Post by Caslav Klonimirovic on Jan 18, 2010 9:19:17 GMT -5
About the Slavs; Again!
By Risto Stefov
rstefov@hotmail.com
January 17, 2010
When I hear the word “Slav” it evokes unpleasant memories reminding me of the constant abuse I have taken and still take from some Greeks. I cannot even begin to count the number of times I was called a “Slav” nor to describe the unpleasant situations during which this word was hurled at me. But I am not alone in this abuse, just about everyone who has dared to feel Macedonian and publicly express it has been, at one time or another, called a “Slav”. So then what is meant when a Greek calls a Macedonian a “Slav”? A Greek calling a Macedonian “Slav” it synonymous with calling him or her “a low life”, “scum of the earth”, “stupid”, “uncultured”, “uneducated” and so on! It is a derogatory and unpleasant reference; a reminder to those, particularly the Western Media, who “inadvertently (or not)” still call Macedonians “Slavs”.
So, what exactly is a “Slav” and how did these “Slav’s” come into being?
A “Slav”, from a Greek perspective, is an “undesirable” person. Macedonians are called “Slavs” because they get in the way of the Greek myth. The Greek myth is the foundation of the Modern Greek identity where only Greeks who have descended from the ancient Greeks deserve to be called Greek or Macedonian. In reality however, anyone who subscribes to the “Greek doctrine” can call him or her self Greek or Macedonian. The Greek doctrine is a political phenomenon requiring one to abide by a number of rules. To be Greek one must subscribe to the idea that they are (a) descendents of the ancient Greeks, (b) insist that “Macedonia is Greek”, (c) must be a xenophobe and racist just like the ancient Greeks, and (d) speak the Greek language or parts of it.
Any person who does not subscribe to the “Greek doctrine” has no right to call him or her self Greek or Macedonian and therefore he or she is automatically a “Slav” and a traitor. Allow me to elaborate; any of my cousins with whom I share great grandparents who have accepted the Greek doctrine; that is they say they are Greek, speak the Greek language, go along with the idea that “Macedonia is Greek”, are xenophobic racists and claim to be the descendents of the ancient Greeks or the ancient Macedonians, qualify to be both Greek and Macedonian. Macedonian, but only of the Greek kind. I, on the other hand, who refuse to accept the “Greek doctrine” but still want to identify myself as a Macedonian, because that is what I am, according to the “Greek doctrine” do not qualify to be Macedonian and therefore I am automatically a “Slav” and a traitor to the Greek cause.
So what is “Slav”? Is it an ethnic group? A culture? A religion?
Before answering this question, let us first examine the Greek version of a “Slav”. According to some Greeks the “Slavs” are a people who came to Macedonia en masse from some swamps north of the Danube River. When they arrived in Macedonia in the 6th century AD they killed off the indigenous Macedonians and repopulated Macedonia. The “Slavs” however, for some unknown reason, did not enter Greece because those same Greeks who claim that Macedonians are “Slavs” also claim Modern Greece is populated by pure Greeks, descendents of the so-called “Ancient Greeks”, implying that the “Slavs” never crossed today’s Greek border.
The reason I am bringing up “the Slavs” again is because I had another one of those discussions with my relative and we both agree that these “Greek claims” are not only ridiculous but they are laughable.
For example, given that there were no borders between today’s Greece and Macedonia in the 6th century AD, since both countries at the time were regions of the so-called “Byzantine Empire”, what was there to stop the “Slavs” from entering Greek territory and from killing off all the Greeks and settling Greece as well?
I don’t think one needs to be a historian or a scientist to see the flaw in this logic.
Today’s Greeks completely ignore the fact that their borders were drawn for the first time in the 19th and 20th centuries and shamelessly continue to propagate myths that Macedonia was Greek since ancient times and that Greeks are ethnically pure and descendents of the ancient Greeks when we know for a fact that there is nothing “Greek” or “pure” about Modern Greece. Worse, while making these ridiculous claims, the same Greeks insist that Macedonians do not exist and dare to call the real Macedonians “Slavs”.
