Resolution of the Comintern on the Macedonian question

  1. Home
  2. Wiki
The first page of the Resolution. The document is classified.

The resolution of the Comintern of January 11, 1934, was an official political document, in which for the first time, an authoritative international organization has recognized the existence of a separate Macedonian nation and Macedonian language.[1]

Background

[edit]

At that time there were few historians, ethnographers or linguists who claimed that a separate Macedonian nation and language existed.[2][3] In early 20th century, among the small number of the Slavs in the region of Macedonia who had a national identity, most coexisted Bulgarian ethnic sentiments and regional Macedonian identity.[4][5] However, for the majority of Macedonian Slavs, national identity was a political and flexible option imposed by the educational and religious propaganda, as seen by contemporary observers at the time.[6][7] The partition of the Ottoman Macedonia between Balkan nation-states after the conclusion of the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) and World War I (1914–1918) left the area divided mainly between Greece and Serbia (later Yugoslavia), while the smallest portion was acquired by Bulgaria. As result many Macedonians of Serbian Macedonia and Greek Macedonia were forced to emigrate to Bulgarian Macedonia.[8] All of the countries pursued a policy of trying to assimilate the inherited population.[9] Under Serbian control in Vardar Macedonia the locals faced with the policy of forced Serbianisation.[10] The Greek governments also began a process of Hellenization, promulgating a policy of persecution of the use of Slavic dialects both in public and in private, as well of expressions of any ethnic distinctiveness.[11] In 1919 and 1927 population exchange agreements were signed and some of the Slavic-speaking population in Greece left for Bulgaria. In Vardar Macedonia amid the oppressive Serbianisation campaign a Macedonian consciousness seemed to be growing.[9]

Resolution

[edit]

In June 1931 the registrar of the Comintern Otto Kuusinen in his report on the national question to the executive committee, suggested that the main weakness of the Comintern was the insufficient appreciation of the national questions.[12] Kuusinen called to discuss the national question in order to develop a new national program for each of the parties. Meanwhile, to the Balkan communist parties a directive was provided, for the gradual abandonment of the slogan of the Balkan Federation, highlighting in its foreground the "right of the distinct peoples of self-determination to a full separation". The reason for this political turning, was the rising of Nazism in Germany. Thus in 1932 a members of the Comintern sponsored IMRO (United), put for the first time the issue of the recognition of a separate Macedonian nation.[13] This question was discussed among them, however, there was a split when Vasil Hadzhikimov and his group, refused to agree that the Macedonians are a separate people from the Bulgarians. Nevertheless, the highest institutions of the Comintern were informed about this issue from Dino Kyosev who gave a lecture in Moscow in 1933 on the distinct Macedonian national consciousness.

As a result, in the autumn of 1933 Dimitar Vlahov - leader of the IMRO (United) and former Bulgarian diplomat, was summoned in Moscow and took part in a number of meetings related to the Macedonian Question and the recognition of a Macedonian nation.[14] Vlahov claimed, that before the convening of the consultation, the leadership had already reached its stand that the Macedonian nation exists.[15][16] Vlahov who was a Soviet spy and declared himself until the 1930s as a Macedonian Bulgarian,[17][18][19] accepted the decision without any personal reaction or substantive comment.[20] However, his intervention seemed crucial in the adoption of this resolution.[21] The executive committee ordered the leading cadres of the Balkan Secretariate, Henryk Walecki - a Pole, and Bohumír Šmeral - a Czech, to draw up a special resolution on the issue. Because they had no concept of this problem, using Vlahov's help the resolution yet had been prepared.[22] So on January 11, 1934, the Political Secretariat of the executive committee of the Comintern adopted its final decision on the Macedonian Question which was the recognition of the existence of a separate Macedonian nation. The decision was based on the activity of IMRO (United).[21][23] The basis of the new concept was the common view that the region of Macedonia is one of the pivots of future imperialist war and therefore the Comintern seeks an option to blunt the contradictions between the countries that possess it.[24] The Resolution was published for the first time in the April issue of the IMRO (United) newspaper Makedonsko delo.[25] Among the more significant points of it was:

"The bourgeoisie of the three imperialist nations among which Macedonia has been divided is endeavouring to conceal the ethnic oppression by denying the national characteristics of the Macedonian people and the existence of a Macedonian nation. The Greek chauvinists maintain that the local Slav population in the Greek-occupied sector of Macedonia consists of Greeks who were slavicized in past centuries and must be forcibly “brought back” to Greek culture through the interdiction of the speaking and teaching of their mother tongue. The Great Serbia chauvinists cite the existence of Serbian words in the language spoken by the local Slav population as a pretext for declaring this population to be one of the “tribes” of the Yugoslav nation and they are subjecting it to forcible serbianization. The Bulgarian chauvinists are exploiting the affinity between the Macedonian and Bulgarian languages to assert that the Macedonians are Bulgarians, and trying thus to justify their occupation of the Petritch area and their expansionist policy throughout Macedonia."

