Christian Voss
(„Macedonia – Macedonias: Changing Contexts in the Changing
Balkans“ Conference, London, June 2001)
In the last decade Greek Macedonia has developed into an Eldorado for anthropologists and ethnologists[1]. Representatives of slavistic studies, however, have withdrawn from the region after the unpleasant arrests of the dialectologues Schmieger and Thau-Knudsen in the late 1980ies, who made the mistake to work on field in a traditionally grkomani-orientated village in the southwest of Kastoria (Nestorio). The activity and destiny of the Miladinovci-brothers from Struga, Dimitar and Constantin, collector of folklore texts in the 1840-1850s, and of the Slovenian slavist Vatroslav Oblak in the 1890s show that linguists in this region are inevitably regarded as political spies and agents of Russia, and this is typical of the time from 1850 up to now.
The
latest Macedonian studies can be divided into two parts. In my opinion
the first phase consists in the field studies during the early 1990ies
of Cowan 1990, Karakasidou 1997, Cowan, Mackridge/Yannakakis 1997 which
– on account of the hysterical nationalism and physical threat – focused
on the areas east of Thessaloniki: Assiros, Ossa, Sochos. You may see the
anthology edited by Cowan „Macedonia. The Politics of Identity and Difference“
2000 as the manifesto of the secondary phase: It virtually reacts to the
first report about the slavophone minority written by van Boeschoten in
1989 (in the Greek journal „Scholiastis“) under the pseudonym Eleftheria
Panagopoulou and her official report to the EU in 1993 and sees the villages
of Florina as the focal point of Macedonian consciousness in Greece[2].
The
third phase which did not start yet should focus on the area between Edessa
and Thessaloniki, that is the region where the bulk of Slavophones people
live. They have been shaped greatly in a Bulgarian way, on the one hand
as for their dialect, on the other hand historically. This refers to the
emigration movement before and after 1912 and also to the relationship
with Sofia and Bulgarian Pirin-Macedonia and last but not least to their
role in Second World War. Only interdisciplinarian studies in this presumably
most important region of Aegean Macedonia would allow certain sweeping
statements about the Slavophones in Greece. The application of the deconstructivist
method to the villages of Edessa and Naoussa, where is very little impact
of transatlantic diaspora, will show if the idea of deessentialized, transitional
and constructed ethnicity as developed and emphasized in the „Inflections“
in the foreword of K. Brown and J. Cowan 2000 has to be reviewed.
In
the following I would like to stress two preliminary remarks:
Firstly,
Aegean Macedonia as a whole is no permissible frame of reference. Also
the western part of Aegean Macedonia, even the neighbouring prefectures
of Florina and Edessa, do not share a common identity. Macedonian identity
in Greece historically is synonymous with indigenity and the inherited
Ottoman local autonomy grasping the village as a microcosmos, which means
it is an antonym to local and social mobility and to every beyong-going
horizon.
Secondly,
the awareness of the ethno-linguistic otherness has been preserved by the
politics of assimilation which was wave-like extremely repressive. This
may be the reason for the Macedonian revival and its first direct political
aim. In spite of that up to now it is quite possible to notice that a radical
ethnic consciousness can do without the linguistic component, for example
in the touristy village Loutraki/Poz¬ar near Aridaia/S’botsko[3].
You also may find that things are just the other way round: in the neighbouring
village Promachoi/Baovo that is outstandingly characterized by its Greek-national
consciousness – people go on speaking the Slavic dialect and last year
in Christmas time even played Macedonian popmusic cassettes from Skopje
in their coffee-houses who had been sold to them by a Vlach hawker.