I don’t think one needs to be a historian or a scientist to see the flaw in their logic here either.
Are the “Slavs” an ethnic group? No they are not! Outside of the condescending Greek definition of what a “Slav” is there is a general reference to the “Slavs” as a people that exist all throughout Eastern Europe and in parts of Asia from the Balkans to Siberia. It is impossible for all these people, including those in Russia, to be of one single ethnic group!
Similarly all these people cannot be of a single culture or a single religion. There are many different cultures in Eastern Europe and Asia and they cannot all be culturally classified as “Slav”. We also know for a fact that people referred to as “Slavs” belong to a variety of religions including to the Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim religions. So, we can conclude that “Slav” is not an ethnicity, culture, or a religion.
So what is “Slav” then?
The only characteristic that comes close to defining what a “Slav” is is the language these people speak. In other words, these countries are called “Slav” because the people living in them speak a language that belongs to the family of “Slav” languages.
Now that we have established that a “Slav” is a person who speaks a language which has roots in the “Slav” family of languages, one has to wonder how is it possible that so many individual people of varying ethnicities, cultures and religions in such a vast region as Eastern Europe and parts of Asia came to speak a similar language?
The key to discovering this secret is in the codification and formalization of national languages. For example when did Russia codify its national language? Or as my relative would say, when was the “Slav” language “imposed” on the Russian nation? We have to agree here that even the Eskimos in Russia speak Russian, a “Slav” language. We also have to agree here that “Slav” is not an indigenous Eskimo language. So the word “imposed” is correctly used.
If Russian, the “Slav” version, was “imposed” on the Russian nation then where did it come from and when? More importantly, what does Russia have in common with Macedonia to share a language with it? I would hazard to guess that the common factor that these two countries, existing on opposite poles of the continent, have is religion, the Orthodox religion to be exact. So how did these two countries happen to come by the Orthodox religion and who came by it first?
We know for a fact that Christianity took root in Macedonia way before it filtered up to Eastern Europe and Russia. We also know that Macedonia was an “exporter” of Christianity and of the “Slav” language, more commonly known then as “Church Slavonic”. So as my relative put it, call us crazy but we are going to go out on a limb here and say that the “Slav” language was exported from Macedonia to Russia at the same time Christianity was exported from Macedonia to Russia. Then in time Russia made this “church language” into its national language. We know this is hard to believe and even harder to accept but think about it! How can so many people in such a vast area, the size of Eastern Europe and parts of Asia, speak a language with common roots? How did it come by that Eskimo’s speak “Slav”? What other explanation is there?
Why export the Macedonian language you might say? Why not the Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian, or the language of any other south “Slav” speaking country?
Well, in spite of Greeks boasting that the Greeks spread their “Greek language” all over the ancient known world, NO ONE outside of the Modern Greeks speaks Greek. And those who do speak Greek were taught the language in school. In other words, Greek is not a language of the people; it never was.
The fact that Solun and Ohrid, the religious centers of the Eastern World, were in Macedonia and a part of the Byzantine Empire and not part of any Bulgarian or Serbian Empires, leaves Serbia and Bulgaria out. As Professor Angelina Markus often puts it, the people of Moravia and other regions as far north as Siberia were asking for teachers to be sent from Macedonia and not from Greece, Serbia, or Bulgaria. Why? I don’t know why for sure but there are similar situations that occurred in other parts of the world at different times that would explain why. For example, why did the colonists in America in the early days of colonization ask for teachers to be sent from England as opposed to Holland? Was it perhaps because the colonists understood the English language better than they understood Dutch? The colonists chose their teachers from England because of the English language. The English in England were also better educated and more cultured and could teach a lot better than the colonists could themselves?
It is a known fact that Macedonia was experiencing a “cultural renaissance” when the Christian religion was making its way northward to Russia. So from what better place could you ask for teachers to be sent than from the most enlightened place in the world?
Now I want to say a bit more about the “Slav mass migration”.
