There is nothing random, incidental or thoughtless in Serbian policy towards Bulgaria. This is a strategy with a 180-year history, the beginning of which we find in Iliya Garashanin's "Drawing" from 1844.
Although the prototype of this document was a project of the head of Polish emigration in Europe, Adam Czartoryski, developed in detail by his representative at the Serbian court, the Czech Franjo Zach, Ilija Garašanin further developed and specified the idea that Serbia should become Piedmont for the South Slavs, by united in one state, under its authority. In order to realize this plan, "Serbia must ... from the old Turkish state break stone by stone, so that from this good material, laid on the good foundation of the old Serbian kingdom, the new Serbian state can be built and raised..." And further: "... Having briefly indicated the situation of present-day Bulgaria and its importance for Serbia... we proceed to indicate several preliminary means that must be used to root Serbian influence in Bulgaria..."
And these "patriotic" plans were made 34 years before the liberation of Bulgaria. Even before Bulgaria had felt the beneficial breath of freedom, strategies were already being built for it for its future obsession ... However, until April 3, 1860, when in his Easter service in Constantinople, the Bulgarian Bishop Hilarion Makariopolski did not mention the name of the Ecumenical Patriarch, the Serbian and Greek propaganda, in the territories traditionally inhabited by Bulgarians, do not have such a drastic character. In the act of Hilarion Makariopolski, the emissaries of our neighbours understood that the Bulgarians were starting a struggle for church independence, and then for national independence, which shows that a new candidate is emerging for the inheritance of the Turkish Empire. Thus they come to the conclusion that the Bulgarians are an obstacle to the realization of their megalomaniac "state-building" visions...
This text aims to shake Bulgarian statesmen and politicians, who are mired in daily flea market fights for power and privileges, cleverly hiding behind yet another highly humane ideas and postulates, wrapped in the shiny tinfoil of mutually exclusive propaganda...
***
Tito's confidant Lazar Moisov unwittingly pulls back the curtain. Admitted to the classified Belgrade archives, he stumbles upon clues that reveal the Serbian-Greek plans for the partition of Macedonia. In his study "On the Question of the Macedonian National Minority in Greece", Skopje, 1954, despite his task of confirming the Serbian point of view on Macedonia, citing the source documents, he brings to light the unsuspected, especially for the Bulgarians, truth. And so we learn that from 1861 to 1893 seven secret talks took place between representatives of Belgrade and Athens with ideas for agreements and treaties for the partition of Macedonia. In August 1867, they also signed a military convention.
G. Rakovski had more than once "burned himself" from the unfraternal actions of our western neighbours and reacted with his typical sincerity: "Serbs if they come close enough in their language to the Bulgarians and if they live in their immediate neighbourhood, however, they are always were mortal enemies of Bulgarians and no one stopped opposing them when even the slightest happy... and favourable circumstance appeared to them." (in "Future", Belgrade, late summer, 1863)
A decade later, Hristo Botev will blurt out: "... In your article "Bulgarian spies and inquisitions" you so brazenly and disgustingly slander the Bulgarian people, its exarchy and ourselves that it would not be tactful on our part if we leave you with only a simple contempt..." (in "Zname", May 23, 1875)
And further: "From the beginning of its existence until now, Serbia has been insincere towards the Bulgarian people. Her various governments, from Milos to Milan, besides never wanting to help us throw off the barbarous Turkish yoke from our necks, have always almost endeavoured to hinder our liberation, and always almost looked to take advantage of our confidence, from our strength and our blood..."(in "Flag", April 4, 1875)
Thirty years later, Yavorov witnessed an even more sinister picture created by our Western "brothers": "On the 18th of that evening, a large Serbian detachment attacked the Bulgarian village of Tulmintsi, Palanecko, and burned it down. Men and women, old men and children, swept away by the Serbian scythe and bullets, found a timeless grave in the flames of their native eaves..." (in "Ilinden", May 23, 1908)
We, the modern Bulgarians, love to glorify our revivalists and revolutionaries like Rakovski, Botev, and Yavorov, but there are only a few, especially at the top of the state, party and public hierarchy, who made sense of their insights into the Serbian plans towards Bulgaria!
