I think it's nice of your side to describe your trip to Macedonia or FYROM if you prefer as a nice thing. Altough I am for software freedom for Macedonia,FYROM, I think while we argue about the historical matter with our neighbours, we should concentrate on the matter which was brought up by somebody who has interest to bring some of its knowledge on the Balkan. Thank you for your interest in this matter and greetings from SmartFreak form MAcedonia(FYROM).

Interesting and for sure more than good that our neigbhoors are interesting for us so much.

We have here one saying like this:

Behind the good horse (or car if u want) there is lot of dust

So, Go Greek ppl, make allways a coments against us, finnally the time will show who is wright.

Regards

ohoho

BTW Do u know that Greek on thair own lenguage means "GAY", so they preffer to call them selfs Hellas

:)

Here, on this forum, a Macedonian asked whether Bulgarians wanted their land...

No we do not want your land. We never did. During the previous century we just fought so that our brothers from Macedonia are together with us again... Much Bulgarian blood has been spilled, so that Macedonia becomes independent of the Ottoman empire. Bulgaria was devided to three... and modern Bulgaria comprises only tho of these three. We celebrate the day when Bulgaria was "united" again, but I do not think it did become united... My father is from South-western Bulgaria (which we call Makedonia or Makedonskia krai - and we never meen some other nation), My mother is from the North (Balkana)... do not say that I am half Macedonian, half Bulgarian... it would be silly... there is really no real Bulgarian who has not Macedonian blood in his veins, that is why we call them "brothers", and we never mean that we are the "bigger brother" as some citizens of the Republic of Macedonia think - we are just the descendants of the same people... though for half a century, Macedonia nas been part of Yugoslavia, and during this period many cultural differences appeared, mainly because of the "Yugoslavian propaganda"... (i just did not want to call it wit other names) and terror. Thousands of people who called themselves Bulgarians were killed during this period, including women and children. So after the initial bloodbath, each parent who wanted some/any future for his child, had to teach him/her to call his/her-self [something else, that I do not want to mention here, because I do not want to start a fight]. So do not get me wrong... independent Macedonia is the best that thing that could happen to this land... but is it really independent? The part of the Macedonians who are not Albanians or Serbs or Greeks... do ther really feel themselves independent? I really hope so. I am on their side and I will always be. The original IMRO comprised many Bulgarians (I feel silly when I have to separate Bulgarians from Macedonians, especially when talking about the end of the 19th century) and they fought for independent Macedonia, independent from Ottoman, Serbian and Greek influences. Much, much Bulgarian blood has been spilled for an "Independent Macedonia", so do not tell me that I want your land... I do not want anything. We live in a different world today. I just want you (citizens of the former Yugoslavic republic of Macedonia) not to be sarcastic, not to joke with what my grandparents did for each other... (since my grandparents are from the macedonian part of Bulgaria and from the northern one)... there is no use to conceive hatered, since we are neighbours... We do not want anything that is yours, we do not have the complex of a newborn "nation"... we know what's ours... the problem is that since we are too tolerant, you are trying to "build" your history, taking from ours... You are soon going to say that there was no First Bulgarian Empire, But First Macedonian empire, since Samuel set up Ohrid to be the Capital of this empire... you are going to say "oh, Ohrid is in Macedonia, its Macedonian empire then"... Allow me a short quotation from Britannica: Following a revolt of the western provinces, this first Bulgarian empire fell apart, but it was partially reintegrated by Samuel (reigned 976-1014), who set up his own capital in Ohrid (not the traditional Bulgarian capital of Preslav [now known as Veliki Preslav]) and also established a patriarchate there. Although the Byzantine state reasserted its authority after 1018, a second Bulgarian empire raised its head in 1185; this included northern and central Macedonia and lasted until the middle of the 14th century.

You are probably going to say... "oh, there was no Second Bulgarian empire, there was Second Macedonian empire"...

