Macedonia by N. Martis - 2

MACEDONIA by Nikolaos Martis - 2

The Greek Macedonians played a major part in the history of Greece, of Europe, and of the whole world during the Hellenistic period (336-30 BC).

Alexander, the King and commander-in-chief of all the Greeks, crushed the despotic Persian Empire. He propagated Hellenic culture (as Plutarch tells us) and, assisted by his successors, the diadochi, established Greek as the universal language, thus changing the whole course of history.

It is deliberately deceitful to use the term "Slav", for the word "Slav" means "race". For centuries, the only Slavs known in the Balkans were the Croats, the Slovenes, the Serbs, and the Bulgarians. Until 1944, the only Slavs living in the territory of the FYROM were either Serbs or Bulgarians, as historical references and statistics attest (see Document No 9). Since they could not, in 1944, transform Serbs and Bulgarians into "Macedonians", Skopje's historians resorted to the term "Slav".

Historical accounts, statistics and wartime events also, confirm that the only Slavs in the region were Serbs and Bulgarians. The Macedonian Struggle (1903-1908) was waged by Greeks and Bulgarians; the first Balkan War (1912) was fought by Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks against the Turks; the second Balkan War (1913) was fought by Serbs, Greeks, Rumanians, and Montenegrins against the Bulgarians; and during the First World War British, French, Serbian, and Greek troops clashed in this region with Germans, Austrians, Turks and Bulgarians. There were no "Macedonians" fighting on either side.

The deliberately misleading use of the terms "Macedonians" and "Slavs" is exposed by two irrefutable Turkish documents. One is a population census of 1905, published by an Italian firm and the other is an election announcement of 1912 from Monastir (now Bitolj), which describes the candidates as Turks, Greeks, and Bulgarians. There was no such thing as "Macedonian" nationality during the Turkish period either. The referred Slavs were only "Serbian" and "Bulgarian" (see Document No 10).

For the people of FYROM to call themselves "Macedonians" constitutes an assault on fundamental principles and on the proclamations of international organizations, states, and world leaders. We underline the following three reasons:

- First: Everyone talks about democracy, but no-one bothers to mention that this "sad farce" (as the French Byzantinist Raine Gerdan has described it) is the brainchild of the world's most undemocratic system, Communism (see Document No 11)

In order to gain control of the Balkans and the northern Aegean, Stalin imitated Hitler (who invented the "Arian race") and created the Macedonian nation". A statement he made in 1946 is eloquent in this respect; "They do not have Macedonian consciousness at the moment, but they shall acquire it': The Communist propaganda machinery, efficient as always, bore out the truth of Stalin's words. (see Document No 12)

To recognize the people of FYROM as "Macedonians" is to support not only an undemocratic edifice but also an evil plot conceived by the Communists to take over Greek Macedonia.

In 1948, the Communist Guerrillas abducted 28,000 Greek children from Macedonia and took them to various Eastern Block countries. The United Nations archives contain documented evidence of this, and a description may be found in Nicholas Gage's book Eleni. Those children were brainwashed about "Macedonia" for years, the guerrillas intention being to liberate one day Macedonia from the Greeks. In 1988, a few thousands of them, now adults, gathered in Skopje. Many came from Canada, Australia, the United States of America and Europe. In the presence and with the support of the political leadership of Skopje', they decided to raise once again the Macedonian Question. A special international committee was set up and, since then, it has been engaged in coordinating a worldwide propaganda against Greece.

- Second: To recognize the people of FYROM as "Macedonians" will create a permanent source of friction that will endanger peace in the region. The name of "Macedonia", imposed on the republic by the Yugoslav Communist Party, at the conclusion of World War II, bears the seeds of aggression on regions of neighboring countries.

Successive Greek Governments have declared, on many occasions, that they are not opposing the independence and territorial integrity of the new Republic. But no Greek would consent to this state's appropriation of the Greek name of "Macedonia". It is only with a new name (after the example of America and Australia, for instance) that the new Republic, with its multi-ethnic population, will be able to live in peace in a turbulent region.

- Third: As any country, Greece is not represented only by its geographical territory, but also by its history and its cultural heritage. International organizations such as UNESCO and the Council of Europe, governments and prominent world figures, have stated that the history and the cultural heritage constitute fundamental elements of a peoples' identity and should be safeguarded and respected.