This
points to the fact that the attitude of social protest is really at the
very core of the Macedonian consciousness in Greece. The unfortunate Greek
policy of minorities itself has brought about a minority, which in the
1990s is most seizable and audible exactly in the most violently suppressed
area. Furthermore it was just the preservation of the linguistic fossil
of the Katharevoussa up to 1981 that virtually worked like a formaldehyde
solvent preserving the Slavic dialects up to now. If 100 years ago the
Greek government had allowed the teaching of New Greek in Macedonia within
their school curriculum, this assimilation would have been realized much
more quickly. By the way, Gustav Weigand 1924 was of the same opinion[4].
2.
Macedonian newspapers in Greece of the 1940s and the 1990s and their linguistic
orientation
Now
I want to present a survey of the linguistic politics of the 20th century
in Aegean Macedonia and their resultats because today’s linguistic and
ethnic consciousness are based on them[5].
I would like to point out the conclusion I’ll come to beforehand. Presumably
the dialects of the region of Kastoria, Florina and Edessa are those dialects
in Europe that have been written down most frequently. This results from
the capricious history and the frequent changes of sovereignty in this
area (including occupying powers in times of war).
This
manifold endeavour for codification which depends on the political lines
in the late 1940s and 1950s assumes proportions that are downright absurd
when dialect has become a plaything between the zigzag party lines of the
CPs of Greece, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. After the clash between
Tito and Stalin in June 1948, the Greek CP remined loyal to Moscow. In
those days the journalism in slavic language of the civil war diaspora,
for example the radically Stalinistic paper „Ilinden“, published in Bukarest
1952, until destalinization and political thaw in 1956 orientated itself
thoroughly along the principles of the standard Bulgarian language[6].
So we have got two large groups of texts:
a)
the Communist press in World War II and in the Greek civil war,
b)
the publications of political minority-movements of the Macedonians.
I
would like to draw your attention to the process developing in a parallel
way. The Macedonian press of the 1940s and of the 1990s begins by upvaluing
and cultivating the local dialect, and then it turns to the use of standard
Macedonian. Since they are aware that the reader does not or not fully
understand this idiom, the papers are printed bilingually, that means in
Greek and standard Macedonian. Why do they do that? As for the press of
the partisans, the political reasons are obvious:
a)
From 1943 up to 1944 the papers are controlled by the SNOF, from 1946 to
1949 by the NOF[7].
You should know the difference. The SNOF („Slav-Macedonian people’s liberation
front“) was founded in Kastoria in October 1943, a month later in Florina,
Tito-partisans directly participating: their representative was Vukmanovic?-Tempo.
This people’s liberation fromt existed up to May, 1944. The Slavophones
had partly allowed the Germans and the Bulgarians to arm them for fighting
the Greek partisans. The integration of the SNOF into the Greek CP was
the last attempt to win back those Slavophones and make them take the side
of the people’s liberation front EAM and its army ELAS. The linguistic
tolerance and non-chalance of the linguistic policy result from this situation.
To give two examples for the integration of dialectal characteristics (from
Kastoria and Florina region respectively) and individual orthography typical
for the SNOF-period:
Slav?ano-makedonski
glas. Organ na okoli?ckata komisi?a S.N.O.F. Kostursko
3.4.1944[8]:
Posleden
sa?at: Sega ‚o gero?ckata ?rvena Armi?a napredva ntre vo rumanckite
zemi i gradovite padve eden sled drug ... Sega ‚o fa‚istite okupatori priemve
silni udari, edenio sled drug ot gero?ckata vo?ska na E.L.A.S. se na?dve
na zor da bege ot mestata kade se krepee, k‚?o e mesto na rekata Belica,
blizo do grado Lep?i‚?a, sega ‚o pule ‚o temnite gospodari mu do?de
sa?ato...
Sloboda.
