give me money to be a Bulgarian”. (link)

1890s

• Austro-Hungarian journalist Karl Hron published in 1890 Das Volksthum der Slaven Makedoniens (Nationality of the Slavic Macedonians). He states (book):

After my own studies of the Serbian-Bulgarian dispute, I came to the conclusion that the Macedonians, both in their history and in their language, are a special nation. So, they are neither Serbs, much less Bulgarians, but descendants of those Slavic settlers who inhabited the Balkan Peninsula long before the Serbian and Bulgarian invasion and who later did not mix with either of these two nations.

• Theodosius of Skopje, as bishop of Skopje, renounced the Bulgarian Exarchate and tried to restore the Archbishopric of Ohrid as a separate Macedonian Orthodox Church. He pleased with the Bulgarian church to allow this separation, but ultimately wrote a letter to Pope Leo XIII requesting recognition and protection from the Roman Catholic Church in 1891. (link)
• The Young Macedonian Literary Association was founded in Sofia in 1891. It was attacked by Stefan Stambolov’s People’s Liberal Party for linguistic and national separatism. (link)
• The local school council of Kostur (present-day Kastoria, Greece) in 1892 adopted a proposal to replace the Bulgarian and Greek languages of instruction with the local Macedonian dialect. (book)
• Krste Misirkov, considered the founder of Macedonian literary language, was enrolled in a secondary school in Belgrade in 1893 when he founded a student association called “Vardar”. The chief principle in this organization’s charter was that Macedonia should belong to the Macedonians. (link)
• Petar Poparsov, a revolutionary and author, published in 1894 Stambolovism in Macedonia and its Representatives in which he complains of the Bulgarian Jesuit detachment in Macedonia with its tendency to “create Bulgarians in Macedonia”. He criticizes Bulgarian propaganda, describes Philip of Macedon as a countryman, and says “Give me money, and I will become a Bulgarian”. (book)
• British stateman William Ewart Gladstone in 1897 asks (link):

Why not Macedonia for the Macedonians as well as Bulgaria for the Bulgarians and Serbia for the Serbians?

• Goce Delčev in 1897 laments in a letter to Nikola Maleševski, asking “is there a nation that has struggled so much from its own sons, than the Macedonian!” (link). Delčev, perhaps the most important revolutionary figure in 1905 stated “So long as I carry a rifle on my shoulder, Macedonia will be inaccessible to any Bulgarian officer.” (link)

1901

Boris Sarafov, in an article in The Times, stated that Macedonians consider themselves to be a separate national element who would not allow incorporation into Bulgaria, Greece, or Serbia. (image)

1902

The Macedonian Literary Society was established in 1902 as an organization of Macedonians in Russia seeking an independent Macedonia. The map drawn by the group laid the basis for what ethnic Macedonians still consider to be a “United Macedonia” today. Its president was Dimitrija Čupovski (1878–1940) until 1917. (link)

1903

• Nikola Karev, best-known as the president of the short-lived Kruševo Republic, was interviewed by the Greek newspaper “Acropolis” on 8 May 1903. He identified himself as a Macedonian and a descendant of Alexander the Great. (link)
• In 1903, Krste Misirkov laid the principles of the modern Macedonian language in his book On the Macedonian Matters. He also argued for Macedonian autonomous institutions in the Ottoman Empire and he attacked the Bulgarian Exarchate and the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization. In 1905, he published the first scientific magazine in Macedonian, “Vardar”. (book)

These expressions only grow more common and more vocal over the years.

What This All Means

The point of this is not to determine whether or not ethnic Macedonians are indeed descendants of ancient Macedonians. Of course many modern ethnic groups claim ancient ones for their nation-building process. The point is that the Macedonian national identity, often tied to Philip and Alexander, emerged long before certain more powerful nations want the world to believe.

There is nothing wrong with being Bulgarian, Greek, or Serbian. However, the Macedonians are not Bulgarians, Greeks, or Serbs. Regardless of the text presented above, the Macedonians are Macedonian because their fathers, grandfathers, and as far back as they can trace in their families are simply Macedonian. No “friendship” agreements and no Bulgarian EU passports will change this.

In a time in which it is becoming accepted that a person can identify with a gender they were not born with, it should be outrageous to anyone that a few million people cannot decide for themselves their own national identity — an identity that is centuries in the making.