Vlahov mentioned that the resolution had a hostile reception both from members of the Bulgarian Communist Party and of the IMRO (United), residing in Moscow.[26] The Resolution did not ever mention Vlahov as a leader of the IMRO (United).[27] At the meeting where the resolution was adopted, due to the negative reactions to it by the majority of Bulgarian communists present, fears were expressed that it would cause many left-wing Macedonian revolutionaries to switch to Ivan Mihailov's "fascist" and anti-communist IMRO.[23][28] Following the decision of the Comintern, IMRO (United) took as its slogan "the right of the Macedonian people to self-determination up to secession" and formation of "Macedonian Republic of working masses". Despite the fact that this was formally a Resolution of IMRO (United), it was a document adopted by the Comintern, which was immediately published in all the mouthpieces of this international communist centre. Afterwards the mainstream Bulgarian public opinion has maintained that the Comintern is the "inventor" of the idea about the existence of a separate Macedonian nation.[29] Dimitar Vlahov in his memoirs confirmed that the national emancipation of the left-wing and communist Macedonian activists has certainly shaped the formula blessed by the Comintern. Hence, one cannot speak of a purely communist invention with no connection to reality.[21]

Significance

[edit]

Prior to the Second World War, these views on the Macedonian issue had been of little practical importance. During the War the Macedonian national ideas were further developed by the communist Macedonian Partisans. Although most researchers doubt that even at that time the majority of Macedonian Slavs could precisely identify what they are, but they clearly would not identify as Serbs.[6][9] In August 1944, the Macedonian Partisans proclaimed a Macedonian nation-state of ethnic Macedonians. After the Red Army entered the Balkans in the late 1944, new communist regimes came into power in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia and their policy on the Macedonian Question was committed to supporting a distinct ethnic Macedonian identity.[9] A separate Macedonian language was also codified in 1945.

See also

[edit]

