Macedonian State-National Concepts and ... - Makedonika

and a half, the 11 issues of the journal presented the true feelings and aspirations
of the Macedonians to the international public, serving as the most competent
mouthpiece of the struggle for the preservation of Macedonia’s integrity and
freedom. It published a large number of ideas dealing with the future organization
of the Balkans and the Slavic world and about the place of Macedonia there. But
as a result of joint actions by Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece in St Petersburg/Petrograd,
the journal was finally banned in November 1914. Yet this was by no means
the end of the endeavours of the Macedonians to attain their national liberation
objectives.
June 7, 1913, saw the publication of the second Memorandum of the Macedonians
to the Governments and the Public Opinion of the Allied Balkan
States, signed by the “authorized persons”, Dimitrija Ëupovski, Georgi Georgov,
Nace D. Dimov, Dr Gavril KonstantinoviÌ and Chem[ical] Eng[ineer] I. Georgov.
The demands were formulated in five items that again envisaged Macedonia’s
association with Balkan relations.
This was a period when a number of declarations and resolutions were made
with the participation of the Macedonians living in the Russian capital, and they
always involved a broader Balkan or South-Slav federal community. Yet the
Second Balkan War and the Peace Treaty of Bucharest, dictated by the ‘victors’,
also sanctioned the partition of Macedonia in terms of international law and in
fact. But peace was still not secured, and the great world war was yet to come.
8.
To secure a legal representative body, the Macedonians tried to form the Ss Cyril
and Methodius Russian-Macedonian Charitable Society and on November 25,
1913, proposed a ‘Constitution’ with roughly the same goals and tasks as those of
1903 and 1912. The Russian authorities, however, on the insistence of Serbia, once
again refused to issue a permit for the activity of this society. After the intervention
of the Serbian diplomatic representative in St Petersburg, the Russian government
stopped the publication of the journal Makedonskij Golos (Makedonski Glas), but
six months later, at the moment when the First World War broke out and new hopes
arose for the annulment of the Treaty of Bucharest, it started appearing again. The
editorial board was forbidden to publish attacks against the Kingdom of Serbia,
as this stood on the side of Russia in the war, but the articles in the two last issues
were full of testimonies about the struggle of the Macedonians for liberation and
unification.
At the time when the journal was banned, the Macedonian Colony expressed
its views on specific questions through separate publications; for instance, the
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