Klara Volarić

Between the Ottoman and Serbian States: Carigradski Glasnik, an Istanbul-based Paper of Ottoman Serbs, 1895–1909

In this essay I investigate Carigradski glasnik (Constantinople’s Messenger), an Istanbul-based periodical written by Ottoman Serbs between 1895 and 1909. This journal was a direct product of Serbian diplomatic circles in Istanbul aimed at audiences in Ottoman Macedonia, a region which was claimed by Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian countries as their own national territory and which soon became a political arena for the spread of national propaganda intended to persuade the Slavic-speaking Orthodox population of its respective Greek, Serbian, or Bulgarian national roots. Carigradski glasnik propagated the idea of Serbian nationhood and fought for the establishment of a Serbian Millet. Essentially, it was an attempt to create nationhood from above, propagating “Serbianness” as envisioned by its editors and Serbian diplomats. It was engaged in the dispute over Ottoman Macedonia, which in the historiography is known as the Macedonian question.

Keywords: Ottoman Macedonia, national consciousness, propaganda, newspaper, print media, Serbia, Young Turks, national struggle

Following the establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870, the struggle over Ottoman Macedonia intensified. Bulgaria and Greece emerged as the most serious contenders. They promoted concepts of Bulgarian and Greek nationhood in Ottoman Macedonia and also fostered the nation-building process within their own borders. Each of these countries tried to legitimate their claims to Ottoman Macedonia, but the Berlin Congress in 1878 put the Greek–Bulgarian struggle into question because some of the decisions that were made at the Congress affected the situation in Ottoman Macedonia. Specifically, in addition to the fact that Ottoman Macedonia emerged as an international problem and came to be regarded by the great powers as a region that needed to be reformed, Serbia, after having lost Bosnia and Herzegovina, also decided to attempt to establish and strengthen its position there.

However, the intention of Serbian diplomatic circles, and therefore of Carigradski glasnik, was not to undermine Ottoman sovereignty but rather to act in accordance with it. Unlike Bulgaria, which fostered revolutionary activities in the region from 1895 in order to sever Ottoman Macedonia from the Ottoman Empire and eventually annex it, Serbia calculated that it was in its interests that Macedonia remain within the Ottoman Empire. As a latecomer to the struggle for control of the territory, Serbia had to consolidate its position in the region. For this, it needed an ally, which is why the Serbian state supported and acted within Ottoman sovereignty. Each country had the same aim: to keep Ottoman Macedonia within the Ottoman Empire. For this reason, Carigradski glasnik operated fully in accordance with Ottoman press regulations. Moreover, it was published in Istanbul, under the strict surveillance of the Ottoman censors, and the editorial staff went out of their way to demonstrate the utmost loyalty of the Ottoman Serbs to the Sultanate. Since Carigradski glasnik diligently propagated the image of the Ottoman state, on some occasions it was hard to believe that the paper was actually a product of Serbian irredentist plans in the region.

As the periodical of Serbian diplomatic circles, Carigradski glasnik promoted Serbian nationhood as a stable, fixed and clear entity that had existed from time immemorial and that therefore distinguished the Serbian nation from the other nations in the Ottoman Empire, especially from the Slavic Bulgarians. This was the main mission of Serbian diplomatic circles in Istanbul. Thus, the main mission of the periodical was also first to convince its readers that shared aspects of culture such as language and specific celebrations were evidence of shared Serbian nationhood and second to emphasize the (alleged) loyalty of the Serbian nation in the Empire in order to obtain Millet status.1 Furthermore, although the Serbian diplomatic mission propagated fixed Serbian nationhood and the owners and editors of Carigradski glasnik were employed for this matter, the personal data of the two last owners did not reveal a strict and well-defined notion of Serbian nationhood, but rather a fluid sense of national identity, which was quite common among the local Macedonian population. Nevertheless, unlike most of the recent scholarship on Ottoman Macedonia (e.g. Jane Cowan’s or Victor Roudometof’s edited volumes on Macedonia),2 which approaches the study of nationhood from above (i.e. from the perspective of the state elites, who—like Carigradski glasnik—propagated a clear and fixed concept of nationhood) even when discussing its appropriation on the ground, I do not interpret nationhood from this perspective which sees fluid nationhood as a-national, but rather I interpret it as changeable form of practice.

This paper is divided into two sections: in the first section I analyze how Carigradski glasnik defined and propagated Serbian nationhood during the rule of Sultan Abdülhamid II and the early Young Turk period, and in the second section I focus on fluid nationhood exhibited by Kosta Grupčević and Temko Popović, the last two owners and editors of Carigradski glasnik. The first section is based almost entirely on my findings in Carigradski glasnik, while the second section is based on the secondary literature, mostly on the work of Tchavdar Marinov, Bernard Lory, Paschalis Kitromilides, Victor Friedman and others who touch upon some aspects of nationhood in Ottoman Macedonia.

Carigradski Glasnik and Serbian Nationhood during the Hamidian and the Early Young Turk Periods

Ottoman Serbs were not recognized as a Millet in the Ottoman Empire, but since the abolishment of the Peć Patriarchate in 1776, Ottoman Serbs had again become part of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, where they remained until the fall of the Ottoman Empire. For the Ottoman Serbs, not being recognized as a Millet presented certain difficulties, since they were deprived of religious and educational autonomy. This was an aggravating circumstance given that Bulgarians, characterized as the worst enemy of both Serbs and Greeks, obtained Millet status in 1895, granting them complete jurisdiction over their own religious and educational affairs. Another problem that was particularly serious in the context of the Greek-Bulgarian-Serbian war of statistics (in which quantity meant more than quality) was the fact that the Ottoman Serbs officially did not exist in the Ottoman Empire.3 This was the result of the 1881 and 1903 Ottoman censuses, which were based on denominations, i.e. on Millets. As the Ottoman Serbs were not recognized as a Millet, and the Millet was seen as a basis for counting “collective consciousness”, this meant that Ottoman Serbs were not officially recognized in the Empire. Rather they were registered accordingly as part of the Ecumenical Patriarchate or even the Bulgarian Exarchate. In addition, because these censuses were seen as the basis upon which Balkan irredentist claims were tested, the Greeks and Bulgarians challenged the Serb’s right to legitimate territorial claims in the region.4

Nevertheless, this problem, known as нуфијско питање (nüfüs question) in Serbian scholarship, was seen as two-sided. Namely, many Serbian diplomats, including Stojan Novaković, thought it was useless and even counterproductive to insist on solving the nüfüs question because the real number of the Ottoman Serbs would be revealed, and perhaps this would not be in the interests of the Serbian state. In their opinion, Serbian nationhood was de facto recognized because Serbia could more or less equally participate in the struggle for Ottoman Macedonia through Serbian consulates, schools, and churches, and this was what mattered.5 However, generally the Serbian government did not share this opinion, and on a few occasions it tried to solve this problem. Carigradski glasnik was engaged in this issue as well because it was charged with the task of constantly emphasizing the Serbian presence in the Ottoman state and propagating and defining Serbian nationhood in the Empire. According to an issue of the periodical published in 1899, “if the nation wants to be preserved as a nation, then it should have its own church and school. This is especially necessary here, where one nation lives together with other nations.”6

Naturally, this periodical pursued its aims in accordance with Ottoman press laws and procedures and also with consideration of the political atmosphere of the period. During Hamidian period, in which most of the issues of Carigradski glasnik were published, the constant assurance of loyalty to the Sultan was necessary in order to survive. Not only did the Ottoman state demand affirmations of loyalty from the periodical, Serbian diplomatic circles also came to realize that Serbian national goals could only be achieved with the assistance of the Ottoman Empire. Loyalty to the Sultan was usually expressed in the following words:

The Serbian nation in His vast Empire is well-known for its humble loyalty, every time and on every occasion it warmly prays to the Lord Almighty for the good health of its Master, who also cares for His subjects.7

This day in the hearts of all loyal subjects of the Ottoman Throne raises great joy, especially in the heart of Serbian nation. This is a chance for the Serbian nation to express its great love for its Divine Master, as well as its gratitude for the benefactions and mercifulness with which He lavishes his faithful Serbs.8

Avowals of loyalty to the Sultan and affirmations of the strong image of the Ottoman Empire in publications like Carigradski glasnik were carefully monitored, as clearly illustrated by the press collection found in the Yıldız Palace archive, which, according to Selim Deringil, ranged from well-known publications like The Times to “obscure Serbian or Bulgarian publications.”9 However, no matter how obscure Carigradski glasnik might have been for the Ottomans, the fact that it was read not just in Ottoman Macedonia (a region that was rife with tensions), but also outside the Ottoman Empire was grounds enough for the Ottoman image management teams that Deringil describes to pay special attention to its content.

Due to the meticulousness of the Ottoman censors, during the Hamidian period Carigradski glasnik resembled more an Ottoman propaganda paper than a Serbian one. It operated within the bounds set by Ottoman press regulations and imperial sovereignty, which demanded utmost loyalty to the Sultan, who was portrayed as the benevolent father who took care of his good-hearted and naïve children in the organs of the print media that thrived during his reign. Throughout the period, Glasnik operated according to these rules. Although violence was a constant fact of life in Ottoman Macedonia, until the Young Turk revolution and the liberalization of the Ottoman press this paper usually wrote about Ottoman Serbs as the most loyal subjects of Sultan Abdülhamid. The paper particularly stressed its loyalty during the Armenian massacres. Oddly enough, Armenian publications did the same thing. On a few occasions in 1896, Carigradski glasnik did publish notes on articles appearing in Armenian periodicals in which there was constant emphasis on Armenian loyalty to the Sultan, distancing the Armenian population from the troublemakers.10

Carigradski glasnik used every opportunity to praise the devotion of Ottoman Serbs to the Sultan, in contrast to the other, disloyal Christian communities of the Empire, and the periodical represented the Serbs as subjects who deserved to be recognized as a Millet. The usual tropes perpetuated the notion that Ottoman Serbs were one of the rare nations that had had to fight and endure a calamitous fate over the course of its existence, but despite all the obstacles, they always managed to survive and preserve the Serbian name and nation. For instance, one finds the following lament in an 1898 issue of the periodical:

There is no nation under the sky that has passed through harder and more horrible times than the Serbian nation. Every Serb who has even minimally investigated the past life of his nation, will know what these troubles were, when they took place, and how difficult they were. In addition, there are not many nations like the Serbian one, which has amazingly resisted its accursed fate; with great faith in the Lord and the Holy Orthodoxy, and with great pride in its name and nationhood.11

Not surprisingly, contributors to Carigradski glasnik claimed that it was only during the years of Abdülhamid’s reign that Ottoman Serbs finally enjoyed prosperity, because they were allowed to bolster their nationhood and freely proclaim it in the Serbian schools, which were seen as the battlefields of nations. Certainly this represented an allusion to the “book and pen” struggle in Ottoman Macedonia, where religion and education bolstered nationhood. For this reason, it is not surprising that Carigradski glasnik’s call to school resembled a call for war:

Run to school, you little Serb! This call is aimed to you because you have great and divine duties to your name. Nowadays nations are competing on the field of cultural progress. Instead of a battle of swords, we have a battle of minds. This battle determines the survival or decline of the individual and the nation. School is the one thing that will prepare you for this cultural game. So go to school, you too little Serb. School is the sacred duty that will prepare you for cultural work and the game on this field, on which, whether you like it or not, you must show yourself. The Serbian nation showed that it has the talents and abilities that are necessary for culture. In school you will strengthen your mind and raise your heart. Without this, one cannot be a Serb.12

Excerpts from articles show how Glasnik’s writers discussed Serbian nationhood as something timeless and unchanging and something that distinguished Serbs from all other nations. For instance, in an 1898 issue of the periodical one author made the following contention:

Nationhood cannot be lost even when deceived individuals take different names or when different names are imposed upon them forcefully. The armor of our nationhood is our past, language, folk songs and customs and above all slava13–the service–and many other characteristics that distinguish the Serbian nation from other nations.14

Slava, this is our national characteristic. Slava is the most distinguished feature by which we differ from other Slavic nations. Language, customs, tradition, folklore, even physhiognomy also differentiate us from them.15

This notion of clear-cut lines between the ethno-religious communities of the Ottoman Empire was used by the authors who contributed to Carigradski glasnik to prove the “separate existence” of the Serbian nation. Celebrations of exclusive Serbian saints like Saint Sava were meant to contribute to the preservation of Serbian nationhood among the local population in Ottoman Macedonia. For Carigradski glasnik, Serbian nationhood in the Ottoman state was clear. It did not have to be imposed upon the local population, but rather developed and was preserved from the Bulgarian, Greek or even Ottoman attempts to restrain and even deprecate the Serbian nation. For this reason, Carigradski glasnik paid as much attention to the celebrations of such occasions, such as the slava or Saint Sava, as it did to the yearly inaugural celebrations of the Sultan. The subscribers were encouraged to send descriptions of the festivities that were taking place throughout areas where Ottoman Serbs lived in order to bolster and stress the clear uniqueness of Serbian nationhood in comparison to nationhood of other peoples.16 Furthermore, such celebrations fostered the Serbian “imagined community” (to use Benedict Anderson’s term):

On Sava’s day, the entire scattered Serbian nation will be united in their thoughts, and all those thoughts concentrate around the Serbian nation as the defender of the Holy Orthodoxy and the Serbian name; around the revival of Serbian education and progress; around saint Sava, the grandest of the grand among Serbs. There is no Serbian pupil who does not know of his enlightener; there is no Serb who would not pay adequate respect to those who laid the foundations of Serbian education.17

Hence, although operating within the limits of Hamidian censorship and the political atmosphere of the time, in which loyalty to the Sultan had to be continuously stressed, Carigradski glasnik managed to promote Serbian nationhood even on occasions such as the Sultan’s birthday or anniversaries of ascension. On such occasions it used discourse of “we” and “them” in order to distance Ottoman Serbs from other nations and show that the Ottoman Serbs deserved a separate Millet.

