Macedonia

   A geographical region in the Balkans under Ottoman rule until the twentieth century.

   The creation of Greek, Serbian, and Bulgarian national identities in the nineteenth century resulted in Macedonia becoming a focus of the national ambitions of all three governments. Macedonia became part of Bulgaria in the Treaty of San Stefano in March 1878 but returned to Ottoman control by the Congress of Berlin the following July. In the 1890s, the governments sponsored rival armed groups who fought the Muslims and one another. The conflict was not simply over territory but over peoples whom the governments and peoples of Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia considered were their brothers and sisters.

   All three sides used propaganda, education, and violence to achieve their ends. The Greek cause linked nationality to the allegiance of the Orthodox of Macedonia to the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Greek rite. Education was the focus of propaganda. The Greek cause suffered outside of the Aegean regions, because the people of the interior were mostly Slav. Nevertheless, the propaganda effort and the violence adopted in the 1890s managed to win the Greek cause some support in central Macedonia. The Greek government became more involved after the death of Pavlos Melas, a Greek army officer, in 1904.

   Bulgaria sponsored the largest organization fighting for the autonomy of Macedonia, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). The organization was founded in 1893 by a group of Bulgarian revolutionaries led by Hristo Tatarchev and Dame Gruev under the name Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committee. In 1902, it became the Secret Macedonian- Adrianople Revolutionary Organization and in 1906 the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization. It disbanded itself during the Bulgarian occupation of Macedonia (1915–1918), but was revived in 1920 and took the name IMRO. At first the Committee wanted to unite all those - Bulgarians, Greeks, Vlachs, and Turks -dissatisfied with Ottoman rule in Macedonia and the Adrianople Vilayet and obtain political autonomy for the two regions. When the Ottomans discovered a depot of ammunition near the Bulgarian border in 1897, however, repressions against committee activists led to its transformation into a militant organization, which engaged in attacks against Ottoman officials and punitive actions against suspected traitors. The launch of pro-Serb and pro-Greek guerrilla organizations into Macedonia further militarized and nationalized IMRO and the people of Macedonia. The Bulgarian cause dominated in central and northern Macedonia and was also strong in southern Macedonia.

   A Croatian historian, Spiridon Gopcevic - also known as Leo Brenner - made the greatest contribution to Serbian propaganda. In 1889, he published his ethnographic study “Macedonia and Old Serbia,” which argued that there were 2 million Serbs in Macedonia and only 200,000 Greeks and 50,000 Bulgarians. Other such “scholars” published similar works. Such views were transferred into practice in the educational system drastically from 1878. The Society of Saint Sava in Belgrade gave scholarships to talented Orthodox Macedonians, turning them into staunch supporters of the Serbian cause. Nevertheless, the Serbian cause in Macedonia was less successful than the Bulgarian and Greek, with success restricted to the northern and western districts of Tetovo, Skopje, Gostivar, Debar, Kicevo, and Kumanovo.

   In 1912, the governments of Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia put their differences aside to join forces against Ottoman rule. Despite support in Bulgaria, as well as in Macedonia, for the establishment of an autonomous Macedonian province under a Christian governor, Sofia agreed to the partition of Macedonia, but without fixing its borders the conflict became a battle of armies. The Greek army beat the Bulgarians to Salonica, while Belgrade and Sofia disputed the division of Macedonia. In June 1913, Bulgaria’s Tsar Ferdinand, without consulting the government and without any declaration of war, ordered Bulgarian troops to attack the Greek and Serbian troops in Macedonia. The intervention of the Romanian and Ottoman armies tilted the scales against Bulgaria. Vardar Macedonia was incorporated into Serbia and Greece secured Aegean Macedonia. The region was the primary battleground of the Second Balkan War. During the Greek advance at the end of June, the army set fire to the Bulgarian quarter of the town of Kukush and more than 150 Bulgarian villages around Kukush and Serres, driving 50,000 refugees into Bulgaria. In retaliation the Bulgarian army burned the Greek quarter of Serres.

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   FURTHER READING:

    Anderson, M. S. The Eastern Question 1774–1923 . London: Macmillan, 1966;

    Gerolymatos, André. The Balkan Wars: Conquest, Revolution, and Retribution from the Ottoman Era to the Twentieth Century and Beyond . New York: Basic Books, 2002;

    Hammond, N.G.L. A History of Macedonia. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.

   ANDREKOS VARNAVA