Macedonian State-National Concepts and ... - Makedonika

neither Serbian nor Bulgarian ideas, but Macedonian ones. Whoever wants to
discuss autonomy should do this with the Macedonians and with no one else.”
This activity was suppressed in 1905, but the idea continued its development.
It was not by chance that Grigorije HadÔitaškoviÚ in 1917 became the proponent
of a genuine south-Slav platform in the Voden Declaration, and in the next year
he travelled as far as Corfu in order to explain his concepts, in a special
Promemoria, to PašiÚ’s government, although everyone once again refused to hear
the voice of the Macedonian.
5.
We still do not know much about the ‘Russian Party in the Bitola region’ in
1910, and there is no detailed research on the activity of Marko A. MuševiÌ and
his mission to Russia at that period, when a special Memorandum to the Russian
Government and the Russian Church was submitted. Nor do we know very
much about the missions of Krste Misirkov in 1909 and of Dimitrija Ëupovski in
1911 in Macedonia. Yet we know a great deal about the establishment and concepts
of the Ss Cyril and Methodius Slavonic-Macedonian National and Educational
Society in St Petersburg from June 27, 1912 onwards, whose Article 31 of
its Constitution considered “the Slavonic-Macedonian language as the spoken and
written language”; and about the concepts of the Bitola Circle expressed in its act
of August 15, 1912, and also about the presentations of Ëupovski, Dimov, Dr
KonstantinoviÌ and others in the Russian capital, and their warnings that “in
Macedonia it smells of death” and their anticipation of future historical events.
“The victory of the Slavic Alliance, if achieved,” they said, “is absolutely undesirable
from a Slavic point of view, as this will be a requiem for the descendants of
Cyril and Methodius: Macedonia will be divided into three parts, there will be a
temporary triumph over its body, but no one will be satisfied, a fight will
unavoidably break out among those who dismembered it and there will be no bright
day for the Slavs”, and “the outcome will inevitably be a European war and the
partition of Macedonia”.
Seeing the speedy preparations for war in the Balkans, in early September 1912,
the Macedonians pointed out: “The Macedonians want political freedom, but
public opinion (the people) in Serbia and Bulgaria also wants freedom for
Macedonia, as the Macedonians will then return to their own fatherland. Of course,
there are also aspirations in Bulgaria and Serbia to the creation of a Greater
Bulgaria or a Greater Serbia, but this is not the voice of the people.”
The voice of the neighbouring monarchies, however, spoke through the barrels
of the cannons and what ensued was what the Macedonians had predicted —
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