About the Hellenization of Southern (Aegean) Macedonia - A Review of
'Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood'
By Antonio Milososki
Ph.D. Candidate
University of Duisburg
Germany
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"Elsewhere in Greek Macedonia, the term [en-] dopyi ("local")
is used to refer to Slavic-speakers who had inhabited the region prior
its incorporation into Greece in 1913; in the Edessa and Florina prefectures,
for example, the phrase dopyos Makedhonas ("local Macedonian")
is used by many to signify a Slavic-speaker, and his descendants."
Perhaps this quotation from the book of Dr Anastasia Karakasidou was
the reason why the same passed through various troubles before it was
published. Or, maybe this was the main motivation for certain Greek
extremists to accuse Dr Karakasidou of "high treason". When
in 1993 she published one part of her research in the periodical "Journal
of Modern Greek Studies (vol.11, 1993)", she received several death
threats from US-based Greek right-wing organizations, even before her
colleagues had a chance to congratulate her. At the same time, the Greek
newspaper "Stohos", describing her as a state-enemy, published
both her address in Salonika and her car registration number.
But she didn't give up, she continued with her research, and when the
book was finished she made a publishing contract with Cambridge University
Press. The surprise came when at the last moment Cambridge Press decided
not to publish the book - allegedly because of the intelligence coming
from the UK Embassy in Athens saying that such a step might endanger
the security of British citizens who resided in Greece. The case has
now gathered a great deal of world-academic attention. There were stories
in the Washington Post and The New York Times. Three academic editorial
board members resigned from the publishing house in protest at the decision.
The "Karakasidou case" became known worldwide. Generating
interest even before its publishing, the book was finally printed in
1997 by Chicago University Press. Today Dr Karakasidou is Professor
at Wellesley College in the US, and her book "Fields of Wheat,
Hills of Blood" is one of the most circulated among the students
of anthropology and Balkan history.
This book, which is very readable and comprehensive, is an outcome
of her fact-finding mission in the region of Assiros (originally Guvezna),
a small town located twenty miles northwest from Salonika. In the research
that covers the time period from 1870-1990, Dr Karakasidou describes
the life of the region's inhabitants, their migration, their customs,
professions, languages, as well as the impact of the numerous wars on
the population. Particularly emphasized is the role of the local notables
in the processes of shaping or rather reshaping the national identities
of the inhabitants. The local notables, known as tsorbadjihi (local
Christian elite), merchants, priests, teachers and state administrators,
consisted of the lowest but obviously the most effective tool in the
process of national assimilation. According to Dr Karakasidou, the key
factor in this process, until 1913, were the local tsorbadjihi and the
Greek Church - Patriarchate. The Patriarchate had cleverly used its
privileged position in the Ottoman Empire in opposition to the recently
re-established (1870) Bulgarian Church (Exarchate), even though the
later had noticeably enjoyed stronger support among the "Slav-speaking"
population all over Macedonia. After the partition of Macedonia, beside
the Patriarchate, state-sponsored schools and the Army (through the
army-obligation for adult males) undertook the leading role in the process
of nation-building of the Greek national consciousness among the non-Greek
inhabitants, which at that time consisted of the majority of the population
in Southern (Aegean) Macedonia. Those were the main assimilation-levers
for the realisation of the state-sponsored project for the Hellenization
of that part of Greece. In that respect, speaking about the situation
in Assiros in the war-periods (Balkan Wars, Word Wars, and the Civil
War), the author, using both oral memory and written history, brings
the destiny of the "ordinary people" closer to the eyes of
the reader.
Where in the region trade, agriculture, religion, common customs and
mixed marriages had connected its inhabitants, it is easy to notice
how, under the pressure of the neighbouring propagandas, year by year
the differences (particularly in the language) became far more important
than the similarities. For example, many "Slavic-speaking"
women from the surrounding villages who had married into the Greek-speaking
families in Assiros found themselves forbidden by their husbands or
in-laws to speak their "native Bulgarian dialect" in their
new households. At the same time, the author underlines that the labels
"Macedonian" and "Bulgarian" represent synonyms,
which, particularly today, are used in Greece interchangeably in reference
to "Slavic-speakers", in respect both of their language and
ethnicity.
Further on, one can understand the significance of the refugees (prosfighas)
and their immense importance in the process of "national homogenisation"
of the young Greek state. Actually, Anastasia's father was a Turkish-speaking
prosfighas himself, compulsory evacuated to Greece in the wake of the
Asia Minor War in 1922. His life had been deeply affected by the Greek
nation-building process. And, although after his settling in the region
of Macedonia he had acquired some sense of belonging to the Greek collectivity,
yet every evening he would tune his short-wave radio to an Istanbul
station and sing along with the slow Turkish songs, explaining to his
little daughter their verses. From the comprehensive analysis about
the colonisation of this part of the country it becomes clear that the
Greek nation, particularly in the regions of Southern Macedonia and
Thrace, has derived from profoundly diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
The next method that had accelerated this process of state sponsored
assimilation was the so called "voluntary resettlement" of
the native population, mainly to Turkey and Bulgaria, but also to the
East-European countries during and after the Greek Civil War.
All in all, the book represents a well-founded publication about the
Hellenization of one small part of Southern (Aegean) Macedonia. Nonetheless,
it gives us more than enough evidence to draw the conclusion that Macedonia
has never been exclusively Greek. Moreover, at the beginning of the
twenty-century, Southern Macedonia was a multiethnic region with an
overwhelmingly non-Greek majority. As the Bishop of Florina (Lerin)
Augostinos Kandiotis once said "If the hundreds of thousands of
refugees had not come to Greece, Greek Macedonia would not exist today".
The book is well worth reading. Unravelling the complex social, political
and economic processes through which these desperate people become amalgamated
within the expansionistic Greek identity, this book provides an important
corrective to the developments of the "Macedonian Question".
Source: www.pollitecon.com