"Speaking National: Nationalizing the Greeks of Bulgaria, 1900 –1939," Slavic Review, 2008.

Speaking National: Nationalizing the Greeks of Bulgaria, 1900 –1939

Theodora Dragostinova

A variety of national, nonnational, multinational, or somewhat-national individuals made up the social fabric of twentieth-century eastern Europe. Whether these were the Habsburg “amphibians,” the Bohemian “also-Germans” (Auchdeutsche), the Silesian “Water Poles” (Wasserpolen), the Hungarian “janissaries,” or the Serbian “hermaphrodites” (melez), one thing is clear: the range of national loyalties was broad and varied.1 Na-tionalism cannot only be understood as a struggle between the national and nonnational or as attempts by the former to nationalize the latter. Nationhood presented a rich spectrum of behaviors and various degrees of affi liations that included, not only staunch national loyalists and stub-bornly nation-blind persons, but also individuals who were in-between and often switched sides.

The fate of the Greeks in Bulgaria, a minority group entangled in the growing national tensions between Bulgaria and Greece, vividly illustrates the dilemma for individuals over permanently identifying with a national cause. In 1900, the Greeks comprised some 80,000 individuals, or 2 per-cent of the Bulgarian population, but this small minority was prominent in commercial activities and visible in cultural life.2 A diverse population,

Research for this article was funded by the Kokkalis Program on Southeast and East- Central Europe at Harvard University, the Social Science Research Council (with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation), the American Council of Learned Societ-ies, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and the American Historical Association. Preliminary versions of the text were presented at the annual convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies in Toronto in 2003 and the annual con-vention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities in New York City in 2006. I want to thank Bud Barnes, Maureen Healy, Rainer Ohliger, Maria Todorova, and Onur Yildirim for their comments on early drafts and the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for its fi nancial support. I also wish to express my gratitude to Diane Koenker, Mark Steinberg, and the two anonymous reviewers whose insightful comments greatly improved my argument.

When I refer to localities, I provide both the Bulgarian and Greek names and add the current name in parenthesis at fi rst mention. In some cases, a locality had only a Turkish name until it acquired a Bulgarian name in the interwar period.

1. Inhabitants of the Habsburg empire have long used the term amphibians, as Chad Bryant explains in “Either German or Czech: Fixing Nationality in Bohemia and Moravia, 1939–1946,” Slavic Review 61, no. 4 (Winter 2002): 684 – 85. The reference to “Water Poles,” “hermaphrodites,” and “janissaries” is found on 685. For “also-Germans,” see Jeremy King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848–1948 (Princeton, 2002), 158–59.

2. The Ecumenical Patriarchate estimated about 100,000 Greeks, which probably in-cluded all groups under Greek cultural infl uence, but Greek diplomatic reports confi rm the fi gure of 80,000. See Patriarchat Oecuménique, Memorandums adressés aux représentants des Grandes Puissances à Constantinople et autres documents relatifs aux récents évènements de Bul-garie et de Roumélie Orientale (Constantinople, 1906). Bulgarian census data and references in Greek diplomatic reports are best summarized in Xanthippi Kotzageorgi, ed., Oi Ellines

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Speaking National 155

the Bulgarian Greeks included urban cosmopolitan elites, modest but well-educated shopkeepers and fi shermen, and impoverished, illiterate peasants. Despite their support for the Greek national idea, they had strong ties to their places of birth and generally showed reluctance to emigrate in the early twentieth century. But trapped between the contra-dictory national priorities of Bulgaria and Greece, they came to recon-sider their loyalties and many resettled to Greece in the post–World War I period.3

In the early twentieth century, Bulgaria and Greece both had aspira-tions involving Thrace and Macedonia, the diversely populated provinces of the Ottoman empire, and they clashed over the partitioning of these territories in a bloody confl ict between national activists on each side that was especially fi erce in Macedonia.4 These hostilities escalated during the Second Balkan War and World War I, in which Bulgaria and Greece joined opposing military alliances and implemented confl icting national poli-cies. Both countries were also compelled to deal with large minorities liv-ing within their territories. In Bulgaria, offi cials were most concerned with the Muslim populations, but the assimilation of the Greeks became a ma-jor issue in the fi rst and third decades of the twentieth century. In Greece, after the country acquired territories in Macedonia and Thrace in the period 1913 –1923, politicians aspired to homogenize the new provinces that were inhabited by Bulgarian-speaking (and often Bulgarian-minded) individuals in addition to the sizeable Muslim minorities.5 In this context, both countries had to deal with “fl exible-minded” (revstosyniditoi) indi-viduals with “wavering national consciousness” (koleblivo natsionalno sâz-nanie) whose national feelings were “wavering and indefi nable” (koleblivi i

tis Voulgarias: Ena istoriko tmima tou periphereiakou ellinismou (Thessaloniki, 1999), 121–99 and 216 –19.

3. The most comprehensive account on the minority remains Kotzageorgi, Oi Ellines tis Voulgarias. For the early minority policies of the Bulgarian state, see Zhorzheta Nazârska, Maltsinstveno-religiozna politika v Iztochna Rumeliia, 1879–1885 (Sofi a, 1997); and Zhorzheta Nazârska, Bâlgarskata dârzhava i neynite maltsinstva, 1879–1885 (Sofi a, 1999).

4. For the struggle over Macedonia, see Duncan Perry, The Politics of Terror: The Macedonian Liberation Movement 1893–1903 (Durham, 1988); Hugh Poulton, Who Are the Macedonians? (Bloomington, 1995); Loring M. Danforth, The Macedonian Confl ict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World (Princeton, 1995); and Anastasia Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood: Passages to Nationhood in Greek Macedonia 1870 –1990 (Chicago, 1997).

5. For the national struggles in Bulgaria and Greece, see Peter F. Sugar and Ivo J. Lederer, eds., Nationalism in Eastern Europe (Seattle, 1969); Peter F. Sugar, ed., Eastern Eu-ropean Nationalism in the Twentieth Century (Washington, 1995); and Charles and Barbara Jelavich, The Establishment of the Balkan National States, 1804 –1920 (Seattle, 1997). Kara-kasidou provides a fascinating anthropological account of people’s everyday encounter with nationalization in a village in Greek Macedonia. See Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood. An important study that tackles the political dimensions of ethnic tensions in Greece is George Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic: Social Coalitions and Party Strategies in Greece, 1922–1936 (Berkeley, 1983). For an analysis of the nationalization of the Muslims in Bulgaria, see Ali Eminov, Turkish and Other Muslim Minorities of Bulgaria (New York, 1997); and Mary Neuburger, The Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria (Ithaca, 2004).


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neopredelimi).6 The two nation-states pursued incompatible national agen-das, and this fact explains the intensity of the national campaigns and the complex ways they affected the population. Therefore, the examination of the Bulgarian Greeks, torn between the Bulgarian state and the Greek nation, serves to demonstrate the fl uctuating dynamics of and responses to nationalization in the territories contested by Bulgarians and Greeks.

The process of “ethnic unmixing” that accompanied the disintegra-tion of the Habsburg and Ottoman empires has been especially help-ful in illuminating the problematic nature of nationhood.7 Scholars have criticized the metaphors of “awakening” or “national revival” that link ethnicity to nationality and have questioned the botanical vocabulary of nationalism that “roots” nations and peoples into territories.8 Recent literature on eastern European nationalism has focused on populations that remained nationally indifferent and stuck to their local identity; it has described evolving defi nitions of nationhood and power struggles for the prevalence of a particular view; and it has explored ordinary people’s response to nationalization and the way that they internalized state poli-cies.9 Rogers Brubaker famously introduced the notion of “nationness” as a “conceptual variable” and not a tangible, well-structured entity; he proposed to treat the nation “not as substance but as an institutionalized form . . . not as entity but as contingent event.” 10 The historical sociologist has criticized the practice of “groupism,” or attaching the label of a stable group to social aggregates such as the nation.11 Such studies have had

6. For “fl exible-minded,” see Gennadius Library Archive (GLA), American School of Classical Studies, Athens, Greece, Archive of Philipos Dragoumis, 68.1.11 (Confi den-tial Memo of Samaras from 27 February 1945). For “wavering national consciousness,” see Tsentralen Dârzhaven Arhiv (TsDA), Sofi a, Bulgaria, f. 370k, op. 6, a.e. 1167, l. 50 (Bulgarian translation of Greek police directives from 26 April 1941). For “wavering and indefi nable” national feelings, see TsDA, f. 176k, op. 5, a.e. 1127, ll. 10–21 (Report of the Bulgarian Embassy in Vienna from 5 January 1931).

7. For an overview of the new scholarly directions, see Maria Bucur and Nancy Wing-fi eld, eds., Staging the Past: The Politics of Commemoration in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848 to the Present (West Lafayette, 2001); Maria Todorova, ed., Balkan Identities: Nation and Memory (New York, 2004); and Pieter Judson and Marsha Rozenblit, eds., Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe (New York, 2004).

8. Jeremy King employs the term ethnicism to criticize the straight line between eth-nicity and nationality in “The Nationalization of East Central Europe: Ethnicism, Ethnic-ity, and Beyond,” in Bucur and Wingfi eld, eds., Staging the Past, 112–52. For a critique of the vegetative vocabulary of nationalism, which refers to “ancestral seeds from which ge-nealogies sprout,” see Pamela Ballinger, “ ‘Authentic Hybrids’ in the Balkan Borderlands,” Current Anthropology 45, no. 1 (February 2004): 43.

9. Some recent studies that have focused on multinationality include King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans; Gary Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861–1914 (West Lafayette, 2006); and Pieter Judson, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge, Mass., 2006).

10. Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (New York, 1996), 16.

11. Instead, he claims, “ethnicity, race and nationhood are fundamentally ways of perceiving, interpreting and representing the social world. They are not things in the world but perspectives on the world.” Rogers Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups (Cam-bridge, Mass., 2004), 17. Most recently, he has examined the dynamics of nationalization at the offi cial and everyday levels in Rogers Brubaker, Margit Feischmidt, Jon Fox, and



the benefi t of questioning the all-embracing identities that until recently dominated national narratives while also explaining why nationalism was such a powerful ideology capable of mobilizing huge masses of people.

Two aspects of nationhood are scrutinized here: the offi cial policies of national homogenization adopted by Bulgaria and Greece and the ac-tions of individuals as they confronted rigid requirements of national loy-alty. While Bulgarian and Greek politicians regularly proclaimed national unity, they had what was clearly a trial-and-error approach to nationaliza-tion: they continuously modifi ed their policies and made compromises that were meant to maintain the overall framework of national homogeni-zation. In this context, ordinary people were not simply objects of nation-alization; instead, they actively shaped the national discourse and practice to serve their needs and priorities. Throughout the period, “speaking na-tional,” to paraphrase Stephen Kotkin, remained the frame of reference for offi cial policies and ordinary people’s demands.12 Invoking the na-tion was effective because it brought together large masses of people with various understandings of nationality and different expectations from the nation-state. The national discourse provided a common language and a set of universally accepted rules of social interaction, which both offi cials and ordinary folk recognized and knew how to navigate.

