PART OF THE MONOGRAPH “GOJKO JAKOVLEVSKI” BY SLAVE KATIN
The development path of the Mac edonian emigration to Europe basically coincides with the de velopments in the Balkans and even more so with the developments related to Mace donia. As a result, the migrant movements of the Macedonians and their intensity were conditioned, above all, by economic living and working conditions, and in many cases by reasons of a national-political nature.
The fortune seeking, that is, moving from Macedonia to Europe was smaller in number compared to the emigration to the United States, Canada and Australia. However, the emigration from Macedonia was increased after the Ilinden Uprising in 1903, and was particularly intensified after the Balkan Wars and the First World War, which in stead of liberating them from five centuries of slavery, brought to the Macedonians a threefold division, oppression, assimilation, denationalization, and physical destruction, carried out by formerly liberated neighbors Bulgaria, the Royal Yugoslavia, Greece and Albania.
What happened in the past, especially during the Balkans Wars and after World War I, resulted in relatively short periods of crucial migration movements and ethnic changes that had disastrous consequences for the Macedonian population in certain parts of Macedonia.
Thus, according to certain data, out of all three parts of divided Macedonia, 60% of the emigrated Macedonians were from Aegean part, 25% from Vardar part and 15% from Pirin part of Macedonia. According to the UN Special Commission for the Balkans, however, in a report of 13 May 1949, 232,000 Macedonians were displaced from Aege an Macedonia, and in their place the Greek authorities brought and inhabited Greek Macedonia with Greek refugees from Asia Minor.
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Also, the eviction of the population from all parts of Macedonia has been intensified between the two world wars, and especially after the world crisis. The emigration inten sified after World War II, especially after the defeat of the Greek Democratic Army in the Greek Civil War, in which the Macedonian population from the Aegean part of Macedo nia participated en masse, hoping to finally obtain their national and social rights.
Due to the reprisals and other deliberate pres sures of the Greek authorities over the Mac edonian population, large number of Mace donians and other nationalities were forced to resettle during this period and had to leave their homeland. Such incidents were particularly manifested in the Lerin-Kostur region.
The period after 1960 is also characteris tic. Then, with the opening of the SFR Yu goslavia to the world and the involvement in the international division of labor, along with the creation of an agrarian population in the cities and the liberalization of the policy to seek a job in other countries, more workers and intellectuals from the then SR of Macedonia moved from Macedonia to Europe. Migration movements from Mac edonia to the European Union are present today, but their intensity varies depending on the economic and political conditions in Macedonia, the Balkans and the world.
Unlike the United States, Canada, and Australia, the migration of Macedonians to Europe intensified after World War II and continues to this day. At first, Macedo nians started to move to Europe for a trial period, after which lot of them decided to permanently stay there. Especially in the seventies of the last century, the pressure for organized demands for workers from various European agencies and companies has been increasing. Such requests were ac cepted by the employment bureaus, which made lists of interested workers, and then various agencies and intermediaries who sent our people directly to Western Euro pean countries, especially Germany, Swit zerland, France, Denmark and Sweden.
It is characteristic that at the beginning of the temporary work in these countries, young people, who were single, without families, were leaving in an organized way. Almost all of them left with signed contracts in their pockets, which meant they would have to stay one to five years to earn for a living, to make some money and then to return to their homeland.
Later, it turned out that only a small number of Macedonian citizens who left to Europe in the late 1960s and early 1970s returned to their country, while the major ity has adjusted to the living and working conditions in their new environments. They dragged their families, which started the process of new wave of emigration move ments from Macedonia to Europe. The Mac edonians in Europe, especially in Germany and Sweden, in the sixties of the previous century, almost with the beginning of their mass arrivals at what was then called tem porary work, began to self-organize.
. To be continue
By SLAVE KATIN
