1.
Ottoman Empire
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After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans the Ottoman Beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror, at the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states. Some of these were later absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries. With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, while the empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, this view is no longer supported by the majority of academic historians. The empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society, however, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind that of their European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian Empires. While the Empire was able to hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent. Starting before World War I, but growing increasingly common and violent during it, major atrocities were committed by the Ottoman government against the Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks. The word Ottoman is an anglicisation of the name of Osman I. Osmans name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān, in Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye, or alternatively ʿOsmānlı Devleti. In Modern Turkish, it is known as Osmanlı İmparatorluğu or Osmanlı Devleti, the Turkish word for Ottoman originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century, and subsequently came to be used to refer to the empires military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term Turk was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, the term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. In Western Europe, the two names Ottoman Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favored both in formal and informal situations and this dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. Most scholarly historians avoid the terms Turkey, Turks, and Turkish when referring to the Ottomans, as the power of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman, osmans early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River and it is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbours, due to the scarcity of the sources which survive from this period. One school of thought which was popular during the twentieth century argued that the Ottomans achieved success by rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam, in the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans. Osmans son, Orhan, captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326 and this conquest meant the loss of Byzantine control over northwestern Anatolia. The important city of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387, the Ottoman victory at Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe
2.
Republic of Macedonia
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Macedonia, officially the Republic of Macedonia, is a country in the Balkan peninsula in Southeast Europe. It is one of the states of the former Yugoslavia. A landlocked country, the Republic of Macedonia has borders with Kosovo to the northwest, Serbia to the north, Bulgaria to the east, Greece to the south, the countrys geography is defined primarily by mountains, valleys, and rivers. The capital and largest city, Skopje, is home to roughly a quarter of the nations 2.06 million inhabitants, the majority of the residents are ethnic Macedonians, a South Slavic people. Albanians form a significant minority at around 25 percent, followed by Turks, Romani, Serbs, Macedonias history dates back to antiquity, beginning with the kingdom of Paeonia, a Thracian polity. In the late sixth century BCE the area was incorporated into the Persian Achaemenid Empire, the Romans conquered the region in the second century BCE and made it part of the much larger province of Macedonia. Macedonia remained part of the Byzantine Empire, and was raided and settled by Slavic peoples beginning in the sixth century CE. Following centuries of contention between the Bulgarian and Byzantine empires, it came under Ottoman dominion from the 14th century. Between the late 19th and early 20th century, a distinct Macedonian identity emerged, although following the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, Macedonia remained a constituent socialist republic within Yugoslavia until its peaceful secession in 1991. Macedonia is a member of the UN and of the Council of Europe, since 2005 it has also been a candidate for joining the European Union and has applied for NATO membership. Although one of the poorest countries in Europe, Macedonia has made significant progress in developing an open, the countrys name derives from the Greek Μακεδονία, a kingdom named after the ancient Macedonians. The name is believed to have meant either highlanders or the tall ones. However, Robert S. P. Beekes supports that both terms are of Pre-Greek substrate origin and cannot be explained in terms of Indo-European morphology, the Republic of Macedonia roughly corresponds to the ancient kingdom of Paeonia, which was located immediately north of the ancient kingdom of Macedonia. In the late 6th century BC, the Achaemenid Persians under Darius the Great conquered the Paeonians, following the loss in the Second Persian invasion of Greece in 479 BC, the Persians eventually withdrew from their European territories, including from what is today the Republic of Macedonia. In 356 BC Philip II of Macedon absorbed the regions of Upper Macedonia, the Romans established the Province of Macedonia in 146 BC. Roman expansion brought the Scupi area under Roman rule in the time of Domitian, and it fell within the Province of Moesia. Whilst Greek remained the dominant language in the part of the Roman empire. Slavic peoples settled in the Balkan region including Macedonia by the late 6th century AD, during the 580s, Byzantine literature attests to the Slavs raiding Byzantine territories in the region of Macedonia, later aided by Bulgars. Historical records document that in c.680 a group of Bulgars, Slavs and Byzantines led by a Bulgar called Kuber settled in the region of the Keramisian plain, presians reign apparently coincides with the extension of Bulgarian control over the Slavic tribes in and around Macedonia
3.
Bulgarian language
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Bulgarian /bʌlˈɡɛəriən/, /bʊlˈ-/ is an Indo-European language, a member of the Southern branch of the Slavic language family. Various evidential verb forms exist to express unwitnessed, retold, with the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Bulgarian became one of the official languages of the European Union. Development of the Bulgarian language may be divided into several periods, prehistoric period – occurred between the Slavonic migration to eastern Balkans and the mission of Saints Cyril and Methodius to Great Moravia in the 860s. Old Bulgarian – a literary norm of the southern dialect of the Common Slavic language from which Bulgarian evolved. It was used by Saints Cyril and Methodius and their disciples to translate the Bible, Middle Bulgarian – a literary norm that evolved from the earlier Old Bulgarian, after major innovations were accepted. It was a language of literary activity and the official administration language of the Second Bulgarian Empire. Modern Bulgarian – dates from the 16th century onwards, undergoing general grammar, present-day written Bulgarian language was standardized on the basis of the 19th-century Bulgarian vernacular. Bulgarian was the first Slavic language attested in writing, as Slavic linguistic unity lasted into late antiquity, in the oldest manuscripts this language was initially referred to as языкъ словяньскъ, the Slavic language. In the Middle Bulgarian period this name was replaced by the name языкъ блъгарьскъ. In some cases, the name языкъ блъгарьскъ was used not only with regard to the contemporary Middle Bulgarian language of the copyist but also to the period of Old Bulgarian. During the Middle Bulgarian period, the language underwent dramatic changes, losing the Slavonic case system, today one difference between Bulgarian dialects in the country and literary spoken Bulgarian is the significant presence of Old Bulgarian words and even word forms in the latter. Russian loans are distinguished from Old Bulgarian ones on the basis of the presence of specifically Russian phonetic changes, as in оборот, непонятен, ядро and others. As usual in cases, many other loans from French, English. Modern Bulgarian was based essentially on the Eastern dialects of the language, between 1835–1878 more than 25 proposals were put forward and linguistic chaos ensued. Eventually the eastern dialects prevailed, and in 1899 the Ministry of Education officially codified a standard Bulgarian language based on the Drinov-Ivanchev orthography, the language is mainly split into two broad dialect areas, based on the different reflexes of the Common Slavic yat vowel. This split, which occurred at some point during the Middle Ages, led to the development of Bulgarias, E. g. млеко – milk, хлеб – bread. This rule obtains in most Eastern dialects, although some have ya, or an open e sound. The literary language norm, which is based on the Eastern dialects
4.
Macedonian language
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It is the official language of the Republic of Macedonia and a recognized minority language in parts of Albania, Romania and Serbia. Standard Macedonian was implemented as the language of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia in 1945 and has since developed a modern literature. Most of the codification was formalized during the same period, Macedonian dialects form a continuum with Bulgarian dialects, they in turn form a broader continuum with Serbo-Croatian through the transitional Torlakian dialects. The name of the Macedonian language is a matter of controversy in Greece. Macedonians closest relative is Bulgarian, with which it has a degree of mutual intelligibility. The next closest relative is Serbo-Croatian, all South Slavic languages, including Macedonian, form a dialect continuum. Its other principal members are Romanian, Greek and Albanian, all of which belong to different genetic branches of the Indo-European family and they are also the only Slavic languages with any definite articles. Bulgarian and Macedonian are the only Indo-European languages that use of the narrative mood. Prior to the codification of the language, Macedonian dialects were described by linguists as being either dialects of Bulgarian or Serbian. Similarly, Torlakian was also regarded as Bulgarian. On the other hand, many Macedonian intellectuals maintained that their language was neither a dialect of Serbian nor of Bulgarian, but the core of its standard was not formed out of dialects or variants that had ever been covered by the Bulgarian standard. Consequently, its autonomy could not have resulted from a conscious distancing of a variant of a pluricentric language, like the other South Slavic standards, the Macedonian standard was based on dialects which had never before been covered by a standard. Modern questions of classification are largely shaped by political and social factors, likewise, this view does not take into account the fact that a Macedonian koiné language was already in existence. The codifiers ultimately chose the dialects, but did so because they were most widespread. The population of the Republic of Macedonia was 2,022,547 in 2002, outside of the Republic, there are Macedonians living in other parts of the geographical area of Macedonia. There are ethnic Macedonian minorities in neighbouring Albania, in Bulgaria, in Greece, according to the official Albanian census of 1989,4,697 ethnic Macedonians reside in Albania. A large number of Macedonians live outside the traditional Balkan Macedonian region, with Australia, Canada, according to a 1964 estimate, approximately 580,000 Macedonians live outside of the Macedonian Republic, nearly 30% of the total population. The Macedonian language has the status of official language only in the Republic of Macedonia, and is a minority and official language in parts of Albania, Romania
5.