Because nationality was increasingly becoming the exclusive language of social legitimacy, national identity in some situations functioned as what I call “emergency identity,” which facilitated individuals’ physical survival, economic placement, social integration, or personal enhance-ment. This analysis relies on Alexei Yurchak’s concept of “ideological lit-eracy,” which is seen as “a technical skill of reproducing prefabricated ‘blocks’ of discourse” in the Soviet context; in the case discussed here, the need for “national literacy” in a nation-centered context similarly func-tioned as an “act of recognition of how one must behave . . . in order to reproduce one’s status as a social actor.” 13 Similarly, Pierre Bourdieu has described human interaction as a constant interplay between multiple agents and has assumed that “belonging to a [social] fi eld means by defi -nition that one is capable of producing effects in it.” 14 People were active agents shaping policymaking while at the same time resourcefully adapt-ing to the rules of the nation-state. The profuse utilization of national rhetoric served as a discourse of entitlement, especially during military

Liana Grancea, Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town (Princeton, 2006).

12. Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization (Berkeley, 1995), 198–237 and especially 224 –25. In this analysis, “speaking Bolshevik,” i.e., utilizing the vocabulary of offi cial Soviet discourse, allowed individuals to enter a “fi eld of play” that made them members of offi cial society.

13. Alexei Yurchak, “Soviet Hegemony of Form: Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 45, no. 3 ( July 2003): 485– 86 and 489–90. For a more detailed explanation, see Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton, 2005).

14. Pierre Bourdieu and Loic J. D. Wacquant, An Invitation to Refl exive Sociology (Chicago, 1992), 102; and Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge, Eng., 1991).


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confl icts and nationalization campaigns, and the form of actively express-ing national loyalty became a strategy for handling the diffi cult social real-ity. Nationality acquired “provisional stability” as people strategically acted out one facet of collective ascription, national affi liation, as their primary feature of identity.15

The instability of nationality determined the coexistence of primor-dial and constructionist discourses and practices of national belonging. Ronald Grigor Suny has emphasized the difference between nationalism as a category of scholarly analysis that recognizes the “fragmented and contested process” of nation-making, on the one hand, and the actual practice of nationalists, on the other, whose “identity-talk” sticks to “essen-tialist, often primordial, naturalized language about a stable core.” 16 Or, as Brubaker has pointed out, reifi cation is central to nationalism, whose practitioners see nations as “collective individuals, capable of coherent, purposeful collective action.” 17 Yet this distinction does not mean that the two strands of nationalism remained detached; on the contrary, national activists approached the nation as both stable and ephemeral, permanent and transitory.18

The sources used in this article reveal the logic of Bulgarian and Greek brokers of national ideology: they diligently worked to create the nation around common ideas, to staff it with people with suitable allegiances, and to maintain it as a viable collective body. While activists urged indi-viduals to choose the “correct” nationality—a practice that acknowledged the constructionist elements of nationalism—they portrayed the ensuing “nation” as a community of blood and soul—a rhetoric that relied on a primordial national language. This overlap is perhaps best explained by the fact that, “despite its past-oriented rhetoric, nationalism in its practice was an equally radical futuristic project.” 19 It was this concern for posterity that necessitated the implementation of strategies for the “betterment” of the nation. In the case examined here, the existence of “fake” Greeks who would eventually become “true” Bulgarians confi rms the premise that the “nation” was both shifting and fi xed, constructed in its making and pri-mordial in its maintenance.

15. Ronald Grigor Suny points out that this “provisional stabilization” of group identity functions “without closure, without forever naturalizing or essentializing the provisional identities arrived at.” See Ronald Grigor Suny, “Provisional Stabilities: The Politics of Identities in Post-Soviet Eurasia,” International Security 24, no. 3 (Winter 1999/2000): 144.

16. Ronald Grigor Suny, “Constructing Primordialism: Old Histories for New Na-tions,” Journal of Modern History 73, no. 4 (December 2001): 865.

17. Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed, 13 –16.18. As Suny explains in the case of Kazakhstan, “the sense that ethnicity was real and

deeply rooted coexisted with the anxiety that nationality could be eroded if efforts were not made, particularly by the state, to shore up the bases of national culture.” See Suny, “Constructing Primordialism,” 879.

19. Maria Todorova, “The Trap of Backwardness: Modernity, Temporality, and the Study of Eastern European Nationalism,” Slavic Review 64, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 143.



Nationality as a Tool of Policymaking

Despite the essentialist understanding of nationality that is ubiquitous in offi cial documents, politicians demonstrated an acute awareness of the malleability of nationhood. Thus their approach to nationalization was both consistent and fl exible: while they viewed the implementation of certain policies as enabling national conversion, they also recognized that these measures required constant adjustment. Pressures worked sometimes, especially when new national regimes were being established following military confl icts. But, under other circumstances, subtle re-minders and apt incentives were more productive because the population assessed the practical benefi ts and disadvantages of administrative deci-sions, regardless of the nationality of their carriers. Thus, when politicians talked about “pure” Bulgarians or Greeks and their “perennial” national allegiances that determined the “naturalness” of national aspirations, they discerned that these loyalties had to be created anew and maintained on an everyday basis.

Nationalizing the Greeks in the Early Twentieth Century

The situation of the Greeks in Bulgaria was closely related to the upsurge in hostilities between Bulgarian and Greek activists in the Ottoman province of Macedonia. In the late nineteenth century, various political organiza-tions promoted contradictory ideas about how to deal with the continuous crises in Macedonia.20 In the early 1900s, ideological tensions escalated in the intense fi ghting for the wavering loyalties of the population, and national activists in Athens and Sofi a dispatched armed bands that used terror to convert the peasants to the respective national idea.21 In 1905 and 1906, Greek guerrilla fi ghters committed atrocities against Bulgarian civilians in several villages supporting the Bulgarian cause.22 In response,

20. Notably, these were the organizations later known as the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), which promoted the idea of Macedonian autonomy; the Supreme Committee (also known as the External Organization), which sought di-rect annexation of the area to Bulgaria; and the Greek National Society (Ethniki Etaireia), which worked for the liberation of all Greeks within the Ottoman empire but increasingly shifted its attention to Macedonia to counterbalance Bulgarian claims. See R. J. Crampton, A Concise History of Bulgaria (Cambridge, Eng., 1997), 129–33; Richard Clogg, A Concise History of Greece (Cambridge, Eng., 1992), 71–75; Marin Pundeff, “Bulgarian Nationalism,” in Sugar and Lederer, eds., Nationalism in Eastern Europe, 123 –24 and 130–31; and Jelavich, Establishment of the Balkan National States, 211.

21. Clogg, Concise History of Greece, 74; and Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood, 81– 82. For a detailed explanation of the developments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Perry, Politics of Terror.

22. The most notorious massacre occurred in Zagorichane/Zagoritsani (Vasiliada) in Macedonia on 25 March 1905, in which Greek national activists slaughtered some 78 Bulgarian civilians, according to Hristo Silianov, Osvoboditelnite borbi na Makedoniia (Sofi a, 1983), 208–9. Bulgarian newspapers, however, provided an exaggerated fi gure of 200 Bul-garian casualties. See Mir from 7 April 1905. It is indicative of the dynamics of the national struggles that this massacre of Bulgarian civilians in Macedonia by Greek national activists


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anti-Greek rallies erupted in Bulgaria to protest the tactics of the Greek national movement. In some cities, the demonstrations transformed into pogroms, leading to the expropriation and destruction of Greek com-munal and private property. On 30 July 1906, following an encounter between Greek and Bulgarian activists, fi re destroyed Anhialo/Anchialos (Pomorie), a predominantly Greek town of 6,000 on the Bulgarian Black Sea. After these anti-Greek events, some 20,000 Greeks abandoned Bul-garia for Greece, the Ottoman empire, Europe, or the United States.23

In response to Greek accusations of Bulgarian pressures on the Greek minority after the rallies, Prime Minister Racho Petrov dismissed the al-leged use of force as “a pedestrian method of Bulgarization” (plosâk nachin na pobâlgariavane) and explained how his administration would pursue the minority’s nationalization: “to accomplish the Bulgarization [or] at least the depersonalization [obezlichavane] of the Greek element in Bul-garia in a painless albeit slower way [neboleznen makar i po-baven nachin na pobâlgariavane], the Bulgarian government has at its disposal the ed-ucational system, economic policies, administrative measures, as well as our military forces.” 24 In this honest confession, Petrov pinpointed the mechanisms of national persuasion that a state could implement.25 He emphasized: “If Bulgaria had a real political interest and discerned any danger from the Greeks, it would not hesitate to openly . . . consider weakening, with legal means, the infl uence of its internal enemies and . . . Bulgarize the Greeks living in Bulgaria.” 26 The prime minister linked na-tionalization to issues of sovereignty and national security, whose impor-tance justifi ed restricting the autonomy of the minority. The casual way in which he formulated this opinion reveals that it refl ected a widely ac-cepted consensus about the workings of national conversion. Indeed, af-ter 1906 offi cials implemented educational reforms requiring Bulgarian- language instruction for all Bulgarian citizens. The government limited the Greek monopoly in the profi table economic sectors of salt mining and

triggered violence against the Greeks in Bulgaria orchestrated by Bulgarian national ac-tivists, including Bulgarian refugees from Macedonia. See Mir from 12 and 21 April 1905 as well as the Greek newspapers Akropolis from 15 and 20 April 1905 and Esperini from 18 April 1905. For the role of Bulgarian refugees from Macedonia in the anti-Greek events, see Genadi Genadiev, Bezhantsite vâv Varnensko, 1879–1908 (Varna, 1998).

23. For the Greek opinion on the events, see Patriarchat Oecuménique, Memorandums adressés aux représentants des Grandes Puissances à Constantinople; Mouvement antihellénique en Bulgarie et en Roumélie Orientale. Extraits des rapports des autorités consulaires helléniques, Juillet-Août 1906 (Athens, 1906); and A. R. [Athon Romanos], Persécutions des Grecs en Bulgarie (Athens, 1906). The Bulgarian answer can be found in Polozhenieto na gârtsite v Bâlgariia: Otgovor na memoara na Tsarigradskiia patriarh ot 14 avgust 1906 do poslanitsite na Velikite dârzhavi v Tsarigrad (Sofi a, 1906). An interesting socialist interpretation is Pavel Deliradev, Antigrâtskoto dvizhenie: S istoricheski ocherk na bâlgaro-grâtskite otnosheniia (Sofi a, 1906).

24. TsDA, f. 322k, op. 1, a.e. 161, ll. 34 –35 (Memo of Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Racho Petrov to the Bulgarian Embassy in Athens from 23 September 1906).

25. For a classic account on nationalization, which confi rms Racho Petrov’s focus on education, the economy, and military draft, see Eugene Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870 –1914 (Stanford, 1976).

