United Macedonia - History of The Concept

History of The Concept

The concept of a United Macedonia appeared initially in the late 19th century as variant called authonomous Macedonia in the documents of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization. The organization was founded in 1893 in Ottoman Thessaloniki by a small band of anti-Ottoman Macedono-Bulgarian revolutionaries, which considered Macedonia an indivisible territory and claimed all of its inhabitants "Macedonians", no matter their religion or ethnicity. The idea then was strictly political and did not imply a secession from Bulgarian ethnicity, but unity of all nationalities in the area. The term "United Macedonia" has been in use since the early 1900s, notably in connection with the Balkan Socialist Federation.

In modern era, ethnic Macedonian nationalists call for a "United Macedonia" since 1989, reading " Solun (Thessaloniki) is ours" and "We fight for a United Macedonia". Several maps depicting "United Macedonia" as an independent country which constitute clear evidence of irredentist claims of Macedonian nationalists against both Greek and Bulgarian territory circulated since late 1980s and the beginning of 1990s. In one of those maps all of Mount Olympus was incorporated in the territory of "United Macedonia". The Macedonian nationalists break down the region of Macedonia as follows:

• Vardar Macedonia (Вардарска Македонија) which includes:
  • The territory of the Republic of Macedonia
  • Prohor Pchinski (Прохор Пчински) - in southern Serbia
  • Gora (Гора) - in southern Kosovo
• Greek Macedonia (or "Aegean Macedonia", "Егејска Македонија" ) - the region of Macedonia in northern Greece
• Blagoevgrad Province (or "Pirin Macedonia", "Пиринска Македонија") - in southwestern Bulgaria
• Mala Prespa and Golo Brdo (Мала Преспа и Голо Брдо) - an area in southeastern Albania

Ethnic Macedonian nationalists describe the above areas as the unliberated parts of Macedonia and they claim that the majority of the population in those territories are oppressed ethnic Macedonians. In the cases of Bulgaria and Albania, it is said that they are undercounted in the censuses (In Albania, there are officially 5,000 ethnic Macedonians, whereas Macedonians nationalists claim the figures are more like 120,000-350,000. In Bulgaria, there are officially, 5,071 ethnic Macedonians, whereas Macedonian nationalists claim 200,000 ). In Greece, there is a Slavic-speaking minority with various self-identifications (Macedonian, Greek, Bulgarian), estimated by Ethnologue, and the Greek Helsinki Monitor as being between 100,000-200,000 (according to the Greek Helsinki Monitor only an estimated 10,000-30,000 have an ethnic Macedonian national identity). Macedonian nationalists have claimed that there is a Macedonian minority numbering up to 800,000.

The roots of the concept can be traced back to 1910. One of the main platforms from the First Balkan Socialist Conference in 1910 was the solution to the Macedonian Question, Georgi Dimitrov, a Bulgarian Communist politician, in 1915 writes that the creation of a "Macedonia, which was split into three parts, was to be reunited into a single state enjoying equal rights within the framework of the Balkan Democratic Federation".

The concept of a united Macedonia was used by revolutionaries from the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) too. In 1920-1934 their leaders - Todor Alexandrov, Aleksandar Protogerov, Ivan Mihailov, etc., accept this concept with the aim to liberate the territories occupied by Serbia and Greece and to create an independent Macedonia, with predominantly Bulgarian population. Bulgarian government of Alexander Malinov in 1918 offered to give Pirin Macedonia to such a united Macedonia after World War I, but the Great Powers did not adopt this idea, because Serbia and Greece opposed. In 1924, the Communist International suggested that all Balkan communist parties adopt a platform of a "united Macedonia" but the suggestion was rejected by the Bulgarian and Greek communists.

The idea of a united Macedonia under communist rule was abandoned in 1948 when the Greek communists lost in the Greek Civil War, and Tito fell out with the Soviet Union and pro-Soviet Bulgaria.

In its first resolution, VMRO–DPMNE, the nationalistic governing party of the Republic of Macedonia, adopted the platform of a "United Macedonia", an act that has annoyed moderate ethnic Macedonian politicians and has also been regarded by Greece as an intolerable irredentist claim against Macedonia, its northern province.

Before and just after the Republic of Macedonia's independence, it was assumed in Greece that the idea of a united Macedonia was still state-sponsored. In the first constitution of the newly independent Republic of Macedonia, adopted on 17 November 1991, Article 47 read as follows:

(1) The Republic cares for the status and rights of those persons belonging to the Macedonian people in neighbouring countries, as well as Macedonian expatriates, assists their cultural development and promotes links with them. In the exercise of this concern the Republic will not interfere in the sovereign rights of other states or in their internal affairs'

(2) The Republic cares for the cultural, economic and social rights of the citizens of the Republic abroad.

On 13 September 1995, the Republic of Macedonia signed an Interim Accord with Greece in order to end the economic embargo Greece had imposed, amongst other reasons, for the perceived land claims. Amongst its provisions, the Accord specified that Macedonia would renounce all land claims to neighbouring states' territories.

The United Macedonia concept is still found among official sources in the Republic, and taught in schools through school textbooks and through other governmental publications.