Macedonia (region)
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Macedonia /ˌmæsᵻˈdoʊniə/ is a geographical and historical region of the Balkan peninsula in southeastern Europe. Its boundaries have changed considerably over time, however it came to be defined as the geographical region by the mid 19th century. Nowadays the region is considered to include parts of six Balkan countries, Greece and it covers approximately 67,000 square kilometres and has a population of 4.76 million. Its oldest known settlements date back approximately 9,000 years, from the middle of the 4th century BC, the Kingdom of Macedon became the dominant power on the Balkan peninsula, since then Macedonia has had a diverse history. The definition of Macedonia has changed several times throughout history, expansion of Kingdom of Macedon,1. Kingdom of Perdiccas I, Macedonian Kingdom of Emathia consisting of six provinces Emathia, Pieria, Bottiaea, Mygdonia, Eordea, Kingdom of Alexander I, All the above provinces plus the eastern annexations Crestonia, Bisaltia and the western annexations Elimiotis, Orestis and Lynkestis. Kingdom of Philip II, All the above plus the appendages of Pelagonia and Macedonian Paeonia to the north, Sintike, Odomantis and Edonis to the east. In the 2nd century, Macedonia covered approximately the area where it is considered to be today, for reasons that are still unclear, over the next eleven centuries Macedonias location was changed significantly. The Roman province of Macedonia consisted of what is today Northern and Central Greece, much of the area of the present-day Republic of Macedonia. Simply put, the Romans created a larger administrative area under that name than the original ancient Macedon. In the Byzantine Empire, a province under the name of Macedonia was carved out of the original Theme of Thrace and this thema variously included parts of Thrace and gave its name to the Macedonian dynasty. Hence, Byzantine documents of this era that mention Macedonia are most probably referring to the Macedonian thema, during medieval and modern times, Macedonia has been known as a Balkan region inhabited by ethnic Greeks, Albanians, Vlachs, Serbs, Bulgarians, Jews, and Turks. Today, as a region where several very different cultures meet. Macedonian Greeks self-identify culturally and regionally as Macedonians and they form the majority of the regions population. They number approximately 2,500,000 and, today, smaller Greek minorities exist in Bulgaria and the Republic of Macedonia, although their numbers are difficult to ascertain. Ethnic Macedonians self-identify as Macedonians in a sense as well as in the regional sense. They are the second largest ethnic group in the region, because of their primarily Slavic origin they are also known as Macedonian Slavs and Slav Macedonians. They form the majority of the population in the Republic of Macedonia where according to the 2002 census, according to the latest Bulgarian census held in 2001, there are 3,117 people declaring themselves ethnic Macedonians in the Blagoevgrad Province of Bulgaria
6.
Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization
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The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization was a revolutionary national liberation movement in the Ottoman territories in Europe, that operated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Founded in 1893 in Salonica, its aim was to gain autonomy for Macedonia, According to some authors later it became an agent serving Bulgarian interests in Balkan politics in struggles against the Ottoman Empire. Starting in 1896 it fought the Ottomans using guerrilla tactics, and in this they were successful, even establishing a state within state in some regions and this effort escalated in 1903 into the Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising. The fighting involved about 15,000 IMRO irregulars and 40,000 Ottoman soldiers, after the uprising failed, and the Ottomans destroyed some 100 villages, the IMRO resorted to more systematic forms of terrorism targeting civilians. In this period autonomism as a tactic was abandoned and annexationist positions were supported. After the First World War the combined Macedonian-Thracian revolutionary movement separated into two detached organizations, IMRO and ITRO, after this moment the IMRO earned a reputation as an ultimate terror network, seeking to change state frontiers in the Macedonian regions of Greece and Serbia. They contested the partitioning of Macedonia and launched raids from their Petrich stronghold into Greek, in 1925 the Greek army launched a cross-border operation to reduce the IMRO base area, but it was ultimately stopped by the League of Nations, and IMRO attacks resumed. In the interwar period the IMRO also cooperated with the Croatian Ustaše, after the Bulgarian coup détat of 1934, their Petrich stronghold was subjected to military crackdown by the Bulgarian army, and the IMRO was reduced to a marginal phenomenon. The organization changed its name on several occasions, after the fall of communism in the region, numerous parties claimed the IMRO name and lineage to legitimize themselves. Among them, in Bulgaria a right-wing party carrying the prefix VMRO was established in the 1990s, in practice, IMRO was established by Bulgarians and most of their followers were Bulgarians. The organization was a revolutionary society operating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the goal of autonomous Macedonia. Initially, they were against the aspirations of neighboring states in the area and saw the future autonomous Macedonia and it appears likely that at the early stages of the struggle, a desired outcome of the autonomy was unification with Bulgaria. This aim was changed later with the idea of transforming the Balkans into a state, in which Macedonia. The idea of autonomy was strictly political and did not imply a secession from Bulgarian ethnicity, even those, who advocated for independent Macedonia and Thrace, never doubted the predominantly Bulgarian character of the Slavic population in both areas. The organization was founded by Hristo Tatarchev, Dame Gruev, Petar Pop-Arsov, Andon Dimitrov, Hristo Batandzhiev, most of them were closely connected with the Bulgarian Mens High School of Thessaloniki. According to Hristo Tatarchevs Memoirs IMRO was first called simply the Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, Ivan Hadzhinikolov in his memoirs lists the five basic principles of the MROs foundation, According to Dr. e. Most of it, where the Bulgarian element predominated in the mixed population, the organized revolutionary movement in Thrace dates from 1895, when Dame Gruev recruited Hristo Kotsev, born in Shtip, who was then a teacher in the Bulgarian Mens High School of Adrianople. Acting in the name of the Central Committee, Kotsev set up a committee in Adrianople
7.
Bulgarians
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Bulgarians are a South Slavic ethnic group who are native to Bulgaria and its neighboring regions. Bulgarian citizenship shall further be acquirable through naturalization, the population of Bulgaria descend from peoples with different origins and numbers. They became assimilated by the Slavic settlers in the First Bulgarian Empire, from the indigenous Thracian people certain cultural and ethnic elements were taken. Other pre-Slavic Indo-European peoples, including Dacians, Celts, Goths, Romans, Greeks, the Thracian language has been described as a southern Baltic language. Some pre-Slavic linguistic and cultural traces might have preserved in modern Bulgarians. Medieval historians claimed that the Triballi are the largest tribe and that subsequently changed their name to Bulgarians or Serbs. Others claimed that the Paeonians are Bulgarians, others claimed that the Moesi, according to archeological evidence from the late periods of Roman rule, the Romans did not decrease the number of Thracians significantly in major cities. The latter gradually inflicting total linguistic replacement of Thracian if the Thracians had not already been Romanized or Hellenized and they continued coming to the Balkans in many waves, but also leaving, most notably Justinian II settled as many as 30,000 Slavs from Thrace in Asia Minor. The Byzantines grouped the numerous Slavic tribes into two groups, the Sklavenoi and Antes, some Bulgarian scholars suggest that the Antes became one of the ancestors of the modern Bulgarians. The control of the Bulgars in the west was indirect and in the hands of the Slavic chiefs, the Bulgars are first mentioned in the 4th century in the vicinity of the North Caucasian steppe. However, any connection between the Bulgars and postulated Asian counterparts rest on little more than speculative and contorted etymologies. The Bulgars are not thought to have numerous, becoming a ruling elite in the areas they controlled. Their archeological evidence is concentrated in northeast Bulgaria and in Macedonia, mixed Bulgar-Slavic settlements emerged according to archeological evidence. Omurtag was the last ruler with a Turkic name and during the reign of Boris the Slavonic language reached an official level, a substantional number of loan words of the Bulgar language remained in the Medieval Bulgarian Slavic language and fewer survived in the modern. During the Early Byzantine Era, the Roman provincials in Scythia Minor and Moesia Secunda were already engaged in economic, the major port towns in Pontic Bulgaria remained Byzantine Greek in their outlook. The establishment of a new state molded the various Slav, Bulgar, in different periods to the ethnogenesis of the local population contributed also different Indo-European and Turkic people, who settled or lived on the Balkans. The First Bulgarian Empire was founded in 681, after the adoption of Orthodox Christianity in 864 it became one of the cultural centres of Slavic Europe. Its leading cultural position was consolidated with the invention of the Cyrillic script in its capital Preslav at the eve of the 10th century
8.
