GREEK EDUCATION IN MONASTIR - PELAGONIA

GREEK EDUCATION IN MONASTIR - PELAGONIA 15
9. The painful conclusion to be drawn from the iniquitous incorporation
of Monastir into Serbia in 1912 is that the root cause of the tragic outcome
lay first and foremost in the lack of co-ordination of Greek military
operations in the region and the impotence of Greek diplomacy in the Balkans.
The weakness of Greece’s operational organisation became clear in
the disagreement between Prime Minister Venizelos and Crown Prince
Constantine concerning the order in which the cities and regions of Macedonia
should be occupied. Venizelos’ insistence that the bulk of the troops
in the field should be dispatched to secure Thessaloniki weakened the western
front, which was Prince Constantine’s priority, with the result that Monastir
was left undefended and empty of Greek forces, to be occupied, unopposed,
by the astonished Serbs! As for Greek diplomatic efforts in the region,
these came too late, and even then only under pressure of events that
by that time were unfolding far too fast to be curbed or influenced.
The people of Monastir could not understand how a city and a region
“without a single Serb” – as the Serb troops who marched into Monastir
admitted – could have fallen so painfully and ingloriously to alien forces,
which moreover occupied the city “in the name of the Greek Army”! This
question continues to torment the unfortunate survivors to this day…
10. The sense of Greekness that continued to inhabit the people of
Monastir and the surrounding area in their displacement and diaspora after
1912 remains strong and powerful to this day. The entire history and presence
of the associations created by the refugees from Monastir, their force
and the focus of their interest, have always been concentrated on three main
points: striving to reverse the fait accompli in the hope that Monastir may
some day be united with Greece, working together for the benefit of all their
members and to help them solve their problems of survival, and keeping the
memory of their ancestral home fresh and strong. It should also be noted
that neither distance nor the freedoms and opportunities open to those who
emigrated to, for example, New York, could veil the memory of and the
longing for the lost and far-away homeland, but on the contrary sustained
and magnified their desire and determination to continue to lead their customary
“Monastiriote way of life” and to pursue the just and indefeasible
rights of a free Greek Monastir.
11. In sum, the set of attitudes and values that characterised the people
of Monastir was part of the common set of nationalist goals and visions
shared by the Greek world as a whole. Its basic ideological media were
Greek education, direct corporate militant struggle, organised self-sufficient