Documents on the bilingual Greeks in Macedonia

The Bilingual Greeks of Macedonia do not consider themselves as a minority. They are Greek and they understand and speak a second language other than Greek. It is a Slavic Idiom based on Bulgarian and contains Greek, Turkish and Albanian words. It is not the “Makedonski language” of Skopje which was formed by Yugoslav Serbs in 1944 by removing many Greek, Bulgarian, Albanian elements and replaced them with Serb. This emphasis was politically motivated and made to purposely distinguish the bulgarophile citizens of Vardaska Banovina from Bulgaria. The Vinozhito (OURANIO TOXO/RAINBOW) Party of Greece based in Florina does not represent these people at all, contrary to what Vinozhito and Skopje Claim.

1) “Grecomaniacs/Grecoman/Grckoman” (passionately Greek) in the words of the Bulgarians and their descendants: The following discussion on the nationality of these Bulgarophone speakers, which [French reporter] Michel Paillares reports having had with Hilmi Pasha, the Inspector General of the Macedonian vilayets of Monastir and Thessaloniki, is significant :


Paillares: But these Bulgarophones insist that they are really Greeks?
Hilmi: They say they are Greeks when no coercion, no constraint, is brought to bear on them.
Paillares: And what is your opinion, Your Excellency ?
Hilmi: My opinion, and the opinion of my government, is that they are Greeks. We classify our subjects according to which schools and which Church they attend. Being unable to win people by peaceful propaganda, the Comitadjis do not hesitate to make use of the most atrocious methods. They turn to the knife, the revolver, the axe.


2) From the book: Agones ston Elliniko Borra (Struggles in the Greek North), Makedonia 1862 – 2007, by Georgios K. Papavizas, published in 2007 by Ekdoseis Symmetria, p.99; Book is available in English and Greek:
French reporter Michel Paillares (again):

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“Ti me endiaferoun oi ethnologikes kai glwssologikes theories; …Ekeino pou me endiaferei einai pou oti oloi autoi oi Makedones, aneksartita apo tin glwssa pou miloun, protimoun na stavrothoun apo tous Boulgarous para na arnithoun ton Ellinismo tous…Oi asimantoi autoi iroes einai Ellines, kai gonatizw brosta sto ypertato megaleio tous.”



“What do I care about ethnologic or linguistic theories?…That which interests me is that all these Macedonians, regardless of what langauge they speak, prefer to get crucified by the Bulgarians instead of to deny their Hellenism…These unsung heroes are Greeks, and I kneel in front of their supreme grandeur.”

3) In 1871, the Russian Goloubinskii had written : “These purported Greeks nourished a more implacable hatred and a more intense scorn for all things Bulgarian or Slavic than did real Greeks.”

4) An extract from a book by Giovanni Amadori-Virgili, a former Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, entitled “La questione Rumeliota (Macedonia, Vecchia Serbia, Albania, Epiro) e la politica italiana”, published in 1908 as number 1 in a series by the Biblioteca Italiana on foreign policy:
The passage in question reads: “Through their partiotic sentiments and their devotion to Greek traditions and Greek culture, the Slav-speaking Greeks of Macedonia express their vigorous determination to be Greeks.”