http://makedon.mtx.net/rev0.htm ------------------------------------------------------- State Sponsored Revisionism The Bulgarian Cultural and National Revival (Until 1978) described on the pages of Glasnik Na Institutot Za Nacionalna Istorija (Voice of the Institute of National History) Skopje (1957-1980) Anna Melamed Bulgarian Academy of Science, The History of Dobrudja, Thrace and Macedonia The Bulletin of the Institute of History", 1988 v30, pp238-303 The subject of this historiographic study is the impact of the revival (until 1978), both cultural and national themes, connected with the Southwestern Bulgarian lands, as noted in the contemporary historical writings in the Socialist Republic of Macedonia. The works mentioned in the Glasnik na Institutot za Nacionalna Istorija, which began to appear in 1957, have been taken as the basis of the present research work. In order to draw a clearer and more exact picture of the manner in which the scientific - cognitive studies are carried out, and the means by which the reality of the National Revival is described in the historical science of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, a brief review is given of its characteristics sides since the emergence of this science and up to the founding of Glasnik as a periodical published by the Institute of National History in Skopje. Aside from Glasnik, separate publications of a more conceptual and programmed nature are drawn upon or often used by the contributors to the periodical as a basis for conclusions. From its very first steps, historical science in the People's Republic of Macedonia set itself the task of constructing, developing and substantiating the political and historical thesis, that from remote times the population of Macedonia came into being as an independent historical ethnic and linguistic community within the frame-work of strictly defined territorial boundaries. This community gradually began to differentiate itself in the period of the National Revival as an independent national unit, with differentiated characteristics dissimilar to the Bulgarian ones. The Bulgarian ethnonym, which was predominantly used by the Bulgarian population in Macedonia during the National Revival period, has found a different and sometimes contradictory explanation in the studies of contemporary Skopje historians. The principal factors for the delayed "national differentiation" of the "Macedonians" from the Bulgarian community were explained in the following manner the delayed capitalist development of Macedonia in comparison with the remaining Balkan peoples; the ethnic variety in the region; the alien denationalization strivings --of the Greeks, the Serbs and chiefly of the Bulgarians. The Russian consuls in Macedonia, the Slavophiles in Russia and their policy in the Balkans, the European travelers and scholars, who usually served one Balkan policy or another and in most cases knew neither the population in Macedonia nor its language, also had a negative impact. The Bulgarian circles in which they moved, as well as the Bulgarian national institutions in Constantinople, were of special importance for the Bulgarian orientation of the "Macedonian intelligentsia" and of part of the "Macedonian bourgeoisie" According to the Glasnik, the church movement in Macedonia appeared and developed independently. Its basic aim was the restoration of the "Macedonian" Archbishopric of Ohrid as a "Macedonian National" organization. The identical tasks and situation determined the striving of the "Macedonian intelligentsia" to seek an ally among the Bulgarians against the Greek Patriarchate. The Bulgarians bourgeoisie, however, being economically stronger and having greater political possibilities, usurped the leadership and began to subject the struggle of the "Macedonian people" to its own expansionist aims. The secular in form and "Macedonian" in content movement for education and enlightenment also sprang up independently, but in the '60s it clashed with intensified "Bulgarian penetration" in Macedonia. The "Macedonian intelligentsia" reacted against this with efforts aimed at the publication of several textbooks for the first grades in a "Macedonian-Bulgarian dialect", as the authors of these books called them themselves, and by expressing several opinions at the time in the Bulgarian periodicals on the introduction of the South-western Bulgarian dialects into the literary Bulgarian language then being formed. According to the authors in Skopje, the struggle of the Macedonian people for independent national expression was particularly intensified after the creation of the "Bulgarian Exarchate, which became the principal coordinator and leader of "Bulgarian propaganda" in Macedonia. In the early 1870s a "Macedonian national program" was fully and independently formed, as well as an "organized Macedonian National Movement", whose chief ideologist was the 'semi-literate Serbian nationalist' [according to the S. Novakovich's comments in his Report to the Serbian Ministry of Education] Georgi Pulevski, who published two dictionaries in Belgrade with the financial support of the Serbian chauvinists - P. Srechkovich and M. Miloevich. Pulevski's two dictionaries are 1.The 4-language Dictionary: Serbian/Albanian - Albanian/Arumanian -Turkish - Greek (1872) 2.The 3-language Dictionary: S.-Macedonian (Serbo-Macedonian) - Albanian -Turkish (1875) The consolidation of the "Macedonian nation" continued until the creation of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia (1944), and, according to some authors, even after that. The conclusions and formulations in Glasnik, as well as in other Skopje publications, are built on an exceptionally poor collection of excerpts from documentary sources and of memoir literature, whose treatment suffers from subjectivism and bias. At the same time, in the use and publication of the sources in Skopje, some essential words, expressions and whole passages are frequently omitted, which changes their original meaning. The documentary material is falsified. Contemporary studies, whose conclusions are not to the taste of the authors in the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, are not quoted or are criticized from subjectivist positions. The development of themes is contradictory to the fundamental laws of contemporary gnoseology. In the process of their research, the authors in Skopje precede from the contemporary historical and political anti-Bulgarian thesis in the Socialist Republic of Macedonia about the Revival processes in Macedonia, which is turned into a dogma. From such a viewpoint they select material which is necessary to them, and formally and factionally change its essence in order to make it suit their initial positions.