Macedonian State-National Concepts and ... - Makedonika

to “the representatives of the great powers — signatories to the Treaty of Berlin”,
the Club was shut down, the newspaper banned, and the main activists expelled
from Serbia.
At the time when a joint Slavonic association was active in the Russian capital
(Slavjanskaja Beseda) and there were already established national societies of
Czech, Bulgarian and Serbian young people, the Macedonian Scholarly and
Literary Society was founded in St Petersburg on October 28, 1902 (old style).
Its principal objectives were the prevention of national disunion among the
Macedonians and the encouragement of their association “on the grounds of the
unity of their fatherland, their same descent and future, and also on the basis of
joint study of their fatherland from the historical, ethnographic, folklore and
linguistic points of view”. As early as November 12, 1902, the special Memorandum
to the Russian government and to the Council of the St Petersburg Slavonic
Charitable Society presented the most comprehensive Macedonian national programme
for the winning of a “free Macedonia in political, national and spiritual
respect” in order “to avoid antagonism among the Slavs from various areas of the
Balkan Peninsula and to unite them into a single national-cultural whole”. It
envisaged that in the initial period Macedonia was to be granted basic autonomous
rights and freedoms in accordance with Article 23 of the Treaty of Berlin — where
the Macedonians would be recognized “as a separate people with a distinct literary
language which will become, together with Turkish, the official language in the
three vilayets of Macedonia: Kosovo, Bitola and Salonika,” and which would also
involve “the recognition of an independent church”, with a governor-general from
among the majority nationality and a deputy from the less numerous nationality,
with a “regional elective popular assembly” as well as an “organic statute” from
the Sultan which would be guaranteed “by the European great powers”, acting as
an autonomous unit “like the province of Lebanon” within the borders of the
Ottoman Empire. Yet “such a free Macedonia in its political, national and religious
aspects,” says the memorandum, “will aim to attract the neighbouring states to it
in a f e d e r a t i o n and fulfil its mission peacefully and quietly. In a word, only
this kind of Macedonia can appear on the Balkan Peninsula in the role of a true
P i e d m o n t for the unification of Balkan Slavdom and Orthodoxy.” On December
29, 1902, the boundaries of that Macedonia were defined and it was decided
to compile a parallel Macedonian-Bulgarian-Serbian-Russian dictionary in order
to demonstrate to the Russians and foreigners that Macedonian was an individual
and distinct language in the Slavonic group of languages.
This programme was reflected in the Constitution of the Macedonian Scholarly
and Literary Society of December 16, 1903. Article 12 officially introduced
the Macedonian language into literary use for the first time, while Krste Misirkov
carried out that decision in practice by the publication of his book Za makedonckite
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