Does Modern Greece deserve to exist? - by Risto Stefov

ΠΡΟΣΟΧΗ: ΣΥΝΙΣΤΑΤΑΙ ΣΟΒΑΡΑ Η ΧΡΗΣΗ ΥΠΟΓΛΩΣΣΙΟΥ ΠΡΙΝ ΤΗΝ ΑΝΑΓΝΩΣΗ ΤΟΥ ΠΑΡΑΚΑΤΩ ΑΡΘΡΟΥ!  

Αποστολή: Thomas Saras (Canada)

rstefov@hotmail.com

June 6, 2010

Now before jumping up and down about the “ridiculousness” of my question, please consider the bizarre and unsubstantiated Greek claim that “Macedonians do not exist” even though they do exist all over the world! If we accept the Greek allegation that “Macedonians do not exist” isn’t it only fair then to question the existence of the Greeks?

Who decides if Macedonians do or do not exist? Is it the Greeks and Bulgarians? If that is the case then it is only fair that the Macedonians decide if Greeks and Bulgarians truly exist and if they deserve to have their own countries?

There was once a Yugoslavia but it is no more. Yugoslavia, like Greece and Bulgaria, was a modern country created for “political reasons” and its identity based on the false premise that only “Yugoslavs” or “South Slavs” lived in Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav motto was “one nation, one people, one country”! This would have been true of course if “language” was the strongest qualifier for such an “identity”. But as it turns out it was not.

Ethnically speaking, the so-called “Yugoslavs” were as ethnically diverse a people as any modern nation, and as Yugoslavia fell it broke-down to its most common real ethnic elements.

Now given that the entire southern Balkans were borderless since the Ancient Macedonians ruled them and given that the same southern Balkans were conquered, invaded and settled dozens of times by invaders and colonists, wouldn’t it be fair and accurate to say that the people of the southern Balkans are a very-mixed-lot? This is a lot more accurate then believing some 19th century myth that says the Greeks are direct descendents from the so called ancient Greeks and that the Macedonians are “newcomer Slavs”! All the people in the Balkans are just as mixed as any other people in the world!

If 19th century so-called “historians” can claim that the Modern Macedonians are “newcomers” to the Balkan Region, then ask yourselves this question; “What stopped those ‘newcomers’ from also invading and settling Greece?” Was there an invisible wall that we don’t know about that kept invaders out of Greece?

So here is the situation! If you believe that “newcomers” came and settled Macedonia then you must also realize that these “newcomers” did not stop at today’s artificially erected border between Macedonia and Greece and that in fact these “newcomers” also invaded and settled Greece!

If, on the other hand, you believe that there were no invasions in the Balkans and that the Modern Greeks are pure Greeks, descendents of the ancient Greeks, as most Greeks claim today, then you must also admit that the Modern Macedonians too must be pure Macedonians, descendents of the ancient Macedonians!

Given the above, if you believe “Macedonians do not exist” then you must also believe that “Greeks do not exist” either! Conversely, if you believe “Greeks” exist then you will have to accept that Macedonians also exist. You can’t have one without the other!

In the past I have presented my readers with many articles on the “artificiality” of the Modern Greek nation but for the sake of simplicity and expediency I will again summarize;

There never was a so-called “Greece” in ancient times by that name; there were however a dozen or so City States which existed independent of each other for a few centuries between 600 and 400 BC which afterwards were conquered and enslaved first by the ancient Macedonians and then by the Romans and the Ottomans.

Whatever was left of these people after the Macedonian and Roman conquests was destroyed through persecution by the Christians because of their stubborn beliefs in pagan gods. The region in question, the southern part of Modern Greece, in time became devoid of people and Roman, Eastern Roman and Ottoman rulers, over the years, continued to repopulate it with settlers who invaded their territories as refugees.

The first wave of settlers, well known to history, were the Slav speakers who as refugees drifted into Eastern Roman territories and were resettled by the then Emperors at the sparsely populated lands on the southern tip of the Balkan Peninsula. It is well known from history that these Slav speakers settled the present day Peloponnesus which they then called Morea. Morea existed by that name for more than a millennium up to the 19th century when the Modern Greeks renamed it to Peloponnesus.