Only after the Young Turk revolution and the passage of less restrictive press regulations did Carigradski glasnik begin to advocate Serbian interests more openly. Immediately following the revolution very little changed in the discourse. Abdülhamid remained untouchable, and the proclamation of the constitution was entirely attributed to him. The following passage from a 1908 issue of Carigradski glasnik points to how the Ottoman Serbs and other communities actually did expect meaningful changes from the Young Turk regime:

Sweet months of His Rule were accompanied by a harsh fate. Reformed glorious Turkey had to save the country from danger that was threatening from the outside. This attempt was stopped by the evil will of the Sultan’s advisors, whose personal interests were more important than the public one. In their irresponsibility they brought the country to the edge of doom. The voice of suffering and the exhaustion of the people reached the Throne of our Almighty. On 11 June our divine Ruler brought an end to these intrigues. 11 June is a day of freedom, a day of progress, a day of a rejuvenated Turkey! In the rejuvenated constitutionally free Turkey the Sultan Abdülhamid celebrates the thirty-third year of his coming to the Ottoman Throne. This thirty-third year is the most glorious in the reign of our divine Sultan. It is the beginning of the renaissance of our homeland based on the equality and brotherhood of all the Ottoman nationalities with the protection of civil freedom and safety. With him begins the Resurrection of our native land in all possible cultural directions. Long Live Constitutional Sultan Abdülhamid II! Long Live!18

These lines were written only a month after the revolution, so some of the big changes in the discourse, at least regarding Abdülhamid, could not be perceived. However, the reserved and loyal stance regarding the Sultan remained until the very end, that is to say, until the counterrevolution and Abdülhamid’s deposition in April 1909. The same could not be said for some other periodicals, like the satirical press, which had been banned during Hamidian era but resurrected after the Young Turk revolution and which began to criticize the Sultan.19

The dethronement of the Sultan was seen as a “historical act” with which the Ottoman Empire ridded iteslf of a despot comparable to Caligula or Nero. This suggests that Carigradski glasnik was playing it safe, waiting until the actual dethronement of Abdülhamid. Only then, after fifteen years, did Carigradski glasnik change its rhetoric concerning Abdülhamid, transforming him from an adored patriarch into a monster:

…and exiled Abdul Hamid, intellectual culprit not just for the bloody rebellion in the army and its consequences, the blood fight in Istanbul on 11 April—but also for all the evils and misfortunes that our Fatherland endured during the 33 years of his calamitous and bloody governance. Abdul Hamid, the main obstruction towards progress and the prosperity of the Ottoman Empire, is removed from our path.20

After the Young Turk revolution, not only did the Sultan become a monster; gradually the Young Turks’ state also came to be portrayed as a monster as well. Like other communities in the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman Serbs expected too much from the Young Turk regime. When their expectations were not met, euphoria gave way to disenchantment.21 When the Hamidian patrimonial discourse was replaced by Ottomanism, according to which loyal subjects of the Sultan became Ottoman citizens equal in their rights, everyone expected that at least some of their problems would be solved. As Carigradski glasnik wrote, the news concerning the re-proclamation of the constitution was welcomed with great joy, especially because the Ottoman Serbs believed that the anarchical situation in Ottoman Macedonia would come to an end, and even more importantly, that Serbian nationhood would be finally recognized in the Ottoman Empire. As one contributor to a 1908 issue of the periodical wrote:

In all the places were the Serbian nation lives, the proclamation of the constitution was welcomed exceedingly, enthusiastically and gladly. The new days after the constitution were welcomed by the Serbian nation with the same feelings as were felt by all the other nations in the Empire. If anyone had suffered and struggled, it was the Serbian nation. It hoped that once this would come to an end, the days of freedom would come, when life would be guaranteed, if nothing else. Earlier its nationhood was not recognized. Like some little foster child in folk tales, it was placed here for a bit, there for a bit; it was added to the Patriarchate, then to the Christians, sometimes it was part of the Exarchate; but no one wanted to recognize this nation as a nation, as had been done with the Greeks, Bulgarians and the rest of the population. Its schools and churches were often closed, teachers and priests were sent to prison, and it simply waited patiently and hoped that better and kinder days would come.22

However, Carigradski glasnik soon realized that the new political atmosphere was not as promising as had been hoped. The paper stressed that the Ottoman Serbs were certainly among the first to salute the changes introduced by the Young Turks because they expected that the proclamation of liberty and equality would be introduced into the provinces where the Ottoman Serbs mainly lived. However, soon after Glasnik expressed disappointment with the fact that none of these promises was kept in Ottoman Macedonia, the paper warned that guerilla bands were still the masters in the region, sometimes even backed by the representatives of the Ottoman authorities. For instance, in February 1909, Ottoman Serbs from Prilep defended two Serbian monasteries from Bulgarian bands, and on this occasion they sent a letter to Ottoman authorities, including the parliament, in which they demanded the protection of their rights. In the following passage I provide the complete text of the letter because it illustrates disillusionment with the new regime (which was prevalent among all of the Ottoman communities) and it also provides an example of how Ottoman Serbs portrayed themselves and the tropes they used when addressing the Young Turk authorities. Namely, they accepted the “official” discourse of the regime. Ottoman Serbs were not operating within a paradigm of loyalty anymore. The key terms became freedom and equality.

The Ottoman Serbs from Prilep and the surroundings gathered today at the national assembly to protest that the Bulgarian attacks on Serbian property are tolerated. They protest because Ottoman authorities protect Bulgarians and therefore cause damage to the Serbian nation and its property. They express their dissatisfaction with the Ottoman authorities for having allowed the Bulgarian entrance into distinctly Serbian monasteries: Zrze and Slepče; and not only that they allowed it, but that the gendarmerie offered it for the sake of maintaining peace and order. Zrze and Slepče are villages inhabited by Ottoman Serbs, and the monasteries are financed by entirely Serbian villages, which also provided them with estates. Bulgarians have no right to them, and will not have them because now our Fatherland enjoys peace and order. There are no Bulgarian villages near these monasteries; so Bulgarians have no legitimate right to claim them.

We are protesting against the terror that Bulgarian bands are inflicting and that is tolerated when they walk armed through our villages and force villagers to be Bulgarians, which was the case in Dolman and Dabnica; while a Serb is not tolerated even when he is unarmed.

The Serbian nation is deeply saddened when, in the times of freedom and equality, the Ottoman authorities treat it unjustly and separate it from the other nations. For example, while Greeks and Bulgarians have bells on their churches, for Serbs this is strictly forbidden, and police even come to take the bells down, as was the case here in Prilep.

The Ottoman Serbs from Prizren and its surroundings legitimately demand back the monastery in Treskavac because it is situated in the middle of the Serbian population, which has maintained and financed it. Bulgarians violently—with the help of their bandit troops—took the monastery, and now it is illegitimately in their possession.

The Ottoman Serbs from Prilep and its surroundings are always prepared to give their lives for the happiness and progress, as well as for the preservation, of the Ottoman Fatherland; they do not want what is not theirs, however, they will defend what is theirs until the last breath.23

Although dissatisfaction with the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina was expected (Carigradski Glasnik published the article under the symbolic title Српска голгота [Serbian Golgotha]),24 major discontent actually only came after the elections of the senate and parliament. Namely, of 40 senators elected by the government, 30 of them were Muslims, one was a Jew, while the rest were Christians. Among the Christians, all the communities were represented except the Ottoman Serbs. This obviously indicated that the Ottoman Serbs were not going to be recognized as a nation, which was accompanied by general frustration about the Ottoman Serbian position in the Empire. As one contributor to a 1908 issue wrote:

Injustice towards the Serbs in Turkey! Is this so horrible or so new? Is this the first, or will it be the last injustice against the Serbian nation in Turkey? Is this why we ponder and write about it? We do not know anything other than injustices, which have been coming, one after another, since time immemorial.

The Serbian nation, which consists of two million people in Turkey, is not represented in the Senate. On the other hand, Jews have their representative, although they do not live compactly as a nation but only as trade colonies; Bulgarians are represented, although they only live in Edirne vilayet and not in other parts of Turkey (because Slavic Exarchists in Salonika, Kosovo and Bitola vilayets cannot be considered Bulgarians), even Macedonian and Epirus Romanians who number barely 200,000 people, only the Serbs from the Government did not get a single senator.

Will they defend themselves by saying that there are no Serbs in Turkey, or that Serbian nationhood is not recognized in Turkey? But Serbs are in Turkey, the election for the national deputies has shown it. The three Serbs elected as national deputies from the Kosovo and Bitola vilayets have shown to the Bulgarians and all the others who say there are no Serbs in Turkey [that they are mistaken]. (…) It is the duty of these Serbian deputies to discuss this issue in the parliament and to insist categorically on solving this injustice to the Serbs. How this will be resolved is a matter for the Government, which after all committed this injustice.25

Throughout this interregnum period until December 1909, when Carigradski glasnik was closed, early euphoria over the new regime was replaced by frustration because of the failure of the imperial authorities to recognize Serbian nationhood and the “sale” of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Austria-Hungary. In short, the motto “we do not know justice, but we are tired of injustice”26 became a popular Ottoman Serbian catchphrase after the Young Turk revolution.

Facts on the Ground: “Reckless” Serbian Propaganda and Fluid Nationhood

Although operating within different Hamidian and Young Turk frameworks, Carigradski glasnik managed to propagate Serbian nationhood successfully. This propaganda was accompanied by affirmations of utmost devotion to the Ottoman state, which was not just a tactic that allowed Carigradski glasnik to be published continuously, but was also a framework advocated by Serbian diplomacy. What one notices on the basis of the sections above is the clarity and decisiveness with which this periodical discussed Serbian nationhood. Ottoman Serbs were well-defined and separated from the other Ottoman communities, despite the fact that they did not have religious or educational autonomy, nor were Ottoman Serbs recognized as a nation within the Empire. What one can conclude on the basis of the writings that were published in Carigradski glasnik is that its editors were not fighting for the implementation of Serbian nationhood within the local Ottoman Macedonian population (because it was obviously implemented), but rather were fighting for the right to exercise this nationhood. Nevertheless, nationhood on the ground in Macedonia was generally not well-defined, even if Carigradski glasnik suggested in spite of this.

Serbian diplomatic circles did not have a clear idea concerning who was actually living in Old Serbia and northern Macedonia, both of which were regions that the Serbian state claimed. Stojan Novaković, the leader of Serbian diplomatic circles in the Ottoman Empire, was even against the recognition of the Serbian element in the Empire because no one actually knew how many people regarded themselves as Ottoman Serbs. For this reason, the creation of established and elaborated Serbian diplomatic action that would infuse Serbian nationhood into the local population was of the utmost importance. However, neither Serbian diplomacy nor Serbian national workers acted together smoothly on the ground in Ottoman Macedonia.

For instance, the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs managed to open four consulates in Priština, Salonika, Bitola, and Skopje charged with implementing Serbian national action, i.e. spreading Serbian nationhood through religion and education on the ground. Yet remarkably, these four consulates barely communicated with one another. For instance, in a letter from 1894 written to the Serbian Ministry, Branislav Nušić, the Serbian consul in Priština, stated that he might have exaggerated when said that consulates exchange more than two letters per year. Even more, these institutions were spending excessive amounts of money even though Serbia always complained about the budget, and many projects were halted for this reason. As expected, the Serbian administration in the Ottoman Empire suffered from sluggishness and ineffectiveness. According to Nušić, Serbian were the only consulates in Ottoman Macedonia that were composed of consuls, vice-consuls, correspondents and translators. In some consulates, for instance in Skopje, the vice-consul sat at home all day long because he did not have anything to do in the office.27

Indeed, complaints about the conduct of Serbian policy in Ottoman Macedonia were not rare. A report written by the Russian consul in Prizren almost ten years after Nušić’s complaints shows how the professional propagandists, as Lory describes teachers and priests, did not always act as such. Namely, on several occasions in 1903, the aforementioned Russian consul wrote to the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs informing it that the Raška–Prizren’s metropolitan Nićifor was not popular among the local population. According to the Russian consul, Serbian policy in Ottoman Macedonia was reckless:

Serbia here conducts propaganda and spends 100,000 Francs per year to win the love of the people (narod). However, it constantly angers them and spreads embarrassment and disunion. Rather than acting in the interests of the community, it only creates intrigues and damage, which should not be tolerated. First of all, it is reckless to support the consul Avramović, whom people loathe, and the silly metropolitan (vladika) Nićifor. Recently they organized an orgy in the Gračanica monastery, where Serbs even beat up Avramović. This was even reported by “the press”. Metropolitan Nićifor does not behave like a pastor, but as an evil demon of the people. In Peć the metropolitan’s regent, Obrad the priest, defended Albanian criminals in front of the Ottoman authorities, and as a result, the people of Peć no longer invite him to their homes. In Đakovac for a long time the Serbs have not been on good terms with their priest. However, Nićifor does not care. In Prizren he does not recognize the municipality, and he does not engage with national work. The population of Prizren asked me several times to protect them from such a metropolitan. Someone should open Serbia’s eyes to its flawed policy here. It should be forced to stop thinking, and rather start working in consent with its people and with our support.28

The authors of Carigradski glasnik articles also warned that even the lower Serbian clergy were lazy when it came to promoting national interests or fostering a sense of national unity. In an article published in 1897, the periodical mentioned that in the remote villages, where schools had not been established, the priests were the only workers on the national front, but instead of engaging with illiterate peasants and reading Carigradski glasnik to them, these priests were rather content to perform mere ceremonies, take their wages, and then leave the villages immediately afterwards.

