When did Macedonia come under Bulgarian rule and for how long did that rule last?
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The first incursions of Bulgarians into Macedonia were recorded around 789 when a Bulgarian detachment entered the area around the River Struma, but had to withdraw immediately. In 805 Khan Krum annexed the lands of Banat, Transylvania and the region westof the River Timok together with Belgrade. In 809 he destroyed Sofia, and somewhat later he conquered it, but the whole of Macedonia continued to remain outside the Bulgarian borders. In 807 some Bulgarian detach- ments again penetrated into the Struma region, but were unable to remain there. There are also highly unreliable sources from which some assume that during the time of Khan Pressian (836-852) the khagan Izbul conquered the Western Rhodopes and the region between the rivers Struma and Mesta, and that in this period “the whole of Central Macedonia together with a part of Southern Albania” was conquered, as (allegedly) confirmed by a special accord towards the mid-9th century.[1]
Bulgarian scholars assume that, as there are no data relating to the conquest of Macedonia, this automatically means that the Macedonians were “voluntarily” annexed to Bulgaria. But known instances of resistance and rebellions against the Bulgarian conquerors confirm that the Macedonians were far from pleased with the new conquerors. What can be accepted with certainty is the fact that in 864, following the peace accord with the Byzantine Empire, Prince Boris (852-889) received a part of Macedonia as a reward for accepting Christianity from the Constantinopolitan Church.
Thus the struggle for the conquestof Macedonia by Bulgaria continued for nearly a century, but Bulgaria’s full control of the land lasted less than half a century. Following the attack of the Russian Prince Svyatoslav against Bulgaria in 968 and after the occupation of the whole of Danube Bulgaria in the following year, during the next few years battles were fought between the Russians and Byzantines, after which the Bulgarian state collapsed and was included within the Byzantine Empire.
In 969 there was an organized insurrection in Macedonia headed by the four sons of Prince Nicholas, which finally led to the establishment of the vast Empire of Tsar Samuel (Samoil), whose centre and capital was Prespa and Ohrid. This macedonian state succeeded in expanding its territory over a large part of the Balkans, but kept it only up to 1018.
This marked the beginning of a new, two-century-long subjugation under the Byzantine Empire, disturbed by powerful insurrections and short-lived autono- mies of some Macedonian feudal lords. Among the most significant in this period were the uprisings of Petar Deljan (1040) and Gjorgi Vojteh (1072) and the autonomous regional administrations of Dobromir Hrs (1185-1202) in the Stru- mica region and of Aleksij Slav (1207-1230) in the Melnik region. The Crusades incorporated Macedonia for a brief period into what was known as ‘the Latin Empire’, and the Bulgarian Tsar Kaloyan succeeded in occupying parts of it. Yet this Bulgarian reign of Macedonia, too, lasted for no more than two or three years, as following Kaloyan’s death (1207) Macedonia once again fell under Byzantine rule.
Of particular significance is the emergence of new independent feudal lords in Macedonia, among whom the most important was Strez (1207-1214) in central Macedonia. His rule saw a continuation of its statehood in some way, but after his death the Epirote despot Theodorus Comnenus took control of Macedonia. In 1230 the Bulgarian Tsar Ivan Asen II once again incorporated Macedonia into Bulgaria, but this reign, too, lasted for only 11 years; after his death (1241) Byzantine rule continued.
