Macedonian State-National Concepts and ... - Makedonika

political freedom, they are subjected to horrible persecution, torture and murder.
All this is supported by hundreds of facts, many of which have been reported by
correspondents of Russian and especially foreign newspapers.” As Russia was the
catalyst of the Balkan Alliance, the presentation of these facts to the Russian public
was undesirable. But Ëupovski reported that there had already been “open clashes”
over certain cities and towns between the Bulgarians and Greeks, and even
between the Bulgarians and Serbs. “All that makes the allies hold back from mutual
war,” concluded the author, “is the conclusion of peace with Turkey,” because
“[i]nternal Slavic discord is more dangerous for the Balkan states than the schemes
of their numerous external enemies. Slavery under a kindred brother will for
Macedonia be as difficult as slavery under an alien or people of another faith.”
At about the same time the experienced Macedonian activist Georgij Georgov
started a sharp polemic with the Bulgarophiles of Slavjanskija IzvÆstija, declaring,
among other things, that “the autonomy of Macedonia — this is the best and most
equitable way to the settlement of the Macedonian question,” and supported the
establishment, as a priority, of a Balkan federation of peoples living outside
Austria-Hungary, or, if this was impossible, of a South-Slav federation which
would include only Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro.
On March 29, 1913, in his article ‘The Macedonian State’, Dimitrija Ëupovski,
horrified by the imminent military conflict among the allies for the partition of
Macedonia and seeking a solution for the Macedonian people as a whole, declared:
“The preservation of Macedonia’s independence and its entirety will be equally
useful for all Balkan nationalities and states… The division of Macedonia, on the
other hand, in addition to the energetic opposition by the Macedonians themselves,
will unavoidably lead to mutual bloody struggle among the allies: each one of
them will also want to rule those parts it was forced to leave to its fellow fighters.”
Therefore he recommended: “The independence of Macedonia will be a buffer
between the rival Balkan states. It will thus cease to be the apple of discord, in the
struggle for which more than one state has ruined its former greatness. This rivalry
is sufficiently strong even today: the Pan-Hellenic idea excludes the Greater-Bulgarian
one, and neither of them recognizes the Greater-Serbian one.” As a result,
Ëupovski concluded: “Only a federal state, consisting of all the Balkan peoples,
which must include a Macedonia indivisible and independent as to its internal
affairs, enjoying equal rights — only such a federation can secure peaceful
coexistence and progress for the Balkan peoples.”
We find almost the same line of thought in the separately published lecture by
Nace Dimov of March 4, 1913, before the St Petersburg Slavonic Charitable
Society, where the author is convinced that “a second war for the partition of
Macedonia is imminent”, and that “the Macedonian question will be the cause of
a general European war”. He pointed out that “the Macedonians have a one-hun-
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