In the Priština, Novi Pazar and Peć sanjaks there is no one in the villages. The priest comes, finishes his ceremonies, takes what is his, and leaves. And this is repeated continuously. And yet we imagine that the task of a true Serbian priest is not just to finish ceremonies, charge and leave, no! We imagine, as this is what being a priest means, that he should pause and educate villagers about religion, virtues and something similar. Furthermore, the priest should inform peasants about the news regarding agriculture. We are writing articles on agriculture, but not for the citizens, because this is not their concern; we are writing them for peasants, and as they are illiterate—as we know very well—we were and we are counting on priests and teachers, but especially on priests, because teachers cannot reach as far as priests can.29

With the teachers the situation was not much better, since Carigradski glasnik again reported that some teachers spent more time in the local bars than they did in schools, or were behaving violently:

First, we must emphasize the unpleasant fact that some places from the heartland inform us, and we know this from the personal experience as well, that a worm of suspicion erodes relationships between the teachers. The teachers working together within the same school and within the same community should live together in brotherhood and harmony, like priests in the temples of education and like national intelligentsia; instead, in most cases, they slaughter one another like yellow crazy ants, complaining about one another, contriving devious intrigues to destroy one another; in one word, they are disgracing their holy educational mission, as well as their positions as national workers.30

Along with the (dis)organized Serbian propaganda campaign, the efforts to spread Serbian nationhood were equally ineffective on the ground. However, this was not something peculiar to the Serbian nationalists. Even the more elaborate and aggressive Bulgarian propaganda campaigns, which involved employed guerrilla activities and coercion, faced the same problem. In fact, Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian elites had to use many tools, including coercion, in order to create a sense of nationhood among the local Christian population in Macedonia. Jovan Jovanović-Pižon, who was in charge of the consular affairs in the Ottoman Empire, asserted that Serbia should support the local Slavic population, be sensitive to their needs, and not be violent, but rather full of appreciation. Only if Serbia were to do this would the “amorphous and nationally hermaphrodite mass start to have trust in national workers who represent Serbian national thought there. Only in areas where we have devoted and skillful national workers will our national cause develop.”31 According to Jovanović-Pižon, it was natural to assume that “professional propagandists” were the ones who were most interested in educating and spreading “Serbian national thought” in Ottoman Macedonia. This was expected to be the case with the owners and editors of Carigradski glasnik as well. However, unlike Nikodim Savić, who was the first owner and undoubtedly felt like a Serb, the other two owners, Kosta Grupčević and Temko Popović, exhibited more fluid understandings of nationhood, which was characteristic for the Slavic population of Ottoman Macedonians.

Both Grupčević and Popović were born in Ohrid. They were Ottoman Macedonian upper-middle class intellectuals who were educated in Greek schools. According to Lory’s assertion, according to which school teachers were professional propagandists in the service of the Balkan states and in charge of spreading national ideologies,32 it is quite surprising that Greek education did not manage to infuse in Grupčević and Popović the feeling of Greekness, which Kitromilides defines as “a voluntary identification [that] had to be instilled and cultivated through a crusade of national education.”33 Instead, Greek education developed a vague feeling of Macedonianness, which Marinov identifies as supra-national identity “intended to bring together—under the common denominator of ‘Macedonian people’—members of different ethnic, confessional and national groups.”34 In other words, Macedonianness is a direct consequence or, more precisely, construct of the competing Balkan ideologies. Marinov provides a few examples of how this Macedonianness found expression. However, these examples yield only one conclusion: it is not quite clear what Macedonianness means because all the Macedonian intellectuals defined it and expressed it in a different way, including Grupčević and Popović. According to Marinov, “there are historical personalities from late Ottoman Macedonia whose identity largely ‘floated’ between the Serbian and the Bulgarian national option,”35 and between them appeared the third Macedonian option, which was used by Serbian diplomatic circles as “a possible counterweight to Bulgarian influence in Macedonia.”36 Stojan Novaković concretely assumed it would be much better to use the already present vague sense of this Macedonianness, and turn, harness and mold it to Serbian advantage, instead of attempting to impose Serbian nationhood directly upon Macedonians.37 This was obviously the case with the two owners of Carigradski glasnik, who turned from the Greek education they had been given and their vague sense of Macedonianness to Serbian nationhood.

Historians do not know precisely when Grupčević and Popović came into contact with Serbian diplomatic circles or an official Serbian “state” agenda. The first trace of their pro-Serbian activities dates from 1886, when both of them, along with Naum Evro and Vasil Karajovov, established the anti-Bulgarian secret Macedonian Committee in Sofia. Probably around this time they came into contact with Serbian circles, because they moved to Belgrade as soon as Bulgarians learned of their activities.38 In 1887, Grupčević and Novaković were trying to publish a newspaper entitled Македонски глас (Macedonian voice) in Istanbul in a Macedonian dialect, but they never got permission to do so. However, they clearly expressed their intention to start a paper in Istanbul that would promote Serbian interests.39 The fact that this paper, the harbinger of Carigradski glasnik, was meant to be published in the Macedonian (probably Ohrid) dialect confirms that Novaković intended to bring that dialect gradually closer to the Serbian language. Although this paper was never published, we can trace this idea in the work of Temko Popović, who in 1887 published the anti-Bulgarian pamphlet on the Macedonian dialect and Serbian orthography.40 We do not know when Grupčević and Popović, along with Novaković, abandoned this idea, but what is certain is that in 1888 Popović sent a letter to Despot Badžović in which he made the following statement:

The national spirit in Macedonia has reached such a state that Jesus Christ himself, if he were to descend from heaven, could not convince a Macedonian that he is a Bulgarian or a Serb, except for Macedonians in whom Bulgarian propaganda has already taken root.41

However, ten years later Grupčević and he were involved with Carigradski glasnik, the paper that was published in standard Serbian and that clearly advocated Serbian ideas. Obviously their Macedonianness turned into Serbianness, which indicates that fluid nationhood was not something reserved for illiterate peasants in Ottoman Macedonia, but was even found among urban intellectuals acting as promoters of the Serbian national idea.

This is one of the many examples to which recent historiography on Macedonia frequently refers, always with the same conclusion, namely that Macedonians had no sense of nationhood, but rather expressed blurred and fluid identities that were, as Marinov has shown, shaped and created under the influence of the Balkan ideologies. However, expressing multiple national identities does not necessarily mean that these persons were a-national simply because they did not represent “the existence of some ‘genuine’ or ‘proper sense of national identity’ that all the members of a certain well-bound collectivity or ‘group’ are equally, absolutely and constantly aware of.”42 In Rogers Brubaker’s fashion we can rather say that they exhibited nationhood as a form of practice that changes and adapts to different circumstances.43 In this sense, Grupčević and Popović did not represent a-national blur and fluid character, as studies on Macedonia suggest. Rather, they represented nationhood as different forms of practice. Thus, their nationhood was not fixed, but it was also not a-national or fluid. Rather, it was a response (or set of responses) to the interplay of different factors, depending on the current Macedonian context. In other words, “these elites formed a kind of ‘middle class’ which adopted discourses and strategies linked to changes in their political and social positioning, as well as to their search for power or their efforts to remain in power.”44

Grupčević and Popović’s case brings us to the problem of the appropriation of nationhood, more specifically, how nationhood tends to be researched from above. In other words, historians have tended to examine how Balkan states imposed nationhood on local populations, and how the local population showed a fluid and a-national sense of nationhood. Even when scholars are investigating this appropriated nationhood on the ground, they approach the problem from an “imperial” perspective, defining nationhood as a fixed substantial entity envisioned by state elites (much as it was presented in Carigradski glasnik), and not as a discourse prone to change. Jovanović-Pižon noted that the Macedonian question and the implementation of nationhood could not be solved through religion or education because populations were looking for alternatives that would help them address their everyday problems.45 As Basil Gounaris has shown in his study of the Patriarchate-Exarchate race for the local Christian population, the battle for new members was not based on religious rhetoric but rather on the personal, economic or simply pragmatic concerns of local peasants.46 Lory also stresses that the local inhabitants in Macedonia “gave free rein to the propaganda programs that they considered advantageous to them, in that they provided free education. We are struck by the very short-term vision with which educational issues were treated. Only the families of major merchants had any genuine educational strategies for their offspring. Trades people, who were more numerous in Bitola, were very vulnerable to economic fluctuations and to life’s misfortunes such as illness, deaths, or fires.”47

In other words, choices regarding nationhood were determined primarily by pragmatic and not idealistic factors. Branislav Nušić, the vice-consul in Bitola in 1892, vividly described responses to Greek, Bulgarian, and Serbian propaganda among the local population of one entirely Slavic-speaking village:

The church is Greek, the school is Exarchal, two priests are “Serbomans”48… In the house of Vanđel—the priest—Serbian books are hidden in a basement; periodicals from Sofia are on the table; one son is a student in Belgrade; the second son is an Exarchal teacher in Skopje; the third son is a former student of the Austrian Catholic mission; and two children are attending Exarchal elementary school. Рriest Vanđel even holds a han in his house.49

However, we should not make the mistake of jumping to the generalization that the entire Macedonian population expressed multiple identities and was pragmatic regarding nationhood. Although it is difficult to discuss how Carigradski glasnik was appropriated on the ground and how it was accepted among the local population as opposed to professional propagandists (like priests or teachers), we still can assume that it created an “imagined community” by bringing people together around shared characteristics that were described by Carigradski glasnik as the features of Serbian nationhood. As Fox and Miller-Idriss stated, “nationhood is also implicated in the choices people make. People ‘choose’ the nation when the universe of options is defined in national terms. Reading a nationalist newspaper or sending one’s child to a minority language school can thus be defined and experienced as national choices.”50

Conclusion

Although Serbia only entered the battle for Macedonia in 1885, approximately ten years later it managed to achieve its main goals: opening Serbian consulates, promoting Serbian priests into higher ecclesiastical positions, opening schools and Serbian societies in Ottoman Macedonia, and finally establishing a Serbian paper that would propagate Serbian interests in the region within the limits of Ottoman press regulations. This indeed seems impressive on paper, but the situation on the ground was far too unwieldy for these strategies to work effectively. The Serbian state spent a considerable amount of money on a rather disorganized propaganda campaign, national workers often did not work in a professional or coordinated manner, consulates were unaware of one another’s activities despite the fact that they were not physically distant from one another, and the great gap between Serbian national workers and the local population was not bridged well.

Under these circumstances, only Carigradski glasnik diligently completed its mission. However, because of Ottoman press regulations it was forced to present a euphemized reality that local readers simply did not buy into. In spite of these facts, this paper managed to bring its readers (Serbian national workers, educated and the illiterate population to whom Carigradski glasnik was read) together, focusing on topics that, according to the paper, constituted aspects of Serbian nationhood, such as language, celebrations, folk songs and customs. In this sense, Carigradski glasnik certainly propagated Serbian nationhood in a manner in which it was envisioned by Serbian elites and members of the intelligentsia.

It was a “war of statistics,” as Gounaris has called it, in which quantity was much more important than quality. This was one reason why certain Serbian diplomatic circles were terrified of solving the nüfüs question. The urban intelligentsia from the region sometimes displayed multiple and shifting loyalties despite the efforts of the schools they attended. The case of Kosta Grupčević and Temko Popović illustrates this well. Although they attended Greek schools they did not become “Hellenized” Macedonians, but rather gradually became (Macedonian) Serbs. On the other hand, the illiterate rural population did not have time to contemplate nationhood. Only coercion or pragmatic interests yielded results. However, the somewhat mixed nature of these “results” is illustrated clearly by the citation from Nušić. Three seemingly different propaganda campaigns had a strong effect on the careers of people in a single family. The cultural identities of the Balkans were entangled indeed.

Archival Sources

Arhiv Srbije (AS) SN, 128, Letter from Novaković to Ristić, 1887.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

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Jagodić, Miloš. “Извештај Бранислава Нушића о путовању из Приштине у Скадар 1894. године” [Report of Branislav Nušić on the Journey from Prishtina to Skadar in 1894]. Мешовита грађа 31 (2010): 259–88.

Ristović, Aleksandar. “Реферат Јована Јовановића о односу Србије према реформској акцији у Солунском, Битољском и Косовском вилајету” [Jovan Jovanović’s Expert Opinion on the Position of Serbia Regarding the Reform Action in the Vilayets of Salonika, Bitola and Kosovo] Мешовита грађа 31 (2010): 325–86.

Temko Popov letter. Accessed May 17, 2014. http://documents-mk.blogspot.hu/2011/01/temko-popov-letter.html.

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Brummett, Palmira. Image and Imperialism in the Ottoman Revolutionary Press, 1908–1911. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000.

Cowan, Jane, ed. Macedonia: The Politics of Identity and Difference. London: Pluto Press, 2000.

Deringil, Selim. Well-Protected Domains. London–New York: I.B. Tauris, 1998.

Fox, Jon E., and Cynthia Miller-Idriss. “Everyday nationhood.” Ethnicities 8, no. 4 (2008): 536–63.

Friedman, Victor A. “The Modern Macedonian Standard Language and its Relation to Modern Macedonian Identity.” In The Macedonian Question: Culture, Historiography, Politics, edited by Victor Roudometof, 173–201. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

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Grandits, Hannes, Nathalie Clayer, and Robert Pichler. Introduction to Conflicting Loyalties in the Balkans. London–New York: I.B. Tauris, 2011. 1–13.

Jagodić, Miloš. “Нуфуско питање: проблем званичног признавања српске нације у Турској, 1894–1910” [Nüfüs Question: Problem of Official Recognition of the Serbian Nation in Turkey, 1894–1910]. Историјски часопис 57 (2008): 343–54.

Kechriotis, Vangelis. “The Modernization of the Empire and the Community ‘Privileges’: Greek Orthodox Responses to the Young Turk policies.” In The State and the Subaltern. Modernization, Society and the State in Turkey and Iran, edited by Touraj Atabaki, 53–70. London–New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007. Accessed June 29, 2014. https://www.academia.edu/1545927/The_Modernisation_of_the_Empire_and_the_Community_Privileges_Greek_responses_to_the_Young_Turk_policies.

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Nadine Akhund

Stabilizing a Crisis and the Mürzsteg Agreement of 1903: International Efforts to Bring Peace to Macedonia

„Though I am in the service of the Ottomans for the reorganization of the gendarmerie, my position is essentially an international one and I must consider myself someone working under the mandate of the Great Powers, who have accepted the Mürzsteg Plan.”

General de Robilant1

In 1903, the Macedonian Question was at the roots of the first concerted European international intervention. The Mürzsteg Agreement, which was signed by the six great powers and the Ottoman Empire, was an attempt at common European diplomacy.
The Mürzsteg Agreement, which was reached following the failure of the Illinden uprising launched by the Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, placed the three vilayets of Macedonia under the collective control of the great powers. Drawing on diplomatic reports, in this essay I emphasize the “spirit of Mürzsteg” and trace the process of the establishment of an international military and civil administration. The Mürzsteg Agreement gave a substantial peace-keeping role to a large group, including diplomats, military missions, two Civil Agents and their Ottoman counterparts. The paper studies the implementation of the Agreement. How did the ill-defined document lead to the emergence of new maps of Macedonia? In addition to the existing Ottoman administrative map, two others appeared as the three vilayets were divided into five international sectors, each of which was under the control of one of the great powers, and a “religious or mental map” of the region the site of bitter, violent religious-civil conflict began to emerge in 1904, when the two Orthodox churches of the Patriarchate and the Exarchate launched a campaign to convince the populations to declare themselves either Greek or Bulgarian.
In conclusion, the paper assesses the legacy of the Mürzsteg Agreement. This short but meaningful episode represented an innovative approach in the policy of the great powers that was based on emerging concepts such as negotiation, collective action, and dialogue in a recognized international mandate. The concerted intervention of the six great European powers in Macedonia belongs to a broader process of evolution in the history of European international relations, a process that yielded more palpable results after 1918 with the establishment of the League of Nations and the emergence of a new, if short-lived, international order.