26. TsDA, f. 322k, op. 1, a.e. 161, ll. 34 –35.



wine production and assigned more Bulgarians to city councils, religious offi ces, and educational inspectorates. Notably, all Greek towns received Bulgarian mayors who exercised control over the minority. Military ser-vice also worked as a means of national enculturation, and Greek youths regularly tried to avoid conscription by switching to Greek citizenship.27 The administration was clearly on the offensive, enforcing policies in-tended to inculcate the Bulgarian cause.

Greek offi cials echoed these ideas about the elasticity of nationhood. Requesting more lenient educational reforms in Bulgaria, Prime Minister Theotokis admitted: “The Greek element in Bulgaria will be assimilated sooner or later. This would be a logical and inevitable result of its long-standing contacts with the Bulgarian population and the infl uence the lat-ter would exert in the course of time.” 28 Another high offi cial emphasized that the Bulgarian Greeks, “sooner or later, would become good citizens of Bulgaria, destined to be recast [da se pretopiat] into good Bulgarians.” 29 These statements imply that national assimilation, rather than being im-posed through violence, would occur as the unavoidable result of dynamic socioeconomic and cultural forces. Thus, the admission that nationality was malleable entailed a somber evaluation of the geopolitical trends and cultural developments that infl uenced people’s allegiances. Foreign ob-servers concurred: “In a state with the national diversity of Bulgaria, varied national life-styles cannot be sustained for long, and peace and tranquility can be achieved only with the fusion [slivaneto] of the two national tribes [of Bulgarians and Greeks]. . . . The two nationalities can balance each other very successfully, if one absorbs the good qualities of the other”; examples of this successful “fusion” included civil servants and military offi cers who added the Bulgarian suffi x “–ov” to the end of their Greek surnames.30 Residing in a nation-state that was increasingly expanding its jurisdictions crucially shaped the way individuals thought about nationality.

Nation-Building during the Wars, 1912–1918

This understanding that nationality could be changed led to systematic attempts at Bulgarization or Grecization during the Balkan Wars.31 Politi-

27. For Greek reactions to these policies, see Istoriko Archeio Ypourgeiou Exoterikon (IAYE), Athens, Greece (renamed Ypiresia Diplomatikou kai Istorikou Archeiou, or YDIA, in 2001), 1907, 3.1.1 (Greek translation of a Petition of the Plovdiv Bishop Photios to the Bulgarian prime minister from 13 March 1907); and 3.1.2 (Reports of the Greek Embassy in Sofi a from 15 March and 10 April 1907). The offi cial Bulgarian perspective is evident in Polozhenieto na gârtsite v Bâlgariia.

28. TsDA, f. 166k, op. 1, a.e. 1012, ll. 333 –34 (Report of the Bulgarian Embassy in Athens from 31 January 1907).

29. TsDA, f. 166k, op. 1, a.e. 1011, l. 37 (Report of the Bulgarian Embassy in Vienna from 2 February 1907).

30. TsDA, f. 166k, op. 1, a.e. 1010, l. 177 (Article “The Greek Colony in Bulgaria” in Neue Freie Presse, translated in a Report of the Bulgarian Embassy in Berlin from 19 August 1906).

31. These terms are used by national activists in both countries. The term Bulgar-ization exists in both languages: pobâlgariavane in Bulgarian and ekvoulgarismos in Greek.


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cal and military developments were in a state of fl ux during 1912–1913, but most encounters between Bulgarians and Greeks occurred in the contested provinces of Macedonia and Thrace.32 The national dispute had a religious overtone because two ecclesiastical authorities claimed the loyalties of the Orthodox population: the Greek-dominated Ecu-menical Patriarchate and the Bulgarian national church, the Exarchate.33 National activists most frequently challenged the allegiances of the Bulgarian-speaking population that recognized the Greek Patriarchate (and not the Bulgarian Exarchate). Although language was the main in-dicator of nationality for the Bulgarians, the religious jurisdiction of the Patriarchate mattered most for the Greeks.34 In this totalizing scheme, all

To refer to Greek nationalization attempts, however, I use both Grecization and Helle-nization, depending on the source. In Bulgarian, national activists employed the term pogârchvane (Grecization), while elinizirane (Hellenization) is used solely in scholarly texts referring to ancient Greece (Elada). Similarly, there is a difference between gârtsi (con-temporary Greeks) and elini (ancient Greeks, or Hellenes). In Greek, the word Ellines describes both groups, demonstrating the continuity between ancient and modern Greek history; accordingly, Greek national activists employed the term exellinismos (Helleniza-tion). Because my work focuses on Bulgarian attitudes toward the Greek population, my preference is for “Grecization,” a term that refl ects the perspective of the Bulgarian na-tional cause.

32. Although the Balkan Christian states were victorious over the Ottoman empire in the First Balkan War, the Second Balkan War ended with Bulgaria’s collapse in the face of the combined attack by all the Balkan states, including the Ottoman empire. See Jelavich, Establishment of the Balkan National States, 207–21. After the wars, Bulgarians es-caped the Greek administration around Solun/Thessaloniki in Macedonia and Greeks fl ed Bulgarian-occupied Western Thrace and the vicinities of Melnik/Meleniko, Ortakioy (Ivaylovgrad), and Ahtopol/Agathoupolis. With the Bucharest Treaty of 28 July 1913, Bulgarians from (now Greek) Aegean Macedonia resettled into (now Bulgarian) Western Thrace, and Greeks from (Bulgarian) Thrace moved to (Greek) Macedonia, initiating a temporary population shift. For population movements during the wars, see Alexandros A. Pallis, “Racial Migrations in the Balkans during the Years 1912–1924,” Geographical Journal 66 (1925): 315–31; Alexandros A. Pallis, Statistiki meleti peri ton phyletikon metanastavseon Makedonias kai Thrakis kata tin periodo 1912–1924 (Athens, 1925); and Dimitrije Djordjev-ich, “Migrations during the 1912–1913 Balkan Wars and World War One,” in Nikola Tasich and Dushica Stoshich, eds., Migrations in Balkan History (Belgrade, 1989), 115–29.

33. The religious split between Bulgarians and Greeks occurred in 1870, when the Ottoman government recognized the existence of a separate Bulgarian church, the Ex-archate, for those Ottoman subjects who considered themselves Bulgarians and who did not want to remain under the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul (determined after plebiscites in the specifi c localities). See Pundeff, “Bulgarian Nationalism,” 115–20. After the establishment of the principality of Bulgaria in 1878, the Greeks in Bulgarian territory remained under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate, which was largely Greek-dominated. In Macedonia and Thrace, the religious allegiances of the population became a battle-ground for Bulgarian and Greek national activists as their governments struggled to claim territories from the disintegrating Ottoman empire. See Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood.

34. This difference is evident in the following exchange from 1914 between the Greek governor of Salonica and the Bulgarian consul general in the city. According to the consul general, “Bulgarians in Macedonia are all those who speak Bulgarian, who have stud-ied in Bulgarian schools and have been baptized in Bulgarian churches during Turkish times, and have always considered themselves to be Bulgarians.” According to Governor Sophoulis, however, “Greek is everybody who recognizes the Patriarchate.” TsDA, f. 322k, op. 1, a.e. 339, ll. 31–33 (Report of the Bulgarian consul general in Solun/Thessaloniki from 23 December 1914).



Bulgarian-speakers were Bulgarians, consistent with the Bulgarian view, but all Pa triarchist churchgoers were Greeks, according to the Greek stance.35 These confl icting defi nitions of nationhood created a consider-able space for the maneuvering of nationality, and everyone recognized that force and encouragement would be crucial in the process of national recruitment.

After the establishment of Greek administration in Macedonia in 1913, the Greek governor considered the Bulgarian-speaking population’s “re-turn to the [Greek] Orthodox community” to be the best evidence of its Greekness.36 He referred to a wave of “spontaneous requests” to join the Greek Patriarchate from individuals who had previously followed the Bulgarian Church, the Exarchate; such people, “forced to desert [the true Greek] Orthodoxy” in the past because of Bulgarian pressures, were now encouraged to forget their Bulgarian affi liations and adopt the Greek na-tional faith.37 Deliberate and well-planned nation-building immediately became part of the process of state-building in the new Greek territories. However, in 1915 the Bulgarian consul general in Solun/Thessaloniki blamed the phenomenon of switching religions on “the poor treatment of the Bulgarians under the current Greek regime, the taking away of churches, the closing of schools, the forced command to attend Greek night schools . . . where young and old from both sexes are coerced with fi nes and other vexatious measures to learn Greek, as well as other means . . . enforced by the [Greek] public organs and the Greek bish-ops.” 38 These two opinions were predictably contradictory accounts of the developments in Macedonia. Both sides correctly identifi ed the major factor in the process of “making a nation,” namely the decisive role of administrative pressures, yet they insisted on the notion of “pure” Bulgar-ians or Greeks. Politicians used essentialist and constructionist views of nationality in concert, confi rming the awareness that nationally hesitant individuals could change allegiances if the administration provided suf-fi cient stimuli or enforced coercive measures.

Practically oriented policies for the cultivation of a particular na-tionality accompanied the campaigning for people’s loyalties. In 1913, a

35. Bulgarian and Greek historians continue to use different terms to describe the minority, a phenomenon that has its origins in the national struggles between the two countries. According to the Bulgarian view, all Bulgarian-speaking individuals in Greek Macedonia are Bulgarians. At the same time, different terms have been used over time in Greece to describe the minority: “Bulgarian-minded” (Voulgarophronoi), “Bulgarian- speaking” (Voulgarophonoi), “Slavic-speaking” (Slavophonoi), and simply “foreigners” (al-logeneis). Greek historians today use the term Slavic-speaking, a deliberately vague choice that denies the population a concrete Bulgarian connection. This article opts for the terms Bulgarians and Bulgarian-speakers because large parts of the population leaned toward the Bulgarian national cause in the 1910s and 1920s, as is evident by the mass emigration to Bulgaria in the early 1920s. If an individual is clearly identifi ed with the Bulgarian national cause, I use “Bulgarian”; if, on the other hand, he/she was simply claimed by Bulgarian national activists, I use “Bulgarian-speaking.”

36. GLA, Archive of Stephanos Dragoumis, 118.1.1 (Report of the General Adminis-tration of Macedonia from 7 July 1913).

37. Ibid. (Report of the General Administration of Macedonia from 5 July 1913).38. TsDA, f. 322k, op. 1, a.e. 339, l. 24 (Report of the Bulgarian Consulate in Solun/

Thessaloniki from 25 January 1915).