In 1282 the Serbian King Milutin began the struggle for Serbian control of Macedonia and this process was completed by Tsar Dušan in 1345. During the reign of the latter, for a certain period Macedonia even became the centre of the Serbian state, the seat of the Tsar and the Patriarch. It is important to note that Dušan retained the autonomy of the Archbishopric of Ohrid, even though he somewhat decreased its competencies. In addition, the regional feudal lords in Macedonia under Dušan enjoyed a special status and were granted a great degree of autonomy. As a result, following Dušan’s death (1355), the Dejanovci and Mrnjačevci families established fully independent feudal rule. Around 1365 Volkašin proclaimed himself “the King of the Serbs and the Romaioi” and ruled independently until the year 1371, when in the battle near the River Marica, fighting against the Turks, he was killed together with his brother, the despot Jovan Ugleša. Volkašin’s son, known as King Mark (Marko), had to acknowledge Turkish rule after 1390, whereas Konstantin Dejan recognized the supreme authority of the Turks earlier and became a Turkish vassal, continuing, as it were, the semi-independence of that part of Macedonia. It was only after the battle near Rovine (1395), in which both of them were killed, that the Turks were able to establish full control not only of Macedonia, but almostof the whole of the Balkans. The long period which ensued (lasting up to 1912) was the darkest subjugation of the Macedonian people, when Macedonia experienced stagnation and decline, al- though it was also a period of popular resistance expressed through mass insurrections.
Bearing in mind all these facts, we can draw the following conclusions:
(1) The Slavic character of the main ethnic group is of considerable importance for the history of the Macedonian people, but we cannot and should not overlook the significance of the ancient Macedonians, who gave this people its territory, name, culture and blood. If the history of the Turan-Mongol Bulgars is considered as an inseparable part of the history of the modern Bulgarian people, why should not the Macedonians respect the past, glory and culture of their own land, their own name and part of their own blood? For, as Dimitar V. Makedonski said in 1871, “the earth did not gape open to swallow” those ancient Macedonians;[2] they melted into the mass of the people.
(2) The people of Macedonia, in the course of some 13 centuries (after the arrival of the Slavs in the Balkans), mostly lived together in the same state, sharing the same economy and culture; Macedonia was nearly always incorporated as a whole into the different territories of neighbouring states and sustained common influences, which undoubtedly contributed to the formation of this people’s individuality.
(3) Under the feudal system, at least as far as the Balkan region is concerned, mostof the states were not states of peoples but of territories; hence the borders of the Byzantine Empire, Bulgaria, Serbia, and even Turkey, comprised different peoples which later secured a completely independent popular and national development.
(4) During its history from the beginning of the 7th century up to 1912, the Macedonian people invariably came under the control of four principal powers: for more than four and a half centuries it was under Byzantine rule (7th-9th, 11th-13th); slightly more than a century under the Bulgarians (9th-10th, 13th); nearly a century under the Serbs (13th-14th), and five centuries under the Turks (14th-20th). Even if we exclude these five centuries when Macedonia was under Turkish domination, as were the neighbouring peoples, if we take only the period from the 7th to the 14th century, it follows that (during these eight centuries) Macedonia was under Bulgarian rule for no more than 110 years. Bearing in mind that other Balkan Slavic and non-Slavic peoples also came within the Bulgarian borders, that there were no means of mass communication, that the Macedonians had no contacts with the Bulgarians beyond Mount Stara Planina, and that the foreign military-administrative authorities could not exert any stronger influence on the broad masses of the Macedonian population — it can be safely assumed that it was impossible that only the populations of Moesia, Thrace and Macedonia formed a single people, without those of the other regions of the state which came for even longer within the boundaries of Bulgaria. For example, the Romanians (they chose this name as late as 1862, following the unification of Wallachia and Moldavia, which became the national name of the unified Roman people!) were under Bulgarian rule uninterruptedly from the 7th to the 10th centuries, and even later they remained under the strong influence of the Bulgarian state. The Albani- ans, too, were under the authority of the Bulgarians at least as long as the Macedonians. But if these peoples were not ‘Slavic’, then why did the Serbs, Montenegrins and part of the Bosnians and Croats not become and remain Bulgarians?