Bulgaria
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Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in southeastern Europe. It is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, with a territory of 110,994 square kilometres, Bulgaria is Europes 16th-largest country. Organised prehistoric cultures began developing on current Bulgarian lands during the Neolithic period and its ancient history saw the presence of the Thracians, Greeks, Persians, Celts, Romans, Goths, Alans and Huns. With the downfall of the Second Bulgarian Empire in 1396, its territories came under Ottoman rule for five centuries. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 led to the formation of the Third Bulgarian State, the following years saw several conflicts with its neighbours, which prompted Bulgaria to align with Germany in both world wars. In 1946 it became a one-party socialist state as part of the Soviet-led Eastern Bloc, in December 1989 the ruling Communist Party allowed multi-party elections, which subsequently led to Bulgarias transition into a democracy and a market-based economy. Bulgarias population of 7.2 million people is predominantly urbanised, most commercial and cultural activities are centred on the capital and largest city, Sofia. The strongest sectors of the economy are industry, power engineering. The countrys current political structure dates to the adoption of a constitution in 1991. Bulgaria is a parliamentary republic with a high degree of political, administrative. Human activity in the lands of modern Bulgaria can be traced back to the Paleolithic, animal bones incised with man-made markings from Kozarnika cave are assumed to be the earliest examples of symbolic behaviour in humans. Organised prehistoric societies in Bulgarian lands include the Neolithic Hamangia culture, Vinča culture, the latter is credited with inventing gold working and exploitation. Some of these first gold smelters produced the coins, weapons and jewellery of the Varna Necropolis treasure and this site also offers insights for understanding the social hierarchy of the earliest European societies. Thracians, one of the three primary groups of modern Bulgarians, began appearing in the region during the Iron Age. In the late 6th century BC, the Persians conquered most of present-day Bulgaria, and kept it until 479 BC. After the division of the Roman Empire in the 5th century the area fell under Byzantine control, by this time, Christianity had already spread in the region. A small Gothic community in Nicopolis ad Istrum produced the first Germanic language book in the 4th century, the first Christian monastery in Europe was established around the same time by Saint Athanasius in central Bulgaria. From the 6th century the easternmost South Slavs gradually settled in the region, in 680 Bulgar tribes under the leadership of Asparukh moved south across the Danube and settled in the area between the lower Danube and the Balkan, establishing their capital at Pliska
9.
Macedonians (ethnic group)
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The Macedonians, also known as Macedonian Slavs or Slavic Macedonians, are a South Slavic ethnic group native to the region of Macedonia. They speak the Macedonian language, a South Slavic language, about two thirds of all ethnic Macedonians live in the Republic of Macedonia and there are also communities in a number of other countries. The origins of Macedonians are varied and rich, in antiquity, much of central-northern Macedonia was inhabited by Paionians who expanded from the lower Strymon basin. The Pelagonian plain was inhabited by the Pelagones, an ancient Greek tribe of Upper Macedonia, Roman conquest brought with it a significant Romanization of the region. During the Dominate period, barbarian federates were at times settled on Macedonian soil, in contrast to frontier provinces, Macedonia continued to be a flourishing Christian, Roman province in Late Antiquity and into the early Middle Ages. Traditional historiography has equated these changes with the commencement of raids and invasions of Sclaveni and Antes from Wallachia, the exact details and chronology of population shifts remain to be determined. What is beyond dispute is that, in contrast to Bulgaria, northern Macedonia remained Roman in its cultural outlook into the 7th century, yet at the same time, sources attest numerous Slavic tribes in the environs of Thessaloniki and further afield, including the Berziti in Pelagonia. Apart from Slavs and late Byzantines, the settlement of Kuvers Pannonian Bulgars- a mix of Roman Christians, Bulgars and Avars- populated the Keramissian plain around Bitola in the late 7th century. Later pockets of settlers included Magyars in the 9th century, Armenians in the 10th-12th centuries, Cumans in the 11th-13th centuries, subsequently, the literary and ecclesiastical centres in Ohrid, not only became a second cultural capital of medieval Bulgaria, but soon eclipsed those in Preslav. Many aspects which now define Macedonian culture are a culmination of the so-called Byzantine commonwealth which consisted of Medieval Byzantine, Cultural, ecclesiastical and political developments of Slav Orthodox Culture occurred in Macedonia itself. Anthropologically, Macedonians possess genetic lineages postulated to represent Balkan prehistoric and historic demographic processes, such lineages are also typically found in other South Slavs, especially Bulgarians, Serbs, Bosniaks, Montenegrins, but also to the Greeks and Romanians. The large majority of Macedonians identify as Orthodox Christians, who speak a South Slavic language, the concept of a Macedonian ethnicity, distinct from their Orthodox Balkan neighbours, is seen to be a comparatively newly emergent one. The earliest manifestation of a Macedonian identity emerged in the late 19th century, however, modern researchers recognize that all nations are modern constructs. Even ethnic groups with long recorded history are characterized by marked discontinuity with the ancient past, heather Rae summarizes that Macedonian identity is no more or less artificial than any other identity. It merely has a more recent ethnogenesis – one that can more easily be traced through the recent historical record. During the formative Middle Ages, there was no distinct ethno-political Macedonian identity, references to Macedonians were varied, from geographical to administrative one. The Byzantine historians categorized the numerous Slavic tribal unions on the early Medieval Balkans as Sclavinias, in the ninth century, Theophanes the Confessor reported that the emperor Constantine V captured the Macedonian Sklavinias in the year 758-759. The modern Macedonian historians have described it as kind of primary ethno-political entity
10.
Macedonians (Bulgarians)
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Today, the larger part of this population is concentrated in Blagoevgrad Province but much is spread across the whole of Bulgaria and the diaspora. The Slavic-speaking majority in the Region of Macedonia had been referred to as Bulgarians, however one basic distinction between the political agendas of local intelligentsias was clear. The Balkan Wars and World War I left Ottoman Macedonia divided between Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Albania and resulted in significant changes in its ethnic composition. As a consequence a sizable part of the Slavic population of Greek, the Bulgarian population in Vardar Banovina was regarded as Southern Serbs and a policy of Serbianization was implemented. Within Greece, the Southern Macedonians were designated Slavophone Greeks, pro-Bulgarian feelings among the local Slavic population prevailed, including Greece and Serbia. After the Second World War and Bulgarian withdrawal, on the base of the strong Macedonian regional identity a process of ethnogenesis started, as a whole an appreciable Macedonian national consciousness prior to the 1940s did not exist. The nation-building process was motivated and later reinforced by strong Bulgarophobia. The new authorities began a policy of removing of any Bulgarian influence, with the proclamation of the new Socialist Republic of Macedonia, there were started measures that would overcome the pro-Bulgarian feeling among the population. It has been claimed that from 1944 till the end of the 1940s people espousing a Bulgarian ethnic identity had been oppressed, according to Bulgarian sources more than 100,000 men were imprisoned and some 1,200 prominent Bulgarians were sentenced to death. Practically as a consequence the rest of people, with exception of Bulgaria proper, were eventually macedonized, hellenized or albanized. Nevertheless, people with Bulgarian consciousness or Bulgarophile sentiments still live in the Republic of Macedonia, Greece, during the last years the EU membership of Bulgaria has seen around 60,000 Macedonians applying for Bulgarian citizenship. In order to obtain it they must sign a statement declaring they are Bulgarians by origin, about 50,000 Macedonian nationals have already received Bulgarian citizenship. Macedonian Bulgarians have been influential in every field in Bulgarian society, including culture, science, literature, architecture, industry, sports, entertainment, government, some, such as Central Sofia Market Hall architect Naum Torbov, left behind visible landmarks. Others, including Baba Vanga and Mikhael Aivanhov, set intellectual landmarks, Bulgarians in the Republic of Macedonia Bulgarians in Albania Slavic-speakers of Greek Macedonia Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization Macedonia Macedonian nationalism
11.