Keywords: Macedonia, international intervention, Mürzsteg Agreement, national question, administrative reforms

Introduction

In the fall of 1903, the Macedonian question acquired an international dimension for the great powers, the neighboring Balkans states, and the Macedonian national movement (IMRO), which indeed played the leading role in the affairs of this Ottoman province. The particular context in Macedonia offered a unique opportunity to the great powers to launch an international intervention based on the emerging concept of collective diplomacy, which resulted in an agreement later imposed on Sultan Abdülhamid II (1876–1909).

Several parameters shaped the Macedonian Question. The term “Macedonia” reflected a shifting and evolving concept in both time and space, both as a geographical expression and as a historical region. By 1900, the region was an Ottoman territory and a stake for the new Balkans states of Serbia, Greece, Romania and autonomous Bulgaria, which were struggling with the significant influence of the neighboring empires of Austria–Hungary and Russia. The Macedonian question was a plural reality as there was no “single Macedonia,” but rather several Macedonia(s) that coexisted simultaneously. The administrative Macedonia was composed of three Ottoman districts, the vilayets of Salonika, Monastir and Kosovo.2 The multi-ethnic Macedonian population included less than 3,000,000 inhabitants. From the perspective of religion, Macedonia was divided between two Orthodox churches, the Patriarchate and the Exarchate, not to mention the division between the Christians and the Muslims and a substantial Jewish community living in Salonika.3 Finally, Macedonia as a potential state faced two major ongoing challenges, namely the building and recognition of its national identity and the delineation of its borders.

The entrance of Macedonia into the international arena resulted from the Illinden uprising, which was triggered by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), the goal of which was to free the three vilayets from Ottoman rule.4 In October 1903, after three months of fighting, the revolutionary forces of 20,000 to 30,000 comitadjis were defeated by Ottoman III Army Corps.5 However, from IMRO’s point of view the uprising brought a partial diplomatic success, as the attention of the great powers was finally directed towards the Macedonian Question. Why was there an international intervention? Without giving too much credit to international public opinion, one should note that the European press covered the uprising in a manner that prefigured the press coverage of the Balkans Wars ten years later. As an editorial in the L’Illustration emphasized, the press offered daily coverage of what was happening only “40 hours away from Paris.”6 Also several committees, among them the Balkan Committee in London, were acting as influential groups and pleading the cause of the “Macedonian people.”7 Nevertheless, the decisive role was played by the great powers or “the group of Two+Four,” which led to the Macedonian Question gaining international status. On one side, Austria–Hungary and Russia occupied a decisive position in the region because of their geographical proximity, combined with their traditional and historical ties to the Balkans, best represented at that time by the compromise of 1897.8 On the other side, France, Great Britain, Italy and Germany had long-standing cultural interests in the region, as well as more recently developed economic interests. The railroad network was built thanks to invested funds from Paris, Vienna and Berlin.9

The origins of the international intervention were twofold. First, the immediate origins of the Mürzsteg Agreement were to be found in IMRO’s program. Created in 1893, IMRO was the first organized movement that claimed “Macedonia” as an autonomous entity within the Ottoman Empire. IMRO’s leaders, mostly schoolteachers, spread revolutionary propaganda with the intention of fostering a Macedonian national identity. At the same time, the revolutionary committees, the comitadjis, conducted an armed struggle against any Ottoman’s interests and structures. The Macedonian movement succeeded in establishing a climate of “permanent uprising” that was described at length by diplomats and travelers of the time.10 Second, the more distant origins of the intervention lay in the Berlin Treaty of 1878, which created a legal precedent for the involvement of the great powers in an Ottoman territory. Article 23 foresaw the implementation of reforms allowing Christians to participate in rulings on administrative matters with rights equal to those held by the Muslims. However, until 1903 these reforms were not implemented by the Ottoman authorities.

Using the Macedonian context this paper demonstrates how a shift toward a new international order took place with the Mürzsteg Agreement. The six great powers decided on a common solution for the Ottoman province and then unilaterally imposed a new administrative regime. This intervention was also influenced by new concepts, including the reestablishment of security and peace in devastated areas and the protection of civilian populations from military casualties. These concepts would play an increasingly significant role in the politics and diplomacy of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.11

International Control in Macedonia and the “Spirit of Mürzsteg”

On 25 November, 1903, in the aftermath of the Illinden uprising and two months of intense negotiations, Sultan Abdülhamid II reluctantly accepted the Mürzsteg Agreement, a reform plan consisting of nine Articles. In accordance with the agreement, the three vilayets were placed under the collective international control of Austria-Hungary, Russia, France, Germany, Great Britain and Italy. The Mürzsteg Agreement simultaneously represented a break-up and the outcome of the international policy conducted up until then by the great powers in the Balkans. It was a break from the policy of intervention, which primarily took the form of military campaigns, and contributed significantly to the formation of the modern Balkan states and the defense of the Orthodox populations. With the Mürzsteg Agreement, the great powers rejected the military option and opted for the concerted action of peacemaking.

The international intervention was binding for two years, it was renewed in 1905, and it applied to a clearly delimited space, the three vilayets. It also constituted a break from the traditional practice of military occupation, which meant the continued presence of troops on conquered (or liberated) territories, as was the case, for instance, in Bosnia Herzegovina in 1878.

The agreement was also the culmination of a process of implementation of reforms, which had begun with the discussion of changes in 1878 that had come up again in 1896. In fact, the new approach of the great powers in Macedonia was linked to and indeed closely followed two similar cases. One was Armenia (1895–96), where no intervention took place, and the other was Crete (1897–98), which can be seen as a “pre-Mürzsteg operation.” As Alois von Aehrenthal, Austrian Ambassador in Bucharest and later in St. Petersburg, commented with regards to the attitude of Vladimir Nikolayevich Lamsdorff, foreign minister of the Russian Empire from 1900 to 1906, “from the beginning, the Count [Lamsdorff] was partisan to follow the modus procedendi as implemented in Crete.”12 At the time, unrest and violence near Kustendil (vilayet of Kossovo) and Melnik (vilayet of Salonika) led to the partial extension of a series of reforms, originally promulgated on 20 October, 1895 for the Armenian vilayets, to be partially extended to those of Macedonia in 1896.13 A supervisory committee was appointed to monitor the local authorities, control taxes, and encourage applications from non-Muslim elements in the administration. In 1897, following the brief Greek–Ottoman war and other continuous troubles, the island of Crete was placed under the supervision of the six great powers. However, Germany and Austria–Hungary withdrew their troops from the intervention in 1898. Following serious trouble in Macedonia during the winter of 1902, an embryonic reform program was adopted in December of 1902. Louis Steeg, the French consul in Salonika, suggested the nomination of foreign inspectors to supervise security as well as foreign instructors to command the gendarmerie.14 Later, in February of 1903, a specific six-point plan, the Viennese Plan, was set forth by Austro–Hungarian and Russian ambassadors. However, in the case of Mürzsteg, the concerted action of the six powers became a reality for four continuous years.

How was this international intervention undertaken? What was the mechanism? During the winter of 1903, Austria–Hungary and Russia played the leading role in the process of internationalizing the Macedonian Question. These two traditionally warring powers became the mediators and the leaders of a negotiated solution. This approach transformed what was originally a simple provincial revolt against the Sultan’s government into a matter of international diplomacy that required a consensus among seven parties to arrive at a settlement acceptable to all. First, Vienna and Saint Petersburg, while rejecting the military option, tried to maintain their exclusive position in Macedonian affairs, based on the status quo of 1897. However, they had to compromise, as France and Great Britain showed a stronger interest in the situation in Macedonia, even going so far as to suggest the venue of an international conference and the appointment of a Christian governor.15 The result was the Mürzsteg Agreement, an Austrian–Russian initiative taken to involve but at the same time to limit as much as possible the role and the influence of the other great powers, namely, France, Great Britain, Germany and Italy. The idea was to admit them as limited partners while emphasizing the concept of “Two+Four” even more and using Article 23 of the Berlin Treaty. Count Agenor Maria Adam Goluchowski, a Polish-born Austrian statesman credited with a détente in relations between the Austro–Hungarian Monarchy and the Russian Empire, wrote to his ambassador in Russia that the two Empires must on “the contrary keep more than ever in our hands the management of the affairs of the Balkan peninsula,” and he was skeptical about the Sultan’s willingness to agree with the concept of autonomy implied in Article 23.16 Ultimately, the agreement was simply imposed on the Ottoman government.

The Mürzsteg plan was based on three main concepts. In the short term, it reestablished security and order in the three vilayets with the collaboration of the Ottoman authorities. It also ensured assistance for the civilian populations, who had suffered greatly from months of fighting. From Vienna, Goluchowski used the terms “humanitarian action” and “pacifying action” in several reports to assess the conditions of civilians in terms of post military conflict situations related to the emerging international law.17 Finally, for the longer term, the Mürzsteg Agreement was designed to restructure the gendarmerie and the civil government radically through the implementation of reforms supervised by foreign officers and to provide for substantial representation of the Christians elements. The Mürzsteg Program was conceived as a form of combined civil and a military international control.

According to Article 1, Russia and Austria–Hungary were granted two administrators or Civil Agents to assist the Ottoman General Inspector in charge of the implementation of the reform program.18 Appointed in December of 1902 as part of the reform plan enacted by the Sultan, the Inspector General Hussein Hilmi Pasha (1857–1922) worked his entire life for the Ottoman government and enjoyed the confidence of Abdülhamid. Hilmi Pasha had previously been posted in Asia Minor, Damascus, and Yemen, where for seven years he demonstrated his skills as administrator. The French journalist Michel Paillares, who met him in Macedonia in 1904, wrote of him, “[h]e is a charmer, enjoyable, pleasant to meet... he has a prodigious capacity at work, he is of a tireless activity.”19 Heinrich Müller Roghoj (1853–1905), who was sent from Vienna, was familiar with the Balkans, since he had served in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1879. He spoke Turkish, Serbian, Bulgarian and Russian. As Consul General, he was stationed in Odessa. Nicolas Demerik, the Russian Civil Agent, had previously been posted in Beirut and Monastir. The Civil Agents took several steps immediately to address the issues linked to the aftermath of the insurrection. They secured funds to help refugees, who primarily sought refuge in Bulgaria, and rebuilt destroyed villages. They also oversaw the appointment of Christian rural guards in the villages, a function that was normally assumed by Muslims, who were responsible for significant tensions and even mistreatment of non-Muslim populations.20 In addition, they received peasant delegations and filed their complaints against the abuses of the administration. However, the decisions regarding the practical outcomes of these cases remained in the hands of the Ottomans. To assess the situation, the Civil Agents took inspection tours across the vilayets and visited prisons. However, they were escorted by Ottoman officers and used translators. Until their departure in 1908, these two men remained under the close supervision of Hilmi Pasha. If the relationships between the three men were cordial despite a certain ambiguity, the overall results of their actions remained limited. The Civil Agents certainly exerted a moral influence, as Hilmi Pasha had to take into consideration their constant presence at his side. According to a Russian report, the officers were “an element of European permanent control.”21

The reform of the gendarmerie, as defined by Article 2 of the Mürzsteg plan, foresaw the introduction of Christian elements in this military corps, which functioned primarily as a rural police force and traditionally was largely dominated by Muslims elements.22 The gendarmerie was a preventive and repressive police responsible for public security. The organization of the reform was entrusted to an Italian General, Emilio Degiorgis (1844–1908).23 The three vilayets were divided into five sectors, each placed under the control of one of the great powers, with the exception of Germany. Berlin, seeking to preserve its good relations with the Sultan, decided to take on only the leadership of the new gendarmerie school created in Salonika. In each zone, an officer mission sent by the great powers was responsible for the reorganization of the local police in agreement with the Ottoman authorities. In May of 1904, the officers moved into their respective sectors, namely, France and Great Britain to Serres and Drama (Northeast of Salonika); the Russians to the southern section in the vilayet of Salonika; the Austrians to Uskub–Skopje (vilayet of Kossovo); and the Italians to the west of Monastir. The manner in which the sectors were divided up among the great powers clearly illustrated how Vienna and Saint Petersburg maintained their leadership in the Macedonian question. Because of its own strategic military interests, Vienna wanted to withdraw the districts where the majority population was Albanian from the reforms and also to prevent the vilayet of Monastir from being assigned to Italy. Indeed, if Rome succeeded in establishing its influence in Albania, notably among the Catholic-Albanian population, Italy would eventually control the Adriatic Sea, at the north point of which was Pola (today Pula in Croatia), the Austro–Hungarian naval military base. After negotiations, the Albanian districts were excluded from the reforms, but the vilayet of Monastir was assigned to Italy. From 1904 to 1908 the relationship between Rome and Vienna remained tense. In addition, it was essential for the double monarchy to control the region around Uskub because of its proximity to Serbia. Vienna paid particular attention to the territorial ambitions of Belgrade, which were aimed at creating a “Greater Serbia” that would include the vilayet of Kossovo. As Russia was assigned the southern area around Salonika, these two powers held de facto control over the north–south strategic line of communication, Uskub–Salonika.

Between 1904 and 1908, 48 officers were sent to Macedonia, a low figure given the task at hand.24 Originally, 60 officers were to be engaged, a temporary workforce that was to be increased up to 200, along with further implementation of the reforms. However, the opposition of the Sultan led the great powers to revise this figure.25 The officers signed an individual contract for two years, then renewed it in 1906. They entered the Ottoman army with a rank superior to the rank they held in their own national army. In 1904, following the Vienna Plan, six officers from Norway, Sweden and Belgium were posted in Macedonia, two in the vilayet of Uskub, three in the vilayet of Salonika and one in the vilayet of Monastir.26 Their mission was to reorganize the gendarmerie. The Sultan tried to integrate them into the officer corps newly hired, but the great powers refused. These six officers were not officially assimilated into the Mürzsteg Agreement. Diplomatic sources only mentioned them individually, and it seems that they were not treated as group with a specific status.

