How Bulgaria dug a deep pit for itself, in which it roared with delight – 2024-08-18 14:52:54

/ world today news/ We were deafened by the fanfare in the last week. It is well known that it is not easy to think in loud, incessant noise. Especially when it comes to a craft that rarely gives you the opportunity to think – journalism. Undoubtedly, the achievement of Bulgarian diplomacy is serious, but I will refrain from the already caught scumbag of the measures of our media to call almost every act that goes a little outside the usual rut “historic”. What irritates additionally, and not only across the border, but also reasonable people in our country, is the hard-to-disguise malicious smile: “You were pulling, you were pulling, and in the end what happened?”

And what actually happened? – a piece of paper was signed.

This is what the German chancellor told the British ambassador in Berlin when he found out that Britain was entering the First World War because of the violated neutrality of Belgium, guaranteed by London. “What about you for a piece of paper?”. It is clear that it was not because of him that the world was thrown into an unprecedented conflict, but because of the clash of economic and political interests. So here too. The document is important, of course, but it is doubly important that both parties have similar ideas about it.
Now I expect that the patriots will shower us with their ecstasy, because we – those who say, for example, that the work of Ivan Asen II is a perishable work, as was typical of Europe in those centuries, that when we talk about the academic work during the Renaissance, the students in our country they should know not only about the Bulgarian, but also about the Turkish, Tatar, Jewish or Armenian schools, for them we are not patriots. I’m afraid that in their ecstasy the “patriots” will do a big bear dance around the fire into which the opponents of the treaty want to throw him. And neither we nor our neighbors across the border will benefit from this.

They will start talking again about the fatal machinations of the Comintern, which led to the creation of a separate Macedonian nation. Although few in Macedonia or Bulgaria in the thirties knew what the Comintern was? The bad thing is that Bulgarians, and not Moscow, ignited the Macedonian question at the end of the 19th century, and then they did not have the strength to smother the burning flame.

Then the miracles for the Ottoman heritage multiplied. The Serbian anthropogeographer Jovan Cvijic exclaimed that the valleys of the Morava and Vardar rivers were a key to geostrategic dominance over the Balkans. The expansion of Serbia to the south was logical. The expansion of Bulgaria to the southwest was not. High mountain ranges rose between the Principality and Macedonia. The professor still had to look at how much higher Osogovo is than Shar Planina, let’s say. But his ideas were studied at the Military School in Belgrade and they inspired Serbian officers.

For the Greeks, all of Macedonia was part of their classical heritage. All the Slavs in Macedonia who recognized the supremacy of the Ecumenical Patriarchate were Greeks, regardless of the fact that they might not be able to speak a word of Greek.

Even the Vlachs intervened. For propaganda in Macedonia, Bucharest spent 14 thousand francs in 1870, and 550 thousand francs in 1902.

The Bulgarian governments achieved an important success. In the 1990s, they significantly expanded the diocese of the Exarchate in Macedonia, founded schools, gave scholarships to gifted young people to study in Bulgaria and abroad. But to the young crazy heads, progress seemed sluggish.

The question was how to release her. Before them was the example of Eastern Rumelia. So they decided to implement it in Macedonia as well.

The unification with its clearly defined sequence of cause and effect relationships – autonomy of a province with a mixed population, confirmation of the Bulgarian element in cultural, economic and political terms, appointment of a pro-Bulgarian governor of non-Bulgarian origin, appointment of a Bulgarian governor; proclamation of union with support from Bulgaria; the defense of the Union by the Principality hardened the thinking of the Bulgarian statesmen in the next three decades, drove it into deep ruts. The national tasks were seen through the lens of success in Plovdiv. And in history, repetition is an exotic flower.

But the legend of the realization of the Unification “directly by the will of the great powers” seems to have fueled the belief in our politicians and Macedonian actors that we can outsmart the big countries, that we can act alone, that if we show enough persistence, we can achieve our goals , and without considering the interests of others.

It is surprising, but in words all political parties in our country stood behind the idea of ​​autonomy. The most dogmatic, as usual, and the most suspicious of the country’s leaders were the socialists, then the communists. For them, social tasks outweighed national ones. But even for the fanatical supporter of the idea, Dimo ​​x. Dimov, adviser to Yane Sandanski, this did not mean inventing a new nation: “We are Bulgarians first and foremost and we represent the interests of the Bulgarian population in Macedonia and Odra…”

Not for a moment did this idea stand a chance of success as a practical implementation, neither in the Balkans, nor in European diplomatic offices, nor in front of European public opinion. Bulgarian foreign policy, and the revolutionaries themselves, spent a lot of effort to implement it in the minds of Europeans, and achieved a somewhat pyrrhic victory.

Gradually, the idea of ​​autonomism was established not only as a tactic, but also as a long-term strategy among many leaders of the national liberation movement of the Bulgarians. In the long run, it facilitated the separation of the western branch of Bulgarians from their main mass on territorial grounds. Bulgaria’s neighbors, armed with the experience of the Union, did not even for a moment want to allow the thought of Macedonia’s autonomy. Only the Bulgarians stood behind her. And only the Bulgarians lost from it.

Moreover, the rejection of this idea at every convenient moment, when the prospect of Macedonian accession arose (the Balkans, the First and Second World Wars), reinforced the conviction of Western public opinion that Bulgarian foreign policy was initially false in its basic assumptions.
Gotse Delchev also declared for autonomy, but rather as a tactical weapon. Too many interests intersected in it for one to hope that the Bulgarians would be left alone to manage their future. It is no coincidence that just days before the outbreak of the Ilinden uprising, Serbian diplomats in European capitals declared that Belgrade would never accept the idea of ​​an autonomous Macedonia. That even in the newspaper “Belgradski Novosti” they exclaimed: “…any Serb who… agrees to the autonomy of Macedonia… would be a Serbian traitor.”

Let’s look at what happened in the last one hundred and forty years in Macedonia. One goal was fully accomplished, though we don’t like it. In the end, Macedonia won not only the autonomy vaguely hinted at in the Berlin Treaty and which was talked about so much in the program documents of the founders of VMRO, but also its independence. The bad thing is that on the way to it, the self-awareness of part of the population changed. The modern national state rests on three pillars – education, the church, the army. Apart from two short periods, there was no Bulgarian army in Macedonia. The church was disbanded as early as 1913. After 1913, again with the exception of two short periods, there was no Bulgarian school in either Vardar or Aegean Macedonia. Four generations were brought up in a spirit of anti-Bulgarianism. At the beginning of the 20th century, those fleeing from Macedonia stopped their caravans at the Gueshev Pass and kissed the land that was holy to them. The bad thing was that even when Macedonia was in Bulgaria, we showed it all the most unsightly features of our reality, to which the citizens of our country had turned, but the Bulgarians from the outside could not accept.

The concluded contract is a victory of reason. But let’s be more modest. Despite the fact that victory has many fathers, few of them are in Bulgaria. If the situation in Macedonia had not changed, if some of the great countries had not wanted it, no treaty would have been signed.

It is not by chance that a wisdom says that the greatest misfortune is to have your wishes fulfilled. Well, we wanted a free and independent Macedonia – we have it. Now we have to get used to the thought of living with it without patriotic reinforcements and see how to leave senseless conflicts behind to move forward, respecting each other.