Vesnik za slavomakedoncite na na okr. komite E.A.M. S.O.F. Lerincko (1.7.1944)[9]:
DA
?IVEE SOEDINENIETO SMHRT NA ?PISNITE... ODMA KATO SE NAPRAVI P.K.N.O. GEROI?NIO
MAR?AL TITO MU ISPRATI SLEDNATA DEKLARACIA... Ot Ghrcia mu poprati slednio
odgovor. ... So zlaboko dovolovo PKNO Vo Ghrcia kato prevedva? na borbenio
dux na narodo vo Ghrcia ... Koito e tesno svhrzana so borbata na ?ugoslavianckio
narod. ... Sne kraino uvereni ?e na‚to brasveno oru?ie stre‚tu ob‚tio du‚man
- Fa‚izmo - ke sledva postoiano tesno svhrzano za idu‚tata slobodna osnova
...
On
the other hand the people’s liberation front NOF was founded in Skopje
on April 23rd 1945. It became an ally of the Greek CP not until November
1946. It is an organisation founded on Jugoslavian territory right in the
middle between a world war and a civil war, an organisation favouring pan-Macedonianism,
wanting to break away areas from the Greek state territory in order to
create a Macedonian federation under Tito’s patronage. With the outbreak
of civil war the NOF gets the opportunity to act. In its publications the
young standard Macedonian is made use of exclusively, and this is done
by clinging to the Serbian language. This decision implies the renunciation
of documentation of the Greek-Slavic diglossia: the authors were absolutely
aware of their peculiar situation. An eye-witness told me that the editors
of the newspapers themselves could not help laughing about the linguistic
problems in the face of their lexically restricted low variety and said:
„Kak za ja dhiatiposoume taz pusta apofasis?“ Here we can see the results
of the Greek cultural and educational policy which already at the beginning
of the century portrayed the Slavic idioms of the region of Macedonia as
a corrupt dialect, mixed thoroughly, of very poor quality. As regards content
the newspapers serve the party lines of the Greek CP, and ad nauseam they
praise the aims the Greek and the so-called Slavomacedonian nation have
in common and up to 1948 the triad Stalin-Tito-Zahariadis. Another central
idea is, especially in the flood of leaflets, the appeal to fight against
formations like pro-Bulgarian groups and – in the civil war – Greek anti-partisan
units. To give a few examples for the visible loyalty to the new Skopian
standard and the strong Serbian lexical impact:
Statut
na Narodno-osloboditelniot Front (NOF) na Makedonskiot narod od Gr?ka Makedoni?a
(13.1.1948)[10]
narodno-oslobodila?kiot
front; ?lenarina; re‚eni?ata se zadol?itelni za ma~inata; ...se
dol?ni da svikuvaat redovni sostanci i konferencii;ostvarue~e; nepri?atelot;
kako senaroden antifa‚iski pokret na Makedonskiot narod; vozmo?nosta
da ?a sa?uvaat i razvi?at nacionalnata im kultura; zada?a da go
za?akne‚to poveke edinstvoto.
Nova
Makedonka (1.3.1948)[11]
narodot
ko?‚to vo negovata ve?ina e zemedelski; iskusnite zlo?inci; na‚ata
borba vo svo?ot zavar‚etok; izvr‚i?a p¬a?kaod
mnogo ku?i; edno od xarakternite ne‚ta na antifa‚iskata i narodnata borba
za Demokrati?a i Nezavisnost e preokretot‚to
sozdadoa ka? ?enata; do Glavniot ?tab na D.A., vo ko?a se obavezuatdeka
?e pi potpolnat Edinicite...
NEPOKOREN
(5.10.1948)[12]
-Tie
‚to ni go pre?i?a na‚iot ?azik, tie ne bea Grci tie bea Fa‚isti-Grcite
‚to se so general Markos se arni Grci. So tie zaedno se borime,... -E?
mari ma?kin ?azik, Se si razberva‚... (...) Kon seloto odi dedo ?ovan Bukovski.
