Historic Macedonia
Historic Macedonia is in Greece, so what is the historic Macedonian Struggle?
By historic I mean the ancient kingdom of the Macedonians from about 500 BC – 400 BC, or from Alexander I to Archelaos, before Philip II and Alexander III. Part of historic Macedonia, namely the plain of Pelagonia now lies in SW Yugoslav Makedonija. The ancient Macedonians were Greek in language religion and culture but Macedonia remained backward and never developed city states. Macedonia remained conservative and unchanged as a bronze age, Mycenaean kingdom, while most of the other Greek world had developed into self governed city states.
A thousand years later the Slavs started arriving and eventually many settled in the Haemus peninsula and in Macedonia during the middle to later Middle ages from the 6th to 7th to 8th centuries while the Bulgarians appeared a bit later. The Bulgarians were a Turkic tribe that created a state out of lands they won from Byzantium but were eventually absorbed linguistically by the more numerous Slavs. The Croats, the Serbs and Slavomacedonians therefore predate the Bulgarians. The Albanians appear by the the late 10th to early 11th century and the Ottoman Turks arrive in Macedonia by the mid 14th cAD. By the 19th century Macedonia was so mixed ethnically that the French named their own mixed fruit salad “Macedoine”.
Currently there are three geographic entities that call themselves Macedonia. The largest is historic Macedonia which is over 50% of the currently perceived geographic Macedonia. I say percieved because therecwas never a consensus as to what are the frontiers of Macedonia. They change almost every century. The second largest is Yugoslav Makedonija (Slavomakedonija) which is now FYROM or ROM and uner a recent agreement is Severna/North Makedonija and is about one third of the perceived Macedonia total. The smallest part is Bulgarian Makedonija which lies in SW Bulgaria. Ethically Greek Macedonia is over 95% Greek. Yugoslav Makedonija is 30% Albanian about 5O % Slavomacedonian and the rest is Serbs, Greeks, Torbeshi (Muslim Slavs), Turks, Gypsies, etc. Bulgarian Makedonija is mostly Christian Bulgarians with a sizable Pomak speaking (Muslim Slav) minority.
The FYROM Slavomacedonians have since 1944 put out the claim that they are the ONLY “Macedonians”, a claim that is not accepted by anyone else in the region.
Greeks point out to the Greek language and culture of the Ancient Macedonians plus the fact that their part coinsides with the historic Makedonia. The Bulgarians dispute the claim of the Slavomacedonians as a separate linguistic and ethnic group (the Makedonski being closely related and fully inter-intelligible with Bulgarian), noting that such a separate nationality did not exist before the end of WWII. The Macedonians Slavs were called just that, Macedonians Slavs or Bulgarians.
Personally, I agree with the position of historians of Ancient Macedonia being a Greek kingdom, in both culture and language, a claim that is confirmed both by the self identity of the ancient Macedonians themselves and by the archaeological record (every single Macedonian inscription is in Greek, the Macedonians names are unmistakably Greek and the Macedonians fully participated in the religious and cultural Panhellenic festivals. The fact that there are numerous Greek theaters in Macedonia means only one thing that the citizens of those cities understood the play) .
I agree with the Slavomacedonians that they have the right to be called a separate ethnicity from the Bulgarians based on the fact that Croats, Bosnian Muslims and Serbs all speak the same language, religion being the only differentiation, yet they self identify as separate ethnicities. The Serbs consider the Montenegrans Serbs but the Montenegrans disagree, although religion and language unites them. Bavarian Germans and Austrians are both Catholic and German Speaking yet they consider themselves separate ethnicities, while Americans, Belgians, Canadians and Swiss, among others, can be of different religion and language yet within their respective country they claim to be of the same nationality, ethnicity being a matter of self identification. The only point of contention I have with Slavomacedonians is their claim to EXCLUSIVITY on “Macedonism”, which aims to limits the “Macedonian” label only to the Slav-speaking inhabitants of FYROM, plus the bilingual speakers in Greece and Bulgaria.