Footnotes

[edit]
  1. ^ Duncan Perry, "The Republic of Macedonia: finding its way" in Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrot (eds.), Politics, power and the struggle for Democracy in South-Eastern Europe, Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 228-229.
  2. ^ Dennis P. Hupchick states that "the obviously plagiarized historical argument of the Macedonian nationalists for a separate Macedonian ethnicity could be supported only by linguistic reality, and that worked against them until the 1940s. Until a modern Macedonian literary language was mandated by the communist-led partisan movement from Macedonia in 1944, most outside observers and linguists agreed with the Bulgarians in considering the vernacular spoken by the Macedonian Slavs as a western dialect of Bulgarian". Dennis P. Hupchick, Conflict and Chaos in Eastern Europe, Palgrave Macmillan, 1995, p. 143.
  3. ^ Loring M. Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World, Princeton University Press, 1997, ISBN 0691043566, p. 65.
  4. ^ During the 20th century, Slavo-Macedonian national feeling has shifted. At the beginning of the 20th century, Slavic patriots in Macedonia felt a strong attachment to Macedonia as a multi-ethnic homeland... Most of these Macedonian Slavs also saw themselves as Bulgarians. By the middle of the 20th century, however Macedonian patriots began to see Macedonian and Bulgarian loyalties as mutually exclusive. Regional Macedonian nationalism had become ethnic Macedonian nationalism... This transformation shows that the content of collective loyalties can shift. "Region, Regional Identity and Regionalism in Southeastern Europe", Ethnologia Balkanica Series, Klaus Roth, Ulf Brunnbauer, LIT Verlag Münster, 2010, ISBN 3825813878, pp. 127-129
  5. ^ Gallagher, Thomas (2001). Outcast Europe: The Balkans, 1789-1989: From the Ottomans to Milosevic. Routledge. p. 47. ISBN 0415375592. Where an overarching identity existed among Slavs in Macedonia, it was a Bulgarian one until at least the 1860s. The cultural impetus for a separated 'Macedonian identity' would only emerge later.
  6. ^ a b Danforth, Loring M. (1997). The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World. Princeton University Press. pp. 58–66. ISBN 0-691-04356-6. Retrieved 14 November 2011.
  7. ^ Gounaris, Basil G. (1995). "Social Cleavages and National 'Awakening' in Ottoman Macedonia". East European Quarterly. 29 (4): 409–426.
  8. ^ Ivo Banac (1984). The National Question in Yugoslavia: Origins, History, Politics, Cornell University Press, ISBN 0801494931, p. 317.
  9. ^ a b c d Dawisha, Karen; Parrott, Bruce (13 June 1997). Politics, power, and the struggle for democracy in South-East Europe, Volume 2 of Authoritarianism and Democratization and authoritarianism in postcommunist societies, pp. 229–230. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521597333. Retrieved November 20, 2011.
  10. ^ Dejan Djokić, Yugoslavism: histories of a failed idea, 1918–1992, University of Wisconsin Press, 2003 ISBN 0299186105, p. 117.
  11. ^ Dimitris Livanios (2008) The Macedonian Question: Britain and the Southern Balkans 1939-1949, Oxford Historical Monographs, OUP Oxford, pp. 25-26, ISBN 0191528722.
  12. ^ К у у с и н е н, О. Слабият участък от фронта на Коминтерна. — Комунистическо знаме, VIII. 1931, № 9, с. 19.
  13. ^ Произходът на македонската нация - Стенограма от заседание на Македонския Научен Институт в София през 1947 г.
  14. ^ Мемоари на Димитър Влахов. Скопје, 1970, стр. 356.
  15. ^ According to Dimitar Vlahov, one of the chiefs of VMRO (ob.), that was precisely what happened in Moscow in 1934: "I mentioned earlier that the Comintern itself wanted the Macedonian Question to be considered at one of the consultations of its executive committee. One day I was informed that the consultation would be held. And so it was. Before the convening of the consultation, the inner leadership of the committee had already reached its stand, including the question of Macedonian nation, and charged the Balkan Secretariat with the drafting of corresponding resolution... In the resolution, which we published in the Makedonsko delo in 1934, it was concluded that the Macedonian nation exists." For more see: The national question in Yugoslavia: origins, history, politics by Ivo Banac, Cornell University Press, 1984, ISBN 0-8014-9493-1, p. 328.
  16. ^ Dimitar Vlahov, Memoirs, Skopje, Nova Makedonija, 1970, str. 357.
  17. ^ Разведка и контрразведка в лицах: энциклопедический словарь российских спецслужб, Анатолий Валентинович Диенко, Клуб ветеранов госбезопасности (Руссия), Издател Русскій міръ, 2002 стр. 97.
  18. ^ Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia, Dimitar Bechev, Scarecrow Press, 2009, ISBN 0810862956, p. 105.
  19. ^ According to the Macedonian historian Academician Ivan Katardziev all left-wing Macedonian revolutionaries from the period until the early 1930s declared themselves as "Bulgarians" and he asserts that the political separatism of some Macedonian revolutionaties toward official Bulgarian policy was yet only political phenomenon without ethnic character. However, it must be known that they went through Bulgarian educational institutions, through the schools of the Bulgarian Exarchate, which implemented the Bulgarian greater-state policy. The goal of those schools was to create an intelligentsia with Bulgarian consciousness in Macedonia. This will bring even Dimitar Vlahov on the session of the Politburo of the Macedonian communist party in 1948, when speaking of the existence of the Macedonian nation, to say that in 1932 (when left wing of IMRO issued for the first time the idea of separate Macedonian nation) a mistake was made. Katardzhiev claims all this veterans from IMRO (United) and Bulgarian communist party remained only at the level of political, not of national separatism. Thus, they practically continued to feel themselves as Bulgarians, i.e. they didn't developed clear national separatist position even in Communist Yugoslavia. Академик Катарџиев, Иван. Верувам во националниот имунитет на македонецот, интервју за списание „Форум“, 22 jули 2000, број 329.
  20. ^ Klaus Roth; Ulf Brunnbauer, eds. (2008). Region, Regional Identity and Regionalism in Southeastern Europe. LIT Verlag Münster. p. 142. ISBN 9783825813871. Vlahov's apparent willingness to accept the Comintern's decision blindly, without even offering any personal reaction, partly explains what Elizabeth Barker called the "widespread belief, not eradicated by Vlahov's disclaimers, that he was in fact a Communist agent.
  21. ^ a b c Diana Mishkova; Roumen Daskalov (2013). Entangled Histories of the Balkans - Volume Two. pp. 515–517. ISBN 978-9004261914.
  22. ^ Balkan Studies: Biannual Publication of the Institute for Balkan Studies, Hidryma Meletōn Chersonēsou tou Haimou (Thessalonikē, Greece), 1994, p. 363.
  23. ^ a b Who are the Macedonians? Hugh Poulton, C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 2000, ISBN 1-85065-534-0, p. 98.
  24. ^ Палешутски, Костадин. Югославската комунистическа партия и македонският въпрос, 1919–1945, Издателство на Българската Академия на Науките, София 1985, стр. 223.
  25. ^ Македонско дело, бр. 185, IV. 1934.
  26. ^ Balkan Currents: Studies in the History, Culture and Society of a Divided Land, Basil P. Caloyeras, Lawrence A. Tritle, Loyola Marymount Univ, 1998, ISBN 0941690822, pp. 108-109.
  27. ^ Yugoslav communism and the Macedonian question, Stephen E. Palmer, Robert R. King, Archon Books, 1971, ISBN 0208008217, p. 48.
  28. ^ Коста Църнушанов: "Македонизмът и съпротивата на Македония срещу него", Университетско издателство "СВ. Климент Охридски", София, 1992, стр. 342
  29. ^ Macedonia: Warlords and Rebels in the Balkans, John Phillips, I.B.Tauris, 2004, ISBN 186064841X, p. 37.
[edit]