“Grecomans” was used by the Bulgarians as a derogatory term to define the Greek Slavophones, i.e. those who remained firm to the Ecumenical Patriarchate and to Hellenism.
It is interesting to note that in 1883, despite the growth of the Bulgarian national and ecclessiastical movement, the situation in terms of ecclesiastical affiliation in the northern “border” bishoprics of the contested central zone presented the following picture Bishopric of Ohrid and Prespa, patriarchist families 3030, exarchist 6003, Bishopric of Pelagonia (Monastir), patriarchist 6459, exarchist 4988, Bishopric of Moglena (Florina), patriarchist 2433, exarchist 699.
The majority of these patriarchists were Vlachophone and Slavophone “Grecomans”.
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[AYE/”Constantinople Embassy”/1883, Dokos (Monastir) to Koundouriotis (Con/pole), No. 210, 15/27 Nov.1883] , [Dillimas and Orientations by Evagellos Kofos]
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Grecomaniac or Grecophile
The above words are terms that used from the ultra-nationalist in order to determine the Greek Slavphones during the Greek Struggle in the 19th and in the beginning of the 20th century.
These terms came from Bulgarian or Serbian nationlist elements.Today the FYROMacedonian ultra-natiolists diaspora centers REPLACE these odds and using these terms in order to insult these Greeks.
For the sake of the thread let us accept that the old Bulgarians, those who in current Makedonoski theory “considered” themselves Bulgarians and who, in fact, lived in Macedonia, as a minority community, however, as is apparent from the Ottoman statistics for 1905, have erroneously been taken as constituting a segment of the “Macedonian” nation.
As we have said, however, these people were Bulgarians:they never (at that time) called themselves “Macedonians”, they fought as comitadjis in the ranks of the Bulgarian Committee and later, in 1924, taking advantage of the Kafantaris-Molov agreement on the “voluntary exchange of populations”, they left for Bulgaria.
None of them moved to what was then the district of Skopje –which, moreover, was at that time certainly not called “Macedonia”: it was merely “Vardarska Banovina” (Directorate of the Axios), an administrative district of the then Kingdom of Serbia. Serbia consequently delivered a protest to the Greek government for having exchanged these people for Greeks living in Bulgaria when, according to Serbia, they were in fact Serbs, (not, of course, “Macedonians”). All the “Bulgarophones”, as they were called at that time, who remained in Greece were old Patriarchists (adherents of the Ecumenical Patriarchate) from the time of the Bulgarian Schism, veterans of the Macedonian Struggle.
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“Grecomaniacs” (passionately Greek)
In the words of the Bulgarians and their descendants.The following discussion on the nationality of these Bulgarian speakers, which Michel Paillares reports (op.cit., pp. 50-51) having had with Hilmi Pasha, the Inspector General of the Macedonian vilayets of Monastir and Thessaloniki, is significant :
Paillares: But these Bulgarophones insist that they are really Greeks?
Hilmi: They say they are Greeks when no coercion, no constraint, is brought to bear on them.
Paillares: And what is your opinion, Your Excellency ?
Hilmi: My opinion, and the opinion of my government, is that they are Greeks. We classify our subjects according to which schools and which Church they attend. Being unable to win people by peaceful propaganda, the Comitadjis do not hesitate to make use of the most atrocious methods.
They turn to the knife, the revolver, the axeIt is equally significant that much earlier, in 1871, the Russian Goloubinskii (see the relevant note in my dissertation on “The liberation of Thessaloniki”, op.cit., pp. 25-26) had written : These purported Greeks nourished a more implacable hatred and a more intense scorn for all things Bulgarian or Slavic than did real Greeks.
Just recently my attention was drawn to a passage in the magazine Tachydromos, an extract from a book by Giovanni Amadori-Virgili, a former Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, entitled “La questione Rumeliota (Macedonia, Vecchia Serbia, Albania, Epiro) e la politica italiana”, published in 1908 as number 1 in a series by the Biblioteca Italiana on foreign policy.The passage in question reads: Through their partiotic sentiments and their devotion to Greek traditions and Greek culture, the Slav-speaking Greeks of Macedonia express their vigorous determination to be Greeks.
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Της Βιολέττας Σμυρνιού Παπαθανασίου *
