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Tsar Samuel and the use of the adjective “Macedonian” are one of the points of misunderstanding in the Joint Historical Commission between Bulgaria and the Republic of North Macedonia. Achieving tangible results in understanding our common history is one of Sofia’s conditions to say “yes” to Skopje’s negotiating framework with the EU. Bulgaria has insisted on changing history curricula, which is not happening yet, BNT notes.
What is written in the history textbooks that the children of our southwestern neighbor study?
It was Tsar Samuel who was the historical figure on whose work and significance the Joint Historical Commission between Sofia and Skopje had reached a fragile agreement. After a hiatus of almost a year and the coming to power of the second government of Zoran Zaev, the historians of Skopje withdrew from the consensus already reached.
In Skopje, they continue to insist that Samuel is the Macedonian king of the Macedonian kingdom. Without the support of any historical source, these abound in fourth, sixth and seventh grade textbooks in our southwestern neighbor.
Here’s an example with the map below: On the left is the map of the First Bulgarian Kingdom during the reign of Tsar Samuel years before the fall of the First Bulgarian Kingdom under Byzantine slavery. And on the right the same map, but, according to the Skopje textbooks, the so-called “Macedonian Kingdom”, which, according to historians there, “completes the process of final formation of the Macedonian state and people.”
How these textbooks depict Tsar Samuel, the country he ruled, the Glagolitic alphabet and the origin of the Bulgarians: In the history textbooks taught to children in the Republic of North Macedonia, it is written that the Tsar Samuel was the founder of a Macedonian royal dynasty. – David, Aaron and Moses, rebelled against the Bulgarian government in 969, rejected it and created a Macedonian kingdom.
When they claimed that Samuel was a Macedonian king, we repeatedly said, “Okay, we’ll present it in our textbooks, give us a source to write it down.” And they didn’t respond once. They said Samuel was We said: “Yes, we don’t care. Give a source to write it in.” There are no such sources, “he commented to the corresponding BNT member. Prof. Ivan Ilchev, member of the Joint Commission of Experts on Historical Issues and Educational.
Samuel is actually a comitopol. He is the son of the Nikola committee, regional governor of part of Western Bulgaria, recalls Professor Ivan Ilchev. He accepted royal dignity in 997, only after the Bulgarian prince Roman died in captivity in Byzantium. The historians of Skopje are silent on these facts.
“They cannot explain some things. For example, they cannot explain how the Byzantine chroniclers of the late 12th and early 13th centuries called Emperor Basil II a” Bulgarian assassin, “notes Professor Ivan Ilchev.
In Skopje textbooks we read that in Samuel’s country it was written in the “Macedonian Slavic language.”
“For them, since the Middle Ages, from Geshevo, it has been Bulgaria, from Geshevo onwards, it has been Macedonia. We know very well that such a border never existed until it was drawn with the Congress of Berlin”, explains the historian.
According to the textbooks in Skopje, the Glagolitic alphabet was the work of the Saints Brothers Cyril and Methodius to “more easily Christianize the Slavic Macedonians around Thessaloniki”, and then the Slavic script spread to other neighboring lands, first in Bulgaria.
Corresponding member Professor Ivan Ilchev also says: The Glagolitic alphabet was created by the Holy Brothers to win the status of Great Moravia for the Byzantine cause and they go with this alphabet to Great Moravia. They never appear in Macedonia. His students came to Macedonia years later.
St. Clement, the first bishop to preach in Bulgarian and founder of the Ohrid Literary School, is featured in Skopje textbooks as “Old Slav” and founder of the “Macedonian Church”.
“But in the biographies of Kliment Ohridski it is written that Boris sent him to Macedonia to preach the Word of God and spread the script and he was ordained a bishop by the Bulgarian church,” he said.
The Archbishopric of Ohrid, which is the name of the Bulgarian autocephalous Orthodox Church in the Bulgarian lands conquered by Byzantium, according to the Skopje textbooks, is an independent Macedonian church.
“I don’t want to argue here, I just advise you to read Basil II’s chrysostome on the rights granted to the Archbishopric of Ohrid and it says, ‘that he was appointed bishop of all Bulgaria,'” commented corresponding member Prof. Ivan Ilchev.
The Bulgarians, according to the Skopje textbooks, are “a Mongolian Tatar tribe of the group of Turkic peoples.”
The inhabitants of the present Republic of North Macedonia, according to its historians, are descendants of the “ancient Macedonians” and the mythical hero “Macedonia”, melted by Slavic tribes in the V-VIII centuries.
“For example, they do not mention anywhere that the Kuber protobulgarians live in the lands between Thessaloniki and Bitola,” he said.
We understand that Gotse Delchev was born into a “large family in Kukush”. The adjective “Bulgarian” is omitted.
“The Ilinden-Preobrazhensk Uprising became only the Ilinden Uprising in an attempt to ‘untie’ itself from its Bulgarian origin,” say the textbooks of the Republic of North Macedonia.
Six generations of the Republic of North Macedonia study these textbooks. Until World War II, they were taught to be Serbs. In the composition of Yugoslavia, they are Macedonians. The only thing that has not changed over the decades, says Professor Ilchev, is the thesis that the main enemy of Skopje in the Balkans is Bulgaria.
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