Ser-Drama-Lagadin-Nevrokop Dialect - Past and Present Range, Emigration and Expulsion To Bulgaria

Past and Present Range, Emigration and Expulsion To Bulgaria

Before the Balkan wars, the range of the Serres-Nevrokop dialect was estimated to include the regions of Serres, Drama, Nevrokop and a small part of the Thessaloniki region. This range included approx. 170,000 speakers on the territory of modern Greece (150,000 Christian and 20,000 Muslim Bulgarians or Pomaks) and 25,000 speakers on the territory of modern Bulgaria (10,000 Christians and 15,000 Muslims). However, Kanchov indicates that at least some of these were bilingual and subject to strong Hellenization, including the Slavic population of the towns of Drama, Serres, Lagadina, as well as of several villages around Lagadina. There was substantial emigration towards Bulgaria even before the Balkan wars, approx. 50,000 Bulgarians from Macedonia lived in Bulgaria in 1900; however, there is no data as to how many of these came from the regions identified above.

The region suffered heavy devastation during the Second Balkan War. A total of 260 Bulgarian villages in the regions of Drama and Serres were set on fire by the advancing Greek troops, with their inhabitants either slaughtered or expelled to Bulgaria. By the end of 1913, Bulgaria had received approx. 50,000 refugees from Greek Macedonia, the vast majority of them from the most affected regions of Kukush, Serres and Drama. Emigration continued in 1914 and during and after World War I. Additional 60,000 to 90,000 Bulgarians from Greek Macedonia (out of 90,000 to 120,000 people, 32,000 of which were from Western Thrace) emigrated to Bulgaria at the beginning of the 1920s according to the Mollov-Kafandaris Agreement.

Thus, refugees from Greek Macedonia comprised at least 110,000 to 140,000 of the 250,000 officially registered Bulgarian refugees between 1912 and 1916, or slightly more than a third to slightly less than half of the pre-war Christian Bulgarian (referred to as ethnic Macedonian in the Republic of Macedonia) population of Greek Macedonia identified at approx. 320,000 by Kanchov. Considering that the number of refugees from Eastern Thrace and Western Thrace was approx. 50,000 and slightly more than 30,000, respectively, and that there were no mass expulsions from Serbian Macedonia and Southern Dobruja, the number of refugees from Greek Macedonia was probably higher. Furthermore, the data from the Bulgarian refugee agency includes only officially registered refugees and omits people who did not register as such.

According to Hugh Poulton, the patterns of migration to Bulgaria differed across the different parts of Greek Macedonia. The majority of the Slavs roughly East of the Vardar (including the region where the Serres-Nevrokop dialect was spoken) either fled or, later, immigrated to Bulgaria, whereas the majority of the Slavs West of Vardar remained in Greece and only a minority resettled to Bulgaria. The large-scale migration is corroborated by the data collected during the Bulgarian occupation of northeastern Greece during World War II.

The Bulgarian authorities counted only 37,000 Bulgarians during the 1941 census in the Bulgarian-occupied zone (which practically coincided with the range of the Serres-Nevrokop dialect), even including bilingual persons and returnees from Bulgaria, down from more than 170,000 before the Balkan Wars. According to the Bulgarian statistics, of approx. 698,000 Bulgarians who immigrated to Bulgaria from 1878 to 1945, 200,000 came from Greek Macedonia, which is equal to between half and two-thirds of the Slavic population of Greek Macedonia before the Balkan Wars. As evidenced above, the vast majority of the refugees and migrants came from the eastern part of Greek Macedonia.

Considering the above, as well as the strong Greek assimilation pressure, evident also before the Balkan Wars, it is generally unlikely for the Serres-Nevrokop dialect to be preserved in any significant numbers in its former territory in Greece. Thus, the only certain present range is in the southeastern part of Pirin Macedonia, as well as among descendants of refugees from the region in other parts of Bulgaria. The overwhelming majority of the speakers of the dialect in Pirin Macedonia identify as Bulgarians, while less than 1.0% of the population of the region (only region-wide data available) identify as ethnic Macedonians.