To? osem 90-te negovi godini... -Zdravo dedo. Kako si? Dobro bre sinko,
ami ti kako si? -Dedoto ispoten mu frli niz seno eden pogled. -Nosam Bilten
dedo saka‚? -Bilten? ?to e toa bre sinko? -Na... Deltio Idiseon, mu ob?asni
mladiot ?ovek i mu predlo?i eden list. -Ne znam da ?etam bre sinko -promarmori
stariot i se upati kon gumnoto. Kurierot usetil deka dedoto ne razbral
za kakov Bilten stava duma. Zatova pobrza: Ama dedo, ovo? Bilten e napi‚an
po na‚inski, makedonski.
-Makedonski?
?to veli‚ bre ?edo.
b)
Now I would like in a short way to analyse the 3 papers of the political
minority movement; this analysis brings about the question about future
perspectives of development. In the first paper, TA MOGLENA, whose editions
from 1991 to 1993 were available, language is not really in the centre
of the discourse of otherness, since the whole paper is written in Greek.
The main theme is apartheid and the discrimination of the Slavophones by
the Greek state which points the social conflicts becoming more and more
ethnic. In reports based on proper investigations of the events after 1913
a consciousness becomes obvious that has developed historically and that
starts constant polemics against the historians of the Balkan Institute/Thessaloniki
about the „Macedonian fight“, the fate of Greek heroes like Pavlos Melas
and Kapetanios Kotas, and the official Greek discussion of thealleged „phantom
minority“.
Let’s
have a look at the second paper, named ZORA. In this non-regional paper
published from 1993 to 1996 there is the same socio-critical tendency.
Due to the fact that ethnic Slavic civil war refugees are still excluded
from the repatriation law of 1982, the settlement of people from Northern
Epirus and Kaukasus in the region is interpreted like a repetition of 1922-1923
with the settlement of nearly 600000 Asia Minor and Black See refugees
in Aegean Macedonia. The rise of quality is due to the fact that some of
the editors are activists educated at a university (mostly in former Yugoslavia)
and leftist intellectuals of non-Slavic origin (for example Lithoxoou).
At
the same time this paper pursues a multifarious, prudent language policy:
they introduce the standard Macedonian alphabet, this is paralleled by
the presentation of evergreens of Macedonian folk-songs in cyrillic characters
and by local songs in Greek characters. There is also a serialized survey
of the toponymic modifications for the whole region. The aim of this survey
and of the section „Stranica za kultura“ is to contribute to the rediscovery
of the lost ethnolinguistic identity and to make people accept their linguistic
otherness with dignity instead of being ashamed of it by acquiring historical
and linguistic knowledge. This is – so to speak – the classical imperative
of rebirth-discourses.
In
the paper NOVA ZORA (1996-1998) you can see another rise of quality as
a political movement (among other things the authors joined the EFA „European
Free Alliance“ of neonationalist movements[13]).
Furthermore you can notice the definitive move of the centre from Aridaia
to Florina which has split up the movement (I am going to dwell on this
item later on). The political movement warns of racism in the rural region,
especially of hate speeches between Slavophones and Asia Minor refugees.
The paper is completely bilingual: Greek and standard Macedonian. The authors
are highly aware of the fact that the standard Macedonian is not understandable
for the Slavophones in this region mainly because here we find an extensive
use of latinisms and internationalisms which are unknown in the Greek language.
Therefore the editors have begun to add Slavic comments to the internationalisms.
For
example: NOVA ZORA, 4 (april 1998): me©unarodnata
koincidenci?a (poklopuva~e) doka?ala ...; na‚ite napori da gi koncentrirame
(sredoto?ime) na ...; toa producira (proizveduva) protivre?nosti; ?uvstvuvam
deka posredno (indirektno) sme napadnati; drugiot te erodira (razoruva);
ko? go ignorira (prenebregnuva) pra‚a~e;emigrantite
(begalcite) ‚to se naseluvaat ...; do?di da gi regulirame (uredime) problemite.