Brothers (when I say brothers I mean it), let us not quarrel about WORDS, since this is exactly what we are doing... The fact is that when a Bulgarian student goes to study in Macedonia, he does not need a language course, he already knows all the songs you sing when you are happy or when you are gieving (Nazad nazad mome kalino, bolen mi leji mile po pop yordanov etc.). It is the same when a macedonian student comes to Bulgaria... At a party, a year ago, a student at the conservatoire in Sofia who was from Skopije told me "Do you think, that you are more Bulgarian than me? You are not..." and I was dumbfounded. And yes, if one asks me whether I would sacrifice a part of the Bulgarian history, for the sake of AN INDEPENDENT MACEDONIA (with its own history and cultural heritage), I would readily agree... But treating Bulgaria with disrespect is something that I cannot force myself to forgive (though I would forgive thousands of insults directed at me). Please peolpe, leave historians bring forward arguments about this and that and do not walk on tha fire, sayng things that are too brave. Here you sould talk about Open Source; The New World, where territory doesn't mean anything; about helping each other, not arguing whose muscules are bigger or whose grandparents did more... I believe that tolerance, modesty and mutual respect are the gratest virtues and I guess I am not very virtuous soul, but I am trying to be one... I never start an argument, but when my country/nation and ancestors/cultural herritage is offended I cannot just stand like this and see how people, not acquainted with the history of Balkans are making wrong Conclusions. For example I am not familiar with the history of India and that is why I would probably take the first thing I hear for an undaoubtable truth, look at the map and assume that only the cities within the borders of India are the only ones who wave always been within its borders... and I will not spend more than 5 minutes exploring its history... so I shall remein with a partial truth, which is always equal to a lie... (a theorem)

Please, Be tolerant.

Please, DO think more before writing historical "facts".

Please Be patient - we are all going to live in a United Europe soon...

I love Bulgaria. I love Macedonia (and it is the same with 8 million Bulgarians) Do not tell me that I should choose...

Hi, guys. I've got Britannica 99 on 3CDs, and undertook a tiny little research. Let us not argue about things that are not even clear to the international historical community. Besides, as you know, the history is always on the side of the winners. The winner here is Macedonia, since it exists as an independent state. And that's great. We (Bulgarians) are very happy about this, since we heve an idea of the terror macedonians have been subject to under the reign of the communists... Independent macedonia is a good beginning - since we are soon going to live in a United Europe... No one argues about territiry. Just leave our alphabet alone... would you?

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See "Bulgarian Language" in Britannica '99:

The history of Bulgarian is divided into three periods: (1) Old Bulgarian, 9th-11th century; (2) Middle Bulgarian, 12th-16th century; and (3) Modern Bulgarian, from the 16th century to the present. Old Bulgarian, the language of the Macedonian Slavs of the 10th and 11th centuries, was the first Slavic literary language; it developed in the Macedonian part of Bulgaria after St. Clement, a pupil and disciple of the Slavic missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius, took refuge there after having been driven out of Moravia.

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"The first Bulgarian empire." Britannica '99

Boris I of Bulgaria (852-889) was baptized a Christian in 864, at a time when the conflict between the Roman church and the Eastern church in Constantinople was becoming more open and intense. Although Boris' baptism was into the Eastern church, he subsequently wavered between Rome and Constantinople until the latter was persuaded to grant de facto autonomy to Bulgaria in church affairs. The spread of Christianity was facilitated by the work of Saints Cyril and Methodius, who had invented an alphabet in which to write the Slavic language (known as Old Church Slavonic or Old Bulgarian) and who had developed a Slavonic liturgy in Moravia. When Moravia committed to Rome and expelled the disciples of Cyril and Methodius, many of them resettled in Bulgaria, where they were welcomed by Boris and undertook the translation of church books and the training of priests.

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Britannica '99; Languages of the world/ Languages of the family/ South Slavic.

The Eastern subgroup: Bulgarian and Macedonian.

