Macedonia and Bulgarian National Nihilism
Ivan Alexandrov
 

5. THE BULGARIAN NATIONAL CONCEPT
 

It is well known that since the Liberation until the years after WWII there existed in various forms two MLMs. One was "Internal", that is inside Macedonia, while the other "External" and within Bulgaria. Their members were called Centralists and Vrhovists respectively. But there is no dispute that both organizations were Bulgarian, since they represented the struggles of Bulgarians, fighting for their nationality, for the liberation of occupied lands and for national unification. The central theme in the MLM was therefore the Bulgarian national idea which not only presented no conflict with achieving social justice but actually fulfilled it. Every departure from this basic concept, that Bulgarian-Macedonians are of an unique ethnicity, eventually, as the history shows will sabotage and destroy the Bulgarian liberation and unification process.

We must unequivocally re-acknowledge the struggle for national liberation and unification as a sacred right for all people. When realized in practice, as Dimiter Blagoev stressed, it facilitates the development of productive forces which in turn alleviate the class struggle of the proletariat. Consider also that Lenin recognised the National state as the rule in human history, while proponents of Marxism-Leninism regarded the military path of Italy and Germany last century towards unification as progressive. We however conveniently forget these facts and are quick to criticize the Ruling-class of Bulgaria for participation in past wars.

Bulgarian foreign policy has never denied the right of unification for any people. To the contrary, Bulgaria has supported it fully. At different times after WWI and WWII unification occurred for the Romanians, Serbians, Ukranians, Belorussians, Lithuanians, Polish, Croatians, Slovenes and even the Datchani (Danish). Supporting these justified acts established our credentials as Internationalists. However, on many occasions and for many reasons we denied equivalent rights to our own people. We expose ourselves as having dual standards, one set for the rest of the world and another for the Bulgarian people.

In neighbouring countries the appropriated foreign parts are consistently claimed as their own, but in Bulgaria the opposite logic exists, we regard our own as foreign. On one side stand the foreign powers defending and justifying the lies, the devastation, the genocide; while we cannot even unite to defend the truth, justice and our very national dignity. Such a phenomenon can only be termed "national nihilism". This occurrence is not, and cannot be allowed to become state ideology, but in many instances it manifests as a powerful and unperceived force which distorts


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the judgment of many party, community, Government, economic, scientific and cultural activists. Unfortunately our progress at eradicating such thinking is painfully slow. The old sectarian-dogmatic ideology still maintains the notion of national nihilism despite the 9th Congress of the BCP (1966) declaring it as void and anti-Bulgarian.

Many texts have been published, and most of them ostensibly artistic works, throughout which these latter nihilistic attitudes are plainly evident. However, instead of the proper critical review process, we either keep silent or commend such studies oblivious to the content or the prevailing circumstances of the era. Therefore some novels demean the integrity and motives of prominent MLM members, and even ascribe actions to representatives of the Right-Wing which occurred 5 years after their death! This pseudo-Marxist approach no longer has relevance in today's Bulgaria. The time has long past when we would accept statements of the form

"Macedonia has a common territory, a common language, represents an economic unity, has a common spiritual aspect and therefore a separate Macedonian Nation exists"


This logic allows a myriad of new separate Nations to be sanctioned which in reality did not exist either now or ever. For example we can call part of the Romanians "Transylvanians", the Serbs "Bosnians", the Croatians "Dalmatians", Albanians "Kosovians", the Greeks "Cypriots", the Czechs "Moravians", the Polish "Mazurians", the Ukrainians "Galicians", the Austrians "Tyrolians", the Germans "Bavarians", the Italians "Sicilians", the Spanish "Andalusians" etc.

It is absurd and illogical to take one part of the whole, due to foreign pressure or influence and proclaim a new nation. Yet in our case a part of the Bulgarian lands was taken, and the Bulgarian people there decreed to have a new "non-Bulgarian" ethnic identity. Pathetically, even in Bulgaria today there are individuals who accept these concepts. We realize such unsubstantiated claims which are promoted as truths are called dogmas. Bulgaria's society no longer has need of political views contrary to the factual evidence. The time has come when all past dogmatic phenomena should be permanently erased.

Returning to the Macedonian Question, the conditions of yesteryear which allowed dogmatic assertions, with respect to the existence of a Macedonian people and Nation are now clearly missing. Within today's State politics, Macedonia is divided into three parts. It does not represent a single territory, nor a single economic unit but in fact two divergent economies, Socialist and Capitalist. Across its common territory, no single ethnic group predominates, nor is there any unified spiritual outlook. A balance exists between the Slavo-Bulgarian community, the absolute majority until the late 1920s, and the Greek element. There is also a significant Albanian population. The Slavonic inhabitants, Bulgarian by descent,


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now speak in three literary languages, Bulgarian, "Macedonian" and Greek. The pertinent question however, is which fragment of this population forms the Macedonian Nation? All the Slav-speaking or only the people in Yugoslavia? And why only in the latter are "Bulgarians" automatically transformed into "Macedonian" nationals? In Aegean Macedonia the same people by language and self-declaration consider themselves Bulgarian, "Macedonian" (under foreign influence) or Greek, while in Pirin we only have Bulgarians. Even if we consider the whole Bulgarophone population within the three parts of Macedonia it is still not objectively possible to assert that a "Macedonian Nation" exists.

The majority of academic scholars and politicians consider it an enigma that a new language was created for the "Macedonian Nation" when it was inhabited almost entirely by a prevailing Bulgarian ethnic element. Within the contemporary world many nations exist with a common language - English, Spanish, Portugese, French, German and others. The original population of Montenegro is regarded as a distinct nation but we have no evidence to suggest there was any attempt to create a unique Montenegran language. If there has to be a new language for the Macedonian Republic why can't the Bulgarian language also be permitted and not banned as it as present? The smallest Slavonic ethnic group, the Luzhichanites, who live in East Germany, have two forms of their literary language, Upper and Lower Luzhitski. Nations and languages cannot be created by decrees, they either exist or are in an evolutionary process.
 

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