Resolution of the Comintern on the Macedonian question

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The first page of the Resolution. The document is classified.

The resolution of the

Macedonian nation and Macedonian language.[1]

Background

At that time there were few historians, ethnographers or linguists who claimed that a separate Macedonian nation and language existed.

Bulgarian Macedonia. Under Serbian control in Vardar Macedonia the locals faced with the policy of forced Serbianisation.[6] The Greek governments also began promulgating a policy of persecution of the use of Slavic dialects both in public and in private, as well of expressions of any ethnic distinctiveness.[7] In 1919 and 1927 population exchange agreements were signed and some of the Slavic-speaking population in Greece left for Bulgaria. In this way the Bulgarian community in most of the area began to reduce, either by population exchanges or by change of its ethnic identity.[8]

Resolution

In June 1931 the registrar of the Comintern

IMRO (United), put for the first time the issue of the recognition of a separate Macedonian nation.[10]
This question was discussed among them, however, there was a split when Vasil Hadzhikimov and his group, refused to agree that the Macedonians are a separate people from the Bulgarians. Nevertheless, the highest institutions of the Comintern were informed about this issue from Dino Kyosev who gave a lecture in Moscow in 1933 on the distinct Macedonian national consciousness.

As a result, in the autumn of 1933

region of Macedonia is one of the pivots of future imperialist war and therefore the Comintern seeks an option to blunt the contradictions between the countries that possess it. This decision by the Comintern was the recognition of a separate Macedonian nation.[15]
According to Vlahov, that was precisely what happened in Moscow in 1934:

"I mentioned earlier that the Comintern itself wanted the Macedonian Question to be considered at one of the consultations of its executive committee. One day I was informed that the consultation would be held. And so it was. Before the convening of the consultation, the inner leadership of the committee had already reached its stand, including the question of Macedonian nation, and charged the Balkan Secretariat with the drafting of corresponding resolution... In the resolution, which we published in the Makedonsko Delo in 1934, it was concluded that the Macedonian nation exists".[16]

He also mentioned that the resolution had a hostile reception both from members of the Bulgarian Communist Party and of the IMRO (United), residing in Moscow.

IMRO.[14][18] Vlahov himself was a member of both organizations and a Soviet spy,[19] who declared himself until then as a Bulgarian.[20][21] He accepted the decision without any personal reaction or substantive comment, that confirms he was operating in fact as a Communist agent.[22] However, the Resolution didn't ever mention the ineffectual Vlahov as a leader of the IMRO (United).[23] The Resolution was published for the first time in the April issue of the IMRO (United) magazine "Makedonsko Delo".[24] Following the decision of the Comintern, IMRO (United) took as its slogan "the right of the Macedonian people to self-determination up to secession" and formation of "Macedonian Republic of working masses". Despite the fact that this was formally a Resolution of IMRO (United), it was a document adopted by the Comintern, which was immediately published in all the mouthpieces of this international communist centre. Afterwards the mainstream Bulgarian public opinion has maintained that the Comintern is the "inventor" of the idea about the existence of a separate Macedonian nation.[25]

Significance

Prior to the

Macedonian Question was committed to the Resolution of supporting the development of a distinct ethnic Macedonian identity.[27]
A separate Macedonian language also was codified in 1945.

See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ Duncan Perry, "The Republic of Macedonia: finding its way" in Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrot (eds.), Politics, power and the struggle for Democracy in South-Eastern Europe, Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 228-229.
  2. ^ Dennis P. Hupchick states that "the obviously plagiarized historical argument of the Macedonian nationalists for a separate Macedonian ethnicity could be supported only by linguistic reality, and that worked against them until the 1940s. Until a modern Macedonian literary language was mandated by the communist-led partisan movement from Macedonia in 1944, most outside observers and linguists agreed with the Bulgarians in considering the vernacular spoken by the Macedonian Slavs as a western dialect of Bulgarian". Dennis P. Hupchick, Conflict and Chaos in Eastern Europe, Palgrave Macmillan, 1995, p. 143.
  3. ISBN 0691043566, p. 65.
  4. ISBN 3825813878
    , p. 127
  5. ISBN 0415375592
    . Where an overarching identity existed among Slavs in Macedonia, it was a Bulgarian one until at least the 1860s. The cultural impetus for a separated 'Macedonian identity' would only emerge later.
  6. ISBN 0299186105
    , p. 117.
  7. ISBN 0191528722
    .
  8. ISBN 0801494931
    , p. 33.
  9. ^ К у у с и н е н, О. Слабият участък от фронта на Коминтерна. — Комунистическо знаме, VIII. 1931, № 9, с. 19.
  10. ^ Произходът на македонската нация - Стенограма от заседание на Македонския Научен Институт в София през 1947 г.
  11. ^ Мемоари на Димитър Влахов. Скопје, 1970, стр. 356.
  12. ^ Balkan Studies: Biannual Publication of the Institute for Balkan Studies, Hidryma Meletōn Chersonēsou tou Haimou (Thessalonikē, Greece), 1994, p. 363.
  13. ^ Dimitar Vlahov, Memoirs, Skopje, Nova Makedonija, 1970, str. 357.
  14. ^
    ISBN 1-85065-534-0
    , p. 98.
  15. ^ Палешутски, Костадин. Югославската комунистическа партия и македонският въпрос, 1919–1945, Издателство на Българската Академия на Науките, София 1985, стр. 223.
  16. ISBN 0-8014-9493-1
    , p. 328.
  17. ISBN 0941690822
    , p. 108.
  18. София
    , 1992, стр. 342
  19. ^ Разведка и контрразведка в лицах: энциклопедический словарь российских спецслужб, Анатолий Валентинович Диенко, Клуб ветеранов госбезопасности (Руссия), Издател Русскій міръ, 2002 стр. 97.
  20. ISBN 0810862956, p. 105.
  21. ^ According to the Macedonian historian Academician Ivan Katardzhiev all left-wing Macedonian revolutionaries from the period until the early 1930s declared themselves as "Bulgarians" and he asserts that the political separatism of some Macedonian revolutionaties toward official Bulgarian policy was yet only political phenomenon without ethnic character. This will bring even Dimitar Vlahov on the session of the Politburo of the Macedonian communist party in 1948, when speaking of the existence of the Macedonian nation, to say that in 1932 (when left wing of IMRO issued for the first time the idea of separate Macedonian nation) a mistake was made. Katardzhiev claims all this veterans from IMRO (United) and Bulgarian communist party remained only at the level of political, not of national separatism. Thus, they practically continued to feel themselves as Bulgarians, i.e. they didn't developed clear national separatist position even in Communist Yugoslavia. Академик Катарџиев, Иван. Верувам во националниот имунитет на македонецот, интервју за списание „Форум“, 22 jули 2000, број 329.
  22. ISBN 3825813878, p. 142.
  23. ISBN 0208008217
    , p. 48.
  24. ^ Македонско дело, бр. 185, IV. 1934.
  25. ISBN 186064841X, p. 37.
  26. ISBN 0-691-04356-6
    , pp. 65-66.
  27. ISBN 9780521597333
    . Retrieved November 20, 2011.

External links
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