Bulgarian is spoken by more than nine million people in Bulgaria and adjacent areas of other Balkan countries and Ukraine. There are two major groups of Bulgarian dialects: Eastern Bulgarian, which became the basis of the literary language in the middle of the 19th century, and Western Bulgarian, which influenced the literary language. Bulgarian texts prepared before the 16th century were written mostly in an archaic language that preserved some features of both Old Bulgarian or Old Church Slavonic (10th to 11th century) and Middle Bulgarian (beginning in the 12th century). (see also Index: Bulgarian language, South Slavic languages)

Although the vocabulary and grammar of the early texts written in the Old Church Slavonic language include some Old Bulgarian features, the language was nevertheless based originally on a Macedonian dialect. Old Church Slavonic was the first Slavic language to be put down in written form. This was accomplished by SS. Cyril (Constantine) and Methodius, who translated the Bible into what later became known as Old Church Slavonic and invented a Slavic alphabet (Glagolitic).

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Britannica '99

Macedonia, Bulgarian MAKEDONIYA, Modern Greek MAKEDHONIA, Serbo-Croatian and Macedonian MAKEDONIJA, region in the south-central part of the Balkan Peninsula that comprises northern and northeastern Greece, the southwestern corner of Bulgaria, and the independent Republic of Macedonia.

History.

Macedonia owes its name to the ancient kingdom of Macedonia (or Macedon). Centred in the southern part of the region, this kingdom seems to have been largely Greek-speaking, with Thracian and Illyrian admixtures. By the 4th century BC, it had extended its rule northward into the Balkan Peninsula and throughout the Mediterranean. In the 2nd century BC, Macedonia was made into a Roman province.

When the Roman Empire was divided in the 4th century AD into eastern and western halves, Macedonia became part of the eastern half, which became the Byzantine Empire. By this time the population of Macedonia had been largely Christianized. Macedonia's Greek ethnic composition was overturned by the invasion of Slavic peoples into the Balkans in the 6th and 7th centuries AD. Most of the region subsequently fell under the sway of the first Bulgarian empire in the 9th century. The Bulgarians were Christianized during this period by disciples of Saints Cyril and Methodius, whose adaptation of Greek characters to a Slavonic dialect spoken in southern Macedonia eventually became the Cyrillic alphabet. For the rest of the Middle Ages parts of the region were variously ruled by the Byzantine Empire, the second Bulgarian empire, and the Serbian empire. The groundwork was thus laid for the conflicting national claims to Macedonia that emerged in the modern era.

Macedonia fell under the sway of the Ottoman Empire in the late 14th century, and the area was subsequently colonized by significant numbers of Muslim Turks and Albanians, thus further complicating the region's ethnic fabric. In the late 15th century sizable numbers of Sephardic Jews who had been expelled from Spain settled in the towns of Macedonia (especially Thessaloniki), where they competed with the Greeks for local trade.

In 1878, after winning the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, Russia by the Treaty of San Stefano compelled the Ottomans to grant independence to Bulgaria and give that revived nation all of Macedonia except Thessaloniki and the Chalcidice Peninsula. This settlement was soon overturned by the major European powers, who in the Treaty of Berlin that year returned Macedonia to Turkey, allowing it to keep its Christian administration. For the next three decades Macedonia was coveted by the Greeks, the Bulgarians, and the Serbs, with each claiming closer ethnic or historical ties to Macedonia than the others. The liberation of Macedonia from the Turks was desired by all non-Muslim Macedonians, however, and to this end the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) was started in 1893 with a program of "Macedonia for the Macedonians." (see also Index: Berlin, Congress of, Serbia)

In 1912 Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece put aside their differences and formed the Balkan League in order to wrest the region from the Turks. They promptly achieved this goal in the First Balkan War (1912-13) but then quarreled with each other over how to divide up Macedonia among themselves. The Serbs, Greeks, and Montenegrins, helped by the Romanians, then fought and won the Second Balkan War (1913) against Bulgaria. The ensuing treaty in 1913 assigned the southern half, or "Aegean Macedonia," to Greece and most of the northern half ("Vardar Macedonia") to Serbia; a much smaller portion, "Pirin Macedonia," went to Bulgaria. Bulgaria sided with the Central powers in World War I and thus was able to occupy all of Macedonia. But the Central powers' defeat in that war resulted in another reduction of Bulgaria's portion of Macedonia, so that it retained only its present-day Pirin share. Vardar Macedonia was incorporated with the rest of Serbia into the new Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (renamed Yugoslavia in 1929).