When Slovenia declared its independence in 1991, it issued a banknote depicting an Austrian throne of the fourteenth century. Austria immediately accused Slovenia of an infringement upon its history and its symbols and demanded that the banknote be withdrawn. The Slovenians complied.

Under the circumstances, how should Greece react, given the fact that FYROM - as attested by its new school textbooks for 1992-3 - appropriate the whole of Macedonian history which is a cherished element of the Greek national and cultural identity?

The Hellenistic period (335-30 BC) was created by Alexander the Great and his Greek Macedonian diadochi, and was so named because it was, during that period, that the Hellenic culture was diffused throughout the world. It brought new scientific, philosophical, and religious ideas that dominated the world for centuries and influenced the development of all cultures. Can these achievements, by any stress of imagination, be attributed to the... ancestors of FYROM? Their ancestors came into the area centuries after that period.

The Russian historian Avraam B. Rankovitch (of the Soviet Academy of Sciences), in his book, Hellenistic Period, p. 285, writes: "The culture that was fostered in the Hellenistic period also burst the bounds of the Hellenistic world. This culture, which was later inherited by the Roman Empire, Byzantium, and the peoples of the East, exercised a significant influence on the culture of the modern era".

Consequently, the falsification of Macedonian history is not an affront to the Greeks alone, but to the world civilization, as a whole.

In June 1992, Dr. Henry Kissinger, as a self-respecting historian, made a statement in Paris in which he described the history of Macedonia as the strong weapon that justifies Greece's inalienable right to the name of "Macedonia".

My book The Falsification of Macedonian History, reveals the extent to which Skopje has falsified Macedonian history. I believe that there is irrefutable evidence from the works of ancient Greek writers, the Old and the New Testament, Jewish writers and thousands of Greek inscriptions found on Macedonian territory. They all attest to the Hellenic identity of the ancient Macedonians. This was very well known in the ancient world, as shown by the fact that the Macedonians participated in the Amphictyonies and in the Olympic Games.

Among other acknowledgments regarding the value and validity of my book, I was honored by the former Chancellor of Germany, Mr. Helmut Schmidt and the former President of France Mr. Valery Giscard d'Estaing. (see Document No 13)

As I pointed out in a letter to President Clinton on November 20, 1993 the creation of the "Republic of Macedonia" is an act of hostility against Greece for the following reasons:

I. it constitutes an illicit usurpation of the name, the history and the cultural heritage of Greek Macedonia;
II. it denies the "Greek character" of Greek Macedonia and, thus, encourages the aggressive pretensions against Greek territories;
III. it interrupts the continuity of Greek history, given that, from 337 BC the Greeks at Corinth (see Document No 14) made first Philip and later his son Alexander (not, certainly, Mr. Gligorov's ancestors) their King and Commander-in-Chief in the war against the Persians.

It is everybody's duty to research and confirm the truth of these assertions. Ancient Macedonia, as a constituent element of Hellenism, is the very cornerstone of modern Western civilization, an arena of desperate battles for freedom and democracy; in particular the international centers of science and learning, have an obligation towards the free people to present the truth, the fundamental prerequisite of democracy.

The following Macedonian Greeks set their seal on the history of Greece, Europe, and the whole world:

1. Philip of Macedon, who established the Macedonian Kingdom as a great political power and urged on by the Athenian Isocrates, was the pioneer of the European idea. "Argos is the land of your fathers". Isocrates, To Philip XII, 32 (Loeb, G. Norlin);
2. Aristotle, the scientist and philosopher whose work will always influence research and knowledge;
3. Alexander the Great, the most stupendous historical figure ever, who influenced the course of world history tremendously. Alexander was the first ever to talk of peace and fraternity between all peoples (Plutarch's On the Fate and Virtue of Alexander and Holzner and Arrian) and the first to speak out against racial discrimination (Arrian and Martis' Logos).

"Alexander gave a general feast, sitting himself there, and all the Macedonians sifting round him; and then next to them Persians, and next any of the other tribes... And Alexander prayed for all sorts of blessings, and especially for harmony and fellowship in the empire between Macedonians and Persians. They say that those who shared the feast were nine thousand, and that they all poured the same libation and there of sang the one song of victory" Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander VII, 11, 8-9 (Loeb, F.C. Babbitt)

He put this latter principle into action by marrying Roxana and Darius' daughter. Stateira, as also by countenancing the marriage of hundreds of his officers with Persians (Plutarch).

