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Virtual Macedonia Bookstore - Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood: Passages to Nationhood in Greek Macedonia, 1870-1990
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List Price: $30.00
Our Price: $24.88
Your Save: $ 5.12 ( 17% )
Availability: Usually ships in 1 to 2 weeks
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 949.5607
EAN: 9780226424941
ISBN: 0226424944
Label: University Of Chicago Press
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 358
Publication Date: 1997-10-15
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Studio: University Of Chicago Press
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Not worth the paper it's written on..
Comment: An utterly historically inacurate peice of rubbish. Lay the facts as they are not as you wish them to be. Another Turkish perpective on Greek history. Unfortunately, "freedom of speech" also means "freedom to write/print inaccuracies, faslehoods and deception".
Customer Rating:
Summary: Where are my human rights?
Comment: Where are our human rights as Hellenic makedonians who lived in the region before the 6th and 8th century?
My ancestors spoke a greek dialect and eight hundred years after our leader died, Alexander the Great, slavic and mongulian minorities are falsifying my history. I once again ask the author where are my rights?
The author's claim of a Macedonian Question, is more than a mere squabble over a name. It is a well-designed scheme for annexing the northern Greek provinces of Macedonia and Thrace. It started during the inter-war period, by the decisions of the Comintern and the Balkan communist parties seeking to establish a united (Macedonian and Thracian) State. Subsequently it was Tito, in 1944, who tried to establish such a State within Yugoslavia. He changed the name of Southern Serbia (which had been known as Vardashka since 1913) to "Macedonia" and then proceeded to establish, out of the Slavs of the region (Bulgarians and Serbs), a new Slavic nation inappropriately called "Macedonian".
To transform this theoretical concept into a political reality Tito:
Concocted in 1944 a "Macedonian government" as a first step to the setting up of a Socialist Republic of Macedonia".
Dubbed the local Slavonic dialect "Macedonian language". A special committee worked for years to turn this dialect into the "official Macedonian language".
In 1968 the "Macedonian Church" came into being irregularly, by a government coup. As a result, it was not recognized as a formal Church by any Orthodox Patriarchs or by the Vatican.
In 1969, the "History of the Macedonian nation" was published. Any reference in the world's archives to Macedonia and to historical figures and historical events connected in any way with Macedonia over the millennia, was manipulated and forcibly given a "Macedonian (Slavic) identity".
Thus, politicians and historians collaborated:
to usurp the name, the emblems, and the history of Macedonia;
to set in motion expansionist aspirations, by renaming Greek Macedonia as "Aegean Macedonia", i.e. part of a united Macedonia and issued maps limiting Greece's northern frontiers to Mount Olympus;to allege the existence of a "Macedonian minority" in Greece.
Their theoretical basis for these claims was based on the assertion that:
The ancient Macedonians, Alexander the Great, the Ptolemies, etc. were not Greeks (an allegation which is repeated in the recent FYROM's school textbooks for 1992-3).
After the arrival of Slavic tribes in the Balkans in the 6th century AD those Slavs, that managed to reach the Byzantine Provinces of Ancient Macedonia, intermarried with the local non-Greek Macedonians and thus they formed a new ethnic group, the "Slavo Macedonians" who subsequently were simply referred to as "Macedonians".
Unfortunately for the author, World history does not record a similar case of usurpation of a people's name and history by another group of people.
Lack of the slightest credibility on the part of the pseudo-Macedonian "nation" of Skopje is furthermore revealed by the single fact that Skopje's Bulgarians and Serbs discovered only after 1944 that back in the sixth century they had been transformed from Slavs into Macedonians. (The Albanian Kossovarians are going to ask for their independence in the coming months. Will this uprise encourage the oppressed Albanians living in FYROM?)
To claim that the Ancient Macedonians were not Greeks, however, and to use the term "Slav" with reference to the creation of the "Macedonian nation" is a trick that the author has used.
The "Macedonian Nation" does not, nor did it ever exist. The Macedonians were Greeks, they spoke the same language and worshipped the same gods (who were inhabiting the Macedonian mountain of Olympus) and performed the same sacrifices, in the same sanctuaries as all the other Greeks. Only, if the author had a better understanding of city-states would she realise this.
