In Professors Palmer and King's
"Yugoslav Communism and the
Macedonian Question" (1971) the conclusion reached on p159
The treatment of Macedonian history has the same primary goal
as the creation of the Macedonian language - to de-Bulgarize
the Macedonians and create a separate national consciousness
should be kept firmly in mind when reading Radin's text.
For Radin approaches this task with a single minded purpose - to regurgitate
Yugoslav Communist Party dogma on the Macedonian Question. However in an attempt
to re-sell essentially worn out "propaganda" Radin explains on page10 his peculiar
research approach
"The relevant facts have had to be extracted from accounts
often written for other purposes and with other motives in mind"
True to his word Radin develops his thesis for the pre-medieval existence
of a Macedonian nation by a process of both preferential selection and
gross misrepresentation of the archival evidence. And while Radin includes
a seemingly impressive bibliography, it is paradoxical that he lists, yet
never examines, works which directly contradict his basic arguments.
Not surprising, when we note Radin's repetitious use of the
same few Skopje based publications as the supporting evidence. Some are used
so often that the reader could be excused for pondering the actual necessity of Radin's text.
One of Radin's main aims is to show that the Macedonian revolutionaries
were in fact promoting a nascent socialist class struggle. A difficult task
when we consider Palmer and King's much earlier comments on this theme (p161)
Reconciling progressive Marxist historiography with Macedonian
national history has proved to be especially difficult. The
Macedonian revolutionaries were generally not socialists and the
Balkan socialists did not recognise the Macedonian nationality
Consequently the achievements and prominence of the few, and in most cases
subordinate IMRO members who manifested any "left" or "socialist"
inclination are instantly transformed by Radin into the Macedonian Liberation
Movement's greatest and most popular heroes. Ivan Alexandrov describes this selective idolation
as a communist legacy.
But Radin does not restrict his goals merely to historic revisionism, he also
attempts to develop an anti-Bulgarian sentiment by perpetually characterising Bulgaria
and its agents as the principal villains of Macedonia's years of misery. Naturally the
Serbians are treated much kinder. Accordingly, by simplistically reducing the "Macedonian
Question" to one of heroes and villains amongst the Macedonians themselves, Radin relies
on the use of dichotomy as a technique of argument, or more accurately, a substitute
for it. This radical simplification of the true issues fosters an antagonistic model, which
serves secular interests by resisting consensus and encouraging resentment. For Radin and
his colleagues therefore, dichotomy provides the predictable comfort of ingrained hostility
so often associated with neonationalistic dogma.
To detail all the misinformation and errors in Radin's text is infeasible, therefore I will
restrict my analysis to some of the more blatant examples of misrepresentation.
On p20 Radin states - "What proportion of the population was made up by the
majority group, the Macedonians? On the basis of an Ottoman census, an 1887 report
revealed the following breakdown: Slaves 1,252,385 (almost totally
Macedonians)"
The reference cited is De Laveleye E.
"The Balkan
Peninsula" (1887, p290). However on the very same page De Laveleye states
According to the best-informed writers - Reclus, Kiepert, Ubicini,
Lejean, Crousse - the great majority of the inhabitants of Macedonia are Bulgarians
I think this is what Radin means when he talks about "extracting" facts.
On p24 Radin states - "The Carnegie Commission report of 1913 quoted the Slav
population of Aegean Macedonia at a mere 30%"
The
Carnegie Report never at any stage referred to the
"Slavs of Macedonia" as other than Bulgarians. With respect to the census information the
same report states on p30
The Bulgarian statistics alone take into account the national
consciousness of the people themselves.
Radin deliberately introduces the term "Slav" to create an illusion that ambiguity existed
as to the identity of the Bulgarian-Macedonians. If so it is only Radin's misconception, and
not that of the
Carnegie Report which consistently refers only to the "Bulgarians" of Macedonia.
On p26 Radin states - "Rather in their expounded views, Macedonia is but "an
antiquated geographical expression" - this is the standard phrase adopted - and they point
to her "great ethnic diversity" in support of this fallacious argument. However there have
been noted dissenters:
1. A.J.P Taylor, who proposed that from 1870 onwards, the question of the Slav
nationalities in the Balkans was, in reality, a matter concerning only one nation, that being
the "Southern Slaves", distinguishable only by their dialects and geographic location. He
considered that this theory applied equally to all the Southern Slaves: Serbs, Croats,
Slovens, Bosnians, Montenegrins, Macedonians and Bulgarians"
Radin however fails to cite any reference for Taylor's assertion. But if we read AJP
Taylor's
The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1848-1918 (Oxford, 1960),
specifically p246, he writes the following
Historically a Macedonian is simply a Bulgarian who was put back
under Turkish rule in 1878.