164 Slavic Review

Greek police chief announced to Bulgarian-speakers in his locality, “You have always been and still are Greeks, but the [Bulgarian] bands have made you Bulgarians. Now you should sign this petition and declare that you are Greeks. . . . If you do not want [to do this] voluntarily, I will make you sign it by force.” 39 In accordance with the aspirations of the Greek administration to create loyal Greek citizens, this local initiative resulted in the offi cial renunciation of the Bulgarian Exarchate by all inhabitants of the community. In a neighboring village, a Greek replaced the Bul-garian teacher, and the families that did not send their children to the Greek school were fi ned by the day.40 Nationality became a matter of daily exigency, as offi cials circulated all vital orders in Greek, distributed food to the nationally upright individuals, seized churches and schools, and ex-propriated arms, tools, and working animals from ambivalent peasants.41 The initiation of lawsuits and fi nancial requests against individuals who hesitated to identify as Greeks also worked as a method of national con-viction, and court cases and fi nes “magically disappeared” when inhab-itants of Bulgarian-speaking villages declared their adherence to Greek nationality.42

National persuasion was also used against minority individuals in Western Thrace under Bulgarian rule in 1913 –1918. Because of the siz-able number of Muslims and Greeks in the area, offi cials systematically sought to create a population with suitable national allegiances.43 The Bulgarian administration urged Greek families “in a delicate manner” to “temporarily depart” the area because of “the explosive atmosphere” in the region; authorities referred to the arrival of Bulgarian refugees from Greek Macedonia who were inclined to harass the Greeks now under Bulgarian control.44 Despite such pressures, this migration wave was largely voluntary, and it mainly included the Greeks of better social standing who felt discriminated against in the new setting.45 In contrast, there were Greeks “from the poorest working class, who . . . send their children to our schools, worship in our church, some even approached

39. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 2, a.e. 1393, l. 4 (Report of the Bulgarian bishop in Voden/Edessa from 1 April 1913).

40. Ibid., 1. 5 (Report of the Bulgarian bishop in Voden/Edessa from 3 April 1913). For Greek language policies in Macedonia, see Tasos Kostopoulos, I apagorevmenni glossa: Kratiki katastoli tov slavikon dialekton stin elliniki Makedonia (Athens, 2000).

41. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 2, a.e. 1213, ll. 41– 46 (Report about the Greek administration in the Solun/Thessaloniki area from 29 November 1912).

42. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 2, a.e. 1397, ll. 173 –74 (Report of the Bulgarian bishop in Solun/Thessaloniki from 29 March 1913).

43. Western Thrace was ceded to Bulgaria after the First Balkan War with the London Peace Treaty of 17 May 1913 and remained Bulgarian territory up until the end of World War I.

44. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 3, a.e. 45, l. 7 (Undated Order #1456 of Rozental, chief of the Refugee Settlement Committee in Dedeagatch/Alexandroupolis).

45. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 22, a.e. 14, l. 72 (Report of the governor of Giumiurdzhina/Ko-motini from November 1914). A total of 35,851 persons resettled from Bulgaria to Greek Macedonia since the beginning of the Balkan Wars, and most originated from Thrace. See Ypourgeion oikonomikon, Dievthynsi ktimaton kratous, Ekthesis peri ton en Makedonia prosphygon (Athens, 1916), 12–20.



the . . . Bulgarian Agricultural Bank for loans . . . to start cultivating their properties.” 46 Arguably, the rural population was prone to “easy assimila-tion,” and, because these Greeks could serve as part of the workforce and teach the mulberry and silkworm art to Bulgarians, offi cials “ha[d] an interest in keeping them.” 47

The newly established Bulgarian authorities reckoned that Western Thrace “should remain, as a borderland, with a purely Bulgarian popula-tion.” 48 Because of the strategic importance of the area, experts in 1915 proposed creating a Colonization Institute, which would sustain the Bul-garian ethnic presence with the settlement of 120,000 Bulgarian refugees that had been displaced during the wars.49 This was the only large-scale attempt at population management that Bulgarian offi cials implemented, and it lasted until 1918, at which time the armistice after World War I for-bade further Bulgarian initiatives in Western Thrace. Bulgarian politicians used the same techniques of population engineering as their neighbors in the Ottoman empire, Greece, and Serbia, and, given enough time, they could have Bulgarized the territories in their possession.50 When favor-able circumstances and effi cient policies existed, the ethnic picture in any area could be “fi xed” to refl ect the needs of the national administration in charge.

Emigration or Bulgarization after the Great War

After World War I, together with the Neuilly Peace Treaty of 17 November 1919, Bulgaria and Greece signed a Convention for the Voluntary Emigra-tion of Minorities, which affected about 350,000 people in both countries. A Mixed Commission acted as a supervisory body, guaranteeing the vol-untary character of emigration and the fi nancial compensation of each emigrant for the property left behind.51 The two countries followed com-pletely opposite agendas with this convention. Bulgaria insisted on the concept of voluntary migration and wanted to secure minority rights for

46. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 3, a.e. 45, ll. 13 –14a (Report of Rozental from 26 November 1914).

47. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 22, a.e. 14, l. 72 (Report of the governor of Giumiurdzhina/Komotini from November 1914).

48. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 3, a.e. 45, ll. 13 –14a (Report of Rozental from 26 November 1914).

49. Georgi V. Dimitrov, Nastaniavane i ozemliavane na bâlgarskite bezhantsi (Blagoevgrad, 1985), 19; and Stoyko Trifonov, Trakiia: Administrativna uredba, politicheski i stopanski zhivot, 1912–1915 (Sofi a, 1992), 162–247.

50. Bulgarian policies were very similar to the techniques Greece and Turkey imple-mented to homogenize their lands after the compulsory population exchange between the two countries sanctioned with the Lausanne Treaty of 1923. See Renée Hirschon, ed., Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey (New York, 2003).

51. Important sources on the Bulgarian-Greek exchange include Memorandum on the Mission and Work of the Mixed Commission (n.p., 1929); André Wurfbain, L’échange Grèco- bulgare des Minorités Ethniques (Lausanne, 1930); Commission Mixte d’émigration Greco-Bulgare, Rapport des membres nommés par le Conseil de la Société des Nations (Lausanne, 1932); and Ste-phen Ladas, The Exchange of Minorities: Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey (New York, 1932).


166 Slavic Review

the Bulgarians in Greece. Greece, however, wanted to rid her “new lands” in Macedonia and Thrace of minorities and, in an effort to homogenize these provinces, sought to settle Greeks from Bulgaria. While Bulgarian politicians worked to stall the exchange, their Greek counterparts re-quested the full application of the convention.52 Greek politicians tried to persuade the affl uent Greek minority in Bulgaria to “save” its nationality and “repatriate” to Greece, while Bulgarian offi cials worked to accommo-date the Greeks who wished to remain and requested minority rights for the Bulgarians in Greece on a reciprocal basis.

In early 1919, the Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos sum-marized his dilemma regarding the minority: “The future survival of the Greeks in Bulgaria is problematic and would most probably lead to the voluntary loss of national awareness [ekousia apoleia ethnismou].” 53 Accord-ing to this line of thought, only radical measures, such as resettlement, would rescue the minority from national oblivion. To defend Greek in-terests in Bulgaria, the government set up a Greek Military Mission and assigned as its chief Colonel Konstantinos Mazarakis-Ainian, a veteran of the Greek cause in Macedonia. Mazarakis concluded that “continu-ous Bulgarian pressures, the lack of contact with the homeland, and eco-nomic interests” had undermined the Greek loyalties of the minority; in particular, many Greeks willingly socialized with Bulgarians and sought Bulgarian citizenship.54 He feared that this blending of Bulgarian and Greek allegiances had weakened the minority’s commitment to the Greek national cause. As reported in Bulgarian newspapers, the colonel repeat-edly asked the Greeks to “cut the pitiful [Bulgarian] tails off your purely Greek names, these ‘ov,’ ‘ev,’ and ‘iv’ [endings].” 55 He opposed the ac-ceptance of Bulgarian citizenship, which occurred for practical reasons but had unattended consequences.56 He urged the minority to avoid in-tegration because “our worst enemies, both in politics and trade, are the Bulgarized Greeks [ekvoulgaristhentes Ellines].” 57 Despite the “sincere pa-triotism” of many, Greek leaders “seriously worried about the national feelings, not so much . . . of those alive today, but of their heirs who will stay here and suffer innumerable pressures on their nationality.” 58

52. For the Bulgarian and Greek stance, respectively, see Georgi V. Dimitrov, Iliuzii i deystvitelnost: Sporove za prava i imoti na bâlgarite ot Egeyska Makedoniia i Zadarna Trakiia, 1919–1931 (Blagoevgrad, 1996); and Areti Tunta-Phergadi, Ellino-voulgarikes meionotites (Thessaloniki, 1986).

53. IAYE, 1919, A/5/II, 4 (Undated telegram from Venizelos to Mazarakis). The document is probably from early January 1919 as an answer to Mazarakis’s report from 19 December 1918, which asked for instructions.

54. IAYE, 1919, A/5/II, 4 (Report of Mazarakis from 5 February 1919).55. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 3, a.e. 1382, l. 78 (The Bulgarian newspaper Bâlgariia from

22 January 1919).56. IAYE, 1919, A/5/II, 4 (Report of Mazarakis from 24 January 1919).57. Istoriko Archeio Makedonias, Geniki Diikisi Makedonias (IAM, GDM), Thes-

saloniki, Greece, fi le 82 (Report of Mazarakis to the Greek Army Headquarters from 19 December 1918, p. 4).

58. IAYE, 1919, A/5/II, 4 (Proclamation of the Greek Military Mission to the Greeks in Bulgaria from 14 January 1919).



Shortly after the convention was signed in 1919, Greek offi cials took systematic steps to convince the minority to emigrate. Bulgarian diplomats reported that Prime Minister Venizelos warned the Greeks “not to ex-pect anything” and advised them, “if they value their nationality, to come and settle in our territory.” 59 According to Bulgarian opinion, Venizelos aimed at several things with these colonization policies: to adjust the eth-nic composition in the new Greek territories that had sizable Muslim and Bulgarian minorities; to create a buffer zone around the Bulgarian-Greek border populated by refugees impervious to Bulgarian propaganda; and to supply the country with the workforce necessary for postwar recon-struction.60 Greek agents coordinated a massive enterprise of national persuasion in Bulgaria by dispatching activists to strengthen the morale of the minority, executing a census mapping the Greeks and their proper-ties, organizing meetings that discussed practical matters of emigration, and securing fi nancial means for compensating the minority.61 Offi cials in Greek Macedonia and Thrace requested the colonists’ arrival, because emigration would “save the nationality” (sotiria ethnismou) of the Bulgar-ian Greeks while also creating a “nucleus for the Hellenization [pyrinas exellinismou] of every Bulgarian village” in the provinces.62 Immediately after World War I, and before the mass infl ux of refugees into Greece in the period 1922–1923, the Greek government considered the arrival of some 50,000 Bulgarian Greeks as an important step toward amending the demographic situation in the volatile “new lands.”

Modernization as Bulgarization in the 1930s

Concern with the wavering loyalties of the population was unmistakable in the interwar policies of nationalization. After the implementation of the Convention for Emigration in the period 1924 –1925, Bulgarian and Greek offi cials determined that the staunchest defenders of the national cause had already emigrated. The minorities that had stayed behind were seen as prone to assimilation and willing to make national compromises. In the 1930s, various Bulgarian measures targeted members of the Greek minority, and the main tenets of nationalization included the limita-tion of foreign language use, geographic name change, and economic marginalization.