Let me begin by saying that the “Slav mass migration” is only a theory without any archeological evidence and with hardly any historical backing to prove that it ever took place.
If however it did take place, as many Greeks would claim, then what were the so-called “Slavs” when they allegedly migrated southward? Were they an elite warrior group militarily organized for conquest? Was their aim to conquer the Balkans and Macedonia?
The answer to the above questions is NO!
First let’s say that there were no “mass migrations”, only some migrations. Second, let’s look at the evidence left behind. According to Procopius, the so-called “Slavs” came with their families on wagons and attempted to storm Solun via the water on hollowed-out tree logs.
On another occasion another historian wrote: they came in droves looking for land to settle. They were not choosy about what land they could settle on be it arid, dry or swamp.
The only profile that fits behaviour such as this is that of refugees. Pressure put on the people living in the vicinity of the Danube River by invading tribes such as the Avars and Bulgars during the 6th century AD, forced them to flee southward into Byzantine territory looking for sanctuary. In other words the so called “Slav migrations” were nothing more than refugees fleeing from conflicts.
It is unheard of that “warriors” and “conquerors” would travel with their families on wagons while doing battle, let alone settle on arid soil or on swamp land and work hard for a living. Warriors settle for no less than taking the best of everything from those they conquer and subdue. Also there is no profit in killing the conquered, as the Greeks claim happened in Macedonia, when they could use them as slaves to work for them.
There are some who will go as far as to say the “Slavs”, or what I call refugees, who invaded the Balkans spoke a different language before coming to Macedonia. It is alleged that they learned the “Slav” language from the indigenous Macedonians. If you don’t believe me then how do you explain the fact that the Macedonians inside the fortified city of Solun which was never invaded or conquered by the so-called “Slavs” spoke “pure Slavonic”. Attested by Emperor Michael III himself, no less!
Here is some historic evidence:
Between 842 to 867 (regency of Michael III)
“....and in the reign of Michael, the son of Theophilus, the protospatharius Theoctistus, surnamed Bryennius, was sent as military governor to the Province of Peloponnesus with a great power and force, viz., of Thracians and Macedonians and the rest of the western provinces, to war upon and subdue them. He subdued and mastered all the Slavs and other insubordinates of the province of Peloponnesus, and only the Ezeritai and the Milingoi were left, towards Lacedaemonia and Helos……. (DIA)” (Courtesy of Soldier of Macedon)
The year 862 (Kiril and Metodi)
“You are both natives of Salonika, and all Salonikans speak pure Slavonic.... (Life of St Metodi)” (Courtesy of Soldier of Macedon)
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“In the Panonia legends in Cyril's Hagiography it is said that the Moravian prince, Rastislav, addressed Byzantine Emperor Michail III in a letter and asked him: "For our people who had renounced polytheism and accepted Christianity, we have not a teacher who would explain Christ's faith in our language... For that reason, my lord, please send us such a bishop and a teacher." In the fourth chapter of the same legends it is written that at the meeting, Cyril was also present, and when this application was on the agenda the philosopher was addressed by the emperor: "Philosopher, did you hear these words? Except for yourself, there is no other person who can carry out this task. Take these numerous presents and go, and take your brother Methodius the prior with you. You are Thessalonikians, and all the Thessalonikians speak pure Slavonic." Cyril's Hagiography also includes the philosopher's reply: "Although I am tired and ill, I will go there with pleasure, if they have letters for their language."” (http://www.unet.com.mk/mian/youngest.htm)
“When the Moravian Emperor Rastislav appealed to the Byzantine Emperor Michael III in Constantinople for missionaries to teach the gospel to the Slavs of Moravia, Michael chose Constantine and Methodius, who were well known as Byzantine scholars and diplomats. Michael justified his choice with the famous sentence: "You are Thessalonians, and all the people of Salonika speak pure Slavonic".” (Peter Hill, “Who are the Macedonians?”)
How could the people of a famous Macedonian city, named after Salonica, Philip II’s daughter, NEVER invaded or OCCUPIED by the “Slavs” be speaking pure Slavonic? Some food for thought!