This is not a rhetorical question, this is a call for statesmanlike pragmatism and wisdom, here in the Balkans...
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Serbia's plans for enlargement take on more concrete dimensions with each passing year. This is how the idea of Macedonianism was born. This happened within the framework of a committee in 1868 at the initiative of Metropolitan Mihailo of Belgrade. According to Kosta Tsarnushanov, this committee (committee) is made up of four people. The chairman is Archimandrite Nikifor Ducic and the members are Prof. Panta Sreckovic, the notorious chauvinist Milos S. Miloevi and Stojan Novakovic. He remained on the committee until August 8, 1872, when he assumed the post of Minister of Education. The committee is tasked with opening Serbian schools outside Serbia, especially in Macedonia, appointing teachers to these schools and providing them with salaries and textbooks.
Already in 1866, Milos S. Miloevich, after returning from Russia, where he had followed, provided Prince Mihailo with a memoir in which he proposed a concept of how to counter the process of the Bulgarian revival in Macedonia.
This activity, against the natural development of our nationality and statehood, received a new strong impetus after the Fermana declaration of Bulgarian church independence on February 28, 1870. Then Serbian ingenuity ran wild. Sent as ambassador to Constantinople, Prof. Stoyan Novakovich, after long observations and reflections, how could the rise of Bulgaria, especially in Macedonia, be stopped, also created his concept of Macedonianism. It was developed in his letter of December 4, 1888, to the Minister of Education Vladan Djordjevic. Here is the text of this letter, which I have quoted more than once: "Since the Bulgarian idea, as everyone knows, has taken deep roots in Macedonia, I think it is almost impossible for it to be completely shaken by opposing it only to the Serbian idea. This idea, I am afraid, would not be able to suppress the Bulgarian idea as a pure and naked opposition, and therefore the Serbian idea would benefit from some ally who would be sharply opposed to Bulgarianism and who would have behind him the elements that could they attract the people and popular sentiments by separating them from Bulgarianism. I see this ally in Macedonianism."
Specific and clear. Macedonianism is a transitional phase of Serbization. The goal is the denationalization of the Bulgarians in Macedonia. And again, Stoyan Novakovic wrote the recipe. Already in 1886, he decided to publish a newspaper in Constantinople. It will be called "Macedonian Newspaper" and will carry out the following program:
1. The Serbian spirit is infused into the Macedonian people in order to prove to them that the Macedonians are not Bulgarians, that they no longer have any connection with the Bulgarians, that the Bulgarians are enemies of the Macedonian people...
2. To develop the most vigorous propaganda for the expulsion of the Bulgarian bishops and teachers, natives of Macedonia and brought up in the Bulgarian spirit.
3. To take the Serbian alphabet as the most suitable for the Macedonian language..." etc.
Listen to the speeches of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Macedonia Hristijan Mickovski, and delve into his real actions to understand that he is today's agent of Stojan Novakovic in Macedonia.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's paternal concern for the fugitive from justice of his own country, former Prime Minister in Skopje, Nikola Gruevski, the warm relations between Orbán and Aleksandar Vučić, as well as Orbán's new financial injection for Mickowski's government are not accidental. The recent redirection by Skopje of the investments planned for the construction of "Corridor #8" to the completion of "Corridor #10" sent, for once, the infrastructural connectivity between the Black and Adriatic seas with Italy to a dead end. This is a problem that obliges Sofia, Rome and Brussels to monitor it carefully.
The demonstrably growing consensus between the presidents Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova and Aleksandar Vucic unceremoniously tears apart the false patriotic shell of Macedonianism and exposes its true essence – the Serbization of the people along the Vardar.
Belgrade, with the support of Budapest, is returning to Skopje more and more distinctly to the era of this brutal process...