59. TsDA, f. 322k, op. 1, a.e. 383, ll. 1–94 (Report of the Bulgarian Embassy in Athens from 15 May 1920, entitled “The Development of the Political Events in Greece since the Neuilly Treaty,” pp. 53 –54).

60. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 4, a.e. 1670, ll. 70– 82 (Report of the Bulgarian Embassy in Ath-ens from 3 May 1921, entitled “The Deplorable Situation of Refugees from the Caucasus in Greece,” p. 1).

61. IAYE, 1919, A/5/II, 4 (Proclamation of the Greek Military Mission to the Greeks in Bulgaria from 14 January 1919; Report of Mazarakis from 5 February 1919; Census Instructions of Mazarakis from 4 February 1919); and TsDA, f. 176k, op. 3, a.e. 1382, l. 81 (Memo of the Thracian Military Unit to the Ministry of War from 27 February 1919).

62. IAYE, 1920, 5.5.2 (The governmental representative of Western Thrace from 29 April 1920).


168 Slavic Review

In June 1934, a scandal erupted in Anhialo/Anchialos in Bulgaria following a local directive that prohibited the speaking of “foreign lan-guages, especially Greek and Turkish.” Although the decree was widely disseminated through messengers and posted on public buildings, it was soon revoked after the Greek Consulate and the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs intervened.63 This act was the initiative of a lower bureau-crat, the local police inspector, who was indignant that the minority “d[id] not respect the language spoken in Bulgaria”; he insisted that Bulgarian should be used in public, although “in their homes, [the Greeks] can speak whatever language they want.” 64 National activists were displeased that “the Greek element [wa]s strong and the material resources—the salt and wine industry—[we]re mainly in Greek hands.” 65 Despite the of-fi cial insistence on the unity of the Bulgarian nation, this division between Bulgarians and “foreigners” (inorodtsi) emphasized that some Bulgarian citizens were still not considered full-fl edged members of the national community.

The renaming of predominantly Greek localities also undermined the position of the minority. In 1925, Bulgarian refugees from Western Thrace who were settled in Mesemvria proposed renaming the town “Han Krum,” in honor of the medieval Bulgarian king who had beheaded the Byzantine emperor Nikiphoros in the ninth century.66 This plan was ulti-mately abandoned, but the town’s name was Bulgarized to Nesebâr.67 In Anhialo/Anchialos, the city council appointed a special commission to choose among the names Primorie (a translation of the Greek Anchialos), Solengrad (Salt City), and Lozengrad or Vinograd (Wine City). Despite the general preference for Solengrad, in August 1934 the town was re-named Pomorie pursuant to an order from the Ministry of the Interior. All streets and public venues also acquired Bulgarian names.68 Although

63. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 22, a.e. 355, ll. 1 and 3 – 4 (Directive of the Anhialo/Anchialos county chief from 11 June 1934 banning public use of foreign languages; Memo of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Denominations from 21 June 1934; Directive of the Anhi-alo/Anchialos county chief from 21 June 1934 revoking the previous directive); and IAYE, 1934, A/6/I/2 (Correspondence between the Greek Consulate in Burgas, the Greek Em-bassy in Sofi a, and Burgas district authorities from 14, 19, and 25 June and 11 July 1934).

64. Dârzhaven Arhiv-Burgas (DA-Burgas), Bulgaria, f. 82k, op. 1, a.e. 45, ll. 72–73 (Undated explanation of the police chief of Anhialo/Anchialos).

65. DA-Burgas, f. 82k, op. 1, a.e. 12, ll. 1–2 (Petition of the Pomorie Citizens Com-mittee to the Ministry of Education from June 1939, requesting the opening of a new high school in town).

66. DA-Burgas, f. 151k, op. 1, a.e. 1, l. 9 (Protocols from the meetings of the Mesemvria City Council in October 1925).

67. Nikolay Michev and Petâr Koledarov, Rechnik na selishtata i selishtnite imena v Bâl-gariia, 1878–1987 (Sofi a, 1989), 256.

68. Some of the new street names include Han Krum, Tsar Boris, Kiril and Medoti, Tsar Simeon, Tsar Samuil, Benkovski, Shipka, Botev, Vazov, Iavorov—all Bulgarian his-torical fi gures. DA-Burgas, f. 212k, op. 1, a.e. 17, ll. 214 –15 (Protocols from the meeting of the Anhialo/Anchialos City Council on 7 November 1925); DA-Burgas, f. 212k, op. 1, a.e. 28, ll. 31–32 (Protocols from the meeting of the Anhialo/Anchialos City Council on 17 February 1937); and DA-Burgas, f. 212k, op. 1, a.e. 24, ll. 6b–9 (Protocols of the An-hialo/Anchialos City Council from 29 September 1934).



Sozopol managed to preserve its Greek name, it did not avoid the renam-ing of all its streets.69 Stanimaka became Asenovgrad, the city of Asen, referring to the medieval Bulgarian king who built a nearby fortress in the thirteenth century.70 Throughout 1934, most Greek localities were renamed as a symbol confi rming Bulgarian dominance in these previously Greek centers.

Economic development on the Black Sea was also linked to the Greeks’ presence and their predominance in the retail, salt mining, wine pro-ducing, and fi shing sectors. In Anhialo/Anchialos, local administrators felt that “our seaside should be Bulgarized [da se pobâlgari] and not [left for] the Greeks to Grecisize it [da go pogârchvat].” 71 As Greek diplomats claimed, Bulgarian nationalist organizations proposed replacing Greek fi shermen with Bulgarian refugees and encouraged “the strengthening of national navigation, primarily to achieve the nationalization of our seashores, that is, the transfer [ektopismos] of the Greek population from Bulgaria or its Bulgarization.” 72 With the arrival of refugees in the Greek localities, the redistribution of resources to Bulgarians became an issue of national independence. The Greeks occupied auspicious economic niches, and the national marginalization of the minority became linked to the more active entrepreneurial participation of the Bulgarian majority.

The renamed and modernized Greek localities gradually acquired a new atmosphere. As reported by Greek envoys, Bulgarian offi cials pro-moted patriotic education and economic development and disseminated their stories of progress: “everything that the Greek notables failed to achieve in the past has been accomplished today . . . running water, rail-way connections . . . good infrastructure . . . and electricity.” 73 In 1939, King Boris visited the renamed Pomorie and praised the “prosperity, culture, and progress” of this once Greek city. Surrounded by students dressed in costumes from Macedonia, Thrace, and Dobrudzha, the three areas of Bulgarian national aspiration, the royal cut a ribbon in the col-ors of the Bulgarian fl ag.74 Speeches exalted “the entrepreneurial spirit, persistence, and creative ambition of the Bulgarian nation,” and samples of wine, salt, and fi sh, products formerly monopolized by Greeks, were

69. DA-Burgas, f. 152k, op. 1, a.e. 14, l. 119 (Protocols from the meeting of the Sozopol City Council in 1934).

70. Michev and Koledarov, Rechnik na selishtata i selishtnite imena v Bâlgariia, 31–32. For earlier Bulgarian attempts to rename the city, see K. Myrtilos Apostolidis, O Stenimachos (Athens, 1929), 70n1.

71. DA-Burgas, f. 82k, op. 1, a.e. 45, ll. 72–73 (Undated explanation of the police chief in Anhialo/Anchialos).

72. IAYE, 1924, A/5XII, 5 and 8 (Report of the Greek Consulate in Burgas from 29 November 1924 and Report of the Greek Embassy in Sofi a from 7 March 1924); TsDA, f. 176k op. 5, a.e. 256, l. 28 (Memo of the Ministry of Interior to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Denominations from 13 July 1925); and IAYE, 1922, 94.4 (Greek translation of the Bulgarian newspaper Rabotnicheski vestnik, “How Shall They Bulgarize?” from 8 April 1922).

73. IAYE, 1934, A/6/I/1 (Report of the Greek vice consul in Burgas from 17 October 1931, regarding an article entitled “Anhialo Past and Present” in Burgaski far from the same date).

74. IAYE, 1939, 13.1 (Report of the Greek vice consul in Burgas from 26 June 1939).


170 Slavic Review

exhibited as the output of the “hard-working” Bulgarian people.75 Local histories emphasized that the Black Sea coast had always been a part of the Bulgarian national community; claiming chronological primacy for the Bulgarian nation, historians underscored the importance of local, and not Greek, inhabitants, such as the ancient Thracians who decisively in-fl uenced the Greeks.76 In the achievements of the Bulgarian nation, there was no place for the Greeks, and silences successfully erased the minority from offi cial history.77

National activists and administrators correctly recognized that appro-priate policies could sway individuals’ national allegiances. This consen-sus explains the scale of population management practiced throughout the period, whether entailing more forceful policies such as colonization and forced migration or more peaceful measures such as economic plan-ning, cultural assimilation, and marginalization. Time and persistence played a major role in the Bulgarization or Grecization of mixed territo-ries, as is evident in the existence today of fi rst cousins across the current borders who have different national identifi cations and whose children have become “pure” Bulgarians or Greeks.78 But despite three wars and

75. “The Progress of Pomorie,” Chernomorski glas, 1 July 1939, 2.76. The Thracians were the indigenous population in parts of the Balkan Peninsula,

and they predate the Greeks in some areas where Greek city-states established colonies after the seventh century BCE. Different Thracian tribes existed and some established powerful kingdoms that had various encounters with the Greeks. The Thracians did not have written records, so their history is the subject of continuous scholarly debate and contestation. Bulgarian historians claim that these indigenous populations in isolated mountainous areas survived the Roman and barbaric incursions of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages and blended with the proto-Bulgarians and Slavs to form the medieval Bulgarian state. For such an interpretation of the history of formerly Greek localities in Bulgaria, see Anastas Razboynikov, Cherno more: Geografsko opisanie (Knizhka za kursisti i uchiteli) (Plovdiv, 1931); Ivan Batakliev, Nashiiat chernomorski briag: Geografski pregled (Varna, 1932); and Aleksi pop Marinov, Moreto i nasheto kraybrezhie: Ot Kaliakra do Rezovo (Varna, 1937).

77. This tendency is especially pronounced in Bulgarian works on these Greek towns, published in the interwar period, which as a rule avoid any mention of Greek presence in the area. In addition to the references above, see Kosta Traianov, Rodnoto more: Ot Kaliakra do Ropotamo (Varna, 1938); Ivan Stoianov and Vasil Stavrev, Varna: Gradât i okolnostite (Varna, 1930); N. Dermishkov, Perlite na slâncheviia grad Varna i okolnostite i (Varna, 1938); Stoiu Shishkov, Plovdiv v svoeto blizko i dalechno minalo: Istoriko-etnografski i politicheski pregled (Plovdiv, 1921); Stoiu Shishkov, Plovdiv v svoeto minalo i nastoiashte: Istoriko-etnografski i politiko-ekonomicheski pregled (Plovdiv, 1926); and Ivan Batakliev, Tatar-Pazardzhik: Istoriko-geografski ocherk (Sofi a, 1923).