Ethnic Macedonian
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The Macedonians, also known as Macedonian Slavs or Slavic Macedonians, are a South Slavic ethnic group native to the region of Macedonia. They speak the Macedonian language, a South Slavic language, about two thirds of all ethnic Macedonians live in the Republic of Macedonia and there are also communities in a number of other countries. The origins of Macedonians are varied and rich, in antiquity, much of central-northern Macedonia was inhabited by Paionians who expanded from the lower Strymon basin. The Pelagonian plain was inhabited by the Pelagones, an ancient Greek tribe of Upper Macedonia, Roman conquest brought with it a significant Romanization of the region. During the Dominate period, barbarian federates were at times settled on Macedonian soil, in contrast to frontier provinces, Macedonia continued to be a flourishing Christian, Roman province in Late Antiquity and into the early Middle Ages. Traditional historiography has equated these changes with the commencement of raids and invasions of Sclaveni and Antes from Wallachia, the exact details and chronology of population shifts remain to be determined. What is beyond dispute is that, in contrast to Bulgaria, northern Macedonia remained Roman in its cultural outlook into the 7th century, yet at the same time, sources attest numerous Slavic tribes in the environs of Thessaloniki and further afield, including the Berziti in Pelagonia. Apart from Slavs and late Byzantines, the settlement of Kuvers Pannonian Bulgars- a mix of Roman Christians, Bulgars and Avars- populated the Keramissian plain around Bitola in the late 7th century. Later pockets of settlers included Magyars in the 9th century, Armenians in the 10th-12th centuries, Cumans in the 11th-13th centuries, subsequently, the literary and ecclesiastical centres in Ohrid, not only became a second cultural capital of medieval Bulgaria, but soon eclipsed those in Preslav. Many aspects which now define Macedonian culture are a culmination of the so-called Byzantine commonwealth which consisted of Medieval Byzantine, Cultural, ecclesiastical and political developments of Slav Orthodox Culture occurred in Macedonia itself. Anthropologically, Macedonians possess genetic lineages postulated to represent Balkan prehistoric and historic demographic processes, such lineages are also typically found in other South Slavs, especially Bulgarians, Serbs, Bosniaks, Montenegrins, but also to the Greeks and Romanians. The large majority of Macedonians identify as Orthodox Christians, who speak a South Slavic language, the concept of a Macedonian ethnicity, distinct from their Orthodox Balkan neighbours, is seen to be a comparatively newly emergent one. The earliest manifestation of a Macedonian identity emerged in the late 19th century, however, modern researchers recognize that all nations are modern constructs. Even ethnic groups with long recorded history are characterized by marked discontinuity with the ancient past, heather Rae summarizes that Macedonian identity is no more or less artificial than any other identity. It merely has a more recent ethnogenesis – one that can more easily be traced through the recent historical record. During the formative Middle Ages, there was no distinct ethno-political Macedonian identity, references to Macedonians were varied, from geographical to administrative one. The Byzantine historians categorized the numerous Slavic tribal unions on the early Medieval Balkans as Sclavinias, in the ninth century, Theophanes the Confessor reported that the emperor Constantine V captured the Macedonian Sklavinias in the year 758-759. The modern Macedonian historians have described it as kind of primary ethno-political entity
12.
Sofia
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Sofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria. The city has a population of 1.26 million, while 1.68 million people live in its metropolitan area, the city is located at the foot of Vitosha Mountain in the western part of the country, within less than 50 kilometres drive from the Serbian border. Its location in the centre of the Balkan peninsula means that it is the midway between the Black Sea and the Adriatic Sea, whereas the Aegean Sea is the closest to it, Sofia has been an area of human habitation since at least 7000 BC. Being Bulgarias primate city, Sofia is a hometown of many of the local universities, cultural institutions. Sofia is one of the top 10 best places for business in the world. Sofia is Europes most affordable capital to visit as of 2013, for the longest time the city possessed a Thracian name, derived from the tribe Serdi, who were either of Thracian, Celtic, or mixed Thracian-Celtic origin. It seems that the first written mention of Serdica was made during his reign, during the Romans civitas Serdenisium was mentioned the brightest city of the Serdi in official inscriptions. The city was major throughout the past ever since Antiquity, when Roman emperor Constantine the Great referred to it as my Rome, other names given to Sofia, such as Serdonpolis and Triaditza, were mentioned by Byzantine Greek sources or coins. The Slavic name Sredets, which is related to middle and to the citys earliest name, the city was called Atralissa by the Arab traveller Idrisi and Strelisa, Stralitsa or Stralitsion by the Crusaders. The name Sofia comes from the Saint Sofia Church, as opposed to the prevailing Slavic etymology among Bulgarian cities and towns. It is ultimately derived from the Egyptian Kemetic word sbÅ, meaning star, door, teaching and wisdom and this was a tradition of collection of wise literature, shared between Mediterranean cultures, which was called sophia in Greek. In these documents the city is called Sofia, but at the time the region and the citys inhabitants are still called Sredecheski. The city became popular to the Ottomans by the name Sofya. In 1879 there was a dispute about what the name of the new Bulgarian capital should be, the citys name is pronounced by Bulgarians with a stress on the o, in contrast with the tendency of foreigners to place the stress on i. The female given name Sofia is pronounced by Bulgarians with a stress on the i, Sofia has an area of 492 km2, while Sofia City Province has an area of 1344 km2. Sofias development as a significant settlement owes much to its position in the Balkans. It is situated in western Bulgaria, at the foot of the Vitosha mountain, in the Sofia Valley that is surrounded by the Balkan mountains to the north. The valley has an altitude of 550 metres
13.
Vasil Glavinov
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Vasil Kostov Glavinov was a Bulgarian socialist from Ottoman Macedonia, a member of the Bulgarian Workers Social Democratic Party. He is considered a Macedonian in the Republic of Macedonia, Glavinov worked in his native Veles before moving to Sofia in 1887. There he went bankrupt, owing to the support which he gave to the first Bulgarian theatre troupe. In July 1891 on the initiative of Dimitar Blagoev, several social democratic circles united to form the Bulgarian Social Democratic Party, in 1892 Glavinov became acquainted with Dimitar Blagoevs exposition of the Marxist view of history and in 1894 he entered the Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers Party. In the same year, under Vasil Glavinovs leadership and in order of Blagoev, in 1896 Glavinov founded a Macedonian Revolutionary Social-Democratic Union, as part of the Bulgarian Workers Social-Democrat Party. In Sofia Glavinov met the leader of the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization Gotse Delchev. Glavinov also edited several Socialist papers here, after the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, he moved to the Ottoman Empire and initially gravitated around the Peoples Federative Party. The newspaper Rabotnicheska Iskra, edited by him, described the two rivaling Bulgarian parties at the time, the PFP and the Union of the Bulgarian Constitutional Clubs. According to the newspaper, both of the parties, the former a defender of the poorer Bourgeois, the latter - of the richer, were nationalist and were led by desires of unification with Bulgaria. Because of that, Glavinov was disappointed and entered the Ottoman Socialist Party in Salonica in 1910 and it was actually not a real political party, but rather a group of intellectuals. In the same year he participated also in the First Balkan Socialist Conference held in Belgrade, after the Young Turks had taken stringent measures against it, difficult times began for the Ottoman Socialist Party. As a consequence, on the eve of the Balkan Wars in 1911 Glavinov moved back to Sofia, here he opposed the Balkan Wars and World War I and was sympathetic to the October Revolution in Russia. In 1919 his Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers Party joined the Comintern and was reorganised as the Communist Party of Bulgaria, in 1920 Glavinov was elected as a member of the Central Emigrants Commission to the Central Committee of the Party. After the St Nedelya Church assault on 16 April 1925 he was arrested and he died in Sofia in 1929
14.