***
After the Balkan Wars and especially after the First World War, direct and perfidious Serbization displaced all forms of Macedonianism. Then, for about two decades, it becomes redundant. From 1912 to 1941, Serbization was a constant, ubiquitous and brutally enforced process. I will not repeat familiar examples of this sinister bacchanalia. I will only point out those that continue to be Terra incognita for Bulgarian society. For example, in November 1912 the writer Branislav Nusic was appointed regional governor of Bitola. In our country, he is known for the productions of some of his comedies and other dramatic works. This same "creator", empowered with unlimited powers, uses all means to terrorize the local Bulgarian population. I offer the following case: When the worshipers fill the local church for the Sunday Holy Liturgy, Nušić orders the church to be surrounded by soldiers and guards, places a table in front of the entrance, on which there is an open notebook with blank pages, and makes everyone who comes out write their names with the Serbian ending IR. After this violent ritual, when a grandmother wrote her name, according to the new "rules", in the "company" of soldiers with bayonets pointed at her, through tears she uttered: "We are Turkish!"
The "humanist", the "cardiologist" and the criminal are in a tight embrace, which nobody wants to know about in our country.
Particularly elegantly perfidious is the case of the Nobel laureate for literature, the famous writer Ivo Andrić. Hundreds of pages have been written about him in our country, with well-deserved praise for his work, but this genius of words is also a genius as a high-ranking Serbian official.
There is a report by the temporary manager of the Bulgarian legation in Belgrade, Hristo Shishmanov, dated September 1, 1936, on the occasion of his meeting with the head of the political directorate at the Yugoslav Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ivo Andrić. Reflecting on possible changes in the Bulgarian government and subtly hinting at changes that do not suit the interests of Belgrade, Andrić concludes: "Establishing a political regime in Bulgaria that TOLERATE THE MACEDONIAN ORGANIZATION... WILL ONLY BE HARMFUL FOR RELATIONS BETWEEN THE TWO STATES ..." (CDIA, f. 176, op. 7, a.e. 222, l. 109-110. )
Then VMRO was perceived in Belgrade as a Bulgarian organization, which is its essence. An organization that fights against the Serbization of its compatriots in Macedonia. Let Hristian Mickovski, the chairman of the ersatz VMRO-DPMNE, which has been turned into an instrument of this vicious policy, comment on this fact...
In the pamphlet "Serbian Chauvinism" by Prof. Boyan Penev, published in 1915, the author quotes an excerpt from the preface to one of the poetry collections of the poet M. Stefanović. This is not aesthetics. This is a lesson in primitivism and hatred: "To the meanest and most uncultured nations recorded in the history of mankind, from the creation of the world until today, the Bulgarian people can also be referred to," the author writes.
Here is the finale of one of his poems: "Al Bugarin does not know God."
When such an inhumane building
In the shameful twentieth-century
In the whole cultural world...
Weep, earth, abhor culture!”
Thus, generation after generation is brought up in this spirit. The communication model offered to us by Skopje today bears the same brand... And in Belgrade, they continue to suggest that the Bulgarians are their main enemy. This is what the scholar Jovan Djuric, a specialist in Byzantine and Balkan history, claimed in an interview with the French weekly "Nouvelle Observatoire" (February 24 - March 2, 1994). When asked whether the Croats were the main enemy of the Serbs, he answered: "...For Serbia, Bulgaria - it is the rival, the enemy, the threat in general…”
How true are the words of a Serb, Vladimir Goati, who on April 10, 1994, in front of the "New York Times" said most sincerely: "We are victims of a long-lasting nationalist idea from which it is impossible to free ourselves. This is the true state of mind of the Serbian people…”
And what has the Serbian embassy in Sofia been doing all these years? This is what we learn from the book "War Returns" by the Frenchman Henri Pozzi. He wrote: “…Suffice it to say that the military attaché, Colonel Skecic, has created a veritable organization of hired killers…I myself met more than 20 times in Sofia…agents of the Serbian legation, accompanied by large dogs, for whom agents all they know...that they are the inspirers, if not the authors, of the recent political murders in Sofia..."
Bulgaria is really "lucky" to have such a neighbour...
Not long ago, on one of the televisions, our historian was worried about the fate of Orthodoxy in this confused Balkan peninsula. Of what exactly? Couldn't figure it out.
To this worried person, I offer one statistic about the fate of the Bulgarian Orthodox churches and priests in the Serbian-occupied Vardar Macedonia.
"In 1912-1913, the authorities confiscated and turned into Serbian 761 Bulgarian churches, extradited five Bulgarian bishops, expelled, killed or forced 833 Bulgarian priests to declare themselves Serbs..." (in "Kambana" - Sofia, October 6, 1913 . )
I offer this as food for thought for all those worried about our Orthodox unity. Who blows up this unity, let everyone answer for himself.
