The diachronic Greek history of Macedonia is at the core of the current FYROM name dispute

'Tymphaios' writes in American Chronicle :

A cult of identification of the modern inhabitants of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) has grown since 1992, with the aim of portraying FYROM as an inheritor and indeed the single inheritor of all things Macedonian. This culture, aided by laws that forbid scientific research in FYROM on the origins of its inhabitants, strives to take away from Greece and especially from the Greek administrative district of Macedonia almost anything that forms part of its Macedonian heritage.

It is uncomfortable to me as a Greek to have to defend Hellenism, especially to a man as blinded with hatred as Risto Stefov. One hopes that by arguing something reasonably, the discourse will benefit everybody. The recent polemics of Risto Stefov (beginning with American Chronicle, 4 Jan 2009 http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/86762) might especially create the false impression to the unknowing public that Greeks have made connections to the ancients using some racial purity argument. Or even that foreigners made such racial links to the ancients on the Greeks´ behalf. Even that this happened unpredictably when no one considered the Greeks to be Greeks. He quotes much from his friend Gandeto, a man he describes as an eminent historian, but who swears a lot. He includes gossip from an Albanian friend of his as evidence about the existence of an allegedly unreported, concealed minority of 3,5 million Albanians in Greece, a country with a population of 11 million. Stefov carefully omits the vast majority of evidence which does not confirm his allegations. Often he does not give references to his sources but pulls accusations out of his hat as if it were an established fact and well known – perhaps it is well known to some of his friends.

The links of the Greeks with diachronic Greek history, language and culture are simply due to a historic continuity, a continuity of language and customs that has survived if altered down to our own time. Greeks are Greeks in the same sense that Italians regard themselves as Italian and the Spanish as Spanish. The language is sufficient without the need to justify their Italianness or Spanisheness by some genetic test, some new discovery or by historical revisionism. For that kind of practice, Mr Stefov ought to look closer at home. While the question of getting a certificate of genetic identity had never occurred to the ancients, the recent Skopjian claims of genetic purity and genetic links to the ancient Macedonians are well beyond the pail. Examples are (a) a highly vaulted in FYROM but otherwise widely discredited study of the HLA gene carried out by FYROM scientists which allegedly proves that the FYROMians are Macedonians while the Greeks and Japanese are Ethiopians, and (b) a recent video made by FYROM state TV where God appears saying among else: "Listen to me, children of the sun and flowers! I, God, created the Macedonoids from which the white race sprung, inhabiting the lands far to the Japan Sea. The other races are Mongoloids and Negroids. All other peoples are of a mixed race". (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ITEdiSBl3Y&feature=related)

If one looks carefully, the video also shows the Greek adminsitrative provinces of Macedonia and Thrace while the praying voice laments, claiming that many "Macedonians" (presumably FYROMian Slavs) have died for them.

Risto Stefov conveniently skips most of the Greek history of Macedonia to make some racial arguments about the modern Greeks. As that leaves the majority of the relevant facts aside, let us rather take the ancients first. We are primarily concerned about the identity of the Macedonians and they were ancient. It should be made clear from the outset that the ancient Macedonians had Greek names, their cities had Greek names and that they had temples and altars dedicated to the gods of the Greek pantheon as the other Greeks. The cult of the Olympian gods in Greece was a religion centered on Mount Olympus in Macedonia. The Macedonian coins had the names of their kings written in Greek. The currency was the drachma as in the rest of Greece as far back as records exist (5th C BC). They had theatres where it is known that plays written only in Greek were played and they spread the Greek language and culture to the lands in Asia conquered by Alexander. All inscriptions found in Macedonia before Roman times only had Greek writing on them – more than 5000 in number. Where hints of the spoken language and grammar survive, as in a katadesmos (magic curse) from Pella, it was in a form of Doric Greek.

"Macedonia, of course, is a part of Greece".

Strabo, VII, Frg. 9 (Loeb, H.L. Jones).