During the period from 1912 to 1923, several population shifts occurred in Macedonia. The largest of these took place under the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), when 375,000 Turks left Aegean Macedonia and were replaced by 640,000 Greek refugees from Turkey. When the Balkan Peninsula was overrun and partitioned by the Axis powers during World War II, Bulgaria again occupied almost all of Macedonia except for Thessaloniki; this was occupied by the Germans, who sent four-fifths of the city's Jews to their deaths. After the defeat of the Axis in 1945, the internal frontiers of Macedonia were restored roughly to their previous lines. Yugoslav Macedonia was elevated to a separate republic within the communist federation. In 1991 the Macedonian republic declared its independence from Yugoslavia.

Copyright 1994-1999 Encyclopжdia Britannica

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Macedonia/ History/ The medieval states.

In this period the foundations were laid for modern competing claims for control over Macedonia. During the 9th century the Eastern tradition of Christianity was consolidated in the area. The mission to the Slavs has come to be associated with Saints Cyril and Methodius, whose great achievement was the devising of an alphabet based upon Greek letters and adapted to the phonetic peculiarities of the Slavonic tongue. In its later development as the Cyrillic alphabet, this came to be a distinctive cultural feature uniting several of the Slavic peoples. (see also Index: Slavic languages)

Although the central purpose of the missionaries was to preach the gospel to the Slavs in the vernacular, their ecclesiastical connection with the Greek culture of Constantinople remained a powerful lever to be worked vigorously during the struggle for Macedonia in the 19th century. The people who form the majority of the inhabitants of the contemporary Macedonian republic are clearly not Greeks but Slavs. However, this ecclesiastical tradition, taken together with the long period during which Macedonia was associated with the Greek-speaking Byzantine state, and above all the brief ascendancy of the Macedonian empire (c. 359-321 BC), continue to provide Greeks with a sense that "Macedonia is Greek." (see also Index: Greece)

Yet, although Macedonians are Slavs, it remains to be determined what kind of Slavs they are. Among the short-lived states jostling for position with Byzantium were two that modern Bulgarians claim give them a special stake in Macedonia. Under the reign of Simeon I (893-927), Bulgaria emerged briefly as the dominant power in the peninsula, extending its control from the Black Sea to the Adriatic. Following a revolt of the western provinces, this first Bulgarian empire fell apart, but it was partially reintegrated by Samuel (reigned 976-1014), who set up his own capital in Ohrid (not the traditional Bulgarian capital of Preslav [now known as Veliki Preslav]) and also established a patriarchate there. Although the Byzantine state reasserted its authority after 1018, a second Bulgarian empire raised its head in 1185; this included northern and central Macedonia and lasted until the middle of the 14th century.

Possible links between Macedonians and Bulgars during the seminomadic period of the arrival of the Slav peoples in the Balkans are unclear and probably impossible to determine. Modern Bulgarians have based their claims to the historical unity of the two peoples principally on two considerations. First, they emphasize the lack of clear distinctions between early variants of the old Slavonic languages, explaining later developments that were peculiar to the Macedonian tongue as reflecting subsequent Serbianization. Consequently, Macedonian is interpreted as a dialect of Bulgarian. Bulgarians also point out that, throughout the rise and fall of the early Bulgarian empires, control over a great part of Macedonia was a common factor. A supplementary but important point is the continuing role of Ohrid as a symbolic centre of ecclesiastical life for both peoples.