The Macedonians, together with the rest of Greeks, possess according to Herodotus, the kind and constituent element that composed a nation:
"And next the kinship of all Greeks in blood and speech, and the shrines of gods and the sacrifices that we have in common and the likeness of our way of life " Herodotus, History VIII, 144,2 (Loeb, A.D. Godley).
Unfortunately, the author has re-written propaganda and has forgotten to mention that the Slavic dialect spoken in Central and Western Macedonia (Northern Greece) is an ancient Greek language. It contains 1164 Homeric words. Due to the long coexistence of Greeks, Serbs and Bulgarians, this dialect has been enriched with Bulgarian words and endings and has nothing to do with the so-called "Macedonian language" invented in 1944-45, which is a mixture of the Bulgarian and the Serbo-Croatian languages.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Exelent Book!!
Comment: I was amaized to find (and read) book like MS Karakasidou's.It is not so offten that book is writen without prejudice and with bearing the facts of the existence of the Macedonian minority in Republic of Greece. Not Slavophonic Greeks, but Slavic Macedonians, natives to the Northen Greece, the teritory of Makedonia.
We can debate here, of how well,or indepth, of acurate the book is, nothing is perfect in this world, and if it is, it will be boring, so for me this book done its justice. And told the story of forgotten Nation (minority) who's existance can not be forgotten and left on the mercy of the official Athens.
The book its self reise lot of questions and in the same time give lots of answers, wich,person who for first time exopsed to the intricate history of the Balkans and specialy Macedonia, have more clearer picture of things.
I can only aplaude to the honesty, determination and curage of MS Karakasidou, to publish this book.
It is time for the world, to hear about the Macedonian struglle for recognition in Republic of Greece.And Greece's extended eforts of assimilation, and above all the "Democracy" wich eluded this people from 1913 to this day.
Customer Rating:
Summary: WELL researched an UNBIASED
Comment: It is interesting to see what other write for reviews based solely on their OWN BIAS and a even mentioned that the author is of Turkish origin . . . NEWS FLASH the war has been over YEARS ago! This book is very much the truth. It is hard understand the views of those who are RACIST, BIASED, and want to have us take their opinion when their do not look from the outside. I have reseached this FOR YEARS, from INSIDE and OUT and I will have to agree with this book, though some parts I do not, very few. SO if your looking to learn more about this "territory" read this and more. And yes I AM Greek! Proud of it everyday as I walk the streets of Athens. But "Pride" here goes TOO far whith more of a definition of BIAS, RACISM . . .
Customer Rating:
Summary: Old style propaganda
Comment: It's always interesting to see an author of Turkish descent to write a book about Greek territories. Yet, the result was the expected one. "Macedonia is not exclusively Greek", "her obsession with the truth had brought to her death threats, apparently from outraged Greeks", "nation-building in northern greece (Macedonia)" etc. etc. and Karakasidu found of course protection from Anglo-Americans.
Does this reminds a bit of the preparations for the Cyprus 1974 invasion?
Yes! I vote 1 on this propaganda book.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Deftly combining archival sources with evocative life histories, Anastasia Karakasidou brings welcome clarity to the contentious debate over ethnic identities and nationalist ideologies in Greek Macedonia. Her vivid and detailed account demonstrates that contrary to official rhetoric, the current people of Greek Macedonia ultimately derive from profoundly diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Throughout the last century, a succession of regional and world conflicts, economic migrations, and shifting state formations has engendered an intricate pattern of population movements and refugee resettlements across the region. Unraveling the complex social, political, and economic processes through which these disparate peoples have become culturally amalgamated within an overarchingly Greek national identity, this book provides an important corrective to the Macedonian picture and an insightful analysis of the often volatile conjunction of ethnicities and nationalisms in the twentieth century.
"Combining the thoughtful use of theory with a vivid historical ethnography, this is an important, courageous, and pioneering work which opens up the whole issue of nation-building in northern Greece."—Mark Mazower, University of Sussex
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