In
spite of this the standard Macedonian texts remain incomprehensible for
the Slavophones, especially in areas with hardly seizable influence of
the Macedonian standard like Edessa and Naoussa. Up to now the Slavophone
suffers from a complex – injected by the Greek system of sciences – that
he speaks a dialect used by gipsies and of a very poor quality. This complex
is intensified by the fact that the standard language which goes hand in
hand with the speaker’s potential ethnic identity and whose existence is
denied by the Greek state and Greek linguists, is a closed book to himself.
This aspect puts the Slavophones into a state of uncertainty and leads
to further separation between the ethnic identity and the linguistic one.
The current newspaper of the Macedonian movement in Greece[14],
edited in Thessaloniki, does without any texts in Standard Macedonian and
makes exclusive use of Greek (with the exception of some folk songs printed
in Greek letters).
To
sum up the results: The language policy of RAINBOW-party during the 1990s
can be assessed as a repeated failure to establish a regiolectal variety
which would be in conformity with regional identity. Instead of this they
give up upvaluing and cultivating the local dialect and prefer standard
Macedonian.
3.
From Slavophones to Macedonians: The Marginalization in Greek Civil War
As
I already said, the region of Florina is splitting away from past common
political minority representation in western Aegean Macedonia. There are
differences of mentality between the villages of Florina and those of Edessa
and Naoussa; they are determined by the in general bigger prosperity in
eastern villages, and in particular by the role of the villages in the
Second World War and in the civil war. It is by no means true that the
Slavophones in the German occupation zone were all in the same boat: 80
per cent of the people were impartial, about ten per cent stood by the
partisan’s side, the rest took arms from the Germans and the Bulgarians
to fight the Greeks (Perry 1992, 123-125). These old stories have not really
been forgotten. Try to imagine the following situation: you meet convinced
Macedonians today, for example in Angelohori near Naoussa, a village that
was destroyed by the ELAS and in the civil war was used as a centre of
anti-partisans; you ask these people if there were Bulgarians in this area
in the time of German occupation; then they tell you hypocritically that
there really were only Germans in that region – at least the old people
would say so... (for Eastern Macedonia cf. Kotzageorgi-Zymari/Hadjianastassiou
2000).
I
must make a remark about the incompatibility of Greek and Macedonian descriptions
of the Greek Civil war in their essentializing oversimplications „Slavophones
always have been traitors“ or „Slavophones always have been Macedonian
heroes“ respectively. In my opinion this war has – in some part irreversibly
– prevented the integration of the Slavophones into the Greek nation by
stigmatizing them ethnically and – in addition to that – politically as
well (after 1949 „Slavic“ became synonymous with „communist“). There are
many villages which in the 1940s were destroyed twice by the Greeks,
first by the communistic ELAS, then by the monarchic government troops.
The result of these fronts is this one: whichever political side you take,
the Greeks are always the enemies. At the same time the fronts in the civil
war have the following result: even villages that were traditionally shaped
in a pro-Bulgarian way after 1949 were irreversibly Macedonianized, this
means a relapse onto a non-political, local level of consciousness.
The
archontic village Akritas/Buf in the Northwest of Florina can serve as
an example of this: centre of Bulgarian national movement hundred years
ago, centre of the Ilinden uprising, centre of (implicitly pro-Bulgarian)
fighting against the Greek resistence in World War II, but today the 120
inhabitants (left from the 3000 inhabitants of 1940) share a Macedonian
consciousness, but are to be said cowards by the neighbouring villages.
The same is valid for Aetohori/Tus¬im in the northwest of Almopia/Moglena
region or – as pointed out by Michailidis 2000, 74-75 – for Dendrochori/D’mbeni
in the Northwest of Kastoria: from supporting the Bulgarian Exarchate until
1912, the Bulgarian collaboration (during the occupation) and then the
Macedonian separatist and communist cause (during the Civil War) to the
total destruction of the village. I would allege that it is possible to
prove the impact of the competing exarchistic and patriarchistic school-systems
from 1870 until 1912 on Greek Civil war as a„longue dur?e“-phenomenon.