The Slav speakers of Morea left their mark on the entire Morean “topography” by the Slav names they gave to the rivers, lakes, mountains, gorges, villages, towns, etc., Slav names which, after careful examination, became very clear to “some 19th century historians” that Modern Greece was not at all populated by “Greeks” but by “Slav speakers”!

Then as the numbers of Slav speakers began to decline, due to many of their men losing their lives being inducted in other people’s wars, Albanians and Vlachs from the north were encouraged to migrate there and settle the region, sometimes in massive numbers.

Later, that same region was conquered by the Crusaders and a part of it was settled with Latins and other Westerners. The same region was then overrun by the Ottomans and settled by Muslim Turks.

By the 19th century the region had become a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural melting pot of nations and people; much more so than the rest of the Balkans because of its earlier depopulation.

After the Western Europeans discovered (from the Arabs) that an ancient civilization existed in that region, (the same region that was settled by Slav speakers, Vlachs and Albanians), the idea of re-creating it became popular. The idea of “ancient Greece” was popularized mainly by writers and novelists who thought they saw a reflection of themselves in these ancient people. Looking for roots for themselves and for a culture to imitate, many Europeans were infatuated to a point of obsession.

This whole “hoopla” of wanting to re-create “ancient Greece” gave birth to a movement known as the “Philhellenes” or friends of the Hellenes.

After the Philhellenes decided to “resurrect this two millennium old civilization”, they began to coax the “living and vibrant” local cultures to give up what they had and accept the idea that they were now the “descendents of these ancient people” who, a long time ago, created this civilization.

Some bought into the idea and some did not but by the carrot and by the stick, in time, Modern Greece became a pure Greek nation populated by pure Greeks, “direct descendents of the ancient Greeks”, even though the term “Greek” was never before applied to a people en masse in an ethnic or national sense.

In the beginning of this “hoopla” the vast majority of these “future Greeks” spoke their own languages, some spoke Slav, some Latin, some Vlach but the majority spoke Albanian. They also had their own cultures, customs and traditions and initially the majority wanted nothing to do with being “artificial Greeks”. But in time with the introduction of the so-called “Greek” language and much Greek educational indoctrination, they were all convinced to forget their real identities and accept their new artificial one and become “instant Greeks”.

Then as Greece was allowed to expand its territory, it annexed new people and used the same old tricks to also convert these new people into artificial Greeks. This process continued well into the 20th century as Macedonia and Thrace became Greece’s latest victims and as a massive number of settlers was imported from Turkey.

 After conquering Macedonia and annexing Macedonian lands populated with Macedonians, Greece did not waste much time to also forcibly assimilate them and turn them into artificial Greeks. I am saying “forcibly assimilate” because a decade before the Macedonian people themselves fought in a national uprising in order to create their own state. But instead of allowing the Macedonians to create their own state, the Philhellene Europeans decided they did not want a Macedonia state in the Balkans and allowed its brutal partition and denationalization to take place.

So now that we know a little more about how Greece and the Greek identity were created, we need to ask ourselves, “Does artificial Modern Greece deserve to exist?” any more than Macedonia deserves to exist?

Should Greece too be “dismantled” down to its common ethnic elements just as Yugoslavia was not so long ago? Something for the reader to think about!

It’s time for Greece, Bulgaria and their western European patrons to face reality. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t call yourselves “fair”, “reasonable” and “democratic” when deny the Macedonians their human rights and at the same time give your support to artificial Greece. How can you allow the artificial Greeks to have a country (Greece) to call their own and at the same time deny the Macedonians, the indigenous people of Macedonia, even the most basic human rights? 

The problem is that Greece, Bulgaria and some West European countries (you know who you are) will continue to oppress the Macedonian people as long as the Macedonian people quietly take the abuse.

The truth is, Greece and Bulgaria with help from their patrons illegally annexed Macedonian lands, forcibly taken away from the Macedonian people. And that is the entire crux of the problem.

It is time for the truth to be revealed!

Other articles by Risto Stefov:

http://www.maknews.com/html/articles.html#stefov

http://www.americanchronicle.com/authors/view/3446