http://makedon.mtx.net/rev0.htm ---------------------------------------------- The Conditioning is Strong! 120 yrs later we still hear the same OLD Propaganda Recently an inspired Macedonist sent the "Oracle" a lengthy, rambling criticism of one of our articles. Expectedly it was bereft of any logic or knowledge but contained the following most interesting statement "Poleka no sigurno, tezite za etnogenetskite razlioki megju Makedoncite i Bugarite kje doprat do svesta na sekoj Makedonec vo Bugarija i sekoj Makedonec, porano ili podocna, kje sfati deka nema nikakva vrska so turko-bugarskiot rod Dulo." These are EXACTLY the same points the Serbian imperialists used over 120 years ago. Read the following article by Hristo Botev, written in 1875, to realise where these "Macedonists" are coming from and who their real tutors and role models are (and the sad irony is that they have no idea of this very fact - the bell is gone but they just keep salivating). Hristo Botev's Letter [June 20th, 1875] to the Editor of the newspaper "Istok" (Belgrade), about the Serbian chauvinistic propaganda in Macedonia After our answer to your article entitled "Bulgarian Espionage and Inquisition", we thought that you would be silenced or would at least change the tone of your trash. You have tried to do this with the few lines published in the 53rd number of your paper directly aimed at us. However, we do not think that in our answer we "have been striking the air", but that we have been "striking" you and your government, that is why it will be tactical to answer your lines again. We do not avoid polemics and explications; we are democrats, that is why we can step into the quagmire and see what you are doing there, trampled by the public opinion of the Serbian intelligentsia. Listen. You say that in the article "Bulgarian Espionage and Inquisition" you have been adducing facts, while we have been swearing and, at the same time, attacking Serbia, Russia and everything the people themselves desire. (Which people? Our people?) We do not have enough room here to quote all the philological and ethnographical vomit in which your article abounds, and all the abominations and slanders you heap not only on the Exarchate, but on the whole Bulgarian people, and to show you who has been swearing you or we. Just for a second, we shall accept one of your accusations, just to prove to you that, for the above mentioned article, you deserve not only to be cursed, but even to be sent to a madhouse. You adduce facts with which you accuse the Bulgarians and their Exarchate of using espionage and inquisition to Bulgarize the poor, unfortunate Serbians in Turkey, and you say we do not answer your facts but swear instead. Well, how are we to answer facts which you yourselves base on the philological madness of Milos Milojevich, i.e. that Serbians have lived in the Balkan Peninsula since time immemorial, that only a handful of 200,000 Bulgarian-Tartars came here and, in a short time, Bulgarized all these Serbians? How are we to answer these facts when their philological madness is clad in political tendencies, i.e. when you and your government are striving to ensure that there will really be only 200,000 Bulgarians, or, to use your words, Tartars, while the rest are Serbianized, i.e. Slavicized? Wise people respond to philological madness with laughter and scorn, while to your political charlatanism we respond with curses and indignation: the Bulgarian people have no other weapon. But even in this respect, we have proved to be much more tactful than you. We did not swear at the Serbian people (as you did at Bulgarian people), or the Serbian intellectuals or at the decent Serbian patriots, but attacked only this patriotic slum in whose noddles the horses of Dushan keep kicking around and whose aim is to act with a high hand wherever the Serbian (Dragasevich's) "God bless you" is heard. We are not to blame that your government and a great part of your "saintly" men belong to this patriotic scum. And we did that only to show you that our emigrants know the reasons why you raised such an uproar against our Exarchate and flung so many slanders against our people. It was pretty pleasant for you, on the one hand, to sing your methodist song about brotherhood and unity and to cheat us with the good intentions of "the South-Slavonic Piedmont" and, on the other, to sow proselytism in the western parts of our country and to weave your ethnographical and political web. But the Exarchate, at which from the very beginning, you looked at skeptically and the emigrants whom you have been exploiting ever since 1862 up till now, have through their long and bitter experience come to realize who you are and what you are, while the Bulgarian people, whom you have been deceiving since the beginning of your liberation, have turned their eyes, as well as their hopes, away from you. It is natural, of course, after all this that, for you, the Exarchate should have become a den of spies and inquisitors, the emigrants a band of millet-ale venders and vagabonds, and the Bulgarian people (who according to you are not more than 200,000) are Tartars, who, in order to be liberated from the Turks, should first be Serbianized. Prove to us that neither you nor your government think so. Why then do you say that we swear and do not answer your facts? In order to answer and refute your facts, you should first of all explain to us how far your ethnographic boundaries stretch to the south and which places come within the boundaries of your Old-Serbia; because, judging by your geographical and ethnographical ideas, we see that the facts you adduce speak in our favour rather, i.e. that it is not the Exarchate that is forcing the Serbians to accept Bulgarism, but that you and your government are doing this to the Bulgarian element in Macedonia. Thus, for example, we cannot understand this complaint of yours: "In May this year Bishop Damaskin with the consent of the mudur closed the school (Serbian, of course) in Veles and drove away the pupils." Is Veles a Serbian town? Is Veles within the boundaries of your Old Serbia? We are stupid enough (and so are Hilferding [1], Kanitz [2], and Grigorovich, and Liprandi [3] and many other ethnographers) to think that Veles is a Bulgarian town and is situated in Macedonia: consequently it is not you who should complain that bishop Damaskin has closed your school but we, because your propaganda has poked its nose into other people's affairs. Is it not you, who keep saying that "it is in the interests of both Serbians and Bulgarians not to exercise pressure, but to leave everyone to think, work and study, as he finds it best?" What free thinking people! What then is your propaganda doing in Veles? And why do your teachers incite the people not to acknowledge the Exarchate? Or is this also a curse? And have you forgotten the scandal in Tetovo? But while you try to answer these questions, we shall sum up our other curses in a few questions . Tell us, if you please, is there not in Belgrade a society of patriots (which society we called "scum") under the chairmanship of the "philological ass" Milos Milojevich, and does that society not send money, books and teachers to purely Bulgarian villages and towns in Macedonia and to some parts in North-western Bulgaria? If it does, what stands behind these enormous sacrifices, is it to enlighten their brothers, or to sow proselytism among them? Tell us is this society not founded by the Tempter, and is it not, both morally and materially supported by your "Piedmont" government? If it is so, is not its purpose to prove in action that only Serbians live on the Balkan Peninsula? Answer all these vital questions, and then we shall prove to you in the next number of "Zname" [4] why we attack "Serbia, Russia and everything that the people themselves desire", and we shall prove to you that the people do not want what you your government are doing to them, and no longer listen to those who but yesterday cheated them. Notes 1.AF Hilferding (1831-1872), a Russian historian and Slavophil. Author of "Letters on the History of the Serbians and the Bulgarians", etc. 2.Felix Kanix (1829-1904), a Hungarian ethnographer, archeologist and geographer. 3.Ivan Petrovich Liprandi (about 1790-1880), a Russian general and scholar. 4.A newspaper edited by Botev Hristo Botev, Works, Authentic Edition, vol. II, Sofia, 1960; p. 219-222. (the original is in Bulgarian) --------------------