By Risto Stefov
rstefov@hotmail.com
January 17, 2010
When I hear the word “Slav” it evokes unpleasant memories reminding me of the constant abuse I have taken and still take from some Greeks. I cannot even begin to count the number of times I was called a “Slav” nor to describe the unpleasant situations during which this word was hurled at me. But I am not alone in this abuse, just about everyone who has dared to feel Macedonian and publicly express it has been, at one time or another, called a “Slav”. So then what is meant when a Greek calls a Macedonian a “Slav”? A Greek calling a Macedonian “Slav” it synonymous with calling him or her “a low life”, “scum of the earth”, “stupid”, “uncultured”, “uneducated” and so on! It is a derogatory and unpleasant reference; a reminder to those, particularly the Western Media, who “inadvertently (or not)” still call Macedonians “Slavs”.
So, what exactly is a “Slav” and how did these “Slav’s” come into being?
A “Slav”, from a Greek perspective, is an “undesirable” person. Macedonians are called “Slavs” because they get in the way of the Greek myth. The Greek myth is the foundation of the Modern Greek identity where only Greeks who have descended from the ancient Greeks deserve to be called Greek or Macedonian. In reality however, anyone who subscribes to the “Greek doctrine” can call him or her self Greek or Macedonian. The Greek doctrine is a political phenomenon requiring one to abide by a number of rules. To be Greek one must subscribe to the idea that they are (a) descendents of the ancient Greeks, (b) insist that “Macedonia is Greek”, (c) must be a xenophobe and racist just like the ancient Greeks, and (d) speak the Greek language or parts of it.
Any person who does not subscribe to the “Greek doctrine” has no right to call him or her self Greek or Macedonian and therefore he or she is automatically a “Slav” and a traitor. Allow me to elaborate; any of my cousins with whom I share great grandparents who have accepted the Greek doctrine; that is they say they are Greek, speak the Greek language, go along with the idea that “Macedonia is Greek”, are xenophobic racists and claim to be the descendents of the ancient Greeks or the ancient Macedonians, qualify to be both Greek and Macedonian. Macedonian, but only of the Greek kind. I, on the other hand, who refuse to accept the “Greek doctrine” but still want to identify myself as a Macedonian, because that is what I am, according to the “Greek doctrine” do not qualify to be Macedonian and therefore I am automatically a “Slav” and a traitor to the Greek cause.
So what is “Slav”? Is it an ethnic group? A culture? A religion?
Before answering this question, let us first examine the Greek version of a “Slav”. According to some Greeks the “Slavs” are a people who came to Macedonia en masse from some swamps north of the Danube River. When they arrived in Macedonia in the 6th century AD they killed off the indigenous Macedonians and repopulated Macedonia. The “Slavs” however, for some unknown reason, did not enter Greece because those same Greeks who claim that Macedonians are “Slavs” also claim Modern Greece is populated by pure Greeks, descendents of the so-called “Ancient Greeks”, implying that the “Slavs” never crossed today’s Greek border.
The reason I am bringing up “the Slavs” again is because I had another one of those discussions with my relative and we both agree that these “Greek claims” are not only ridiculous but they are laughable.
For example, given that there were no borders between today’s Greece and Macedonia in the 6th century AD, since both countries at the time were regions of the so-called “Byzantine Empire”, what was there to stop the “Slavs” from entering Greek territory and from killing off all the Greeks and settling Greece as well?
I don’t think one needs to be a historian or a scientist to see the flaw in this logic.
Today’s Greeks completely ignore the fact that their borders were drawn for the first time in the 19th and 20th centuries and shamelessly continue to propagate myths that Macedonia was Greek since ancient times and that Greeks are ethnically pure and descendents of the ancient Greeks when we know for a fact that there is nothing “Greek” or “pure” about Modern Greece. Worse, while making these ridiculous claims, the same Greeks insist that Macedonians do not exist and dare to call the real Macedonians “Slavs”.