I
am going to illustrate this aspect by some biographies that correspond
to the model of the „marginal man“ in the context of cultural hybridity
of Stonequist 1961 which for Macedonia could be described as the „Prlic¬ev-syndrom“[15]:
Individuals willing to assimilate but rejected from the majority community
consequently develop a strengthened ethnic consciousness. In my view those
Slavophones who very early in the time of German occupation turned to the
side of the partisans saw themselves as loyal Greek patriots and acted
accordingly. The early resistence was put into practice by the small class
of intellectuals in Western Macedonia. If a Slavophone studied in Thessaloniki
in the time of Metaxas, he must have become totally assimilated. A prominent
representative of today is the village teacher Pavlos Koufis (today Athens).
In his youth he was sponsored by former grkomani-heroes of the „Macedonian
fight“. In spite of this in 1947 he took the mountains under constraint
and joined the communist side. In the diaspora, in Tas¬kent and Bukarest,
he came to discover his „Macedonianness“, but nowadays in his native village
Alona (Armensko) in the west of Florina his former pupils of the 1930s
are mocking at his use of the native dialect because it was him who had
preached them not to use this idiom.
There
are other Slavophones who in the civil war did not have the slightest contact
with the Macedonian autonomy movement – like the well-known interpreter
Vasko Karadz¬a (today in Skopje) who served as personal wireless operator
for General Markos. Even people like this man on the one hand were chased
away by the monarchic Greece like traitors, on the other hand after 1948
they were branded as Tito-spies by the Greek CP who blamed his catastrophic
defeat on the Slavophones. This aspect of merciless double-marginalization
becomes particularly obvious in Pavle Rakovski’s biography. He was born
in a village near Florina, he was trained as a teacher in Thessaloniki,
in 1941 he became a member of the ELAS, later he became – like his wife
– a central figure in the NOF. This lead to the following outcome: in October
1949 he was arrested by the Greek CP in Albania for being a Tito-spy and
taken to Moscow where he was sent to GULAG for many years. Against this
background probably it is no wonder that Rakovski since his return to the
Balkans, in 1960 to Skopje, became one of the most outstanding party-ideologists
and apologists of Macedonianism: in his books (e.g. 1990) he disparages
Greece and the Greek CP. So you see why biographies of such uprooted people
are important to this day: the Macedonian national discourse and irredentism
in many cases is shaped by personal acts of revenge, an aspect which is
not stressed enough in the recent reassessments of personal vindication
in Macedonian historiography described by Gounaris/Michailidis 2000 and
Michailidis 2000.
4.
From local to regional consciousness: Bitola and Florina as „the third
space“
I
would like to point out prospects of the future developments of Slavic
dialects in western Aegean Macedonia. My main thesis is the segregation
of the Macedonian movement already mentioned and the solo effort of the
Floriniotes made to be emancipated from linguistic restrictions. I think
I can underline this by an example. All Slavophones in the region of Florina
make use of the adverb „mesa“ („inside“) when they speak of the Republic
of Macedonia. On the other hand in the most northern eparch of the prefecture
of Edessa, in Almopia with the centre Aridaia, also situated at the border
of the Republic of Macedonia, but separated by a mountain-ridge, people
say „pano“ („above“). In the same way shocking for Greek ears was the behaviour
of an old woman from a Prespa-village who found herself being filmed by
a running Greek TV-camera. She was asked which TV programs she received.
Her answer was: „Three of us and three Greek ones“. To me it is evident
from this that in Florina there is something like a strong regional Macedonian
consciousness. To take into consideration the Ottoman legacy of the Balkans
will help to discover „longue dur?e“-phenomena in collective identities
and to avoid an overemphasized deconstruction of Macedonian identity, which
by authors like Kofos 1986 is abused to confirm Greek nationalistic point
of views, when he coins terms like „politics of mutation“ or „imaginary
community“ (instead of Anderson’s imagined communities).