This represents a somewhat irreconcilable difference in opinion from the same author.
On p26 Radin also states - "2. Villari and Dakin, who believed that the Macedonians were
an ethnically and linguistically independent strain mediating both Serbs and
Bulgars"
However in L Villari's
"Races, Religions, and Propagandas" (In: The Balkan Question,
L Villari [ed], New York, 1905) he writes on p135 & 150
There are in Macedonia four Christian communities - Greeks,
Bulgarians, Serbs, and Rumans or Kutzo-Vlachs ... To claim that the Bulgaro-Macedonians
are really Serbs is somewhat far-fetched, and hardly any of them have been won over to
the Servian propaganda.
Again the actual and quoted facts are contradictory.
On p27 Radin states - "Yet, as stated earlier, the existence of distinct ethnic minorities
in Macedonia has never been denied by Macedonians. Indeed, an English journalist touring
Macedonia prior to the Balkan Wars, remarked that, when asking several Macedonians at
random what nationality they considered themselves to be, he received several different
answers!"
But from exactly the same reference - JF Fraser
Pictures from the Balkans (1906) -
Radin prefers to ignore Fraser's unequivocal statement on the
nationality of Macedonians - pg 5
But who are the Macedonians? ..... You will not, however, find
a single Christian Macedonian who is not a Servian, a Bulgarian, a Greek, or a
Roumanian.
IMRO - The Pre-Ilinden Decade [p57-93]
There are a number of critical facts and issues Radin chose to ignore in his
treatise on the formation and character of IMRO. This is not unexpected
since the preponderance of evidence reveals IMRO as an essentially Bulgarian
organization formed to liberate the Bulgarians of Macedonia from the
cruelties of the Ottoman Empire and to also minimise the influence of the
increasing Serbian propaganda.
Testimony to support this viewpoint is ubiquitous. For instance, Hristo
Tatarchev, the first president of IMRO, reiterates all these very same facts
in his personal memoirs. But even more meaningful is that in 1897 Gotse
Delchev and Giorche Petrov wrote the statutes for the Organization which they
named the
Bulgarian-Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary
Organization, and in which they restricted membership to
"
any Bulgarian, irrespective of sex" - see DM Perry
The Politics of Terror (Durham, 1988, p65).
On p127 & 128 Radin states - "Correspondingly, Yane Sandanski, the peasant ceta general,
was by far the most popular man in Macedonia. The Left thus rallied behind this figure..
.. at which Vlahov, leader of the centrist faction, was surprisingly preferred to Yane
Sandanski as President"
Contrary to Radin's claim, Sandanski was not "
the most popular man in Macedonia". In
fact Sandanski and his followers had been expelled from IMRO and only had support in
the Seres and Drama regions. The main reason relates to the murder in 1907 by Panitza,
acting on Sandanski's orders, of Boris Sarafov and Ivan Garvanov, both members of
IMRO's Central Committee.
The Young-Turks quickly realized the divisive advantage in favouring Sandanski's
"outlawed" IMRO faction, and numerous historic photographs clearly show Sandanski
posing with and being honoured by the highest officials of the Young-Turks regime. In
a speech before the Ottoman Parliament the Deputy Habib-Bey stated (19 Jan 1909)
One faction (in IMRO) seeks many conditions from the
Young-Turks Committee, while the other strives to become Ottoman. This latter
is the faction of Sandanski. This faction is fully Ottoman and will remain committed. Let
their publications be distributed and their wishes met so that they might bring all
Bulgarians closer to us
For their alignment with the Young-Turks Sandanski and Panitza received many
special privileges denied the general population. Sandanski and the PFP had
little or no support from the Bulgarian-Macedonians. Consider the following
written by well-known author and statesman Charles Roden Buxton (
Turkey
in Revolution, London, 1909, p252-3), who visited
Macedonia and the Turkish regimes on many official occasions.
Why are there only four Macedonian Bulgars in the Parliament?"
he asked suddenly, with an indignant flash in his eyes. "And one or two of those are
Sandansky's men, who threw themselves into the arms of the Committee at the start.
