THE LIFE AND WORK OF THE DONOR ATANAS BLIZNAKOV IN THE
MONOGRAPHS OF SLAVE KATIN
The characteristic of the relief map of Aegean Macedonia is that a great number of mountains divide the country into numerous small and large valleys and ravines with a large number of rivers and lakes. According to the present-day administration of Greece, Aegean Macedonia is divided into the following districts: Kostur, Kozani, Pirin, Voden, Kukus, Solun, Ser, Drama, Koval and the district of Khalkidhiki.
The national composition of the population in the Aegean part has undergone great ethnic alteration and fluctuation, especially after the Balkan Wars and after the partition of Macedonia. Up to the Balkan Wars, the Macedonian population in Aegean Macedonia was in the majority.
The Macedonians under Greek authority were and still are subject to assimilatory torture and forced emigration with the primary goal to change the ethnic composition of Macedonia. However, the Macedonians have not only existed in the past, but they exist now and are also going to exist in the future because it is not easy to uproot one people from the place where they have lived for centuries in spite of all kinds of violence and denationalization.
Macedonians have been given various national names in order to exert negative influence on their consciousness. They have been called Slavs, Kauri (non-Moslem), Risjani, Macedonian Slavs, Macedonoslavs, Slavo-Macedonians, Bulgarians, Bulgarian Slavs, Macedonian Bulgarians, Serbs, South-Serbians, Greeks, Macedonian Greeks, Grkofiles, Bugarofiles and Slavophones.
Macedonian dances in Aegean Macedonia
But no matter what they have been called, they were and have remained Macedonians, while all these names can and should not be used due to historical, social and political conditions, because they are only names for a single concept which denotes a tormented and partitioned people with a tragic destiny that could be found anywhere in the world.
According to their characteristics and customs, Macedonians are completely alien to Greeks, linguistically and ethnically. That is why the Greek bourgeoisie developed a policy to physically exterminate the Macedonian people and changed their ethnological composition for its own benefit, from the time it expanded its authority over Aegean Macedonia.
It has accepted this policy as a basic tool even more because the abundant funds invested in Macedonia at that time through the Patriarchate and schools in Macedonia didn’t produce the expected result.
The Greek bourgeoisie, intending to erase any mark that recalls the Macedonian character of Aegean Macedonia, passed a law in November 1926 to replace the names of villages and towns, mountains, fields, place names, rivers, etc. with Greek ones. The law was published in the Official Gazette of the Greek Government “Efimeristis Kiverniseos” No. 332 dated 21 November 1926, while the new Greeks names were published in the Official Gazette No. 346.
The birthplace of Atanas Bliznakov, where he spent both pleasant and sad times, is in the village of D’mbeni, located in Aegean Macedonia, northwest of Kostur. Today national and political slavery dominates this region. The Greek nationalists and chauvinists make strenuous efforts to deprive Macedonians of their national spirit, and destroy and bury deeply the rich historical and cultural past of the Macedonian people from Aegean Macedonia.
Mihajlo Keramidciev
The Mother from Aegae
Tell me, oh mother from Aegae,
Why a black headscarf is covering
You all day long as a garb?
Why your face isn’t happy
And why your eyes cry all day long,
Shedding blurry tears constantly?
Are you mourning for your sons or your daughters?
Or, are your thoughts, your hope for Aegae,
And your hope for life taking your life away?
Tell us, oh mother, since in your black dress,
in your black scarf my eyes are quenched,
And why your tears are burning in my heart,
Burning in my heart and making my body dead?
To be continued
By SLAVE KATIN
