|
Yugoslavia Macedonians
Beginning in the seventh century A.D., the area of the modern
Republic of Macedonia was overwhelmingly populated by Slavs; and
in the ninth century, Macedonia produced the first flourish of
Slavic literary activity. Unresolved, however, is the specific
nationality to which Macedonia's Slavs now belong. The Bulgars,
Serbs, and, even the Greeks claim them. Bulgaria recognized the
Macedonian minority in the Pirin region that it retained after
World War II. In the late 1980s, however, neither Bulgaria nor
Greece recognized a Macedonian nationality: Bulgaria insisted
that Macedonia's Slavs were Bulgars; Greece maintained that the
adjective "Macedonian" was only a territorial designation, and
that the inhabitants of Aegean Macedonia were not Slavs at all
but ethnic Greeks who happened to speak a Slavic language. By
contrast, beginning in the 1960s the Yugoslav government gave the
Macedonians the nominal status of a separate "nation," to
forestall Greek and Bulgarian claims. In 1981 Yugoslav statistics
showed about 1.3 million ethnic Macedonians in Yugoslavia,
250,000 in Pirin Macedonia (southwestern Bulgaria), and over
300,000 in Aegean Macedonia (northern Greece); Macedonians made
up 6 percent of Yugoslavia's total population, 67 percent of
Macedonia's, and .5 percent of Serbia's.
Macedonia was the first of the Yugoslav lands to fall under
the Ottoman Turks and the last to be freed from Ottoman rule. The
dark centuries of Ottoman domination left the region's Slavs
backward, illiterate, and unsure of their ethnic identity. In the
nineteenth century, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Greek clergymen
established church schools in the region and worked to spread
their respective national ideologies through education. Families
often compromised by sending one child to each type of school,
and whole villages frequently passed through several phases of
religious and national reorientation. After the end of Ottoman
rule, control of Macedonia became the most inflammatory issue of
Balkan politics. After a period of guerrilla warfare, terrorism,
and savage reprisals ending with Bulgaria's defeat in the Second
Balkan War in 1913, an anti-Bulgarian campaign began in the areas
of Macedonia left under Serbian and Greek control. Bulgarian
schools and churches were closed, and thousands of Macedonians
fled to Bulgaria, which then was viewed as a place of refuge. The
process was repeated after Bulgaria's World War I occupation of
Macedonia ended. In the interwar period, Macedonian terrorist
groups, with intermittent Bulgarian support, continued armed
resistance against the Yugoslav government. The Yugoslavs refused
to recognize a Macedonian nation, but many Macedonians accepted
Yugoslav control in the 1930s and 1940s. Bulgarian occupation in
1941, first greeted as liberation, soon proved as offensive as
the Yugoslav assimilation program it replaced; the sense of
confused allegiance among Macedonians thus continued into the
postwar period.
After World War II, the Yugoslav government recognized
Macedonian nationhood and established a separate republic,
energetically nurturing Macedonian national consciousness and the
Macedonian language. The first standardized Macedonian grammar
was published in 1948. Federal support for Macedonian cultural
institutions, including a university in Skopje, furthered the
program of national recognition. In 1967 Belgrade underscored the
Macedonians' ethnic individuality by supporting the independence
of the Macedonian Orthodox Church, which for years afterward
enjoyed a more favored position than any of Yugoslavia's other
churches.
Data as of December 1990
|