According to diplomatic and military sources, the Christian people greeted with relief the arrival of the foreign officers, who “were welcomed as a safeguard against administrative arbitrariness.”27 In each sector, the officers requested the dismissal of the officers and policemen they evaluated as incompetent. However, as he had done with the Civil Agents, the Sultan refused to grant the officers the right to make decisions, and the Ottoman officials left pending requests for an indefinite period. The foreign officers’ role was limited to providing suggestions and advice. Until 1908, the Sultan refused to yield, despite repeated requests from the chiefs of the military missions. Colonel Verand, Chief of the French mission, felt obliged to clarify the meaning of his men’s mission: “First, it has been established that foreign officers do not have the effective command, you do not have the right to give orders.”28 The officers were also responsible for providing a better sense of duty and discipline to the Ottoman gendarmes and reorganizing the network of gendarmes-posts, known as the karakols, “the very basis of the reorganization, since the foundation of this institution guarantees the service of a good gendarmerie.”29 By 1908, a total of 184 karakols had been built and fully equipped.30

In each sector, the officer responsible conducted inspection tours to supervise the working of the service, an essential function according to Colonel Verand. Because of the limited number of officers, each one supervised a large territory. During halts, he made sure that the villages were patrolled and the local gendarmes did not commit abuses, such as brutal searches or arbitrary arrests, and also engaged in talks with local leaders. Most of the officers knew at least one of the languages spoken in the area, or they learned Turkish.31 While improvement of the situation remained relative, the presence of the officer certainly encouraged the Ottoman military to show more restraint and limit excesses against civilians. On the ground, these officers met with the peasants who had taken part in the battles of the previous summer or been victims of the revolt and repression. The officers drew attention to the miserable conditions in which these peasants lived. They then realized that their mission had a complex political aspect. To what extent could they or should they denounce the abuses of an administration that had just hired them? Several officers sensitive to the fate of the peasants defended them in their reports. Michel Paillarès, who visited the French sector twice in 1904 and 1905, described at length how the officers felt “invested with a reforming zeal that would fix everything, straighten all.”32 Until 1908, this issue remained unresolved. The fine line between the matters linked to the reorganization of the police force and matters that were more political remained unclear, as the peasants who joined IMRO’s cause complained purposely (or not?) about abuses committed by the gendarmes. Despite difficult living and hard working conditions, the officers performed their duties in the best possible way given the narrow margin of maneuvering. According to the reports from the French and Austrian missions, the daily living conditions were difficult. Isolation was often mentioned, as was uncertainty and communication problems resulting from IMRO’s attacks, as well as the difficult climate, health problems, and cases of malaria.

To complete the picture of the international police, one should note the reactions of the Muslim populations. Overall the Muslims remained hostile to and irritated by the Mürzsteg program, which was perceived as a set of measures in support of Christians in a country where the official religion was Islam. The officers were seen as a symbol of military occupation with its resulting constraints. Captain Falconetti, French officer commented that the Turks “have adopted the conspiracy of silence, their attitude passive, quiet, while monitoring closely every move of the officer.”33 Colonel Léon Lamouche noted that “the Ottoman military regarded the foreign intervention as a deep humiliation for their country.”34 Up to 1908, the Ottoman authorities reluctantly implemented the reforms, following the direct orders of the Sultan. A complex personality, Abdülhamid II reigned for 32 years. Paul Cambon, the French ambassador to Istanbul, emphasized his acute intelligence and his comprehension of state affairs, guided by an extraordinary will to remain in power.35 Abdülhamid had one objective, that was to preserve the territorial integrity of the empire and, consequently, to limit the intervention of the great powers, which was intolerable to him, as he was highly conscious of his political, spiritual and dynastic authority.36

The Meanings of the Mürzsteg Agreement: Its Consequences, Limits, and Legacy

Intended originally only to be in effect for a limited period of time, the text of the Mürzsteg Agreement is relatively short, and the nine Articles were inadequately written in an assertive simple style, without an introduction. Overall, the agreement relied on a paradox, a fundamental misunderstanding, which was to become the cause of trouble and violence from 1904 to 1908. For the great powers, the Mürzsteg Agreement was viewed as a means of maintaining the status quo, a guarantee of stability which, although somewhat uncertain, was seen as preferable to the departure of the Turks and the disorder that would certainly follow. As the text was valid for all the Christians, it eliminated the national claims of Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria. However, the Christian people perceived the agreement as a guarantee of help from the great powers, and they later used it to justify their respective independence movements in Macedonia. During the spring of 1904, violence broke out and again there were massacres. This bloodshed involved not only the IMRO, but also national movements sustained by the Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian and even Romanian governments eager to achieve the “one nation within one state” concept. By then the delimitation and recognition of borders as part of the shaping of national identities had been fully integrated into the state building processes in the Balkans, as had happened earlier in the nineteenth century in the rest of the region. Despite its weaknesses and its malfunctions on the ground, in this context the Mürzsteg Agreement can be viewed as an attempt to move beyond the border concept. The establishment of an international administrative system could have transcended the national issues linked to the delimitation of borders. Unfortunately, the agreement produced the exact opposite, as one of its immediate outcomes was the emergence of a “second mental map” of Macedonia based on a combination of national and religious criteria.

What was the substance of Macedonian national identity in the aftermath of Illinden? In 1904, the concept was not strongly noticeable on the ground. “There is a Macedonia, but there are no Macedonians” is a concise formula that summarizes the impressions of diplomats.37 The fact is that IMRO failed to awaken Macedonian national sentiment, as the defeat of the insurrection clearly demonstrated. The movement was probably too “young.” Indeed barely a decade had passed since its foundation. In addition, it was weakened by internal dissensions further worsened by personal antagonisms between its leaders. In 1904, people who had expected real change with the implementation of the reforms had grown disappointed. The text of Mürzsteg acted as a catalyst, worsening the situation considerably. The region found itself torn apart by bitter, violent religious-national conflict. Here one can speak of the emergence of “mental and even religious borders” in Macedonia. The two Orthodox Churches, the Patriarchate and the Exarchate, sustained by Athens and Sofia respectively, launched a campaign to “convince” the populations to declare themselves either Greek or Bulgarian. This conflict had a double origin. First, the Bulgarian Exarchate was basing its strategies on the firman (decree) of 1870, according to which if two-third of the inhabitants of a locality opted for the Exarchate, they could join the Bulgarian Church. The territory under the Exarchate jurisdiction included parts of Eastern Macedonia. Around 1900, the influence of the Patriarchate declined significantly, and the number of Exarchate bishops multiplied. Second, Article 3 of the Mürzsteg Agreement, the content of which was ambiguous, indicated a future “modification in the delimitation of administrative units in view of a more normal grouping of different nationalities.” In the Ottoman context, people defined themselves by their religious affiliation, such as Patriarchate, Exarchate, or simply Orthodox Christians, Muslims, Jews etc. As Albert Malet indicated in 1903, “in Turkey, it is the religion, or rather the Church which determines nationality: one depends on the other and the Turks recognize a nationality only if it has an ecclesiastical hierarchy of its own.” 38 However astute this insight may have been, it did not exclude the fact that some people also felt genuinely Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, or even Macedonian, more specifically in urban areas, where education was on the rise.

Since the notion of Macedonian national identity was limited, the Greek, Bulgarian, Serbs movements and IMRO, by anticipating future Ottomans decisions, estimated that membership in one of the two Churches would be the criteria retained by the Ottomans, not nationality. In fact, in 1905, the Ottoman authorities launched a census based on religious affiliation, a long, complex undertaking that began with the counting of houses. In her recent book, İpek Yosmaoğlu argues on the basis of Ottoman records that since the Ottomans had decided the census throughout the empire before the agreement, it was not the trigger of the violence.39 However, the two Orthodox Churches, the Patriarchate and the Exarchate, adopted a radical position. The role of the Churches became instrumental, as the clergy, including several bishops, openly took up the Greek, Bulgarian, or Serbian national point of view.40 Religious affiliation and national identity therefore became closely interconnected. Joining the Patriarchate meant being “Greek,” while being affiliated with the Exarchate meant being “Bulgarian.” From 1904 to 1908, the diplomats noted a general decline in the situation and the exacerbation of hatred and daily violence, which they described as an open war among Christians.41 Furthermore, the role of the two Churches became overtly political, serving the unachieved national ambitions of the Balkan governments. “The conflict of nationalities in Macedonia arose as a fight between Churches more than as a fight of races,” commented Steeg.42 “The most odious attacks are between Bulgarians, Serbs and Greeks,” wrote Goluchowski, and “the murders follow, one after the other, the acts of wild revenge multiply.”43 In 1907, alarmed by the gravity of the situation, the great powers attempted to provide a better definition of Article 3. In September, an Austrian–Russian note was sent to Athens, Sofia and Belgrade indicating that the territorial delimitation “will not in any case take into consideration the national changes resulting from the terrorist activities... this delimitation will instead be based on the principle of the status quo ante.”44 However, the weak and vague formulation only added to the complexity of the situation and brought no improvement. The outcome was complex, as Macedonia, still an Ottoman territory with the vilayets administration, was divided along international delimitations as defined by the great powers and simultaneously along religious lines best represented by the fight between the two orthodox Churches and running along a North–South division of the region. The political and administrative delimitation did not correspond to the mental-religious ones.

The international efforts to stabilize the situation in Macedonia were undertaken by a large and substantial international group of military and non-military individuals. This group was formed to implement the reforms. Can one talk about “good governance”? Can this group be described as “professional experts” sent into the field? The mechanism was highly complicated and multiple actors were involved at different levels. On the civil side, there was the General Inspector and the two Civil Agents, who reported directly to their ambassadors. Both men were also in contact with their consuls in Macedonia and occasionally met with the ones from France, Great Britain, Italy and Germany, who watched over them closely. The two Civil Agents were crucial elements whose role and impact could have been decisive if they had had stronger personalities. Here, Vienna and Saint Petersburg bore some responsibility. Steeg and his Austro–Hungarian colleague, August Kral, described the Russian agent, Nicolas Demerik, as a weak, hesitant man, who was not very active or involved and had fragile health.45 According to Michel Paillares, Demerik was a mere shadow of his Austro-Hungarian colleague, and he simply approved of everything he was told.46 Heinrich Müller de Roghoj also had health problems and died in 1905. He was replaced by Richard Oppenheimer, who had previously been posted at the Pireus. On the military side, the international military commission included no less than 15 people. The general in charge of the reorganization of the gendarmerie was assisted by two officers, one Italian and one Russian. The six military delegates were chiefs of the military missions without a former contract with the Ottomans authorities. Finally, the six military attachés from the great powers were included as part of the commission, so as not to forget the officers in their sectors. Symbolically, the meetings between the six ambassadors or the military delegates always took place at the Austro-Hungarian embassy under the patronage of Ambassador Heinrich Calice (1830–1912), the doyen of the diplomats posted in Istanbul.

Adding to the complexity of the system, the Mürzsteg program did not define the relationship between the Civil Agents and their military counterparts precisely. The former were to “watch over the implementation of the reforms and the appeasement of the populations,” while the latter were in charge of the reform of the gendarmerie.47 As noted above, the officers sent the peasants’ complaints to the Civil Agents or the ambassadors, who occasionally transmitted them to the Ottoman authorities. Could the reorganization of the gendarmerie be placed under the supervision of the Civil Agents? Certainly not, but in 1904 the Austrian–Hungarians did suggest subordinating the international military structure to a mixed council under the control of two representatives from Vienna and Saint Petersburg.48 The initiative was taken by the Austro–Hungarian military attaché, Vladimir von Giesl. Hilmi Pasha approved it, as he estimated that the more complex the international administration became, the less efficient it would be. The French, British, and Germans rejected the project and it was abandoned. If the relationships between the Civil Agents and the General Inspector remained cordial and courteous (though dominated by Hilmi Pasha), the relationships between the Civil Agents and General Degiorgis were tense. Their personalities were too divergent for them to have been able to find a common language. Degiorgis showed a non-conformist and debonair attitude regarding the Ottomans, which seemed too familiar and shocked Müller de Roghoj and Demerik.49

Behind the Mürzsteg Agreement lay the political game of the great powers, wavering between support for the somewhat justified national aspirations of the Christians in Macedonia and maintenance of the political stability of the region by tolerating the heavy-handed approach of the Sultan. While they had been unanimous in setting up the agreement, each used it to reinforce its own position in the region and further its own political or economic influence within the Ottoman Empire. In Macedonia, each chief of the military delegation, i.e. each officer, remained first and foremost a delegate of the Great Power he represented, and thus linked to its politics, traditions and customs. Occasionally, some found themselves in contradiction with representatives of the other great powers. There is little trace in the reports of any sense of solidarity between the officers or the chiefs of the mission.

Finally, the reforms comprised of the superimposition of an existing administration without the introduction of any real changes. They consisted of a multiplication of complex international machinery, the functions of which remained inadequately defined. Nevertheless, on the one hand, the text of Mürzsteg provided a common basis for collective action among the great powers and prevented the abandonment of the reforms. The text thus helped to maintain the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, which was increasingly fragile. On the other hand, one must recall the European international context, as the years between 1904 and 1908 correspond to the strengthening of the military alliances, the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente, further reducing the likelihood of any long-term policy based on cooperation among the great powers.

In addition to these considerations, one should also ask the question regarding the reality of the Macedonian issue. To what extent did support for the Macedonian cause or the promotion of the partition of the vilayets between the Balkans states present a real interest for the great powers from the perspective of international policy? As a map of the region makes clear, since the railway network consisting of three major lines that allowed access to the Mediterranean Sea, the port of Salonika was of the greatest potential interest to the great powers. The town had 150,000 inhabitants and occupied the third rank in terms of economic activity after Istanbul, Beirut and Izmir (Smyrna). The modernization of the infrastructures of this port was completed in 1905. The true importance of Macedonia thus would be more one of an economic than political nature.

