GREEK EDUCATION IN MONASTIR - PELAGONIA

. GENERAL OVERVIEW OF THE EDUCATIONAL SITUATION IN
THE NORTHERN PARTS OF THE GREEK WORLD
. GREEK EDUCATION IN THE BALKANS:
IDEOLOGICAL AND NATIONAL FOUNDATIONS
HE OBJECT of the foreign nationalist movements that sprang up in
the Balkan territories where Greek cultural influence was strong
was to infiltrate – ideologically – the minds and morale of the local
Greek population, with the ultimate aim of altering its ethnic composition
and exsanguinating whole communities and districts. They appeared at a
time when the Balkan peoples were developing a sense of national identity
and a Balkan entanglement was emerging as a perceptible danger within the
context of the thorny Macedonian Question. This menace loomed larger
after the end of the Crimean War (1853-1856) and the creation of the Bulgarian
Exarchate (1870), and began to acquire specific and serious dimensions
with the attempts of the Pan-Slavists to incorporate the provinces of
Macedonia and Thrace into the Slav states. Meanwhile, similar endeavours
on the part of Roman Catholicism through the Eastern Rite Catholic
Churches and the Romanian movement in particular also sought to acquire
influence and advantages, not of course with a view to immediate dominance
in the Balkans but rather with an eye to securing ideological and political
openings that could be exploited when the time and the diplomatic
conjuncture were ripe. 1
T
1. Nikolaos Vlachos, 1878-1908
[The Macedonian Question as a phase of the Eastern Question 1878-1908], Athens 1935, 35-
36; cf also Ekklesiastiki Aletheia [Ecclesiastical Truth], 1907, 36; Michel Paillarès,
L’Imbroglio Macédonien, Paris 1907, 465; Antonis M. Koltsidas,
(1850-1913).
[Ideological constitution and educational organisation of the Greek
Vlachs in the Balkans (1850-1913). The ethnic and social dimension], Thessaloniki 1994,
299.