Macedonians participated in the Olympic Games, which at the time were open only to Greeks. Not only are the names of several Macedonian Olympic champions known, but dedications to Macedonian Olympic victors were erected in Olympia itself and were described by Pausanias. The Macedonians had athletic competitions of their own, such as the Olympics of Dion, taking place at the start of the Macedonian month of Dios (month of Zeus), which also marked the start of the Macedonian new year. The city of Dion (Dium), where the games took place, was located at the foothills of Mount Olympus and was suitably dedicated to Zeus. Dion had an important temple dedicated to Zeus, just as Athens was dedicated to Athena and the Parthenon was her best known temple in ancient Greece.

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It does not require a genetic test for a special gene for one to prove they are Greek, as seems to be the current mind frame in FYROM. Greece is not a genetic marker but a culture and an idea, the idea Alexander spread to Asia, that the Byzantines brought to Europe, the idea of freedom of expression, of free education and free enquiry. That is Greece. It does not matter if one is Albanian or American, but apparently it is to Skopjians an unacceptable idea. Risto Stefov, in his recent exposition of his racist views in the American Chronicle, attempts to surprise the world (but surprises only himself) with a view that Athens and the Peloponnesus were inhabited by large numbers of Albanians during Ottoman times. Nevertheless these Christian Albanians rose together with the Greeks elsewhere for the freedom of Greece. That the Greek language survived in those difficult times in folksong, in the language of the Orthodox liturgy, in the Greek schools under special privileges permitted in Istanbul (such as the Great School of the Genos – Megale tou Genous Schole), and in regions enjoying special autonomy in Mani, Zagori, in later periods indeed also in Macedonia, and in parts of Asia and Europe, where Greeks also lived, worked and studied, that is to Stefov of no consequence. It can be ignored through the exercise of free will.

Moreover, if some of those who fought for the freedom of Greece were speaking Albanian, that to Stefov means that the Macedonians were not Greeks. So Greece perhaps is not a country today or perhaps it became free out of Turkish courtesy and those who died for its freedom were not meaning to fight for Greece after all…

Indeed, people of Albanian and Slavic descent fought among the Greeks for the freedom of Greece from the Ottoman yoke. The issue is not race, as it appears to the Skopjian mind that seeks a national purity in undiscovered "Macedonian" genes. Racial considerations were not what has determined Greek identity through time but the allegiance to the idea of freedom, of political freedom, of free enquiry and of social equality and the use of the Greek language as a medium for social and political life. In fact, a key element of the Hellenic liberation of historic Macedonia and its union with Greece was the loyalty shown by those Orthodox Macedonians who spoke a language they called po nashi ("our own"). It was a unique combination of Greek and Slavic that existed only in oral form and which continues to be spoken in villages in western Macedonia (in Greece) today. Macedonians who spoke either 'po nashi', Greek or both were critical to the liberation of the Florina and Kastoria districts in western Macedonia (in Greece). Alarmed at the infiltration of agents provocateur sponsored by the Bulgarian Kingdom and by a lack of support from a Hellenic Kingdom devastated by the disastrous war of 1897, individual po nashi-speaking Macedonians took it upon themselves to resist both the Bulgarian efforts of Risto Stefov´s ancestors to assimilate them and also resisted the oppression of the Ottoman Empire. Their efforts are today honored with memorials and museums all over western Macedonia.

Once liberated, Macedonia became an administrative district of the Kingdom of Greece in 1912. That the affiliation of the Macedonians was a Greek one is obvious from the fact that other areas of the Ottoman empire that fell to the other Balkan nations were named Blagoevgrad district (in Bulgaria), South Serbia and Kosovo in Serbia and variously for the other Balkan nations – but no other region was named Macedonia until Tito had an afterthought in 1945. However, an ethnicity cannot jump from one people to another – indeed their erstwhile mortal enemies – as a pretext for the annexation of their land. Neither can ethnicity possibly be moved from one people to another as an act of self-determination. To be a Macedonian is to be Greek.

"I shall not indulge in a lecture on the ancient identity of the Macedonians and on Philip II of Macedon and Alexander the Great, but the Greeks were historically correct in the campaign that they launched in the early days of the dispute…"

"Nor shall I engage in a lecture on the falsification of the history of Slavo-Macedonia since 1944, although that, too, has much hard factual content. I simply remind the House that Tito´s renaming of Vardar Banovina as the Republic of Macedonia in 1944 was a political statement."

Mr. Edward O´Hara of the British Parliament

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