http://www.macedonia.co.uk/mcic/aboutmacedonia/macedonianissues/yulian.asp

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In his speech at the ceremony, President Gligorov managed to deal a major semiotic blow, this time against the Bulgarians. Not only he omitted entirely the existence of Bulgarians in the Republic, but he claimed historical possession of a resource fond to every Bulgarian heart - the creation of the Cyrillic Alphabet by Saints Cyril and Methodius (9th c.). Gligorov made a further claim to the spreading of Christianity among the Slav peoples as well as being the representative of the nation "whose frescoes used to be the only bright spot in the darkness of medieval Europe" (24 Chasa, 16/04/1993, p.I). While this fight over who is whose in history was thus given a new vigour and field of action, Greece's foreign minister Papakonstantinou indicated the possibility of direct negotiations between his country and the Republic in the immediate future (11 April). Thus, alongside a type of semiotic war which we may call "Access to Ancestors", a parallel purely pragmatic discourse was unfolding. This point will be taken up later on (cf. Realism and Pragmatism); for the time being, it will be only noted that the discrepancy between ideological stance and pragmatism (and, in many a case, opportunism) creates a characteristic ambivalence, portrayed in semiotic nation-state behaviour in the Balkans. The temporary solution offered by the Arbiter and its own semiotic behaviour indicate that it, in effect, is either unwilling or simply incapable of operating in a conceptual paradigm which is different from the "Access to Ancestors" one.

Given that we've been reading an article about software freedom on a Web site focused on an open source (indeed, Free Software) operating system, and given that some pretty alarming anti-competitive practices (by the big monopolist in the industry) have been brought to light, it's disappointing but very illustrative that all most contributors have to say is related to their own personal "cultural insecurity".

I can accept that the Balkan region has had more than its fair share of conflicts, but the Linux Journal Web site is surely not the place to demonstrate the mechanics behind them. Since even the Americans don't get upset about their alphabet and start claiming that the Romans were really Uncle Sam's finest and dearest citizens, it's possibly time to grow up and, amongst other things, concentrate on what you can do to stop Microsoft and various other corporate concerns from buying your respective governments outright.

The subject should be "My trip in Bulgaria and Macedonia"

There is one fundamental misinterpretation that

Bulgarians and Macedonians have:

Yes, the historians from the middle ages called the regions of todays'

Macedonia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia and a part of Northern

Greece - Bulgaria. It had a meaning of a reagon inhabited by Slav

population in that time. And Ohrid was also in a Slav state called

Bulgaria; and Samoil of Ohrid declared himself a Bulgarian.

BUT:

Why do the people who live in Bulgaria today think that they have

to do anything with Samoil's Bulgaria? In my oppinion, they don't

have any more right to do so than, say, Serbians, Croats or Macedonians.

They claim that that part of history is theirs -- and they make a

simple error in judgement -- basing it on using this one noun

(Bulgaria) and not caring about semantics.

Now, semantics means interpretation; and all people have

their own stories...

"... if you think that Bulgarian version of the history is free ok, just share it with us, but don't try to force us to install it ..."

This explain a lot. That's what you do Macedonian: just install

the new version of history (if the history has a bug - e.g not writen appropriately). That's what you study in shool:

to install the history.

Note that patch for history is distributed by your government :))

http://www.balcanica.org/history/maps.html

On knowledge: I'm afraid only the future would allow the opinions about history on all countries in the region (Macedonia, Trukey, Greece, Bulgaria) to converge on simple facts. I hope historians and people who write school textbooks on history will become conscientious enough.

On mind and software: Because the future is in the future, and we need something to happen _now_, we must concentrate on the things that stick as together and are moving us into a better future. The point is the free software development (in wide sense).

Simple history facts: Cyrillic script was modelled on the Greek upper-case letters in the early Middle Ages and was first introduced in Bulgaria in the 9th century(!). Much later, it became the