Statement of the Problem and Basic Questions

Abstract

The central issue in writing about the Macedonians is simple: Who are the Macedonians? It is an old issue and a component part of the “Macedonian Question” (Glenny, 1996; Perry, 1988; Pettifer, 1992). The question of their ethnic identity has been asked regarding both the ancient and modern Macedonians. As to the ancient Macedonians, scholars such as Ernst Badian (1967) and Eugene Borza (1990) have provided critical original indirect evidence, that, contrary to the common notion, the ancient Macedonians had an ethnic identity apart from that of the Greeks.¹ Given, the significance of this scholarly development, the question can now be redirected to the modern Macedonians. Since the modern Macedonians already exist and are accessible to any historical and/or scientific inquiry, the issue appears to be deceptively simple: all one needs to do is to ask them — according to current thinking and practice in anthropology (Danforth, 1991; 1995; Karakasidou, 1997). However, for the Macedonians at the dawn of the twentieth century, this question of self-identity had no answer other than what Rossos (1995) has called a sense of nie/nas, nashe, or nasheism (we/us or ours), a practical mechanism to distinguish themselves from their neighbors, the Serbs, the Greeks, the Bulgarians, and the Albanians. Whether there was a covert, suppressed, unhyphenated Macedonian ethnic identity in an underground existence (see results of the survey/questionnaire at the end of chapter 5) is a moot question at this early historical stage.