I don’t think one needs to be a historian or a scientist to see the flaw in their logic here either.
Are the “Slavs” an ethnic group? No they are not! Outside of the condescending Greek definition of what a “Slav” is there is a general reference to the “Slavs” as a people that exist all throughout Eastern Europe and in parts of Asia from the Balkans to Siberia. It is impossible for all these people, including those in Russia, to be of one single ethnic group!
Similarly all these people cannot be of a single culture or a single religion. There are many different cultures in Eastern Europe and Asia and they cannot all be culturally classified as “Slav”. We also know for a fact that people referred to as “Slavs” belong to a variety of religions including to the Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim religions. So, we can conclude that “Slav” is not an ethnicity, culture, or a religion.
So what is “Slav” then?
The only characteristic that comes close to defining what a “Slav” is is the language these people speak. In other words, these countries are called “Slav” because the people living in them speak a language that belongs to the family of “Slav” languages.
Now that we have established that a “Slav” is a person who speaks a language which has roots in the “Slav” family of languages, one has to wonder how is it possible that so many individual people of varying ethnicities, cultures and religions in such a vast region as Eastern Europe and parts of Asia came to speak a similar language?
The key to discovering this secret is in the codification and formalization of national languages. For example when did Russia codify its national language? Or as my relative would say, when was the “Slav” language “imposed” on the Russian nation? We have to agree here that even the Eskimos in Russia speak Russian, a “Slav” language. We also have to agree here that “Slav” is not an indigenous Eskimo language. So the word “imposed” is correctly used.
If Russian, the “Slav” version, was “imposed” on the Russian nation then where did it come from and when? More importantly, what does Russia have in common with Macedonia to share a language with it? I would hazard to guess that the common factor that these two countries, existing on opposite poles of the continent, have is religion, the Orthodox religion to be exact. So how did these two countries happen to come by the Orthodox religion and who came by it first?
We know for a fact that Christianity took root in Macedonia way before it filtered up to Eastern Europe and Russia. We also know that Macedonia was an “exporter” of Christianity and of the “Slav” language, more commonly known then as “Church Slavonic”. So as my relative put it, call us crazy but we are going to go out on a limb here and say that the “Slav” language was exported from Macedonia to Russia at the same time Christianity was exported from Macedonia to Russia. Then in time Russia made this “church language” into its national language. We know this is hard to believe and even harder to accept but think about it! How can so many people in such a vast area, the size of Eastern Europe and parts of Asia, speak a language with common roots? How did it come by that Eskimo’s speak “Slav”? What other explanation is there?
Why export the Macedonian language you might say? Why not the Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian, or the language of any other south “Slav” speaking country?
Well, in spite of Greeks boasting that the Greeks spread their “Greek language” all over the ancient known world, NO ONE outside of the Modern Greeks speaks Greek. And those who do speak Greek were taught the language in school. In other words, Greek is not a language of the people; it never was.
The fact that Solun and Ohrid, the religious centers of the Eastern World, were in Macedonia and a part of the Byzantine Empire and not part of any Bulgarian or Serbian Empires, leaves Serbia and Bulgaria out. As Professor Angelina Markus often puts it, the people of Moravia and other regions as far north as Siberia were asking for teachers to be sent from Macedonia and not from Greece, Serbia, or Bulgaria. Why? I don’t know why for sure but there are similar situations that occurred in other parts of the world at different times that would explain why. For example, why did the colonists in America in the early days of colonization ask for teachers to be sent from England as opposed to Holland? Was it perhaps because the colonists understood the English language better than they understood Dutch? The colonists chose their teachers from England because of the English language. The English in England were also better educated and more cultured and could teach a lot better than the colonists could themselves?
It is a known fact that Macedonia was experiencing a “cultural renaissance” when the Christian religion was making its way northward to Russia. So from what better place could you ask for teachers to be sent than from the most enlightened place in the world?
Now I want to say a bit more about the “Slav mass migration”.
Let me begin by saying that the “Slav mass migration” is only a theory without any archeological evidence and with hardly any historical backing to prove that it ever took place.
