Macedonian Point of View

Home

The people of the Republic of Macedonia consider themselves descendents of the Kingdom of Macedon, that is related to Philip and Alexander the Great, and the Slavs who arrived in the Balkans in the 6th and 7th century AD. The two ethnicities mixed over the centuries and formed the present Macedonian nation. Throughout history the Macedonian people were part of different empires such as the Byzantium Empire, the Bulgarian Empire, the Serbian Empire and the Ottoman Empire. However, there are many periods of history that overlap with Bulgarian history, which causes constant disputes and tension between the two countries. Some examples are Saint, Saint Cyril and Methodius and the Cyrillic Alphabet, the ethnicity of Czar Samuil, the purposes of the IMRO (the International Macedonian Revolutionary Organization) and so on.

Probably one of the most contested historical figures is Czar Samuel who ruled from 976 to 997 AD from his capital in Ohrid. Bulgarians see him as a Bulgarian ruler who managed to unite all of the Bulgarian lands before the eventual Byzantine invasion and victory. For Macedonian people he is a Macedonian czar who had no connection to the previous Bulgarian kingdom and managed to fight the interests of Macedonian people against Greek expansionism. This theory was largely formulated by the historian D.Ostrogorrsky and others in his book History of the Byzantine State. During the 20th century Macedonian people often saw themselves as the victims of different expansionist interests from neighboring countries who want to divide Macedonia, while it is extremely important for Macedonian people to keep its entity. There are clear examples of this after World War I when Macedonia was divided into three and in a way it was good that it could keep its entity after World War II as a Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Map of Macedonia

History of Macedonia

Bulgarian Claims

Dispute with Greece

Serbian Influences

Macedonian Point of View

Conclusion

There is a very interesting citation from Kaplan (1991:99) on the question about the goals of IMRO and the nationality of its leader Gotse Delchev:

"Do not tell me about about Macedonia," the Bulgarian diplomat I met in Greece told me. "There is no Macedonia. It is Western Bulgarian. The language is 80% Bulgarian...Gotse Delchev was a Bulgarian. He was educated in Sofia. Bulgaria funded his guerrila avtivities. He spoke a Western-Bulgarian dialect. How could he be something that does not exist?"

"The Bulgarians are well-known falsifiers of documents..., "Odre Ivanovski, a state historian for the Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, explained when I met him in his office at Skopje. "What can you expect of Tatars?"...Ivanovski went on: "The Bulgarians, you know, have specialized teams who invent books about Gotse Delchev. They bribe foreign scholars with cash and give them professional professorships in order to put their names on the covers of these books...How could Gotse Delchev be Bulgarian? He was born in Macedonia. He spoke Macedonian, not Bulgarian. How could he be a Bulgarina?"

Portrait of Gotse Delchev

Criticism
Byzantine chroniclers Theophylact Simocatta and Nicephorus describe the people living in contemporary Macedonia as Bulgarians. Later William Z. Ripley confirms this in his book “The races of Europe” which makes the Macedonian identity seem relatively new. The Bulgarian historian Kyril Drezov says, “There has been no Macedonian state since the days of the Kings of Macedon in 4th BC between that time and 1912.” He considers it unlikely that the contemporary Macedonians were a separate ethnic group, because there is no mentioning of their name in historical sources. In the case of the Czar Samuil according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Columbia Encyclopedia and older issues of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, Samuil was Czar of Bulgaria.
This is a picture of Czar Samuil. He was the last Bulgarian czar before Bulgaria fell under Byzantium rule for two centuries. The legend says that he died when he saw the rows of hundreds of Bulgarian soldiers who were blinded by the Byzantine emperator, Basil II the Bulgar-Slayer, during their capture. Samuil's heart could not stand this sight and just stopped working.