Bulgarian Exarchate
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The Bulgarian Exarchate was the official name of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church before its autocephaly was recognized by the Ecumenical See in 1945 and the Bulgarian Patriarchate was restored in 1953. The Exarchate was unilaterally promulgated on May 231872, in the Bulgarian church in Constantinople in pursuance of the March 121870 firman of Sultan Abdülaziz of the Ottoman Empire. The foundation of the Exarchate was the result of the struggle of the Bulgarian Orthodox against the domination of the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople in the 1850s and 1860s. Nevertheless, Bulgarian religious leaders continued to extend the borders of the Exarchate in the Ottoman Empire by conducting plebiscites in areas contested by both Churches. In this way, in the struggle for recognition of a separate Church, in History of Slav-Bulgarians, Paisius urged his compatriots to throw off subjugation to the Greek language and culture. The example of Paisius was followed by others, including Saint Sophroniy of Vratsa, Abbot Spiridon of Gabrovo, Abbot Yoakim Karchovski, struggle for church autonomy The result of the work of Paisius and his followers began before long to give fruit. Discontent with the supremacy of the Greek clergy started to flare up in several Bulgarian dioceses as early as the 1820s, thus, if the Bulgarians wanted to have Bulgarian schools and liturgy in Bulgarian, they needed an autonomous ecclesiastical organisation. The struggle between the Bulgarians, led by Neofit Bozveli and Ilarion Stoyanov, and the Phanariotes intensified throughout the 1860s. The firman envisaged a broad autonomy of the Exarchate but would leave it under the canonical authority of the Ecumenical See. The Exarchates borders went on to extend over present-day northern Bulgaria, Thrace without the Vilayet of Adrianople, the Exarchate was also represented in the whole of Greek Macedonia and the Vilayet of Adrianople by vicars. Thus, the borders of the Exarchate included all Bulgarian districts in the Ottoman Empire, the first Bulgarian Exarch was Antim I who was elected by the Holy Synod of the Exarchate on February 281872. On May 231872, in the Bulgarian St, the Patriarchal Synod reacted by defrocking Antim I and excommunicating others, including Ilarion Stoyanov. The decision on the declaration of autocephaly by the Bulgarian Church was not accepted by the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The latter were accused of having “surrendered Orthodoxy to ethnic nationalism”, Exarch Antim I was discharged by the Ottoman government immediately after the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78 on April 24,1877, and was sent into exile in Ankara. In 1879, the Tarnovo Constitution formally established the Bulgarian Orthodox Church as the religion of the nation. Almost all of the schoolmasters had been born in Macedonia and Adrianople Thrace, the immediate effect of the partition of the Ottoman Empire during the Balkan Wars was the anti-Bulgarian campaign in areas under Serbian and Greek rule. The Serbians expelled Exarchist churchmen and teachers and closed Bulgarian schools, thousands of Bulgarian refugees left for Bulgaria, joining an even larger stream from the devastated Aegean Macedonia, where the Greeks burned Kukush, the center of Bulgarian politics and culture. Bulgarian language was prohibited, and its surreptitious use, whenever detected, was ridiculed or punished, the Ottomans managed to keep the Adrianople region, where the whole Thracian Bulgarian population was put to total ethnic cleansing by the Young Turks army
15.
Gymnasium (school)
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In its current meaning, it usually refers to secondary schools focused on preparing students to enter a university for advanced academic study. In the US, the German Gymnasium curriculum was used at a number of universities such as the University of Michigan as a model for their undergraduate college programs. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual education of young men, in the Polish educational system the gimnazjum is a middle school for pupils aged 13 to 16. The same applies in the Greek educational system, with the option of Εσπερινό Γυμνάσιο for adults. The gymnasium is a school which prepares the student for higher education at a university. They are thus meant for the more academically minded students, who are sifted out at about the age of 10–13, in addition to the usual curriculum, students of a gymnasium often study Latin and Ancient Greek. Some gymnasiums provide general education, others have a specific focus, today, a number of other areas of specialization exist, such as gymnasiums specializing in economics, technology or domestic sciences. In some countries, there is a notion of progymnasium, which is equivalent to beginning classes of the full gymnasium, here, the prefix pro indicates that this curriculum precedes normal gymnasium studies. The term was derived from the classical Greek word gymnasion, which was applied to an exercising ground in ancient Athens. Here teachers gathered and gave instruction between the hours devoted to exercises and sports, and thus the term became associated with. This use of the term did not prevail among the Romans, but was revived during the Renaissance in Italy, in 1538, Johannes Sturm founded at Strasbourg the school which became the model of the modern German gymnasium. In 1812, a Prussian regulation ordered that all schools which had the right to send their students to the university should bear the name of gymnasia, by the 20th century, this practice was followed in almost the entire Austrian-Hungarian, German, and Russian Empires. In the modern era, many countries which have gymnasiums were once part of three empires. In Albania a gymnasium education takes three years following a compulsory nine-year elementary education and ending with an aptitude test called Matura Shtetërore. The final test is standardized at the level and serves as an entrance qualification for universities. There are both public and private schools in these countries. Therefore, gymnasiums often base their admittance criteria on an entrance exam, in Austria the Gymnasium has two stages, from the age of 11 to 14, and from 15 to 18, concluding with Matura. The Humanistisches Gymnasium focuses on Ancient Greek and Latin, the Neusprachliches Gymnasium puts its focus on actively spoken languages
16.
Bitola
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Bitola is a city in the southwestern part of the Republic of Macedonia. It is located in the part of the Pelagonia valley, surrounded by the Baba, Nidže. It has been known since the Ottoman period as The City of The Consuls, Bitola is one of the oldest cities on the territory of The Republic of Macedonia, having been founded as Heraclea Lyncestis in the middle of the 4th century BC by Philip II of Macedon. The city was the last capital of Ottoman Rumelia, from 1836–1867, According to the 2002 census, Bitola is the second-largest city in the country. Bitola is also the seat of the Bitola Municipality, the name Bitola is derived from the Old Church Slavonic word ѡ҆би́тѣл҄ь as the city was formerly noted for its monastery. When the meaning of the name was no longer understood, it lost its prefix o-, the name Bitola is mentioned in the Bitola inscription, related to the old city fortress built in 1015. Modern Slavic variants include the Macedonian Bitola, the Serbian Bitolj, in Byzantine times, the name was Hellenized to Voutélion or Vitólia, hence the names Butella used by William of Tyre and Butili by the Arab geographer al-Idrisi. During the ruling of Radomir Gavril Bitola is mentioned under the name of Buteliu, the Greek name for the city, also meaning monastery, is a calque of the Slavic name. The Turkish name Manastır is derived from the Greek name, as is the Albanian name, Bitola is located in the southwestern part of Macedonia. The Dragor River flows through the city, Bitola lies at an elevation of 615 meters above sea level, at the foot of Baba Mountain. Covering an area of 1,798 km2. and with a population of 122,173, Bitola is an important industrial, agricultural, commercial, educational and it represents an important junction that connects the Adriatic Sea to the south with the Aegean Sea and Central Europe. Bitola has a continental climate typical of the Pelagonija region, experiencing warm and dry summers. The Koppen classification for this climate is Cfb, Bitola is very rich in monuments from the prehistoric period. Two important ones are Veluška Tumba, and Bara Tumba near the village of Porodin, from the Copper Age there are the settlements of Tumba near the village of Crnobuki, Šuplevec near the village of Suvodol, and Visok Rid near the village of Bukri. The Bronze Age is represented by the settlements of Tumba near the village of Kanino, the area of the town is located in ancient Lynkestis, a region of Upper Macedonia, which was ruled by semi-independent chieftains till the later Argead rulers of Macedon. The tribes of Lynkestis were known as Lynkestai and they were a Greek tribe and belonged to the Molossian group of the Epirotes. There are important metal artifacts from the ancient period at the necropolis of Crkvishte near the village of Beranci, a golden earring dating from the 4th century BC is depicted on the obverse of the Macedonian 10 denar banknote, issued in 1996. Heraclea Lyncestis was an important settlement from the Hellenistic period till the early Middle Ages and it was founded by Philip II of Macedon by the middle of the 4th century BC, and named after the Greek hero Heracles
17.