Aegean
Macedonia is a safe of the prototypical Macedonian identity. I believe
it can be described as the obstinate opposition of isolated rural districts
against the diverging and increasingly aggressive attempts of nationalisation
made by the Greeks, the Bulgarians and the Serbs between 1870 and 1912.
It was not before the 1930s that this consciousness becomes ethnic when
the Slavic resident population is pressurized to assimilate and then, for
the first time, it began to define itself as inhabitants within the former
ottoman district borders of the three vilayets ?sk?p, Monastir and Selanik.
The
Macedonian consciousness that up to 1912 was content with a feeling of
local identity in this form has kept alive in Greece up to the present
day. It has its place below the level of ethnic identity, as people don’t
see themselves as a group that might act together (for example, in Kopanos
near Naoussa many Slavophones don’t understand the Slavic toponym „Lerin“
for Florina!). Apart from the strong consciousness of autochthonicity the
common experience of grief brings about identity: in the areas of Florina
and Edessa frequently I have been offered the etymology of the toponym
„Macedonia“: this word was derived from „maka“ („suffering, sorrow, grief,
torture“). I was offered this etymological explanation only by analphabets
at the age of 70 or 80.
As
I stated above Florina is the exception to the rule, presumably this is
due to the traditional contacts with Bitola; that means there is a much
greater nearness to Bitola than to the cities Edessa or Kastoria, not only
caused by the small distance and people’s familiar connections.
The
border in the plain between Florina and Bitola has helped to keep alive
ethnic consciousness[16],
partly it helped to make the nation-building process on the way in Bitola,
too, find its way across the border. For the Slavic migration from the
land, from villages that are Greek nowadays to Bitola about 1900 Gounaris
2001 coins the termin of „cultural continuity“ of town and (since 1912/13
Greek!) village hinterland[17].
Today there are living 15000 Aegean Macedonians in Bitola, they returned
to Macedonia since the late 1950s and the 1960s. Since the regular border
traffic is no longer recorded in the passports from the Greek side very
many visitors come to see Bitola. As I have been told by eye-witnesses,
even outstanding local politicians from Ptolemaida/Kajlari (Northern Part
of the prefecture of Kozani), a refugee of Asia Minor, goes to Bitola to
become acquainted ... with ladies.
The
best brains of RAINBOW-party in Florina, who has close relations with Aegean
Macedonian refugee-organisations, have studied in former Yugoslavia, most
in Belgrad or Skopje, so they master the standard language of Skopje which
means being a shining example in town. This has resulted in the politically
naive attempt – beside the politically not unwise decision to demonstrate
solidarity with the Muslim minoriy in Thrace – to imitate the Yugoslavian
constitution of 1974. The RAINBOW-intellectuals in both cases deterred
the Slavic population, also by calling themselves „national Macedonians“
(„ethnika Makedones“). In former Yugoslavia national minorities, so-called
„narodnosti“, were those ethnic groups who possessed a neighbouring sovereign
state.
In
general, the villages of Florina seem to lie beyond good and evil; you
should know that at village festivals for example of Lofi or Vevi, even
in the presence of Lianis, the PASOK parliamentarian of the prefecture,
the music groups strike up „hard core Macedonian songs“ (imported from
the Republic of Macedonia or from Australia) like „Begajte Grci! Ne ve
sakame vo Makedonija!“ (which means: „Greeks out of Macedonia!“)[18].
This special development of the Florina area seems to be also supported
by the government in Athens – accepting provocations of that kind – as
in this way they can limit the revelation of the taboo of a Slavic minority
to the border region of Florina. This taboo recently has been irreversibly
broken by the new bestseller „The forbidden language“ of the Athenean journalist
Tasos Kostopoulos[19],
who focuses only on the region of Florina. But I reckon that in the densely
populated prefecture of Pella (Edessa) – nearly 140000 inhabitants – the
percentage of the Slavophone population is about 70 or 80 per cent, that
means their number is three times the number of the Slavophones in the
prefecture of Florina[20].