78. This trend became apparent during the fi eldwork I conducted in Greek commu-nities in Bulgaria (the Black Sea coast) during September–October 2001 and in Bulgarian Greek refugee communities in Greece (Greek Macedonia) in May 2002. Even within the same family it was possible to observe siblings whose opinions diverged over their affi lia-tions; for example, in a family from Sozopol in Bulgaria, one sibling was extremely devoted to the Greek cause, while another declared unequivocally that he was Bulgarian, despite his awareness of his Greek origins. The younger members of such families generally show indifference to national passions. For a similar generational difference of perception in another Greek case (the interwar Orthodox refugees from Pontus), see Maria Vergeti, Apo tin Ponto stin Ellada: Diadikasies diamorphosis mias ethnotopikis tavtotitas (Thessaloniki, 1994).



a population exchange, on the eve of World War II Bulgarian and Greek activists continued to build a unifi ed national body.

National Identity as an Emergency Identity

Ordinary people also understood that nationality functioned as a means of social acceptance and inclusion. In moments of hardship, national identity became an urgent point of reference and functioned as an “emer-gency identity,” in which the expression of national loyalty served as a rhe-torical device that buttressed the petitioner’s specifi c claim or supported the person’s long-term strategy for social advancement. This function of national belonging had certain literary and performative qualities, which helped balance the fragile relationship between individual, society, and state during moments of crisis. People did not routinely use national cli-chés as their frame of reference; in emergency situations, however, they deployed the discourse of the nation to infl uence administrative decisions and to take sides in power struggles. This tendency demonstrates the con-tingency of national loyalties, but it also refl ects a practical inclination among the population to maneuver national allegiances to achieve ben-efi ts in everyday life.

Voluntary Assimilation during the Events of 1906

During the anti-Greek events of 1906, public opinion in Bulgaria dis-cerned differing degrees of national commitment among the Greeks, be-cause it recognized that there were minority individuals who had started “to feel like Bulgarians and to be recognized as Bulgarians by their fellow citizens.” Journalists classifi ed these potential converts into several groups: “people whose fathers adopted Greek manners out of stupidity [se gârcheeli po glupost],” others who “had the misfortune to receive their primary edu-cation in Greek,” and, fi nally, people who “have Greek mothers or fa-thers.” 79 In this taxonomy, the last two categories correctly focused on the importance of education and family origins for the cultivation of national loyalty. The fi rst group, however, revealed a more porous understanding of nationhood; it implied the possibility of choice and the option of re-versal (in order to correct previous “stupidity”) when adopting a particu-lar nationality. Thus, even among those with indisputably Greek origins, some were “currently more fanatic Bulgarian nationalists than the Bulgar-ians.” 80 During the anti-Greek movement, many Greeks, when threatened with fi ring or with the imposition of daily inconvenience, “expressed the desire to be Bulgarians.” 81 But educated Bulgarians realized that coercion could be counterproductive and proposed more restrained measures di-rected at nationalizing the minority; they suggested the “subtle, peaceful assimilation of those who stay, so that we do not turn them into enemies of

79. The Bulgarian newspaper Den, 5 August 1906.80. Ibid.81. Ibid., 28 July 1906.


172 Slavic Review

Bulgaria.” 82 This was especially important for the poor population, which “does not care about the [Greek national program] Megali Idea . . . but, given a reasonable assimilation policy, would adjust [bi se aklimatiziralo] to its Bulgarian fellow citizens.” 83

Indeed, in 1906 entire Greek neighborhoods and villages changed their religious (and by presumption national) affi liations and switched from the Greek Patriarchate to the Bulgarian Exarchate. These arrange-ments were executed within a matter of hours during the pogroms, yet they had lasting effects because they were never reversed. During the looting in Plovdiv/Philippoupolis, followers of the Patriarchate in the nearby city of Pazardzhik handed their church over to the Bulgarian com-munity.84 In the village Ak-Bunar (General Inzovo), about 180 heads of households recognized the Exarchate, renamed their church and school, and attended a sermon conducted in Bulgarian.85 In the village Kâlâldzhik (Drianovets), some 76 villagers “of Greek nationality” (po narodnost gârtsi) declared: “from now on, no one among us . . . should be considered Greek, as we are all Bulgarians”; to prove their commitment, they repudiated the Patriarchate, recognized the Exarchate, announced that the local church and school had become Bulgarian, promised to appoint Bulgarian priests and teachers, and proposed to rename the village Drianovo.86 These oc-currences did not signify the overnight transformation in the national feelings of these people but rather demonstrated the performative func-tion of national identity.87 It is unclear whether these proclamations of loyalty changed the way individuals felt about their place in the Bulgarian national body. When confronted with calamities, however, people knew how to make strategic choices that preserved their physical safety and secured their social peace.

The Greek-Maniacs during the Wars, 1912–1918

With the shifting developments of the Balkan Wars, the population often reversed loyalty to the parties involved in the confl icts. The expression of national allegiance, both in content and intensity, depended on the mili-tary presence in the particular region, the establishment of effi cient civil administration, and the operation of the respective religious and edu-cational institutions. Of special interest here is the category of “Greek- maniacs” (grâkomani). Bulgarian activists had long denounced as national traitors the ethnic Bulgarians who spoke Greek, sent their children to

82. Ibid., 20 August 1906.83. Ibid., 21 August 1906.84. Ibid., 22 July 1906.85. Ibid., 30 July and 3 August 1906.86. TsDA, f. 166k, op. 1, a.e. 1010, l. 13 (Protocol of a meeting in Kâzâldzhik from

2 August 1906).87. For an anthropological use of the concept of performance, see Michael Herzfeld,

The Poetics of Manhood: Contest and Identity in a Cretan Mountain Village (Princeton, 1985). For a fascinating historical use in the case of the Greek Adriatic islands under British rule, see Thomas Gallant, Experiencing Dominion: Culture, Identity, and Power in the British Mediter-ranean (Notre Dame, 2002).



Greek schools, and adopted Greek culture.88 “Greek-mania” (grâkomaniia) or “Greek-madness” (grâkoludie) had diverse reasons and manifestations. This phenomenon dates back to the mid-1700s, as the emerging Bulgarian intelligentsia attempted to separate itself from the Greek cultural tradi-tion.89 The controversy culminated in the 1860s with the struggle between Bulgarian and Greek religious authorities over the Bulgarian-speaking population in the Ottoman empire. After the institution of the Bulgarian church, the Exarchate, in 1870, the Bulgarian-speakers who chose the jurisdiction of the Greek Patriarchate were called “Greek-maniacs” to dis-tinguish them from the Orthodox population that predominantly spoke Greek and could more easily be identifi ed as Greeks.90

In the Bulgarian view, grâkomani were individuals who, “with their extreme awe for the culture of Hellenism, together with the Greek language, adopted the Greek spirit as well.” 91 This cultural conver-sion essentially made them potential recruits to Greek nationhood. But many chose this allegiance for its prospect of socioeconomic advance-ment, as is evident in this transformation of Bulgarian-speaking elites in Macedonia:

When Bulgaria was strong, the current grâkomani were premier Bulgarians [pârvi bugari]. The Greeks gave them money and [in 1908] six families, all notable families, became grâkomani. . . . But they did not know enough Greek to ask for water, to ask for bread—they are still Bulgarians, [but] they act like Greeks out of stubbornness. “This place will be Greece”—they say—“so we will be Greeks. This place won’t be Bulgaria, why should we . . . be Bulgarians. You poor people don’t un-derstand these matters.” 92

After signifi cant territories in Macedonia became part of Greece, ac-tively displaying Greek loyalty was linked to social promotion and better chances for employment under the Greek civil or religious administra-tion. It also marked individuals as loyal or disloyal when new territories were incorporated into the two states. Other considerations for choosing Greek allegiances were rooted in the “conservatism” or the “purely senti-mental” concerns of the population, as many were unwilling to renounce the priest who had married them or baptized their children. The priests, in turn, were reluctant to repudiate the bishop who had ordained them.

88. Simeon Radev, Ranni Spomeni (Sofi a, 1967), especially the chapter “Borbata s grâkomanite” (Struggles with the Greek-maniacs).

89. See, for example, the writings of Paisiy Hilendarski, an early ideologue of the Bulgarian national idea from the 1760s, who blamed Greek educators for depriving the Bulgarians of their own history and castigated those Bulgarians who followed Greek cul-ture. Paisiy Hilendarski, Slavianobâlgarska istoriia, ed. Ivan Granitski (Sofi a, 2002). For an analysis of this work in English, see Pundeff, “Bulgarian Nationalism,” 98–103.

90. Radev, Ranni Spomeni; and Pundeff, “Bulgarian Nationalism,” 115–20.91. Liubomir Miletich, “V polurazrusheniia Melnik (Pâtni belezhki ot 1914 godina),”

Makedonski pregled 1, no. 2 (1924): 87.92. Liubomir Miletich, “Ezikovi i narodopisni materiali,” Makedonski pregled 1, no. 3

(1925): 103. The fi rst part of this article, entitled “Bugari i gârkomani,” is the testimony of Dimitâr Hristov, an illiterate peasant from Barovitsa in Greek Macedonia, interview, Sofi a, 19 March 1919.


174 Slavic Review

In this way, the social networks already established in each area sustained the phenomenon of Greek-mania.93

Unsettled national loyalties characterized the grâkomani in the con-tested lands: while many settled in localities that became part of Greece af-ter the Balkan Wars and adopted a Greek identity, others chose to remain in Bulgarian territory, maintained their Bulgarian traditions, and “recog-nized themselves as Bulgarians.” 94 There were different levels of Greciza-tion among this population in the 1910s. Some grâkomani in Western Thrace, for example, were “just about irrevocably Grecisized” (toku-rechi okonchatelno pogârcheni) while others were only “in the process of Greci-zation” (v protsesa na gârtsiziraneto).95 The existence of such distinctions confi rms the proliferation of individuals who combined elements of vari-ous ethnic groups but professed the ideology of a single nation. People perceived national identity as a dynamic category of belonging that was a matter of choice or convincing in each case, but this fact only encouraged attempts to spur the wavering population toward the “correct” direction of national expression.