Between 1905 and 1907, the Mürzsteg Agreement produced an unexpected outcome by ending the exclusive domination that Vienna and Saint Petersburg had maintained not only in Macedonia but in the Balkans since 1897. The weight of the “Agreement for Two” dominated the Macedonian question, thus slowing the process of application of the reforms, as the two powers, while neutralizing their traditional rivalry in the area, also slowed down as far as they could the meddling of Paris, London, Berlin and Rome. In 1905, the great powers further pursued the implementation of the reforms laid down in Articles 4 and 8 of the Mürzsteg program in finance and justice. However, the implementation of these reforms was never more than partial, indicating both the strength of the Sultan’s position and the limits of the international consensus.

In Macedonia, the financial situation was reaching a critical point as the deficit for the three vilayets reached more than 600,000 Turkish pounds.50 The governors had to answer to the sudden orders from the Sultan, who was asking for more funds. Numerous administration officials had not been paid for months. Extortion of funds and corruption were common, especially among members of the police force. The financial reform resulted from an Austro–Russian initiative, and it was the last one taken by the two ambassadors, each of whom was an expert in Ottoman policy. Both Heinrich Calice and Ivan Zinoviev51 played a key role in the process. The first had been stationed in Istanbul since 1880 and the second since 1897. They proposed placing the income, expenditures and annual budget of the three vilayets under the triple control of Hilmi Pasha, the two Civil Agents and the supervision of an international financial commission of four delegates named by France, Great Britain, Italy, and Germany. This project was promptly rejected by Abdülhamid. The Sultan then requested an increase in tariffs of 3 percent, from 8 percent to 11, to meet the extraordinary expenses resulting from the situation in Macedonia. Multiple notes, drafts and counter-drafts were exchanged between the Sultan and the representatives of the great powers, using the ambassadors of Vienna and Saint Petersburg as intermediaries. In November of 1905, the Sultan persisted in his refusals. At the proposal of the Austro–Hungarian government, the powers sent an international squadron of eight battleships and an armed force of 3,000 men to conduct a naval demonstration under the walls of Istanbul.52 On 25 November, the international force left Piraeus for the island of Mytilene and then Lemnos and seized the customs, post and telegraph offices. On 5 December, the Sultan yielded. Macedonian finances were placed under the control of the international financial commission, which remained active until 1908. The most serious defect according to a French report was that military expenses were not included among the responsibilities of the financial commission.53 Its enforcement also was limited because of the troubled situation in Macedonia and the misunderstandings among the members of the commission.

Here one should note that the military option, as a coercive method, was indeed a significant part of the Mürzsteg program. It carried considerable weight as a potential threat to guarantee the implementation of the reforms. The Sultan protested against such “direct interference” by foreign representatives “in purely domestic affairs of the country, as such action prejudiced its independence and its sovereign rights, which the powers had repeatedly and solemnly committed to respect.”54 As France, Great Britain, Germany and Italy were represented in the permanent institution, recognized by the Ottoman government, this financial reform ended the “exclusive control” that Vienna and Saint Petersburg had maintained over the Macedonian Question within the Mürzsteg Agreement. Furthermore, if the gendarmerie reform was part of an agreement signed for only a limited period of time, the financial reform resulted from a separate text fully acknowledged by the consensus of the great powers and the Sultan.

Two years later, in 1907, at Russia’s initiative, the great powers proposed to establish international control over the Macedonian judicial system, which was undermined by corruption, and to introduce Christians into the courts of justice.55 Based on a complex arrangement, the functioning of the justice system would be supervised by six inspectors (three Christians and three Muslims) and would be dependent on the Financial Commission. The great powers could not agree either on the procedure to nominate the inspectors or on the question of whether or not they were to be from Europe, as was suggested by London, or subjects of the Ottoman Empire, as was favored by Vienna. Following several unsuccessful meetings between the six ambassadors in Istanbul, the project was finally adjourned in February 1908.

At another level, the Mürzsteg Agreement and the observations made in the diplomatic sources demonstrate a turning point in international affairs within diplomatic circles of the time. As already noted, the military option was disregarded and collective action was taken. The pragmatic approach chosen by Vienna and Saint Petersburg was guided by the increasing interest shown by Paris and London in Macedonia. One can describe the approach of the great powers in this regard in terms of contemporary crisis management theory. The foreign offices of the great powers opted to respond to and address the crisis with a certain opportunism, as Paris and London would finally have been able to play a larger role in Macedonian affairs, or, at least as they hoped, would have the option to do so. The collective intervention as undertaken in Macedonia belongs to a wider movement that was slowly emerging at the same time. A concept of international law was emerging as a corollary of the Peace Movement that appeared on the European stage at the end of the Crimean war. The Peace Movement linked economic prosperity to peace that can only be achieved through collective diplomacy. War was not going to disappear, but the rules of war should be codified through international law. Also, prevention of conflict appeared as a solution, along with collective foreign intervention to diffuse any crisis and thus ameliorate tensions. The Mürzsteg Agreement was framed by the Peace Movement, as best represented by the two Hague conferences of 1899 and 1907.56 However, the Peace Movement was swimming against the tide, as ultimately the war movement proved to be stronger.57

Finally, one should note that several of the concepts included in the Mürzsteg Agreement revolved around one major idea, namely the fates of civilians during times of war. The conditions of the civilian in a time of war acquired an official status ten years later, at the end of the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, with the international commission sent by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to investigate the treatment of civilians.58 These concepts, which included the needs of the Christian population in the aftermath of the uprising, the issues of the refugees and displaced peoples, their return, the examination of crimes that were committed during the insurrection, and certain practical measures, such as the exoneration of taxes for civilians in order to improve living conditions of victims and refugees, were emphasized in the Carnegie Report. In addition, one of the major figures at the Carnegie Endowment, Paul d’Estournelles de Constant (1852–1924), the director of the Carnegie European office in Paris and a convinced peace activist, was also involved in the cause of the Macedonian people. In 1903, he organized a large meeting in Paris to draw the attention of the French government to the miserable living conditions of the “oppressed Christian people” in the three vilayets.59

Conclusion

How should one assess the legacy of the Mürzsteg Agreement? It has been largely dismissed for its failure to bring peace and stability to Macedonia. Until recently, historians interpreted the international intervention merely as an Austrian–Russian manoeuver, arguing that Saint Petersburg was deeply involved in the Far East and Vienna refused to go to war for an ill-defined Macedonian entity. If the agreement was largely dominated by Saint Petersburg and Vienna, it was also based on a strong refusal to choose the military option, combined with the equally strong will to implement reforms through collective negotiation. The mechanism was highly innovative for its time, and the fact that, in accordance with its provisions, representatives of the six great powers sat together in discussion was an achievement in and of itself.

The program of Mürzsteg put Macedonia in a peculiar position, placing it, a territory of the Ottoman Empire, under the control of the six great powers with the reluctant agreement of the Sultan. While the Mürzsteg Agreement failed to establish autonomy or independence in Macedonia, it reinforced the perception of the region as a single political entity that in the future could become an independent state. The agreement represented an innovative approach in the foreign policy of the great powers, based on negotiation and collective action in a recognized time-limited international mandate.

Archival Sources

Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères (Paris) (AMAE), CP Turkey vol. 26, 29, 39, 42, 46, 52, 54, 139.

Österreichisches Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv (Vienna) Politisches Archiv (ÖHHStPA PA), XII, Turkey, 323, 324, 328, 329, 338; XXXVIII, 393; XXXIX, 2.

Service Historique de l’Armee de Terre (Paris) (SHAT), Turkey 7N1647 ; DP, Series 4–5.

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Yosmaoğlu, İpek. Blood Ties. Religion, Violence and the Politics of Nationhood in Ottoman Macedonia 1878–1908. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013.

 

Gábor Demeter and Krisztián Csaplár-Degovics

Social Conflicts, Changing Identities and Everyday Strategies of Survival in Macedonia on the Eve of the Collapse of Ottoman Central Power (1903–12)

The present study aims to identify certain social dividing lines, fractures and motivations that accelerated the rise in political murders and everyday violence after the Ilinden Uprising. The contribution of foreign intervention (including both the attempts of the great powers to settle the question and the propagandistic activity of neighboring small states) and local traditions (customs) to the nature and extent of violence are also investigated. The authors will also consider the shift in the support policy of neighboring small states from construction to destruction—including the issues of economic benefit and local acceptance at a time when selection of an identity no longer entailed only advantages, but imposed threats as well. During this period the boundaries between the various types of violent action triggered either by religious and school conflict or customs gradually faded, while Chetas became highly organized and self-subsistent through cultivation and smuggling of opium and tobacco and expropriation of state and private property. In order to trace the territorial and cultural patterns of violence as well as specific and general motives, the authors conducted a statistical analysis of quantitative data regarding victims and perpetrators.

The study is based on the comparison of Austro–Hungarian and Bulgarian archival sources in order to check the reliability of data. The study area—the Sanjak of Skopje in Kosovo Vilayet—is suitable for examining problems related to the birth of modern nations: the ethnic and religious diversity of this sanjak makes it possible to investigate both the tensions that existed within and between the Eastern Orthodox and Muslim religious communities as well as the impact of small states with territorial pretensions on this region.

Keywords: everyday violence, Macedonia, IMRO, victims, perpetrators

Introduction

In the aftermath of the 1878 Great Eastern Crisis, the remainder of the Balkan Peninsula had irreversibly become a frontier zone1 of the Ottoman Empire, a territory in which the collapsing central government was in direct contact with the rival great powers and the dynamically modernizing nation states nurturing expansive ambitions. This new situation sparked violence on the Ottoman side of the border, aggression that authorities either failed or did not even attempt to stop. By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, Ottoman central power almost totally collapsed in the Kosovo Vilayet, leaving a vacuum for the propagandistic activity of small states. This manifested itself in the competition for souls, schools and religious posts between Serbians and Bulgarians proclaiming nationalistic views and aspirations abroad (a revival of ethnic mapping) and in the establishment of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) in 1893. This initial phase of the Macedonian question culminated in an attempt to relieve the oppressed peasantry in the course of the Ilinden Uprising in 1903 with the active contribution of 15,000 guerillas and the local population.2 The subsequent plundering of 100 villages committed mainly by irregular Ottoman forces finally elicited the intervention of great powers to secure peace in the European Ottoman provinces. The suppression of the Ilinden Uprising and the cooperation of Macedonian nations provided a warning to Greece as well, prompting the vigorous awakening Greek propaganda.

The present study3 focuses on the period after the Ilinden Uprising until the outbreak of the Balkan Wars, and aims to identify certain social dividing lines, fractures and motivations that accelerated the escalation of everyday violence. The authors will also investigate territorial and cultural patterns of violence, specific and general motives as well as the contribution of foreign intervention (including both the attempts of the great powers to settle the question and the propagandistic activity of neighboring small states) and local tradition (customs) to the nature and extent of violence. The authors have also examined changes in the support policy of neighboring small states, including the issues of economic benefit and local acceptance at a time when the selection of an identity no longer entailed only advantages, but imposed threats as well.

The location to be investigated is the ethnically mixed Sanjak of Skopje in Kosovo Vilayet (organized in 1875–78) between the years 1903 and 1912 with a view toward the neighboring territories in order to assess the specific or general character of the evaluated events. The study area is suitable for analyzing problems related to the birth of modern nations: due to the ethnic and religious heterogeneity in the Sanjak of Skopje, tensions within and between its Eastern Orthodox and Muslim religious communities can be easily identified and demonstrated (Map 1, Table 1). Moreover, the sanjak was located close to the borders of small states with territorial pretensions toward this administrative unit of the Ottoman Empire, thereby adding an extra ingredient to the boiling pot.

In using the expression “everyday violence,” the authors refer to those acts of violence which took place among the civil population on a daily basis and were not connected to the law-enforcement activity of the authorities (military reprisals, border clashes, etc.).4 The theory of Georg Elwert provided an important methodological basis for the present work. He stresses that the weakening of the state creates a market and demand for violence in society (Gewaltmärkte), which is operated by communities organized for trading in violence and coercive measures as commodities (Gewaltgemeinschaften). These Gewaltgemeinschaften [vendors] are formed primarily for economic reasons, though economic factors are also abundant on the demand side as well (economic rivalry between groups over scarce resources usually appears under the guise of ideological conflict and in the form of prejudice against “the other”). These groups, which gradually take control over the monopoly over the use of force from the state, have their own dynamics, including operating conditions and laws.5

This phenomenon was examined primarily by sociologists and historians through case studies, concentrating on the reasons for violence and the formation of communities trading in violence. However, the internal cohesion and integrative power of these structures, as well as their regulative functions and social spheres of action are considered to be under-investigated. The uniqueness of this study is that it approaches the problem from economic aspects as well, stressing that special economic conditions triggered and accelerated the escalation, ethnicization and nationalization of violence in Macedonia. The authors would also like to draw attention to the practice (Gewaltpraxis) and yearly cycle of violence. Beyond the social life and background of Gewaltgemeinschaften, the victims of violence can also be examined at different levels.6

This investigation utilizes a special type of source—the observations of Austro–Hungarian consuls regarding everyday violence in comparison with contemporary Bulgarian consular reports. From a methodological point of view, a combination of Austro–Hungarian and Bulgarian archival sources (a comparison of data obtained from independent observers and participants in events) can be used in order to avoid partiality, since even the different terminology in Austrian and Bulgarian documents reflects differences in interpretation of the events.7 The re-interpretation of some sources using a comparative approach would also be worthwhile.

The limits of this study do not allow us to examine the origin of all fault lines and interactions: the authors therefore focus on the tensions between Muslims and Christians and the antagonism between Patriarchists and Exarchists.8 This chapter applies a statistical analysis of quantitative data regarding victims and perpetrators, tracing patterns, differences and general features. Analysis of selected individual case studies and the role of economic background will be published elsewhere.

 

Nationality		Kaza									Total
		Skopje	Kumanovo	Kriva Palanka	Kratovo	Kočani	Maleš (Osmanie)	Radovište	Štip (Ištib)	Veles (Köprülü)
Albanian	Muslim	21,387	5,595	–	–	7,800	–	–	–	1,500	36,282 (10%)
Slav	Exarchist (Bulgarian)	25,921	23,710	22,141	17,391	16,524	16,536	7,622	19,472	29,394	178,711 (50%)
	Patriarchist	4,406	8,358	108	954	1,090	288	–	–	4,130	19,334 (5.5%)
	Muslim (Pomak)	5,600	–	–	–	–	9,234	–	–	5,242	20,076 (5.5%)
Aromun		360	120	–	102	1,680		–	–	900	3,162 (1%)
Ottoman (Muslim)		9,949	6,765	1,929	3,815	11,600	425	10,464	25,764	12,512	83,223 (23%)
Gypsies		2,404	1,008	336	336	712	485	390	378	664	6,713 (2%)
Total		72,789	45,784	24,514	22,604	39,406	26,968	18,476	46,094	54 357	350,992

 

Table 1. Ethnic composition in the kazas of the Sanjak of Skopje in 1903 based on Austro–Hungarian consular reports.9 Minorities such as Greeks and Jews that composed under one percent of the population are omitted.

