There is nothing random, accidental or thoughtless in Serbian policy towards Bulgaria. This is a strategy with a 180-year biography, the beginning of which we find in Iliya Garashanin's “Drawing” from 1844.
Although the prototype of this document is 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 develops and concretizes the idea that Serbia should become Piedmont for the South Slavs , by uniting them into one state, under its authority. In order to implement this idea “Serbia must … from the old Turkish state to break stone by stone, so that from this good material laid on the good foundation of the old Serbian kingdom to build and raise the new Serbian state…“ And further: “… Having briefly indicated the situation of present-day Bulgaria and its importance for Serbia…we proceed to indicate several preliminary means which 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 neighbors understand that the Bulgarians are 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 megalomaniacal “state-building” visions…
This text aims to shake up the 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…
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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 "About the question of the Macedonian national minority in Greece", Skopje, 1954, despite his task of confirming the Serbian point of view about 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 “scalded“ from the unfraternal actions of our western neighbors and reacted with his typical sincerity: “Serbs, if they are quite closely related to the Bulgarians in terms of their language and if they live in their immediate neighborhood, however, they have always been mortal enemies of Bulgarians and no one is ceased to oppose them when it appeared to them even the least bit happy… and a favorable circumstance.“(in “Future“, Belgrade, late summer, 1863)
A decade later, Hristo Botev will erupt:“… In his article “Spies and Bulgarian Inquisitions“ you defame the Bulgarian people, its exarchy and ourselves so brazenly and disgustingly that it would not be tactful on our part if we leave you with just a simple contempt…“(in “Zname“, May 23, 1875)< /p>
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 endeavored to hinder our liberation, and always almost sought to take advantage of our confidence , of our strength and of our blood…“(in “Zname“, April 4, 1875)
Thirty years later, Yavorov witnessed an even more ominous 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. 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, modern Bulgarians, love to glorify our revivalists and revolutionaries like Rakovski, Botev, Yavorov, but how many are there, especially at the top of the state, party and public hierarchy, who have made sense of their insights into the Serbian plans towards Bulgaria!
This is not a rhetorical question, this is a call for statesmanship pragmatism and wisdom, here in the Balkans…
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Serbian 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.
As early as 1866, Milos S. Miloevich, after returning from Russia, where he had studied, 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, if only the Serbian idea is opposed to it an 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. As early as 1886, he decided to publish a newspaper in Constantinople. It will be called “Macedonian newspaper” and will implement 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, delve into his real actions to understand that he is today's agent of Stojan Novakovic in Macedonia.
The paternal concern of the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for the fugitive from the justice of his own country, the former Prime Minister in Skopje, Nikola Gruevski, the warm relations between Orbán and Aleksandar Vučić, as well as the new financial injection of Orbán for Mickovski's government are not accidental . The recent redirection by Skopje of the investments planned for the construction of “Corridor #8” towards the completion of “Corridor #10”, send 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 follow 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 Skopje more and more clearly to the era of this brutal process...
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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 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 leaves 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” to soldiers with bayonets pointed at her, through tears she uttered: “We are Turkish!“
“The Humanist“, “The Cardiologist“ and the criminal in a tight embrace, which in our country no one wants to know about.
Especially elegant and 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, from 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 DAMAGE THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE TWO COUNTRIES…“ (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 brochure “Serbian chauvinism“ of 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 peoples recorded in the history of mankind, from the creation of the world until today, the Bulgarian people can also be referred to“- writes the author.
Here is the finale of one of his poems:„Al Bugarin does not know God
Where is this inhumane building
To the shame of the twentieth century
To the whole cultural world…
Cry, earth, abhor culture!“
Thus, generations after generations are 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 also claimed by the scholar Jovan Djuric, a specialist in Byzantine and Balkan history, in an interview with the French weekly "Nouvelle Observatoire" (February 24 - March 2, 1994). When asked if the Croats are the main enemy of the Serbs, he answers: “… Serbia Bulgaria – it is the rival, the enemy, the threat in principle…“
How true are the words of a Serb, Vladimir Goati, who on April 10, 1994 in front of the “New York Times” most sincerely says: “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“ of the Frenchman Henri Pozzi. He writes:“…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 which agents everyone knows…are the inspirations, if not the authors, of the recent political murders in Sofia…“
Bulgaria is really “happy“ with a similar neighbor…
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? It could not be understood.
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“ &ndash ; Sofia, October 6, 1913. )
I offer this as a food for thought for all those worried about our Orthodox unity. Who blows up this unity, let everyone answer for himself.
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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. Belgrade was now in control of all the processes confirming 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, so that they themselves can finally understand how it was “confirmed” 80 years ago the new identity and language.
Here I will focus on another “invention“ of the sick imagination of the strategists in Belgrade. This is the new nationality – the shops. 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 they even managed to translate the comedy of St. L. Kostov “Women's Kingdom“ and put it on the Tsaribrod stage.
And again the Serbian “scientific“ thought is leading. In an interview with the Bulgarian weekly “Culture” – 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 recognizes it? The Shopites… And the Shopites are that special ethnic element that speaks its own language and has its own culture…“
Another Serbian academic, Radovan Samardzic, in the same year worried that the “Shop question” can become the “main stumbling block” in the relations between Serbia and Bulgaria.
And to make the phantasmagoria complete, in 2008 students from the University of Niš on a special “academic“ project supported, what an absurdity! and from SU “St. Kliment Ohridski“ crossed 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 “Evening News” on April 7, 2008 wrote that the students were crossing the …region “Shopia”, where the Shopians live and speak a “close” dialect. to Old Slavonic…
Enviable “creative“ ingenuity, that's a fact!
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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:
“ Whoever does not know and is not in a position to correctly evaluate that huge, paramount fact in the Balkan social reality, called SERBIAN CHAUVINISM (Sub. I.N.), he... will never be able to be properly oriented on the Macedonian question and on the 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 current, doesn't it! I hope a high-ranking statesman is found to reflect on the concerns of this worthy Bulgarian!
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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, to discuss ideas, how to secure European investments for the construction of the railway connection between Sofia and Skopje and the entire infrastructure in 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 “St. Kliment Ohridski“ publishing house. Ivan Nikolov is one of the greatest experts on Balkan issues, author of numerous articles and books on the subject. The analysis was written specifically for BGNES. | BGNES