Negotiating Citizenship and Residence in the Interwar Years

This pragmatic attitude toward nationality explains the shifting between Bulgarian and Greek citizenship in the interwar period, when govern-ments instituted identity papers for citizens and registration requirements for aliens. Bulgarian offi cials reported that local Greeks, “when they need a paper stating that they are Bulgarian citizens . . . frequently deny that they are Greek citizens and insist on being given the paper. . . . Yet, when they have to fulfi ll their duties as Bulgarian citizens, they go to the Greek Consulate, which immediately issues a certifi cate stating that they are . . . Greek citizens.” 96 Such “citizens of the sweet waters,” as an American dip-lomat in Athens called them, had a markedly pragmatic approach to their affi liations in situations involving economic interests, military drafts, or public service.97 Greeks who had fi led declarations for emigration in the early 1920s later returned to Bulgaria as Greek citizens and continued their businesses.98 Others fi led declarations for emigration, which allowed them to sell their properties tax-free, even though they never emigrated.99 Many

93. Radev, Ranni Spomeni.94. Miletich, “V polurazrusheniia Melnik,” 88. For an overview of grâkomanstvo in

Melnik, see Galina Vâlchinova and Radoslava Ganeva, “Melnik mezhdu ‘Bâlgarina-orach’ i ‘sredizemnomoretsa-lozar’: Za traynostta na edna etnokulturna harakteristika,” Istoricheski pregled 2 (1997): 142–59.

95. Stoiu Shishkov, Trakiia predi i sled evropeyskata voyna (Plovdiv, 1922), 119–20.96. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 12, a.e. 17, l. 162 (Report of the Burgas Municipal Offi ce to the

Ministry of the Interior from 7 June 1924).97. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 9, a.e. 1543, l. 3 (Report of the Bulgarian Embassy in Athens

from 1 April 1921).98. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 22, a.e. 217, ll. 69–70 (Ministry of the Interior to the Ministry

of Foreign Affairs and Denominations from 21 April 1929).99. For example, thirty Greeks in Stanimaka/Asenovgrad were forced to depart in

1929, three years after fi ling their declarations and liquidating their properties. Ibid., l.



switched from Bulgarian to Greek citizenship in the early 1920s in order to avoid the compulsory labor service instituted in Bulgaria in June 1920.100

The Bulgarian administration was acutely aware of the “maneuvering with citizenship” (manevrirane s podanstvoto) and the fact that “everyone determine[d] his citizenship according to interest.” 101Only in the 1930s did offi cials regulate matters of citizenship, require the registration of all foreigners during their stays in Bulgaria, and issue identity cards to foreign citizens who resided in the country. These measures aimed at ending the practice of dual citizenship, because many Greeks residing in Bulgaria held Greek passports but also registered as Bulgarian citizens. These provisions made Greek citizenship less attractive in the 1930s, and many Greeks switched back to Bulgarian citizenship when the govern-ment imposed high fees for the alien identity cards and fi ned those who had failed to obtain them promptly.102

These more stringent policies were an effi cient means of persuasion, because many Greeks chose the citizenship of their country of residence to avoid considerable diffi culties.103 When in the late 1930s authori-ties required all Black Sea fi shermen to have Bulgarian citizenship, the Greeks in Sozopol applied en masse for it.104 In the Plovdiv/Philippoupo-lis district, offi cials gave individuals with unsettled residence status only two months to get their papers in order, but they promised that adopting Bulgarian citizenship would exempt these people from fi nes.105 Individu-als who became Bulgarian citizens in the late 1930s strategically selected their citizenship, and this choice partially resulted in their formal commit-ment to the Bulgarian national body. While their decisions were not the expression of newly discovered Bulgarian national fervor, in their public appearance they moved closer to the Bulgarian nation. Adopting a par-

76 (Report of the Bulgarian Representative in the Mixed Commission to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Denominations from 9 July 1929).

100. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 26, a.e. 36; op. 9, a.e. 1543; and op. 12, a.e. 91–93, 112, 114, 345, 227, and 228 (Individual applications for Greek citizenship by members of the Greek minority in Bulgaria who wanted to avoid the labor service, instituted in lieu of the military service that was prohibited by the 1919 Neuilly Peace Treaty).

101. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 12, a.e. 91, l. 3 (Report of the Burgas Municipal Offi ce to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Denominations from 6 June 1923). The case concerns two young Greek women from Burgas who tried to avoid labor service by adopting Greek citizenship. See also TsDA, f. 176k, op. 12, a.e. 112, l. 19 (Memo of the Plovdiv Municipal Offi ce from 25 December 1925 about labor service lists).

102. TsDA, f. 370k, op. 6, a.e. 91, ll. 3 – 4 (Ministry of the Interior to the district chiefs and police inspectors in Bulgaria from 10 March 1931, regarding the legal status of for-eigners in Bulgaria).

103. IAYE, 1935, A/6/2/2 (Report of the Greek Embassy in Sofi a from 26 July 1935). The document explains the administrative mess associated with the status of these people.

104. IAYE, 1939, 15.2 (Report of the Greek vice consul in Burgas from 20 Septem-ber 1939). This information is confi rmed in oral history interviews, as is evident in Galia Vâlchinova, “Grâtskoto naselenie i grâtskata identichnost v Bâlgariia: Kâm istoriiata na edno nesâstoialo se maltsinstvo,” Istorichesko bâdeshte 2 (1998): 157.

105. IAYE, 1934, A/6/2 (Reports of the Greek vice consul in Plovdiv/Philippoupolis from 26 and 28 January 1934 and 21 January 1935).


176 Slavic Review

ticular citizenship symbolized the acceptance of the rules of the national community.

An interesting example of the manipulation of national rhetoric in-volved Greeks who had fi led declarations for emigration under the stipu-lations of the Convention for Emigration but later attempted to withdraw them in order to stay in Bulgaria. The stakes in these cases were high, because these individuals faced expulsion to Greece. Petitions requesting the reversal of a deportation order were typically full of more national clichés than any other form of writing during this period. According to the rules of the convention, people who fi led a declaration and liquidated their property had three months to leave their country of residence.106 Many Greeks fi led declarations in the initial months of postwar enthusi-asm in 1919 or following the refugee crisis in 1923 –1925. But once more orderly refugee settlement policies commenced, they opted to remain in Bulgaria.107 For some of them, this decision also meant that they were ready to become Bulgarians.

In 1925, some 159 families from communities on the Black Sea coast tried to withdraw their declarations for emigration, and in their request to King Boris they tried to show that they were good Bulgarians and loyal citizens.108

Lured, cheated, and bullied by treacherous elements—paid agents of the Greek government, who threatened us, persecuted us, terrorized us—we were forced to fi le declarations for emigration. . . . Mother Bulgaria is our mother too. Our predecessors were born here and we were born here too. We fought for her [in the wars] and we lost our dear loved ones. . . . Who-ever has visited our beautiful Black Sea region has admired these thriv-ing lands that have acquired such beauty under our laboring hands. . . . We do not want to leave our country, in which we were born and to which we have paid our blood and obligations; these lands, which are more beautiful than any others, in which happiness has been more than sorrow.109

106. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 22, a.e. 210, l. 5 (Memo of the Ministry of the Interior to the district chiefs in Bulgaria from 11 September 1926).

107. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 12, a.e. 33, l. 138 (Memo of the Greek-Bulgarian Emigration Subcommission in Bulgaria to the Ministry of the Interior from 16 March 1925); TsDA, f. 176k, op. 21, a.e. 2356, ll. 305– 8 (List of thirty Greeks who emigrated but returned to Bulgaria and seventy-one Greeks who acquired passports but did not emigrate); and TsDA, f. 176k, op. 22, a.e. 186, l. 455 (Report of the Burgas district chief to the Ministry of the Interior from 30 June 1926, concerning Greeks in Burgas who had no intention of emigrating).

108. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 12, a.e. 33, ll. 139– 40a (Memo of the Greek-Bulgarian Emi-gration Subcommission in Sofi a from 17 March 1925). All petitions requesting the with-drawal of a declaration for emigration were fi led with the Emigration Subcommission that handled the implementation of the Bulgarian-Greek Convention for Emigration, but some petitioners chose to address their requests to a higher authority, such as King Boris, as evident in this case.

109. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 22, a.e. 186, ll. 136 –38 (Request of inhabitants from Biala, Hodzha-kioy, and Kuru-kioy from 24 December 1925). The families came from Biala/Aspros (Biala), Hodzha-kioy (Popovich), and Kuru-kioy (Goritsa).



Lawyers probably helped compose these writings, but their existence dem-onstrates the readiness of professed Greeks to publicly denounce their prior affi liations. The petition provided all possible proofs of loyalty to the Bulgarian nation and stressed the concrete, tangible contributions of the minority communities to Bulgarian welfare. In fact, there seemed to exist a relatively stable understanding of what allowed one to claim Bulgar-ian nationality. Another Greek explained his predicament: “I was born in mother Bulgaria; I have grown up here; I have served my military service as a good Bulgarian; I have fulfi lled and fulfi ll all my duties as a Bulgarian, and I wish always to remain as such. . . . Ever since I fi led the fatal decla-ration for resettlement, nightmares have tortured my soul, and [I wish] I could shout again, as I did with my combat comrades in the national army, ‘Long live mother Bulgaria!’ ” 110 In these petitions, the “objective” crite-ria for nationhood were place of birth, military service, and the prompt payment of taxes and other obligations. “Subjective” features could also buttress one’s claims, such as a sincere belief in the national community and a willingness to express national loyalty publicly and actively.

Three brothers who faced deportation after their failure to leave Bulgarian territory seemed to have mastered all the requirements of be-ing good Bulgarians:

Since ancient times, our predecessors have lived in [our village]. We were born in this village too. All three of us brothers, as well as our parents and children, have always felt only like Bulgarians. Our children have been educated in Bulgarian schools; our maternal tongue has always been and still is only Bulgarian. Together with all Bulgarian citizens, we had the happiness of participating in the three wars of liberation . . . and, as true patriots, we experienced deprivation and showed heroism and loyalty to the fatherland. . . . Our wives, born Bulgarians, declared to us that, if we were forcibly deported, they would stay, together with our children, with their parents [in Bulgaria], because they prefer to sever their relations with us, their husbands, rather than with their motherland-Bulgaria. . . . We want nothing but the right . . . to live, work and die in Bulgaria, our only fatherland, which we would never stop loving, even if we are torn apart from it.111

The brothers, however, had provided confl icting information about their nationality. According to their village’s vital records, the family had regis-tered as Greek before 1920 and as Bulgarian after that, and the commis-sion rejected the appeal.112 This refusal triggered three identical petitions

110. Ibid., l. 306 (Petition of Ianko Daskalov from Malâk Boialâk from 1 March 1926). The petitioner came from the village Malâk Boialâk/Mikro Boialiki (Malko Sharkovo) near Kavakli (Topolovgrad).

111. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 22, a.e. 185, ll. 17–18 (Petition of the brothers Georgi, Kolio, and Hristo Petrovi Dalukovi from Krumovo from 17 May 1926). The village Krumovo was near Iambol.

112. Ibid., l. 19 (Memo of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Denominations to the Bulgarian Representative in the Mixed Commission from 16 June 1926, regarding the petition of the Dalukovi brothers).


