Elisabeth Barker, “Macedonia, its place in Balkan power politics”, 1950

in Modern Historians, Modern Macedonian History / by Admin / on April 28, 2008 at 11:56 am /

Quote:

It is the national identity of these Slav Macedonians that has been the most violently contested aspect of the whole Macedonian dispute, and is still being contested today. There is NO DOUBT that they are southern Slavs; they have a language, or a group of varying dialects, that is grammatically akin to Bulgarian but phonetically in some respects akin to Serbian, and which has certain quite distinctive features of its own.

[Elisabeth Barker, “Macedonia, its place in Balkan power politics”,
(originally published in 1950 by the Royal Institute of International Affairs), p.10]

Quote:

In regard to their own national feelings, all that can SAFELY be said is that during the last eighty years many MORE Slav Macedonians seem to have considered themselves Bulgarian, or closely linked to Bulgaria, than have considered themselves Serbian, or closely linked to Serbia (or Yugoslavia). Only the people of the Skoplje region, in the north west, have ever shown much tendency to regard themselves as Serbs. The feeling of being Macedonians, and nothiNg but Macedonians, seems to be a sentiment of fairly recent growth, and even today is not very deep-rooted.

[Elisabeth Barker, “Macedonia, its place in Balkan power politics”,
(originally published in 1950 by the Royal Institute of International Affairs), p.10]