Balkan Federation
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The Balkan Federation was a project about the creation of a Balkan federation or confederation, based mainly on left political ideas. The concept of a Balkan federation emerged at the late 19th century from among left political forces in the region. The central aim was to establish a new unity, a common federal republic unifying the Balkan Peninsula on the basis of internationalism, socialism, social solidarity. The underlying vision was that differences among the Balkan peoples the historical need for emancipation was a common basis for unification. This political concept went through three phases in its development, in the first phase the idea was articulated as a response to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. In the second phase, mostly through the period, the idea of the Balkan federation was taken up by the Balkan communist parties. The third phase is characterized by clash between Balkan communist leaders and Joseph Stalin as an opponent of the idea during the post-World War II period. They confirmed their adherence to the ideals of French Revolution in the line of Saint-Simons federalism, the next attempt came immediately after the Young Turk Revolution in 1908. The following year, in Salonika the Socialist Workers Association merged with two Bulgarian socialist groups and the Socialist Workers Federation of Ottoman Workers was founded, on January 7 and 9,1910, the First Balkan Socialist Conference was held in Belgrade, capital of the Kingdom of Serbia. The main platforms at the first conference were Balkan unity and action against the impending wars, another important aspect was the call for a solution to the Macedonian Question. Initially headed by Christian Rakovsky, it had Vasil Kolarov and Georgi Dimitrov among its prominent activists, in 1915, Dimitrov wrote that Macedonia. Which was split into three parts, reunited into a single state enjoying equal rights within the framework of the Balkan Democratic Federation. This independent and united Macedonia would have consisted of the corresponding geographical departments of Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, the Federation was repressed by national governments at different intervals. After the October Revolution in Russia, a Balkan Communist Federation was formed in 1920–1921 and it was a communist umbrella organisation in which all the communist parties in the Balkans were represented. It was dominated by the Soviet Union and Comintern requirements and it advocated a Balkan Federative Republic that would have included Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Turkey, some projects also involved Romania, but most of them only envisaged its fragmentation. From the beginning, the Bulgarians assumed a role in the BCF. In Sofia, May–June 1922, the question of the autonomy of Macedonia, Dobruja and Thrace was raised by Vasil Kolarov and was backed by Dimitrov, the Greek delegate asked for a postponement as he was reluctant to approve a motion that was not on the agenda. In December 1923, Balkan Communist Federation held its 5th Conference in Moscow and this wings militated for a Soviet Republics, which would either be part of a Balkan Communist Federation
18.
Millet (Ottoman Empire)
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In the Ottoman Empire, a millet was a separate legal court pertaining to personal law under which a confessional community was allowed to rule itself under its own laws. Despite frequently being referred to as a system, before the century the organization of what are now retrospectively called millets in the Ottoman Empire was far from systematic. Rather, non-Muslims were simply given a significant degree of autonomy within their own community, the notion of distinct millets corresponding to different religious communities within the empire would not emerge until the eighteenth century. After the Ottoman Tanzimat reforms, the term was used for legally protected religious minority groups, the word millet comes from the Arabic word millah and literally means nation. The millet system has been called an example of religious pluralism. The millet system has a history in the Middle East and is closely linked to Islamic rules on the treatment of non−Muslim minorities living under Islamic dominion. The concept was used even before the establishment of the Ottoman Empire for the communities of the Church of the East under the Zoroastrian Sassanid Persia in the 4th century. People were bound to their millets by their religious affiliations, rather than their ethnic origins, the millets had a great deal of power – they set their own laws and collected and distributed their own taxes. All that was required was loyalty to the Empire, later, the perception of the millet concept was altered in the 19th century by the rise of nationalism within the Ottoman Empire. After the decline of the Assyrian Church of the East in the 14th century, until the 19th century beside the Muslim millet, each official within each community was in charge of tax collection, education, justice and religious affairs. By doing so, however, the Ottoman administration was simply tolerating these non-Muslim communities and they were allowing them religious freedom in a way that kept them from resisting Ottoman rule. This kept these religious communities from prospering or being regarded as equals to Muslims, social discrimination was just as significant during these times as many Jews were unable to serve within the Ottoman armed forces and were unable to join the Ottoman ruling elite. They were granted freedom, however, at a cost. Armenians formed more than one millets under the Ottoman rule, a wide array of other groups such as Catholics, Karaites and Samaritans was also represented. The Orthodox Christians were included in the Rum Millet, or the Roman nation conquered by Islam, only later did a separate Catholic millet emerge. These groups included the Syriac Orthodox and the Copts, the Syriac Catholic community was recognized as its own millet in 1829. The Chaldean community was recognized as its own millet in 1846, the Syriac Orthodox community in the Ottoman Empire was for long not recognized as its own millet, but part of the Armenian millet. Then, during the Tanzimat reforms, the Syriac Orthodox were granted independent status with the recognition of their own millet in 1873, under the millet system the Jews were organized as a community on the basis of religion, alongside the other millets
19.
Bulgarian Millet
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Bulgarian Millet or Bulgar Millet was an ethno-religious and linguistic community within the Ottoman Empire from the mid-19th to early 20th century. Initially the Millet were recognized as the Bulgarian Uniates, and then the Bulgarian Orthodox Christians, at that time the classical Ottoman Millet-system began to degrade with the continuous identification of the religious creed with ethnic identity and the term millet was used as a synonym of nation. In this way, in the struggle for recognition of a separate Church, all Orthodox Christians, including Bulgarians, in the Ottoman Empire were subordinated to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which was dominated by Greek Phanariotes by the end of the 19th century. The Orthodox Christians were included into the Rum Millet, belonging to this Orthodox community grew more important to the common people than their ethnic origins and the Balkan Orthodox people identified themselves simply as Christians. During the late 18th century, the Enlightenment in Western Europe provided influence for the initiation of the National awakening of the Bulgarian people, the awakening process met opposition with the rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th century. According to the proponents of Bulgarian national awakening, Bulgarians were oppressed as a community not only by the Turks. They considered the Greek Patriarchal clergy to be the main oppressor, forced Bulgarians to educate their children in Greek schools and imposed Church services exclusively in Greek in order to Hellenize the Bulgarian population. During the early century, national elites used ethno-linguistic principles to differentiate between Bulgarian and Greek identity into the Rum millet. The Bulgarian Slavs, wanted to create their own schools in a modern literary standard. By the middle of the century, Bulgarian activists shifted their attention from language to religion, as a consequence, until the 1870s, the focus of the Bulgarian National Revival switched to the struggle for a Bulgarian Church, independent from the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Cultural, administrative and even independence from the Patriarchate could only be obtained through the establishment of a separate millet or nation. The coordinated actions aimed at the recognition of a separate millet constitute the so-called Church Struggle, the actions were carried out by Bulgarian national leaders and supported by the majority of the Slavic population in today Bulgaria, Eastern Serbia, Republic of Macedonia and Northern Greece. Bulgarians often relied on the Ottoman authorities as allies in their confrontations with the Patriarchists, the Sultan Firman of 1847 was the first official document to mention a separate, a was issued, in which the name Bulgarian millet. In the meantime, some Bulgarian leaders tried to negotiate the establishment of a Bulgarian Uniate Church, the movement for union with Rome led to the initial recognition of a separate Uniat Millet by the Sultan in 1860. Although the movement initially gathered some 60,000 adherents, the subsequent establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate reduced their number with some 75%, the Bulgarian Church Struggle was resolved with a Sultan decree in 1870, which established the Bulgarian Exarchate. The act also instituted the Bulgarian Millet - an entity combining the notion for a nation with the Ottoman principle of Millet. It also turned the Bulgarian Exarch into both a leader and an administrative head of the Millet. The new entity enjoyed internal cultural and administrative autonomy, however, it excluded non-Orthodox Bulgarians and, thus, failed to embrace all representatives of the Bulgarian ethnos
20.