They would never have been put up by their own fellow-countrymen, and don't represent
them
In Jan 1910, the Central Committee of the PFP, on Vlahov's instigation, expelled
Sandanski, on the grounds he and his supporters were working contrary to PFP ideology
and seeking rapprochement with the "Bulgarian Constitutional Clubs". This "Bulgaro"
tendency of Sandanski is hardly unusual given he was originally a member of the armed
"Vrhovist" bands who crossed into Macedonia in 1895 (DM Perry, op cit, p223) and about
who Radin scornfully writes on page 67
"were forcibly disbanded, their remnants returning to a life
of brigandage"
Radin's whitewashing of Sandanski is further compromised when we review Sandanski's
feelings for the Exarchate (Bulgarian Orthodox Church), expressed at a Congress of the
Federalists held on 8 Aug 1909 and recorded in
Alexo Martukov's
Memoirs (Skopje, 1954). On p186-187 we read
Yane Sandanski sharply stated that no encroachments should be
made upon this national institution and that, if one day, the Exarchate were threatened, he
was ready to take up arms again and go into the Pirin Mountains to fight in its
defence.
On pages 141 & 142 Radin states - "The First Balkan War .... was almost entirely fought on
Macedonian soil. .... The Serbian army, which achieved the most outstanding successes of
the war"
The misrepresentation of fact is astounding. I would refer the reader, amongst many other
texts, to G Young's
Nationalism and War in the Near
East (London, 1915) for a realistic resume; note Young's comment on p210
When the Bulgars had driven the Turkish forces in Thrace behind
the defences of Constantinople, they had accomplished the primary purpose of the
coalition, that is to say, the forcible expulsion of the Ottoman Empire from Eastern
Europe. The operations against the Turkish corps in Macedonia and Albania were
comparatively insignificant
On p177 Radin states - "In 1923 he (Stambulisky) was deposed by a military coup
d'etat sponsored by the bourgeoisie, and ruthlessly murdered by Vrhovist IMRO agents
who assisted the coup. Thereafter, the latter were given free rein to conduct a campaign
of terror against Macedonians throughout the three regions of Macedonia"
First, although IMRO supported the 1923 coup d'etat, it took no official part
in it. Stamboliskii's signing of the "Nish Agreement" with
Belgrade, which sought the liquidation of IMRO, the assassination of regional IMRO
leaders by government agents and the closing of printing presses, however certainly
raised hostility between IMRO and the Agrarians. Radin might have mentioned
that in 1923, and after the coup d'etat, the Bulgarian Communist Party published literature
praising Todor Alexandroff and IMRO, describing it as
the locomotive for the movement of the Balkan people at the
ignition of the Balkan revolution
see D Dobrinov "IMRO and the 1923 Uprising"
Macedonian Review 1991 Vol 24 No.3 p61-69
On p221 Radin states - "The emergence of the Macedonians as a separate slav people
is a perfectly normal historic process, which is keeping with the process by which the
Bulgarian, Croatian and Serbian peoples emerged from the Southern Slav
group"
Because of his book
On Macedonian Matters (Sofia, 1903),
supporting Macedonism, Missirkov is perpetually quoted by all modern Skopje
propagandists, and Radin is no exception. However in truth Missirkov's 1903
views had negligible popular support, and his book (there is some doubt here) was read by only a handful
of people. Missirkov subsequently repudiated all his own claims in
On Macedonian Matters, and spent his final years as a History
Professor in Sofia. He freely acknowledged his father, grandfather and great grandfather
were all Bulgarians and in many articles & letters unequivocally affirmed his
Bulgarian nationality.
On p244 Radin states - "Thus, the task of representing genuine Macedonian interest
fell upon the small Macedonian community in St Petersburg. This body was an affiliate
of IMRO .... Its most outspoken advocate was Dimitar Chupovski, who journeyed to
Macedonia in 1913 ... Chupovksi was arrested by the Greeks and exiled"
Actually, he was "exiled" by the Macedonian people! Dimitar Chupovski was born in
the Kichevo district, and of the "Myak" tribe. He help found the "Slav-Macedonian Student
Society" in St Petersburg (circa 1902), and considered himself an ethnic Slav
Macedonian. His supporters almost exclusively came from NW Macedonia within the
sub-districts of Porochieto, Gorni and Dolni Polog, Azot and the regions about Kumanovo,
and had usually completed their secondary education in Serbia. Within this NW area the
Slav-Macedonian theory of the Serbian Stoyan Novakovich, later
developed by his colleagues Cvijich and Belich had succeeded in influencing part of
the population.
Michael Radin's IMRO and The Macedonian Question
is certain to be lauded by adherents of Macedonism and is guaranteed to
reinforce their beliefs in the inerrancy of this thesis. However as a State
sponsored publication of the Republic of Macedonia, and supposedly in the
post-communist totalitarian era, it sends a clear signal that the old
"nomenclatura" and its anti-Bulgarian policies persist. We can only hope
that things may change in the near future and we'll have much more objective
texts that give due credit to the enormous sacrifice and tribulations of ALL
the past Macedonian revolutionaries and people.