Bulgaria

Correct Answer: Macedonia was an ancient Greek kingdom on the northern Greek peninsula inhabited by Greek speaking people with a Greek ethnic and cultural identity. Modern Macedonia is a Greek province on the northern Greek peninsula inhabited by Greek speaking people with a Greek ethnic and cultural identity.

The Former Yugoslav Republic is unrelated and cannot trace their origins to the historical Macedonia of Greece. The majority population of the Former Yugoslav Republic are descendants of South Slavic invaders of the 6th - 12th century CE who due to foreign occupation inhabited parts of rural Macedonia. They identified as Bulgarians by ethnicity and Macedonians by geography. The push to make these Slavic occupiers, "Macedonians by ethnicity" began with the Serbs who wanted to take over the land in the struggle for freedom from the Ottoman Empire and knowing they couldn't convince the ethnic Bulgarian that they were Serbs in order to support their agenda on the land, began to create a separate "Macedonian" identity to disassociate these Slavic people from Bulgaria. This M.O was picked up by the communists of Yugoslavia who used it on the Bulgarian people of Vardar Banovina, renaming it to the "Socialist Republic of Macedonia" in order to de-Bulgarianise them and to wrest historical Macedonia from Greece and forge for Yugoslavia, a strategic pathway to the Aegean sea.

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Previous Response:

Because Tito's propaganda "created" the pseudo-"makedonian" nation. Because they Macedonians are not Bulgarian.

The truth is that Greece is scared of losing land which currently are in the political not ethinic borders of Greece.

It is not 2 000 000 - 700 000 of those are Albanian and others. At the same time over 1 000 000 million descendants of Macedonians live in Bulgaria today, know what FYROM Macedonians think, yet have no problem with feeling Bulgarian.

Having ancient Thraco-Macedonian genes (30% in FYROM and 49% + 11% in Bulgaria as per IGENEA) does not mean that in 1900 one is not Bulgarian in Macedonia or Thrace. Bulgaria is a collective term for a people formed after the 600s.

The decision of some Macedonians to search for autonomy instead being members of a union with Bulgaria is a political and not ethnic issue. It is the same genes, the same blood, the same customs, songs and nearly the same spoken word on two sides of a border, but with different points of view on the same things.

It is a fact there are Macedonians who do not fell Macedonian, Macedonian but Bulgarian Macedonian or Greek Macedonian. FYROM must accept they are not the only Macedonians.

Reply

It is over 2 million if you count the diaspora. As for this genetic "data", there is also genetic research that shows that today's ethnic Macedonians are genetically closer to the ancient Macedonians than anyone else. However, we will never know who the true descendants are. I know there are other types of Macedonians. I know some ethnic Macedonians will not admit that. And it doesn't matter whether the ethnic Macedonians are really Bulgarian or not because the world now thinks of them as the only Macedonians, whether it is right or not.

Reply

Having ancient thraco-macedonian genes 2000 years ago does not mean that one is not Bulgarian in 1900. My family came from Macedonia. We are Bulgarian. There are over 1 000 000 of us in Bulgaria. And we will be telling the world a different story. I do with my contacts throughout the world and in Bulgaria. I work as a tourist guide, so I talk to thousands of foreigners. The Macedonist fairy tale with never be truth, as long as there are other Macedonians, too, who do not think as FYROM does.

You are a separate political entity (politichko obeduvanye), yet, you are not a separate ethnic group. Macedonia is a political phenomenon, not an ethnic one. The people in Macedonia who do not feel Aromanian, Albanian, Serbian, Gypsy, Turkish or Hellenic are Bulgarian by ethnicity.