 

However, prior to the discussion of the social conflicts, it is necessary to make some general remarks in order to place the subject of our investigation in its historical (and historiographical) context. In this article, the authors aimed to investigate whether analysis in earlier scholarly works regarding the main fault lines or the nature and forms of violence can be considered realistic and if this analysis can be validated using a larger database and numerous concrete examples or whether it should be revised.

First general remark. As a consequence of the Tanzimat reforms, the differences between Muslims and Christians had been gradually diminishing, which deeply frustrated the Muslim community that was in the process of losing its privileges. However, economic inequality did not decrease as the landlords were mainly Muslims, which frustrated the Christians, who remained economically subjugated to the landlords (half of Macedonian land was in large estates called chiflik, while one-third was in waqf [Islamic land endowment] and only the remaining one-sixth was in the hand of freeholders in 1910).10 And since not all Muslims were rich, the abolition of their privileged position eliminated the last factor that differentiated them from the Christian rayah. These Muslim inhabitants of the central Balkans formed one of the most conservative religious groups in the empire, refusing to live within the framework of a modern state and harboring no desire to be treated equally to Christians. Therefore the reforms satisfied neither Muslims nor Christians, nor did they reinforce trust towards the viability of the state. The reforms had brought about confrontation between the Muslims and the central government, but the true victim of their anger and frustration was the local Christians, whom the state failed to protect. After 1878 the situation deteriorated further when 40,000 Muslim refugees from Bosnia and the Sanjak of Niš arrived to Kosovo Vilayet (constituting one-third of the population in Priština, a quarter of the population in both Vučitrn and Gilan and ten percent of the population of Skopje).11 At the same time, vengeful neighboring small states were established. These muhajir families had lost everything they had during the war and the Ottoman government declined to provide them with support. Fleeing from the Austro–Hungarian occupation or from the Serbian army, the absence of state support and the pressing need to provide for their families prompted these refugees to take desperate measures. They expelled thousands of the local Slavic peasant families, mainly from eastern Kosovo, which then fled to Serbia (Mala Seoba). The Muslim refugees, however, assimilated with the local society over the long term, and thus formed a social stratum in the province that could be best characterized by its constant restlessness.12

Second general remark. By the final third of the nineteenth century, the social changes that had reached the Balkans had transformed or abolished the majority of the formerly existing identity patterns. This world was in transition in a religious, social and economic sense as well. The identity of the local, South Slavic-speaking Eastern Orthodox peasantry was also in crisis, though it was not the recognition of Christians as equal citizens that challenged this identity. This occurrence took place too late, as it almost coincided with the birth of modern nationalistic ideas in the neighboring small states—and as mentioned earlier, equal citizenship did not represent a real alternative, since neither Muslims nor Christians were satisfied with the reforms.13 The arrival of nationalism created new fault lines within the population, such as religion had earlier, but without erasing the old differences. The several types and layers of identities were overlapping one another, creating chaos in minds, rivalry between the political ideologies (loyal-liberal and nationalistic-revolutionary) and an upsurge in social change, which was exploited by national movements. The latter current was more popular, partly because it offered a solution to social inequalities as demonstrated in IMRO’s response to the land hunger of peasants. Furthermore, in the present case,14 not only religious and nationalistic divisions tended to face one another at the same time,15 but in addition to the collision of competing internal ideologies, an external threat also manifested itself as a transmitter of the nationalistic idea, which offered a real alternative (a smallholder society with private property) for the oppressed.

While in the Ottoman Empire opportunity for an essentially sectarian identity to develop and transform into something new (the “Ottoman nation”) arose at a rather slow pace, the numerous and elaborated national ideologies suddenly seemed to “flood” the local population. And soon enough, a violent rivalry broke out among the representatives of the different South Slav national creeds.16 These ideologies were no longer (or not only) promoted or propagated by the national church subjected to/or allies of the Ottoman state, but by patriot foreigners from the nation states built on a secular society or by the local intelligentsia, resulting as well in a multiplication of agents and ideologies, which presented average people with a difficult choice.17

 

Map 1. Kaza-level religious and ethnic map of the Sanjak of Skopje by Zsolt Bottlik

The Background of Tensions and the Social and Spatial Patterns of Violence

Nationality and denominational-sectarian conflicts claimed the most victims in Skopje Sanjak in the period from 1903 to 1908. The conflict can be classified into three major groups, two of which are under investigation in this study. The first type of religious conflict is represented by the rivalry between Patriarchists and Exarchists beginning in the 1870s.18 Since the Skopje Sanjak was a collision zone of interests (spornata zona, contested zone) located between Serbia and Bulgaria, this phenomenon is not unique, although the proportion of Patriarchists did not exceed 10 percent compared to the 50 percent of Exarchists. However, these tensions were not limited to this region—the same phenomena occured in the Vilayet of Bitola (Monastir), Shkodra (Iškodra) and Saloniki (Selanik). This is demonstrated by the case of the Eastern Orthodox secondary grammar school in Prizren at the turn of the century; the Bogoslovie conflict that led to the cancellation of several school years as the result of constant fighting between pro-Bulgarian and pro-Serbian factions and during which the reciprocal murder of Serboman and Bulgarian Orthodox priests continued until the arrival of a “neutral” clergyman sympathizing with Austria–Hungary; as well as some cases in the series of Karadag incidents from 1907 (see below).19 Atrocities over debated symbolic places usually dominated in the first phases of these conflicts, followed by struggles against symbolic personalities and culminating in the fight against the local population.

From a sectarian aspect, the Muslim–Christian conflicts (second type) proved to be the most serious among the peasantry in Kosovo Vilayet. A typical source of conflict was the Muslim raids on Christian churches, the perpetrators of which were hardly ever captured by Ottoman law-enforcement forces. The latter often encouraged such attacks in order to punish Cheta (četa) groups, but it had greater impact on the civilian population than on paramilitary groups. A good example of this type of attack is a February 12, 1907 Muslim Albanian raid in which Eastern Orthodox churches in the villages of Zubovce, Požaranje and Galata near Gostivar were ransacked and burned down. These villages were maintained jointly by the Serbian and Bulgarian religious communities of Gostivar, where the denominational identity was still stronger, than national identity. However, the delinquents were known to be Muslim Albanians originating from surrounding villages, the authorities did nothing in spite of the fact that even foreign consuls were voicing protest to the Grand Vizier.20 We must also stress that this sectarian dividing line was not identical to dividing lines between nationalities: for example, in Shkodra Vilayet (today west Kosovo), the Muslim Albanians launched attacks on the shrines of the local Christian Albanians as well.21

The third type of religious conflict took place between Muslim communities (Bektaşi–Sunni; rural–urban; citizen–official). Our statistical analysis will stress that conflict of this type was not negligible in the Skopje Sanjak. The three types of conflict often appeared together in the same area: sometimes their motives can be traced back to sectarian differences, sometimes to customs law, though they can also be attributed to economic, social or personal antagonism and were often encouraged by foreign pressure.

The Skopska Crna Gora (Karadag) Mountains, located north of Skopje, represented one of the major hotspots of nationalistic tension beginning in 1907 (the same was true for the kazas of Kriva Palanka, Kočani and Radovište), as this was the zone in which Albanian, Serbian and Bulgarian interests collided and overlapped. (Serbian refugees from Stara Srbija had settled here in numerous villages between 1689 and 1739, and these refugees were not obedient to the Bulgarian Exarchate). Conflict broke out following a number of unrelated murders. One of the killing sprees was provoked by Serbians when they attacked an Albanian village led by Voivode Petko Ilić. Another incident took place in the village of Brodec: during a raid Bulgarian attackers killed two Serbian men and kidnapped seven more whom were never found. The motives remained unknown in both cases. In addition to the constant Bulgarian and Serbian propaganda and the activity of infiltrating irregular foreign troops, the situation was exacerbated further by the fact that the peasants of Skopska Crna Gora lived in traditional communities in which unwritten customs of the family blood feud entailed obligations on family members. The two series of events infuriated the local communities, which wished to avenge the dead. A few months later everybody was fighting with one another. In this case, the local conflicts stemmed from the consequences of local customs over which state law had seemingly no authority whatsoever,22 while the presence of foreign influence complicated the situation even further. Authorities did nothing, although the local people had asked not only them, but the consulates of the great powers to intervene as well. The subsequent peace negotiations were led by an Archimandrite from a local monastery named Sava, who unsuccessfully tried to make peace based on unwritten customs instead of official law. Although his efforts were thwarted by the local Albanians, who did not wish to give besa for the peace, his activity clearly illustrates that local people did not trust the official Ottoman administrators and that local customs were much more authoritative than imperial law.23

Problems occurred not only at the Ottoman–Serbian border, but by 1907 along the Bulgarian frontier zone as well. Here the local traditions were exacerbated by the propaganda and paramilitary activity of small states. The equality of citizens meant nothing in these periphery areas where local communities and identities were still stronger than the imperial identity that attempted to secure/impose civil rights. These traditional communities became more susceptible to nationalism if it occurred together with the defense of local interests and traditions. The Bulgarian consul in Skopje enumerated in a notebook more than 750 cases of violence committed by Serbs and Greek bands in 1906–07. The list starts with the activity of Georgi Kapitan, who crossed the border with his Serbian Cheta and captured six hostages in two raids, then returned to Skopska Crna Gora, which served as his hinterland.24 It was a perfect base of operations: while promoting Serbian objectives, at the same time Kapitan could also avenge the previously cited atrocities committed against his host community. Local aspirations and state priorities intertwined, and those taken captive could never be sure whether they were being held for ransom to promote the Serbian cause or would be victims of blood feud.

Even more interesting, two more Serbian Chetas were reported from the region of Kratovo and Štip in January 1907 in spite of the bad weather conditions and the fact that the location was far away from the Skopska Gora borderland. (The bands often operated far away from their hideouts in distant kazas to hinder the activity of authorities). These attacks were of different character: in February, Ivan Stajkov kidnapped the starešinas (chiefs, elders) of Stariprad village and forced the village to declare its loyalty to Serbia by taking up Serbian identity.25 These acts were definitely not connected to any vengeful act.

These changes in national consciousness were not permanent or irreversible: in many cases villages changed their identity quickly, if another Cheta appeared. Even religious and national categories were often mixed within a village. The intruders usually inquired about the nationality of residents (Serb, Bulgarian, Greek), though priests answered according to religious category (Exarchist, Patriachist), which did not satisfy the intruders.26 The timing of the above-mentioned raids has more significance than the acts themselves: these events took place in winter, and cannot be explained by simple banditry, the goal of which was to collect food and other means of subsistence. Since the villagers stayed in their dwellings during winter, an attack on them was riskier during this period than during the summer, when potential victims were working in the fields. Therefore the previously mentioned Cheta groups can be regarded as well-trained, organized and determined units in comparison to a simple band of robbers without deep-rooted nationalistic commitments.27

Thus at least three different motives of Cheta activities can be discerned: their aims could be social (local revenge), economic (self-sustainment or weakening the economic basis of the enemy) or political (promoting national propaganda). Political results could also be achieved through the former two motives. Very often the frequency of the raids showed yearly fluctuation. During spring, the exhausted raw core of Chetas gained strength and supplies in the villages of target areas, and by wandering from village to village (partly for security reasons, partly in order to gather men for their cause), increased their number to between 20 and 40 men. Todor Alexandrov commanded a band of this type in Kratovo kaza in 1910.28 The peak of their activity was the late summer, when villagers collected the harvest far from their relatively secure dwellings. Winter attacks were quite rare: local people referred to snow as the “white police,” which was more efficient than the Ottoman authorities or the international gendarmerie operated by the great powers between 1903–08.29 Increased winter activity can be regarded as a peculiarity of Chetas supported by small states, while their other feature is the relatively great number of Cheta-band members. For example, the Cheta of Ivan Stajkov consisted of 30 men in February,30 which means that it was more than the “bare core.”

Based on the above mentioned, two general tendencies began to gain ground concerning the organizational basis of Chetas following the turn of the century. The first was that denominational (sectarian) and national categories were mixed and combined in all conceivable ways (similarly to the goals and motifs explained earlier). The second was that at the same time a new social stratum emerged in the vilayet: being a Cheta member became a lifestyle. Its members were destitute and therefore radical men (regardless of their religion or nationality) who simply tried to profit from the chaos.31 Besides the irregular troops arriving from abroad, which were fighting to realize national ambitions, and local revolutionary forces (like IMRO), these mercenary bands32 also created their own armed corps and under the banner of national goals they essentially lived off the terrorized population, as they could be hired to intimidate and assassinate local leaders. These groups were often balancing between banditry, freedom fighting, terrorism, and sometimes even functioned as auxiliary forces of Ottoman authorities (when maintaining public order or leading punitive actions). At any rate, this had a long tradition in Balkan countries.33 Several photographs of these frequently multi-ethnic or religiously mixed bands can be found in the military archives of the great powers (Photo 1). These Cheta leaders could easily be convinced to change their allegiances. The same happened to Ivan/Jovan Babunski, former Bulgarian Cheta leader from village Martulica, considered to be a Serbian agent from 1907 on, who tried to intimidate the dwellers of Kriva-Kruša (Veles) as described in a letter captured by the Bulgarian Lieutenant Colonel Nedkov in Skopje.34

The social acceptance of the phenomenon (band activity) was not unequivocal. Balogh mentioned that by the end of the eighteenth century, ten percent of Christians (and one-third of young men) had been involved in such a movement at least once in their lifetime.35 This proportion was even higher in Macedonia at the beginning of the twentieth century. IMRO had 35,000 supporters in 1906 in the Skopje Sanjak, constituting more than ten percent of the Ottoman administrative unit’s population. Considering that IMRO was an organization that relied mostly on Exarchists (promoting Macedo-Bulgarian or Bulgarian interests),36 one cannot avoid the assumption that all Exarchist households were conscripted as sympathizers of the IMRO (Table 2): this is the only reason that could explain the high ratio of supporters of IMRO compared to Exarchist families37 (25 percent on average, each head of family). However, supporting the IMRO was still a better choice than to fall victim to a hired band (without genuine political commitment).