Aromanians
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Vlach is a blanket term covering several modern peoples descending from the Latinized population of the Balkans and Central-Eastern Europe. The Aromanians speak the Aromanian language, a Latin-derived language similar to Romanian and it descends from the Vulgar Latin spoken by the Paleo-Balkan peoples subsequent to their Romanization. It is a mix of domestic and Latin language with additional influences from other surrounding languages of the Balkans, such as Bulgarian, Greek, Macedonian, the term Aromanian derives directly from the Latin Romanus, meaning Roman citizen. The term was coined by Gustav Weigand in his 1894 work Die Aromunen, the first book to which many scholars have referred to as the most valuable to translate their ethnical name is a grammar printed in 1813 in Austria by Michael Boiagi. The Greek title was Grammatike Romanike Etoi Makedono-Blachike, the terms Aromanian or Vlach are both exonyms, the first one is modern, the second medieval. The Aromanians call themselves Armâńi or Rrămăńi, depending on which of the two dialectal groups they belong, and identify as part of the fara armāneascā or the populu armānescu. The endonym is rendered in Romanian as Aromâni, in Greek as Armanoi, in Albanian as Arumunët, in Bulgarian as Arumani, in Macedonian as Aromanci, in Serbo-Croatian as Armani and Aromuni. The term is noted in the languages, Greek Vlachoi, Albanian Vllah/Vllehët, Bulgarian and Serbian Vlasi, Turkish Ulahlar. Kahl divides the Aromanians into two groups, the Rrămăńi and Armâńi. Further, the Aromanians are divided into sub-groups, distinguished according to geographic area, Aromanians are grouped into several branches such as, Pindeans, concentrated in and around the Pindus Mountains of Northern and Central Greece. Gramustians, from Gramos Mountains, an area in the western region of Albania. Muzachiars, from Muzachia situated in central Albania, farsherots, concentrated in Epirus, from Frashër, once Aromanian urban center situated in south-eastern Albania. Moscopolitans, from the city of Moscopole, once an important urban center of the Balkans, the first two groups call themselves Rrãmãn, while the other three groups call themselves Armãn. The Aromanian communities have several nicknames depending on the country where they are living, gramustians and Pindians are nicknamed Koutsovlachs. This term is taken as derogatory, as the first element of this term is from the Greek koutso- meaning lame. Following a Turkish etymology where küçük means little they are the group of Vlachs as opposed to the more numerous Vlachs. Farsherots, from Frashër, Moscopole and Muzachia are nicknamed Frashariotes or Arvanitovlachs, most of the Frashariotes are characterized also as Greek-Vlach Northern Epirotes because of their frequent historical inhabitance of ethnic Greek territory. In Romania, the demonym macedoni and machedoni is also used, in Albania, the terms Vllah and Çoban or Çobenj are used
21.
Rum Millet
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Rūm millet, or Roman nation, was the name of the Orthodox Christian community in the Ottoman Empire. In fact, the Christians were conquered by Islam, but enjoyed an internal autonomy. After the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453, the Rum millet was instituted by Sultan Mehmet II who set himself to reorganise the state as the conscious heir of the East Roman Empire. The Orthodox congregation was included in a specific community under Greco-Byzantine domination. Belonging to this Orthodox commonwealth became more important to the people than their ethnic origins. This community became a form of social organization and source of identity for all the ethnic groups inside it. However, under Ottoman rule ethnonyms never disappeared, which indicates some form of ethnic identification was preserved. This is evident from a Sultans Firman from 1680 which lists the groups in the Balkan lands of the Empire as follows, Greeks, Albanians, Serbs, Vlachs. The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople was recognized as the highest religious and political leader, or ethnarch, the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, from 1774, allowed Russia to intervene on the side of Ottoman Eastern Orthodox subjects, and most of the Portes political tools of pressure became ineffective. At that time the Rum millet had a deal of power — it set its own laws. These activities effectively moved the Christian population outside the framework of the Ottoman political system, in the early 19th century, the Greek Orthodox intellectuals tried to reconceptualize the Rum millet. They argued for a new, ethnic Romaic national identity and new Byzantine state and this Megali Idea implied the goal of reviving the Eastern Roman Empire by establishing a new Greek state. It spread among the population of Vlach, Slavic and Albanian origin. With the rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire, the Rum millet began to degrade with the identification of the religious creed with ethnic nationality. The national awakening of ethnic group inside it was complex. The 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War dealt a blow to Ottoman power in the Balkan Peninsula. The Serbian Orthodox Church also became autocephalous in 1879, the recognition of Vlachs as a distinct millet in the Ottoman Empire in 1905 was the final straw in this Balkan nationalistic competition. As a result, intense ethnic and national rivalries among the Balkan peoples emerged at the eve of the 20th century in Macedonia and that was followed by a series of conflicts among Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians and Vlachs in the region
22.
Marxism
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It originates from the mid-to-late 19th century works of German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As the contradiction becomes apparent to the proletariat through the alienation of labor, Marxism has since developed into different branches and schools of thought, and there is now no single definitive Marxist theory. Marxism has been adopted by a number of academics and theorists working in various disciplines. Critics have taken issue with particular Marxist claims or accused Marxism as a whole of being inconsistent, refuted based on new information. The Marxian analysis begins with an analysis of the material conditions, the economic system and these social relations form a base and superstructure. As forces of production, most notably technology, improve, existing forms of social organization become inefficient, from forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution and these inefficiencies manifest themselves as social contradictions in society in the form of class struggle. Under the capitalist mode of production, this struggle materializes between the minority who own the means of production, and the vast majority of the population who produce goods, the socialist system would succeed capitalism as humanitys mode of production through workers revolution. According to Marxism, especially arising from crisis theory, socialism is a historical necessity, in a socialist society private property, in the form of the means of production, would be replaced by co-operative ownership. A socialist economy would not base production on the creation of private profits, Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand. The historical materialist theory of history analyses the causes of societal development. All constituent features of a society are assumed to stem from economic activity, the base and superstructure metaphor portrays the totality of social relations by which humans produce and re-produce their social existence. According to Marx, The sum total of the forces of production accessible to men determines the condition of society and this relationship is reflexive, at first the base gives rise to the superstructure and remains the foundation of a form of social organization. As Friedrich Engels clarified, The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles, accordingly, Marx designated human history as encompassing four stages of development in relations of production. Primitive Communism, as in tribal societies. Slave Society, a development of tribal to city-state, aristocracy is born, feudalism, aristocrats are the ruling class, merchants evolve into capitalists. Capitalism, capitalists are the class, who create and employ the proletariat. According to the Marxist theoretician and revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, the content of Marxism was Marxs economic doctrine
23.
Racho Petrov
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Racho Petrov Stoyanov was a leading Bulgarian general and politician. A talented soldier, he was appointed Chief of General Staff at the age of 24 and was Minister of Defence at 27 and his stature was increased by the leading role he took in suppressing an army mutiny in 1887. Petrov was personally close to Tsar Ferdinand I of Bulgaria and in 1891 was promoted by Ferdinand to the rank of colonel, Petrov also attended Ferdinands wedding to Princess Marie Louise of Bourbon-Parma in Italy in 1893. Ferdinands decision in 1894 to place Petrov in charge of the army completely, as a politician he twice served as Prime Minister of Bulgaria, initially as the non-party head of an interim administration in 1901, the only task of which was to organise the next election. He returned as Prime Minister for a period from 1903–1906. His government was concerned with military matters and oversaw an armament programme. During the Second Balkan War Petrov, by then a Lieutenant General, took command of the 3rd Army, leading it at the Battle of Bregalnica, during the First World War he served as head of the newly established Macedonian Military Inspection Oblast from December 1915 until October 1916. List of Bulgarian generals in the Kingdom of Bulgaria
24.
Grigor Nachovich
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Grigor Dimitrov Nachovich was a Bulgarian politician and diplomat. Nachovich was born in the Danubian town of Svishtov in central northern Bulgaria on 3 February 1845 to the family of a wealthy Bulgarian merchant and he studied at the Greek-language school in Svishtov, at a French-language college and at economy schools in Paris and Vienna. He graduated in political economy in Paris and returned to Svishtov to work as a merchant, in 1866, he headed the local revolutionary committee aimed at liberating Bulgaria from Ottoman rule. After Filip Totyus armed detachment invaded Bulgaria in 1867, Nachovich was forced to flee to Bucharest, Romania, in Romania, Nachovich co-operated with the Band of Virtues, a Bulgarian expatriate organisation, and financed volunteer participation in the Belgrade-based Second Bulgarian Legion. In 1868, he settled in Vienna, in the capital of Austria–Hungary, he worked at the local branch of his fathers trading company. He founded the literary society Progress and contributed to various French, during the Serbo-Turkish conflict in 1876, Nachovich aided Bulgarian volunteers who assisted the Serbian forces. For the course of the Russo-Turkish War two years later, Nachovich served at the Russian general staff, after the Liberation of Bulgaria in the wake of that war and the establishment of the Principality of Bulgaria, Nachovich became a prominent figure in conservative Bulgarian politics. As the regime ended, Nachovich also headed the ministry of finance during Dragan Tsankovs coalition government, in 1882, he became a correspondent member of what is today the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, in 1884, he became a full member. In 1884, Nachovich was appointed Bulgarias diplomatic representative in Bucharest, Romania, after Prince Alexanders dethronement in 1886, Nachovich returned to the country to serve as minister of finance in several gonvernments from 1886 to 1888. From 1903 to 1906, Nachovich was Bulgarian diplomatic representative in Istanbul, in 1913, he took part in the Treaty of London negotiations during the Balkan Wars. Grigor Nachovich died in Sofia on 4 January 1920, aged 74
25.