Furthermore, he entrusted various sectors of his administration to foreign officers of countries he had conquered. By overthrowing the Persian Empire, transmitting Greek civilization to the East, and establishing Greek as the lingua franca of all peoples, he changed the history of the whole world.

"If it were not my purpose to combine foreign things with things Greek, to traverse and civilize every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the bounds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to disseminate and shower the blessings of Greek justice and peace over every nation, I should not content to sit quietly in the luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the frugality of Diogenes" Plutarch's Moralia, On the Fortune of Alexander I ,332A (Loeb, F.C Babbitt)

"Yet through Alexander Bactria and the Caucasus learned to revere the gods of Greeks... Alexander established more than seventy cities among savage tribes, and sowed all Asia with Grecian magistracies. Egypt would not have its Alexandria, nor Mesopotamia its Seleucia, nor Sogdiana its Prophthasia, nor India its Bucephalia, no the Caucasus a Greek city for by the founding of cities in these places savagery was extinguished and the worse element, gaining familiarity with the better, changed under its influence" Plutarch's Moralia, On the Fortune of Alexander I, 328D, 329A (Loeb, F.C. Babbitt).

"By these criteria let Alexander also be judged! For from his words, from his deeds, and from the instruction' which he imparted, it will be seen that he was indeed a philosopher" Plutarh's Moralia, On the Fortune Of Alexander I, 4, 328B (Loeb, F.C. Babbitt).

In the cities Alexander liberated, he abolished the oligarchies that ruled them and restored democracy (see Arrian I 18,2). Today, Arabs and other peoples of Asia he conquered, proudly claim descent from Alexander the Great (see Document No 15: A list of 22 of Pakistan's national heroes, the 11th of whom is Alexander.)

The achievement of Alexander and his Macedonian successors in the Helleno-Bactrian kingdom had a profound influence on Buddhism. Before Alexander's time, there were no representations of Buddha; so it is quite amazing to see a statue of Buddha with a bust of Alexander beside it. (see Document No 16)

Alexander is mentioned by the Prophets Isaiah (19:20,23), Daniel (8:21-22), and Maccabees (A, 1) and also in the Talmud. The Romans deified him, and Mohammed includes him in the Koran, as Zul-Carnein, amongst the prophets. (see Document No 17)

1. The Ptolemies: Ptolemy II (285-245 BC) translated the Old Testament into Greek, producing the Septuagint, which is the official version used by both the Eastern and the Western Church. Ptolemy I founded the Museum (Academy) of Alexandria and also its Library, which, thanks to the Greek Ptolemies, contained 700,000 volumes at the time of its destruction.

It was on the Ptolemies' orders that the legacy of the ancient Greek philosophers was preserved in Alexandria, the possession of all humankind today.

It was in Alexandria that science - physics, mathematics, engineering, astronomy (the first observatory was built in 289 BC by Prolemy 111) developed and it was in the same city that Aristarchus of Samos first expounded the theory of the heliocentric universe, anticipating Copernicus by many hundreds of years.

The first surgical operation on a human being was performed in Alexandria, by Herophilus and Erissistratos, and the science of anatomy was developed there.

Not only was the old Testament translated into Greek, but the New Testament was actually written in Greek. St. Paul saw a vision, in which a "man of Macedonia" spoke to him - of course in Greek - (Acts 16:9) and it was in Macedonia that the Apostle began his missionary work in Europe. Paul and Silas met Greek men and women in Thessalonika and Beroea who were converted into Christianity (Acts 17:4,12), and thanks to the Greek Macedonians Christianity was transmitted all over the world in the Greek language.

2. Cyril and Methodius, the two Greek brothers from Thessaloniki, now known as the "Apostles to the Slavs", are the protagonists of the Slavs' Christianisation in the 9th century, an event which came to be the most important historical and cultural incident for Europe and the world by and large.

"Rightly, therefore, Saints Cyril and Methodius were at an early stage, recognized by the family of Slav peoples, as the fathers of both Christianity and their culture" (see Document No 18 from Epistola Enciclica of Pope Giovanni Paolo II.)

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