Macedonian State-National Concepts and ... - Makedonika

HadÔitaškoviÚ reported that “around mid-July” he was invited by Medical
Colonel Dr Vlajko PopoviÚ to the Serbian hospital in Salonika, where he met
Medical Colonel Dr Ëeda ÛurŸeviÚ for the first time and was acquainted with the
already formulated declaration on Macedonia. The basic concept of the document,
according to HadÔitaškoviÚ, was “to proclaim the Macedonian people as an
individual South-Slav people which would be included as such within the framework
of the Yugoslav [South-Slav] state”. It was intended that the Declaration be
signed (probably by a larger number of supporters of this ideology in Macedonia)
and later a representative of the Macedonians be sent to the Yugoslav Committee
in order to amend the Corfu Declaration in the spirit of this concept. The idea,
believed HadÔitaškoviÚ, “is only the logical conclusion of our view on the ethnography
of the Macedonian Slavs, as it has been publicly disseminated, and in this
way the Macedonians would be politically even more strongly linked to Serbia”.
This would also be accepted by the allies and would be in the spirit of Wilson’s
Fourteen Points concerning world peace.
It is interesting to note HadÔitaškoviÚ’s response in connection with the activity
of the initiator, Dr ÛurŸeviÚ, who in 1895-1897 was sent by Serbian propaganda
as a physician to Skopje. ÛurŸeviÚ himself said that “he has long dealt with this
question, having spent whole two years on propaganda in Skopje; that now he has
undertaken this activity without consultations with the government, but that he has
reasons to believe that at least two or three members of the government maintain
the same position; he invited me,” writes HadÔitaškoviÚ in the Promemoria,
“because he has heard that I am considered as an ideologist of this question among
the Macedonian intelligentsia”.
HadÔitaškoviÚ also mentioned his autonomist and confederalistic activity of 12
years earlier and wrote that he had met Dr ÛurŸeviÚ four times in Salonika, also
giving him “data included in the memorandum”. At the same time he talked to his
“friends amongst the Macedonian intelligentsia” and “all those to whom I spoke
fully approved of my view”, but owing to the special circumstances of war and the
sensitivity of the question, everyone demanded first to hear the opinion of the
Serbian government and then to sign the document. “If the government takes that
position,” says he, “it can convene a conference and open a discussion there”. For,
“as far as the Macedonians are concerned, this question is of particular significance,
and it must be precisely defined”. HadÔitaškoviÚ tried to justify his action
concerning the Declaration with the danger of “the Macedonian question being
settled on a different basis from the settlement of the Peace of Bucharest”, as in
Salonika there were already rumours “of negotiations between the allies and
Bulgaria for a separate peace”. Even though the Serbian diplomat and journalist
Óivojin BalugdÔiÚ told him: “We have a promise on the part of the allies for the
restoration of Serbia, and accordingly the Macedonian question does not exist for
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