(5) In the course of their history, the modern Macedonians formed their own state-political organizations more than once, but these were either not fully developed or remained restricted to smaller territories and were not recognized by others, or bore foreign names, as a result of which contemporary historians included them within pages dealing with other peoples. As early as the 7th century the Macedonian Slavs founded a state organization of their own which was of no lower level that the state organization of the tribal unions of the Serbs and Croats in the 9th and 10th centuries. The constant struggle and insurrections against the Byzantine Empire united the Macedonian Slavs as a community and resulted in that popular unity finding its expression in the first state established by the Slavs in Macedonia headed by Samuel, which, just like any other feudal state, later expanded its borders over a large part of the Balkans. That this state was basically a state of the Macedonian Slavs is confirmed by the historical fact that following its collapse (1018), Basil II made Macedonia a separate theme (thema), giving it the name which was probably used by both the state and its church.
In spite of the complications with the designation, it was in the state of Samuel that the Macedonian people began its affirmation as a people: it formed a state- political whole; it introduced an official standard literary Slavonic language with Ohrid as its cultural and literary centre; it created an autonomous church organi- zation with the elevation of the Bishopric of Ohrid to the rank of patriarchate; it also grew as a single economic entity and its towns experienced great progress, developing the Slavic consciousness of its people, although under a dual appella- tion: under the popular name ‘Slavs’ and the state name ‘Bulgars’. The develop- ment of Macedonia in the following two centuries as a Byzantine administrative territory whose inhabitants were designated as ‘Bulgars’ increasingly replaced the popular name which was retained only in the language of traditional literature and in the vernacular of the neighbouring Albanians, resulting in the widespread use of the appellation ‘Bulgars’, which in the meantime disappeared in the Danube Region theme (or at least it is not mentioned in the surviving written sources from these centuries). The fall of Macedonia under Serbian rule brought about further obfuscation of the popular name. The result of the long Ottoman subjugation and the specific political, social and religious position of the Macedonian people (when the usual terms of address were ‘raya’, ‘kaurin’ (non-Moslem), ‘Christian’, etc.) was a process of obliteration of the ethnic designation, which took place very slowly and was not completed, as in the 19th century it was superseded by a new process in the nation’s formation, which in turn created new problems as a result of the aforementioned historical development of the Macedonian people.
(6) It is also important to mention that the Balkan ‘Slavic’ Orthodox peoples constituted themselves and managed to survive the mediaeval period and right up to the 19th century thanks, to a considerable degree, to the church organizations of their own which guided their spiritual and educational life, regulated the judicial and family relations and united the people under the symbol of their own name. The Archbishopric of Ohrid as an autonomous church organization in Macedonia for eight whole centuries, although retaining the Bulgarian name in its title, maintained a sense of the popular and territorial unity of Macedonia.
There is no doubt that, for instance, the Serbian people was able to fully constitute itself and survive only after the establishment of its own church. It was only thanks to the expansion of the jurisdiction of this church to the territories of Šumadija, Belgrade and Vojvodina that the Serbian people — and, subsequently, the Serbian nation — was able to form its state within the present-day borders. The same refers to Bulgaria, which as early as the second half of the 9th century gained its own church organization, losing it in the 10th century to restore it in the 13th century, and losing it once again in the next century after the country’s conquest by the Turks.
But precisely because of the emergence in the mediaeval period of two autonomous churches bearing the Bulgarian name amidst the Slavic world in the Balkans (whose existence was interrupted in the 14th and 18th centuries), during the age of national revival, in the 19th century, a struggle began for the appropriation of the mediaeval past “under its own name”, resulting in the well-known conflicts and complications which have lingered to this day. How great the significance of the church was in this period can be seen by the establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870, whose eparchies were also taken as the basis for drawing the ethnographic borders of the Bulgarian people, creating political aspirations which have remained alive up to the present day. If three peoples and three nations (Russians, Ukrainians and Belorussians) developed from the core of the ‘Russian’ Church, if two peoples and two nations (Serbs and Montenegrins) emerged in their historical development from the ‘Serbian’ Church, why should not two peoples and two modern nations (Bulgari- ans and Macedonians) develop from the population under the jurisdiction of the Ohrid and Trnovo (Turnovo) Churches in the mediaeval period when the entire historical evolution dictated precisely such development?