178 Slavic Review

submitted by the wives of the brothers, in which they claimed to be “pure-blooded [chistokrâvni] Bulgarian[s], accustomed to Bulgarian norms and traditions.”113 Because the women were illiterate, they likely followed the advice of lawyers in boldly critiquing the Convention for Emigration as the best strategy for reversing the deportation orders. The three petitions agreed that the exchange “created more perfect human groups of na-tions” (po-pravilni choveshki grupirovki po natsii) but also emphasized that the convention should not “exile and resettle, destroy and ruin foreigners [inostrantsi] who have lived [in Bulgaria] for centuries.” 114 Their willing-ness to become Bulgarians proved the loyalty of these three families, and they requested the right to choose Bulgaria as their place of residence.

A Greek residing near the Turkish border, married to a Bulgarian, took his family of four small children to the regional police station in what he believed was the best strategy for reversing the deportation order. As he emphasized, “We educate [our children] in Bulgarian, I myself speak excellent Bulgarian, and I feel more attached to Bulgaria. . . . It would be sad for a Bulgarian family to be sent to Greece.” 115 The desperate man threatened to commit suicide if forced to abandon the country. The fam-ily agreed to resettle in the interior and asked, “What can we do to be in accordance with the laws of our dearest fatherland Bulgaria [nasheto nay-milo otechestvo Bâlgariia]? . . . I, Nikola Vasilev, shall be its soldier.” Despite his Bulgarian name and his eagerness to enlist, there was a tension in the way Vasilev lumped together nationality, citizenship, and residence. He exclaimed, “How is it possible that fi ve Bulgarians are sent to Greece?” not including himself in the number, and declared that Bulgaria was his “second fatherland,” implying that Greece was the fi rst. But he insisted, “Since my marriage, I have developed strong connections to this country, I have long forgotten everything Greek, and because everything there [in Greece] is foreign to me, I decided to remain here [in Bulgaria].” 116 When he decided to reside in Bulgaria, Vasilev remained conscious of his origins, but he felt that his Greek nationality should not prevent him from being treated as a good Bulgarian. His statement reveals that, in the mind of simple folk, the manifestation of national feelings was considered a matter of choice.

These petitions show that the evocation of national loyalty served as a discourse of special rights and sought the enhancement, in a broad sense, of a particular individual or community. The straightforward expression of national allegiances became, not only a vehicle of social mobility, but also a guarantee of a peaceful everyday existence. Many folks had fl uc-tuating national feelings, and they often adhered to the nationality that produced the most tangible privileges or simply made their lives less com-

113. Ibid., ll. 21–23 (Requests from Todora Dineva, Kana Dimitrova, and Elena Stoianova from Krumovo). The dates of the petitions are unclear but they were fi led on 23 June 1926.

114. Ibid.115. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 8, a.e. 805, l. 46 (Request of Nikola Vasilev and Rusana Georgieva

from 15 July 1940). The petitioners were from the village Pashovo near Svilengrad.116. Ibid.



plicated. People used clichés of patriotism as justifi cation of entitlement, because they knew that the government expected national loyalty from its citizens.

The Dilemma of Fixing Nations

While incorporating diverse populations into their expanding countries, Bulgarian and Greek politicians attempted to cement their nations and defi ne them as stable and enduring. In the process, the states simultane-ously reifi ed and molded their nations, exalted their robustness through history, and shaped them in response to current priorities. “Speaking na-tional,” the formulaic language of a fi xed, defi nable nation, was ubiqui-tous. Offi cials used it as the universal justifi cation of their authority over national territories, while they also worked to achieve national homog-enization or at least to secure the invisibility of ethnic others. Simple folk employed the national idiom in their encounters with the administra-tions, hoping to improve their precarious situations within the aggres-sively nationalizing states. Thus, the consensus remained that the most suitable strategy for addressing offi cial national priorities and private daily concerns was to use national rhetoric.

But national policies produced mixed results and unattended conse-quences. In 1906, the chief of a Bulgarian military unit entrusted with Bul-garizing the Greeks in his locality sought a transfer, explaining: “Instead of my Bulgarizing you, I am close to becoming Hellenized” (anti na sas ekvoulgariso kondevo na exellinisto).117 A staunch defender of the Bulgarian cause, the offi cer experienced fi rsthand how nationhood could move in unpredictable directions. Besides, what seemed to be a successful national conversion could rapidly transform because of changes in the broader political context. Following an initial manifestation of acquiescence to the national cause, the population could revert to its “original” identity. Shortly after the nationalization campaigns of 1906, Bulgarian activists worried that the Greeks had abandoned their previous humility. A nation-alist newspaper from Anhialo/Anchialos published the following observa-tion in 1909, three years after fi re destroyed the city: “Our Greeks sing the old song, but in a different key. . . . [They] do not recognize that they re-side in the Kingdom of Bulgaria. . . . They enjoy the Bulgarian lifestyle, but they think and believe that they breathe Greek air.” 118 Practitioners of the national cause recognized that nationality functioned as both a constant and a variable: it created loyalties and coalitions based on what seemed to be outwardly stable group identities, but in the changing context of national struggles and social demands these identities fl uctuated. “Pure” and “loyal” Bulgarians or Greeks existed, but only until new circumstances created new patterns of behavior and new defi nitions of group identity.

The question remains whether nationality as an “emergency identity”

117. Kostas Daphnis, Apostolos Doxiadis: O agonistis kai o anthropos (Athens, 1974), 197n28.

118. The Bulgarian newspaper Kray, 3 October 1909.


180 Slavic Review

ultimately improved the lives of those individuals already marked by their governments as loyal or disloyal. The ability to maneuver nationality de-pended on the minority policies adopted by the specifi c country, and as policies changed so did people’s ability to choose identities. In 1925, for instance, Greece refused to implement the Geneva Protocol sponsored by the League of Nations that promised educational and religious autonomy to minority individuals in Greece and Bulgaria. Instead, Greek politicians promoted policies pushing the assimilation of their “Slavic-speakers,” which led to a signifi cant Bulgarian migration wave from Greece. This development also infl uenced the situation of the Greeks in Bulgaria, be-cause the Bulgarian government adopted reciprocal repressive measures against the Greek minority in its territories.119 Vast segments of the popu-lation were thus marked with a certain nationality and handled accord-ingly; they were resettled by force, conscripted, or taxed inappropriately, fi ned for speaking their language, or excluded from socioeconomic activi-ties reserved for “upright” citizens. In nation-states that were increasingly expanding their jurisdictions, governments imposed their priorities and required the vigorous affi rmation of individuals’ loyalties.

Yet, throughout the twentieth century, claims of national belonging continued to function as a form of strategic thinking that made sense in volatile situations.120 This trend is evident in postsocialist Bulgaria as well. In 1992, after fi fty years of offi cially silencing the Greek minority, close to 5,000 individuals identifi ed themselves as Greeks while 8,000 stated that Greek was their maternal tongue.121 Greek cultural associations emerged,

119. For the assimilation of the Bulgarian-speakers in Greece, see Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood; and Peter Mackridge and Eleni Yannakakis, eds., Ourselves and Others: The Development of a Greek Macedonian Cultural Identity since 1912 (Oxford, 1997). Accounts in Greek include Kostopoulos, I apagorevmenni glossa; Vasilis Gounaris, Giakovos Michailidis, and Georgios Agelopoulos, eds., Tavtotites sti Makedonia (Thessaloniki, 1997); and Giakovos Michailidis, Metakiniseis slavophonon plithysmon (1912–1930): O polemos ton statistikon (Athens, 2003). The Bulgarian perspective on the minority is evident in Georgi V. Dimitrov, Maltsinstveno-bezhanskiiat vâpros v bâlgaro-grâtskite otnosheniia 1919–1939 (Blago-evgrad, 1982); and Georgi Daskalov, Uchastta na bâlgarite v Egeyska Makedoniia, 1936 –1946 (Sofi a, 1999). An account on refugees in Bulgaria, including those from Greece, is Theo-dora Dragostinova, “Competing Priorities, Ambiguous Loyalties: Challenges of Socioeco-nomic Adaptation and National Inclusion of the Interwar Bulgarian Refugees,” Nationalities Papers 34, no. 5 (November 2006): 549–74. The most comprehensive study on the Greeks in Bulgaria remains Kotzageorgi, Oi Ellines tis Voulgarias. For minority problems, see Lena Divani, ed., Ellada kai meionotites: To systima diethnous prostasias tis Koinonias ton Ethnon (Athens, 1995).

120. During World War II, when Bulgarian forces occupied parts of northern Greece, some Greek “Slavic-speakers” identifi ed themselves as Bulgarians and cooperated with the Bulgarian administration, which they no doubt did for practical reasons that contradicted the Greek government’s stance that there were no Bulgarians in Greece. See Raimondos Alvanos, “Slavophonoi dopioi kai Pontioi prosphyges: I mnimi kai i empeiria tis dekaetias tou 40 se dyo choria tis periochis Kastorias,” Istorika 33 (2000): 289–318.

121. In the census from 4 December 1992, some 4,930 identifi ed themselves as Greeks, some 5,144 declared themselves to be Karakachans, while a total of 8,000 noted that Greek was their maternal tongue. See Galia Vâlchinova, “Gârtsi,” in Anna Krâsteva, ed., Obshtnosti i identichnosti v Bâlgariia (Sofi a, 1998), 217. For the Karakachans in Bulgaria, who have a lifestyle and dialect similar to those of the Sarakatsani in Greece, see Zhenia Pimpireva, The Karakachans in Bulgaria (Sofi a, 1998).



offering Greek-language classes, celebrating Greek culture, and coordinat-ing “homeland reunions” between relatives across the border.122 Yet, the economic incentives linked to “being Greek” clearly mattered, and many sought Greek citizenship in order to fi nd better employment in Greece and the European Union. Also, membership in the Greek associations provided substantial benefi ts, such as scholarships to study in Greece, and some individuals opportunistically took advantage of loopholes to further their personal strategies of social promotion.123 Perhaps even more im-portant, people continued to express the view that one’s national affi lia-tion was a matter of choice: “My mother’s family decided, ‘We will become Greeks,’ and they stayed [in Greece] and Grecisized [i se pogârchiha]. This is how it works. . . . While here [in Bulgaria] we became Bulgarians.” 124 For the Greeks in Bulgaria, the twentieth century was essentially marked by the struggle to remain unfi xed, to retain their murky identities, and to be able to choose their loyalties. The nation remained something in the making, and the national body was continuously altered, fi xed, and then altered again. As priorities shifted and situations changed, the primordial nation every so often demonstrated its constructedness.

122. These observations are based on fi eldwork conducted in Greek communities on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast during September and October of 2001.

123. For example, during my fi eldtrip in the Varna and Burgas regions of Bulgaria, some respondents expressed frustration that activists of the Greek associations secured scholarships for their children to study in Greece.

124. Interview with a respondent from Biala, 6 November 2001.


"Speaking National: Nationalizing the Greeks of Bulgaria, 1900 –1939," Slavic Review, 2008.

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Transcript of "Speaking National: Nationalizing the Greeks of Bulgaria, 1900 –1939," Slavic Review, 2008.