Macedonia Fallacies & Facts
Debunking wrong assertions
There are several fallacies and untruths that have been circulating in the past few years as regards Macedonia, and this has been mainly due to the ignorance of many about the Macedonian issue. Here are some that we have debunked;
Fallacy
The residents of The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) are ethnic Macedonians who directly descend from or relate to ancient Macedonians.
Facts
Many of the FYROM leaders have discredited this claim in the past;
FYROM Former President, Kiro Gligorov said in an interview that they are Slavs who arrived in the area in the sixth century and did not descend from ancient Macedonians. (Foreign Information Service Daily Report, Eastern Europe, February 26, 1992, p. 35).
He also said that while they are Macedonians, they are Slav Macedonians without any connection to the Macedonia of Alexander the Great. (Toronto Star, March 15, 1992).
Ljubica Achevska, The FYROM Ambassador to the USA also said in a speech that they do not claim any connection to Alexander the Great and that the people of the FYROM are Slavs who speak the Slav language.
The Ambassador of FYROM to Canada, Jordan Veselinov, also said in a Toronto Star Interview on February 24, 1999, that they are not connected to the northern Greeks, and they are Slav people with a language related to that of Bulgaria.
The FYROM Foreign Minister, Slobodan Casule, in Utrinski Vesnik of Skopje interview on December 29, 2001, said he told Bulgarian counterpart, Solomon Papi that they are part of the same Slav people.
Fallacy
The Macedonians in Greece share ethnicity with the “Macedonians” of the FYROM.
Fact
Macedonian Greeks are not related in any way with the FYRO Macedonian Slavs. The Macedonian Greeks are Greeks who originate or live in the Macedonia geographic region. Only they have the inherited right to be referred to as Macedonians.
Fallacy
The ancients Macedonians were not Greeks but a tribe similar to the Greeks.
Fact
There are over 230 Hellenic families, sub-tribes, and tribes that formed the Hellenic nation, and they spoke over 200 dialects. Ancient Macedonians were one of these groups. See Titus Livius, Herodotus, Ketuvim, Strabo, Nevi’im, Thucydides, Apocrypha (Maccabees I, 1-2) for more information.
Fallacy
Ancient Greece was a country, as we understand it today, a legal entity,
Fact
No. Hellas (Greece) did not become recognised as a legal entity or nation-state ( as we understand it today) till 1830. Until that time, the term Hellas only referred to a geographic term or an administrative area with flexible borders that changed based on Ottoman, Byzantine, or Roman Empires needs.
Fallacy
The ancient Macedonians did not speak Greek but Macedonian, and there is only one ancient Greek language.
Fact
There is no solid linguistic distinction between a language and a dialect; political factors are usually used to determine if a kind of speech is dialect or language. Given that the Pan-Hellenic area was made up of large states like (Thesprotia, Molossia, Acarnania, Macedonia, Aetolia, etc.) and small-city states like (Attica, Corinth, Lacedaemon, etc.), it was common knowledge that inhabitants of these states spoke different languages which were actually variations of the same Greek or Hellenic language. The most advanced was Attic, the dialect of Attica, and this is what many people consider to be the ancient Greek language.