United Macedonian Diaspora Conference 2009

[shockolanu]

All I want to tell to people from FYROM is:

You should remember that before Turks came, you were part of the Byzantine Empire, treated as equals.

The Greek flag is big enough for the entire planet, you should unite with Greece and be part of the region called Macedonia.

This way nobody will steal or take anything from nobody and everyone will have the right to self determination/identification.

If you desire UNITY, you will unite with Greece.

If you want the lands, it's a different story.

[tzakos1982]

STALIN TO BULGARIAN DELEGATION (G. Dimitrov, V. Kolarov, T. Kostov)

The Kremlin, 7 June 1946

Cultural autonomy must be granted to Pirin Macedonia within the framework of Bulgaria. Tito has shown

himself more flexible than you ...That a Macedonian consciousness has not yet developed among the population

is of no account. No such consciousness existed in Belarus either when we proclaimed it a Soviet Republic."

What's that??? no "Makedonski" consciousness before communist propaganda?

[MacedonianSoGreek]

"Where an overarching identity existed among Slavs in Macedonia, it was a Bulgarian one until at least the 1860s. The cultural impetus for a separated "Macedonian identity" would only emerge later..."

(Tom Gallagher, Outcast Europe, page 47)

[MacedonianSoGreek]

1.

"But even stranger is the name "Macedonians", which was imposed on us only 10 to 15 years ago by outsiders and not as something by our own intellectuals... Yet the people in Macedonia know nothing of that ancient name, reintroduced today with a cunning aim on the one hand and a stupid one on the other. They know the older word: "Bugari", although mispronounced: they have even adopted it as peculiarly theirs, inapplicable to other Bulgarians."...

[MacedonianSoGreek]

2.

.."You can find more about this in the introduction to the booklets I am sending you. They call their own Macedono-Bulgarian dialect the "Bugarski language", while the rest of the Bulgarian dialects they refer to as the "Shopski language"."

(Kuzman Shapkarev, in a letter to Prof. Marin Drinov of May 25, 1888 (Makedonski pregled, IX, 2, 1934, p. 55; the original letter is kept in the Marin Drinov Museum in Sofia, and it is available for examination and study)

[MacedonianSoGreek]

1.

"I have even met people who believe there is a special race which they call 'Macedonian', whose 'cause' they wish to aid. The truth is, that in a district which has no official frontiers, and never has had any stable ones, there are people of six races, who, as we have seen, all have causes to be considered [...] I shall speak only of the part I have stayed in- the districts of Lakes Ochrida and Prespa."...

[MacedonianSoGreek]

2.

..."Here there are Greeks, Slavs, Albanians, and Vlahs. Of Turks, except officials and such of the army as may be quartered on the spot, there are few. The Albanians, I believe, are all Moslem. Should there be any Christians they would be officially classed as Greeks." (Edith Durham, "The Burden of the Balkans", 1905, p. 76)