***
After 1944, Macedonianism came to light again as an instrument of Serbism, it became the official national doctrine of the Republic of Macedonia within the framework of Tito's Yugoslavia. Now Belgrade was in control of all processes asserting the new "national" self-awareness. We know everything about this period well. We are only waiting for the rulers in Skopje to open the archives of the UDBA (Directorate for State Security, which was the secret police organization of Communist Yugoslavia - editor's note) so that they themselves can finally understand how the new identity and language was "confirmed" 80 years ago.
Here I will focus on another "invention" of the sick imagination of the strategists in Belgrade. This is the new nationality - the shopi. From the beginning of the nineties of the 20th century, these "wise" people, in the new conditions after the fall of the Berlin Wall, decided that they should throw another stone at Bulgaria. This is how the new miracle was created - the Shopian language. The "luminaries" of this invention even managed to translate the comedy of St. L. Kostov's "Women's Kingdom" and put it on the Tsaribrod stage.
And again, Serbian "scientific" thought is leading. In an interview with the Bulgarian weekly "Kultura" - April 9, 1993, academician Vojislav Djuric, without any concern, edifyingly and rhetorically asks: "Do you know what is the main historical problem between Bulgarians and Serbs, which has existed for so long because no one admits it? The Shopites...And the Shopites are that particular ethnic element that speaks its own language and has its own culture..."
Another Serbian academic, Radovan Samardzic, worried in the same year that the "Shop issue" could become the "main stumbling block" in relations between Serbia and Bulgaria.
And to make the phantasmagoria complete, in 2008 students from the University of Niš under a special "academic" project, supported, what an absurdity! and from SU "St. Kliment Ohridski" crisscrossed the Western Bulgarian outskirts in Serbia, the Western parts of Bulgaria and the eastern towns and villages of the Republic of Macedonia to look for "shops". On this occasion, the Belgrade newspaper "Večernje novosti" from April 7, 2008, wrote that the students were crossing...the "Shopia" region, where the Shopians live and speak a dialect "close" to Old Slavonic...
Enviable "creative" ingenuity, that's a fact!
***
After Rakovski, Botev, Yavorov, Boyan Penev, Stiliyan Chilingirov, Danail Krapchev, Trifon Kunev... who in different years raised their voices against the unceremonious aggressiveness of Belgrade towards the Bulgarian state-building and spiritual roots, another worthy Bulgarian shone with his courage and foresight. This person is Angel Tomov, a graduate of VMRO, with an unshakable Bulgarian self-awareness, not subject to ideological and propaganda temptations. In April 1950, at the height of the imposition of totalitarian power in our country, he dared to write a letter to the "leader" Valko Chervenkov. With this memorable document, he protested against "...the defeated internationalism of our country on the Macedonian issue..." And he continues:
"He who does not know and is not able to correctly assess that huge, paramount fact in the Balkan social reality called SERBIAN CHAUVINISM (Subch. I.N.) he... will never be able to be properly oriented on the Macedonian question and on Yugoslav policy on this issue, he will be a victim of various illusions, he will lead a naive policy on the Macedonian issue, he will be exposed to surprises and disappointments..."
Sounds topical, doesn't it? Hopefully, a high-ranking statesman will be found to reflect on the concerns of this worthy Bulgarian!
***
And I have a dream: to see President Rumen Radev, former Prime Ministers Boyko Borisov, Nikolay Denkov and other party greats sitting around the table. They, with serious concern and mutual trust, discuss ideas, on how to secure European investments for the construction of the railway connection between Sofia and Skopje and the entire infrastructure along the "East-West" direction. Of course, they have already figured out who and why has been sabotaging the implementation of this project for decades...
This will be the worthy response to 180 years of destructive primitive ingenuity of Belgrade towards Bulgaria...
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Ivan Nikolov is a journalist, publicist and publisher. He is the director of the magazine "Bulgaria-Macedonia" and of the publishing house "St. Kliment Ohridski". Ivan Nikolov is one of the greatest experts on Balkan issues, the author of numerous articles and books on the subject. The analysis was written specifically for BGNES. | BGNES