If however it did take place, as many Greeks would claim, then what were the so-called “Slavs” when they allegedly migrated southward? Were they an elite warrior group militarily organized for conquest? Was their aim to conquer the Balkans and Macedonia?
The answer to the above questions is NO!
First let’s say that there were no “mass migrations”, only some migrations. Second, let’s look at the evidence left behind. According to Procopius, the so-called “Slavs” came with their families on wagons and attempted to storm Solun via the water on hollowed-out tree logs.
On another occasion another historian wrote: they came in droves looking for land to settle. They were not choosy about what land they could settle on be it arid, dry or swamp.
The only profile that fits behaviour such as this is that of refugees. Pressure put on the people living in the vicinity of the Danube River by invading tribes such as the Avars and Bulgars during the 6th century AD, forced them to flee southward into Byzantine territory looking for sanctuary. In other words the so called “Slav migrations” were nothing more than refugees fleeing from conflicts.
It is unheard of that “warriors” and “conquerors” would travel with their families on wagons while doing battle, let alone settle on arid soil or on swamp land and work hard for a living. Warriors settle for no less than taking the best of everything from those they conquer and subdue. Also there is no profit in killing the conquered, as the Greeks claim happened in Macedonia, when they could use them as slaves to work for them.
There are some who will go as far as to say the “Slavs”, or what I call refugees, who invaded the Balkans spoke a different language before coming to Macedonia. It is alleged that they learned the “Slav” language from the indigenous Macedonians. If you don’t believe me then how do you explain the fact that the Macedonians inside the fortified city of Solun which was never invaded or conquered by the so-called “Slavs” spoke “pure Slavonic”. Attested by Emperor Michael III himself, no less!
Here is some historic evidence:
Between 842 to 867 (regency of Michael III)
“....and in the reign of Michael, the son of Theophilus, the protospatharius Theoctistus, surnamed Bryennius, was sent as military governor to the Province of Peloponnesus with a great power and force, viz., of Thracians and Macedonians and the rest of the western provinces, to war upon and subdue them. He subdued and mastered all the Slavs and other insubordinates of the province of Peloponnesus, and only the Ezeritai and the Milingoi were left, towards Lacedaemonia and Helos……. (DIA)” (Courtesy of Soldier of Macedon)
The year 862 (Kiril and Metodi)
“You are both natives of Salonika, and all Salonikans speak pure Slavonic.... (Life of St Metodi)” (Courtesy of Soldier of Macedon)
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“In the Panonia legends in Cyril's Hagiography it is said that the Moravian prince, Rastislav, addressed Byzantine Emperor Michail III in a letter and asked him: "For our people who had renounced polytheism and accepted Christianity, we have not a teacher who would explain Christ's faith in our language... For that reason, my lord, please send us such a bishop and a teacher." In the fourth chapter of the same legends it is written that at the meeting, Cyril was also present, and when this application was on the agenda the philosopher was addressed by the emperor: "Philosopher, did you hear these words? Except for yourself, there is no other person who can carry out this task. Take these numerous presents and go, and take your brother Methodius the prior with you. You are Thessalonikians, and all the Thessalonikians speak pure Slavonic." Cyril's Hagiography also includes the philosopher's reply: "Although I am tired and ill, I will go there with pleasure, if they have letters for their language."” (http://www.unet.com.mk/mian/youngest.htm)
“When the Moravian Emperor Rastislav appealed to the Byzantine Emperor Michael III in Constantinople for missionaries to teach the gospel to the Slavs of Moravia, Michael chose Constantine and Methodius, who were well known as Byzantine scholars and diplomats. Michael justified his choice with the famous sentence: "You are Thessalonians, and all the people of Salonika speak pure Slavonic".” (Peter Hill, “Who are the Macedonians?”)
How could the people of a famous Macedonian city, named after Salonica, Philip II’s daughter, NEVER invaded or OCCUPIED by the “Slavs” be speaking pure Slavonic? Some food for thought!