Internment
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Internment is the imprisonment or confinement of people, commonly in large groups, without trial. The term is used for the confinement of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects. Thus, while it can simply mean imprisonment, it tends to refer to preventive confinement, use of these terms is subject to debate and political sensitivities. Interned persons may be held in prisons or in known as internment camps. In certain contexts, these may also be known either officially or pejoratively, internment also refers to a neutral countrys practice of detaining belligerent armed forces and equipment on its territory during times of war under the Hague Convention of 1907. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights restricts the use of internment, article 9 states that No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. The United States set up camps for Cherokee and other Native Americans in the 1830s. From 1863 to 1868, the U. S, military persecuted and imprisoned 9,500 Navajo and 500 Mescalero Apache. Living under armed guards, more than 3,500 Navajo and Mescalero Apache men, women, the term concentration camp saw wider use during the Second Boer War, when the British operated such camps in South Africa for interning Boers. They built 45 tented camps for Boer internees and 64 for black Africans, of the 28,000 Boer men captured as prisoners of war, the British sent 25,630 overseas. The vast majority of Boers remaining in the camps were women and children. Some of them managed to go into exile or went off to join the armies of the Allies in order to fight against the Axis powers, while others ended up in Nazi concentration camps. During the 20th century, the internment of civilians by the state reached its most notorious excesses with the establishment of the Nazi concentration camps. The Nazi concentration camp system was notable for its size, with as many as 15,000 camps. Moreover, Nazi Germany established six camps, specifically designed to kill millions
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International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
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Thrace
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It comprises southeastern Bulgaria, northeastern Greece, and the European part of Turkey. In antiquity, it was referred to as Europe, prior to the extension of the term to describe the whole continent. The name Thrace comes from the Thracians, an ancient Indo-European people inhabiting Southeastern Europe, the word itself was established by the Greeks for referring to the Thracian tribes, from Ancient Greek Thrake, descending from Thrāix. The name of the continent Europe first referred to Thrace proper, the region obviously took the name of the principal river there, Hebros, probably from the Indo-European arg white river, according to an alternative theory, Hebros means goat in Thracian. In Turkey, it is referred to as Rumeli, Land of the Romans. The name appears to derive from an ancient heroine and sorceress Thrace, who was the daughter of Oceanus and Parthenope, the historical boundaries of Thrace have varied. In one ancient Greek source, the very Earth is divided into Asia, Libya, Europa and this largely coincided with the Thracian Odrysian kingdom, whose borders varied over time. After the Macedonian conquest, this regions former border with Macedonia was shifted from the Struma River to the Mesta River and this usage lasted until the Roman conquest. Henceforth, Thrace referred only to the tract of land covering the same extent of space as the modern geographical region. The medieval Byzantine theme of Thrace contained only what today is Eastern Thrace, the largest cities of Thrace are, İstanbul, Plovdiv, Burgas, Stara Zagora, Haskovo, Yambol, Komotini, Alexandroupoli, Xanthi, Edirne, Çorlu and Tekirdağ. Most of the Bulgarian and Greek population are Christians, while most of the Turkish inhabitants of Thrace are Muslims, Ancient Greek mythology provides them with a mythical ancestor, named Thrax, son of the war-god Ares, who was said to reside in Thrace. The Thracians appear in Homers Iliad as Trojan allies, led by Acamas, later in the Iliad, Rhesus, another Thracian king, makes an appearance. Cisseus, father-in-law to the Trojan elder Antenor, is given as a Thracian king. Homeric Thrace was vaguely defined, and stretched from the River Axios in the west to the Hellespont, Greek mythology is replete with Thracian kings, including Diomedes, Tereus, Lycurgus, Phineus, Tegyrius, Eumolpus, Polymnestor, Poltys, and Oeagrus. In addition to the tribe that Homer calls Thracians, ancient Thrace was home to other tribes, such as the Edones, Bisaltae, Cicones. Thrace is also mentioned in Ovids Metamorphoses in the episode of Philomela, Procne, Tereus, the King of Thrace, lusts after his sister-in-law, Philomela. He kidnaps her, holds her captive, rapes her, Philomela manages to get free, however. She and her sister, Procne, plot to get revenge, by killing Itys, at the end of the myth, all three turn into birds – Procne, a swallow, Philomela, a nightingale, and Tereus, a hoopoe
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Adrianople Vilayet
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The Vilayet of Adrianople or Vilayet of Edirne was a first-level administrative division of the Ottoman Empire. This vilayet was split between Turkey and Greece in 1923, culminating in the formation of Western and Eastern Thrace after World War I as part of the Treaty of Lausanne, a small portion of the Vilayet was given to Bulgaria in the Treaty of Bucharest after the Balkan wars. In the late 19th century it reportedly had an area of 26,160 square miles. In the east it bordered with the Istanbul Vilayet, the Black Sea, sometimes the area is described also as Southern Thrace, or Adrianopolitan Thrace. After the city of Edirne, the towns were Tekirdağ, Gelibolu, Kırklareli, İskeçe, Çorlu, Dimetoka, Enez, Gümülcine
29.
Wayback Machine
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The Internet Archive launched the Wayback Machine in October 2001. It was set up by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat, and is maintained with content from Alexa Internet, the service enables users to see archived versions of web pages across time, which the archive calls a three dimensional index. Since 1996, the Wayback Machine has been archiving cached pages of websites onto its large cluster of Linux nodes and it revisits sites every few weeks or months and archives a new version. Sites can also be captured on the fly by visitors who enter the sites URL into a search box, the intent is to capture and archive content that otherwise would be lost whenever a site is changed or closed down. The overall vision of the machines creators is to archive the entire Internet, the name Wayback Machine was chosen as a reference to the WABAC machine, a time-traveling device used by the characters Mr. Peabody and Sherman in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, an animated cartoon. These crawlers also respect the robots exclusion standard for websites whose owners opt for them not to appear in search results or be cached, to overcome inconsistencies in partially cached websites, Archive-It. Information had been kept on digital tape for five years, with Kahle occasionally allowing researchers, when the archive reached its fifth anniversary, it was unveiled and opened to the public in a ceremony at the University of California, Berkeley. Snapshots usually become more than six months after they are archived or, in some cases, even later. The frequency of snapshots is variable, so not all tracked website updates are recorded, Sometimes there are intervals of several weeks or years between snapshots. After August 2008 sites had to be listed on the Open Directory in order to be included. As of 2009, the Wayback Machine contained approximately three petabytes of data and was growing at a rate of 100 terabytes each month, the growth rate reported in 2003 was 12 terabytes/month, the data is stored on PetaBox rack systems manufactured by Capricorn Technologies. In 2009, the Internet Archive migrated its customized storage architecture to Sun Open Storage, in 2011 a new, improved version of the Wayback Machine, with an updated interface and fresher index of archived content, was made available for public testing. The index driving the classic Wayback Machine only has a bit of material past 2008. In January 2013, the company announced a ground-breaking milestone of 240 billion URLs, in October 2013, the company announced the Save a Page feature which allows any Internet user to archive the contents of a URL. This became a threat of abuse by the service for hosting malicious binaries, as of December 2014, the Wayback Machine contained almost nine petabytes of data and was growing at a rate of about 20 terabytes each week. Between October 2013 and March 2015 the websites global Alexa rank changed from 162 to 208, in a 2009 case, Netbula, LLC v. Chordiant Software Inc. defendant Chordiant filed a motion to compel Netbula to disable the robots. Netbula objected to the motion on the ground that defendants were asking to alter Netbulas website, in an October 2004 case, Telewizja Polska USA, Inc. v. Echostar Satellite, No.02 C3293,65 Fed. 673, a litigant attempted to use the Wayback Machine archives as a source of admissible evidence, Telewizja Polska is the provider of TVP Polonia and EchoStar operates the Dish Network
30.
Integrated Authority File
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The Integrated Authority File or GND is an international authority file for the organisation of personal names, subject headings and corporate bodies from catalogues. It is used mainly for documentation in libraries and increasingly also by archives, the GND is managed by the German National Library in cooperation with various regional library networks in German-speaking Europe and other partners. The GND falls under the Creative Commons Zero license, the GND specification provides a hierarchy of high-level entities and sub-classes, useful in library classification, and an approach to unambiguous identification of single elements. It also comprises an ontology intended for knowledge representation in the semantic web, available in the RDF format