The last-named place with 50000 inhabitants (about 60 per cent are Slavophones)
after the civil war and on account of the following miserable job situation
is almost deserted.
Another
crucial aspect separates Florina from the complete remaining region surrounding
it: it is the fact that almost nobody has emigrated to Bulgaria, which
is also a result of the strategy of the Bulgarian Exarchat since 1870 to
focus on the graecophone centre in the very South-West of Macedonia, Kastoria.
This way, the consciousness of the Slavic population of the predominantly
Muslim and politically insignificant small town until 1912 was not troubled
with national connotations and „remained Macedonian“ in a local sense.
This stands in sharp contrast to the region of Kastoria and especially
to the Edessa or Kilkis area where there are close family relations with
Sofia and Pirin-Macedonia: in those places very many refugees settled in
the first half of the 20th century.
As
for the linguistic consciousness this results in the fact that the people
of Florina have a clear Macedonian consciousness, and they see their idiom
as definitely Macedonian. In spite of this I was asked an interesting question
(in August 2000). The dentist Kostas Ioannou, author of a story written
in Slavic and Greek, published in Florina in 1989 with the title „Koleda,
babo, koleda“, closed the door of his consulting-room so that his nurses
were not able to listen to us; then he asked me about my evaluation of
his dialect (of the village Skopia in the vicinity of Florina): was it
Macedonian or Bulgarian? The awareness of a labile, controversial identity
obviously even troubles Florina’s Slavophones.
Now
there is an important question: Will the region of Edessa and Naoussa go
the same way of defiant civil disobedience in order to claim the right
to use the minority idiom or will the people abandon themselves to the
fate of insidious assimilation? In my view the population outside the region
of Florina will be content with their slavic idiom for so-called „acts
of identity“[21],
that means they will be satisfied with a minimal communicative function,
most likely it will be a substandard bringing about group solidarity and
preserving the „social memory“[22].
Meeting somebody you start by saying: „s¬o pravis¬?“ – „arno“. When you
turn to the real exchange of information you start speaking Greek. This
means an ethnic identity which is disassociated from linguistic otherness,
which is mainly aimed at social provocation. This attitude may be seen
in the behaviour of the boss of the fire-brigade of Edessa who, in order
to define himself, every morning puts his Marlborough cigarettes into a
package from the tobacco-fabric „Makedonija“ in Prilep with the Macedonian
coat of arms, a lion.
Let
us pick up the aspect of gender. On the one hand up to the sixties mainly
the women – as they were excluded from the labour market – did not have
command of the Greek language so they were important users of the Slavic
idiom. In the meantime the emancipation of women on the labour market has
taken place, the women are still the main educators of the children who
– for the sake of better integration at school and for preparation opportunities
of career – are no longer taught the Slavic idiom. The inevitable outcome
of these things is the fact that the Slavic dialect has become a sort of
slang, a substandard to which, as we know since Labov[23],
particularly men incline. What may happen to a stranger who visits one
of the so-called „Macedonian evenings“ with live bands singing (!) Macedonian
songs which are highly popular in the region at the moment? Well, he may
be pushed and pressed – even under the threat of violence – to speak Slavic
with the trouble-makers. At least they refuse to speak or understand Greek
in such situations.
To
sum up my results: Macedonian consciousness in Greece above oll is the
resultat of the ethnicization of social and political problems[24],
as Trubeta 1999 has shown for the Muslim minority in Thrace. There are
very little ethnic connotations and no national connotations at all. In
the exceptional case of the Florina region Macedonian consciousness is
the typical one of border societies, who define themselves „contextual
and oppositional“ (Sahlins 1989) and form a „third space“ together with
the border society on the other side.