Nevertheless, this does not mean that these men were activists, able and willing to fight at any time, but rather that they were used as messengers or that their infrastructure (animals, storage places) was exploited by activists. Furthermore, those who were conscripted (even if they remained passive toward the cause) had to pay the “revolutionary tax.” This—in addition to the official tithe that at that time was around 12–15 percent—represented a further additional burden, paid willingly or under coercion.38 This financial resource, though important, was not the sole source of income for the IMRO. Beyond this, foreign support and regular economic activities (see later) were regarded a major sources of revenue as well.

One must conclude that these people were considered primarily to be a taxable population rather than real fighters (and their willingness to fight may be also questioned), because according to a report from 1906, the 6,000 IMRO supporters in the Skopje kaza possessed only 250 rifles (including 190 old Berdans) with 17,000 cartridges and 85 revolvers with 1,550 bullets (Table 2).39 Generally only one-tenth of the supporters had rifles, and the highest ratio was measured in Kočani and Štip (11–13 percent). Here the ammunition-to-weapon ratio was over 100 (explaining the escalation of violence in 1911–12) and the ratio of older weapons was extremely high. We may assume that older weapons from the Crimean War were stored at home by peasants due to the deterioration in public security,40 while Mannlichers and revolvers had been distributed among active members through smuggling.

 

Photo 1. An example of hiring people of different ethnic background for the national cause: the ethnically and religiously mixed Chetas of the Serbian First Lieutenant Gutriković in Kaza Kumanovo 1908. Source and copyright: Kriegsarchiv (Vienna) AOK-Evidenzbureau, Kt. 3483.41

 

Kidnapping, ransom, mass theft of animals, blackmail, threatening letters, the disinterest of Ottoman authorities and bribery, as Ikonomov enumerated the methods in 1911, forced many villages to convert (often temporarily) to a new identity.42 The village of Kanarevo (Kumanovo kaza) decided to become Serboman after the starešina was threatened and bribed.43 Bulgarian priests were arrested in Krastev Dol and in Radibuš by Ottoman authorities, and soon Serbian priests arrived to replace them.44 Ruginci, Orah and Podarži Kon became Serboman due to violence committed by Bulgarian Chetas.45 In some cases the conversion of a village was not a sudden act—it took years and the two parties often continued to live together: this kind of coexistence happened in the case of Stačna, Teovo, Oreše, etc. (Very often social or economic tensions within the community were the explanation for the situation). Nevertheless this phenomenon could also serve as a source of recurrent violence. In other cases, settlements changed sides many times: this happened with particular frequency after 1908, the reestablishment of the constitution and the disarmament of Chetas: see the case of Oreše, Izvor, Rankovski, etc., which became Bulgarian settlements after Serbia temporarily lost Ottoman support, then changed sides again by 1910, when Serbian propaganda became revitalized again (Table 3a).46

The instruments cited above served not only to promote forced Serbianzation or Bulgarization of the villages, but provided food and income for the Cheta as well to sustain their activity as these units were often operating far away from their hinterland. The identification of Serboman villages in kazas distant from the Serbian border may indicate areas of local support for Serbian Chetas (Table 3b).

Beyond taxation, pillaging and “requisition,” another source of income came from state subsidies: the Bulgarian consulate in Skopje warned the government that Serbian agents received 300,000 dinars for the Serbianization of the vicinity of Kratovo (this amount is equal to the annual salary of 350 teachers or 150 military lieutenants). These agents had bought weapons (one witness, a major of the international gendarmerie, mentions 200 rapid-fire guns) instead of creating schools, buying land or bribing local leaders, and only a small sum was spent on securing the loyalty of local people.47 The small states with claims to this territory recognized quite quickly that the destruction of existing (infra)structures was more cost-effective and its effect was more permanent than establishing churches, schools and buying land; therefore beginning in 1908 (following the withdrawal of the great powers and their failure to stabilize the situation and after the radicalization of Young Turks) there was a radical shift from soft methods to hard methods.48 This transformation clearly indicates the beginning of the third phase of the Macedonian question, which was characterized by nearly unlimited violence and coercion.

The violent activity of infiltrating irregular foreign troops increased the high mortality rate (caused by local tradition) even further. Due to the escalation of violence, both the IMRO and former Vrhovists49 organized meetings where they—at least verbally—pointed out that peasants should be kept away from the violence and should not be considered as target groups. These agreements were not only driven by social sensitivity, but by economic rationale as well. Since land revenue constituted a significant proportion of the income of IMRO, it was in the fundamental interest of the organization to secure the safety of peasants living in areas under its control to promote the cultivation of lands. Through the use of its armed forces, IMRO compelled peasants to work the land and often prescribed what to grow on the fields. Surprisingly, this coercive agriculture was economically rational in a certain sense as the IMRO favored crops with greater added value than that of the wheat traditionally grown in the region. One hectare of land sown with poppy seed resulted between 10 and 15 kilograms of opium (if the plantation was not set on fire by rivals) with an average price of 25 to 30 francs per kilogram, thus producing total revenue of between 300 and 450 francs per hectare. This significantly exceeded the revenue derived from other crops (one ton of wheat was about 130-150 francs and the average yield did not exceed one ton per hectare, while the ratio of harvested wheat was only 5 to 1).50 By monopolizing trade in opium and tobacco, IMRO was able to create self-sustaining Chetas that were wedged between peasant and trader expropriating the profits. Since this was a risky enterprise as both adversaries and the government tried to hinder this activity, the mobility of Chetas decreased when they had to defend the harvest. Economic oppression and permanent migration generated by political tension led to desertion of arable lands. By 1912 only 400,000 hectares of land was under cultivation in Kosovo Vilayet out of the total 3.2 million acres as a result of the growing violence.51

Although an armistice between the two organizations (IMRO and Vrhovists) was desirable, efforts to conclude such a truce were more or less futile,52 partly as a result of the growing activity of Muslim bands prior to 1908. The latter attacked not only local peasantry, but also launched attacks against the gendarmerie led by international officers. This special form of violence was carried out not against the officers themselves, but against local Christians serving as privates in the gendarmerie in order to discourage them from participation in police forces.53 Nevertheless, this category is not included in the term “everyday violence” used by the authors.

Not only the armed corps, but the propaganda and ideologies promoted by the neighboring states also battled with one another in the region even during the relatively peaceful period prior to the Ilinden Uprising.54 The target groups (and propagators) of these ideologies were primarily Eastern Orthodox priests and village teachers,55 who—based on their functions within the community—were able to disseminate this message most efficiently. The peasantry was targeted directly to a lesser extent owing to its illiteracy. The greatest influence shaping the identity of villagers was undoubtedly exercised by the priest and the teacher: the village usually followed the national identity pattern(s) that they represented or were forced to represent.56

The fight for supremacy evidently required organizational infrastructure beyond human capital: apart from schools and churches that were considered outposts of the state, which were immobile, though able to control the “Raum und Boden” and were thus most exposed to physical attacks, a network of background institutions responsible for securing optimal conditions was also created.57 The Bulgarian state refrained from directly imposing its own agents on Macedonian Bulgars: the influence of the Bulgarian state over school affairs prior to the Ilinden Uprising was realized through Macedonian-born Slavic teachers educated in Bulgaria (who were influenced by Bulgarian propaganda). This strategy could enhance confidence of local society towards the Bulgarian state, while the Bulgarophile Macedonians were able to (re)create their own intelligentsia. Out of a total of 1,239 professors and teachers in the Bulgarian schools of Macedonia in 1902, 1,220 were native Macedonians and, in addition to the 15 Bulgarian-born Bulgars teaching in Macedonia, there were 450 Macedonian Bulgars teaching in the schools of liberated Bulgaria.58 The numbers also reflect the great role of the Macedonian-born population in Bulgarian political life.59

The dynamic increase of Serbian schools between 1896 and 1901 is the product of the following factors: despite the existence of the supporting organizational background, the Serbian presence was relatively insignificant in Macedonia prior to 1903; however, Serbian propaganda was increasing (with support from Ottoman authorities) compared to Bulgarian propaganda. This phenomenon provided a warning to the Bulgarians, and between 1901 and 1910 the number of teachers in Bulgarian schools almost doubled, which also reflects changes in the support policy in comparison to that previously mentioned.

 

	Schools	Teachers	Students
Bulgarian	843 / 785 / 1359	1,306 / 1,220 / 2,203	43,432 / 40,000 / 78,519
Serbian	77 / 178 /	118 / 321/	2,873 / 7,200 /
Greek	/ 924/	/ 1,400 /	/ 57,500 /

 

Table 4. The result of “peaceful” propaganda: schools in Macedonia in 1896 /1901/1910. Jacob Gould Schurman, The Balkan Wars: 1912–1913 (London: Humphrey Milford, 1914), accessed September 16, 2014, http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11676/pg11676.html and D. Misheff, The truth about Macedonia (Berne: Pochon-Jent, 1917).

 

Even after the involvement of the Great Powers, the provinces were still crying for relief.60 Between May 1904 and May 1905, 111 violent cases committed by Chetas were reported within the boundaries of Macedonia by a Bulgarian source, including those targeting authorities (these should not be included in the term “everyday violence,” but can be compared to them). This means that these atrocities claimed an average of seven victims. This high number reveals that these incidents and conflicts were not accidental or of personal character, but were planned in advance as a part of a campaign of intimidation and revenge symbolizing a special type of warfare. This source does not reveal whether the proximity to borders or distance from central administration had an effect on the escalation of violence (while in the case of Austro–Hungarian consular reports, such an investigation could be carried out), nor does it provide an account of the interethnic character of conflict, contrary to the Austro–Hungarian consular reports.

Based on the above mentioned report of Shopov, most of those arrested in Macedonia were Bulgarians (80 percent, a result of either the activity of Bulgarians or the prejudice of authorities, because their ratio within the population did not exceed 60%), though almost two-thirds of them were found not guilty. Among those who were convicted, Bulgarians were not overrepresented: 20 percent of arrested Bulgarians were sentenced to several years in prison: this represents 79 percent of all imprisoned, while Bulgarians constituted 80 percent of those arrested. The ratio of imprisoned Serbs was also around 20 percent in comparison to the number of Serbs arrested. Among the acquitted, Serbs were overrepresented (80 percent of arrested Serbs were freed), while the investigation process was the longest in case of Greeks due to the fact that they were often not Ottoman but Greek citizens,61 contrary to Bulgar(ian)s, who were mainly recruited from the territory of Macedonia and not from Bulgaria.

According to the data collected by Shopov, Greek Chetas preferred to capture people alive and hold them for ransom, which means that the Greek struggle for Macedonia was in its initial phase: 70 percent of captured were held by Greeks, while the proportion of atrocities committed by Greek forces was only 27 percent. This practice was quite rare in case of Serb and Bulgar offenders: 66 percent of those who died were killed by Bulgarian Chetas, although the latter were involved “only” in 50 percent of encounters. The ratio of murders committed by Serbs/Bulgars was 80 percent among the victims of Serbian/Bulgarian violence. Compared to this, murders constituted only 33 percent of Greek violence. The proportion of the victims of Ottoman authorities constituted “only” 17 to 20 percent of all victims and those who died among them were underrepresented (Table 5).

But the most convincing evidence of the failure of the Ottoman authorities and the international intervention to maintain public order and of the increasing anarchy that ensued after the turn of the century are the detailed statistics compiled by Austro–Hungarian consuls listing the victims of the social conflicts. These are conflicts (contrary to those discussed above) that cannot be tied unambiguously to the activity of Chetas or authorities, thus falling under the category of “everyday violence.” A typical example of consular reports is the document written in Skopje in 1905 enumerating all acts of everyday violence that occurred in the sanjak between May 11 and September 13 of that year.62

 

11. Mai	Fatima und Tochter Zarifa aus Treskavec	Getötet, Täter unbekannt
27. Mai	Koce aus Podoreš	Vermißt
16. Juni	Demendezi aus Jargerica	getötet, Täter angeblich Comité-Rache
17. Juni	Stojan aus Jargerica	getötet, Täter angeblich Comité-Rache
19. Juni	Avram Jane dessen Frau und Tochter aus Rozbunar	verwundet, Täter 3 unbekannte Mohammedaner
20. Juni	Risto Konstantin aus Radovište	verwundet, dtto
20. Juni	Traman Dimitrija aus Delina	schwer verwundet, Täter angeblich Türken
28. Juni	Kristo Ile aus Vratica	der Tatverdächtig der Mohammedaner Damjan [sic!]
12. Juli	Jovan Velko aus Šipkovica	Vermißt
16. Juli	Angelko Trajan, Jordan Postol, Mike Lazar, Mike, Petre Stojan, Tase Gjorgje: Hirten aus Radoviste	von einer mohammedanischen Bande gefesselt und durch Messerstiche getötet
17. Juli	Stojan Niko u. Gam: dtto	dtto.
19. Juli	Trajce Zafir aus Kance	getötet, Täter Rara Ahmed
12. August	Dane Jane und Sohn David, Koce Ilia aus Vrahovica	getötet, Täter mohammed. Comités
18. August	Tašo Georgiev aus Radovište	getötet, Täter unbekannte Comités
21. August	Ilija und Arif aus Vrahovica	getötet, Täter 3 Mohammedaner
25. August	1 unbekanntes Comité-Mitglied bei Gmerdeš	Getötet
3. September	File Risto aus Jargaica	getötet, Täter unbekannt
3. September	Todor Spasov aus Kanče	getötet, Täter Türken aus Promet
3. September	Panče Ilo aus Skoruša	getötet, Täter Türken aus Promet

 

Table 6. List of violent activities in Radovište kaza (cited in the original language): officially five
political murders were recorded among the 20 cases, but only one victim was a committee member.63

In Kaza Radovište: Getötet 23, Verwundet 4, vermißt 2.

 

Dated from 1905 this list enumerating 285 victims in a period of four months from a smaller area looks to be more detailed compared to the report of Shopov containing 772 victims in a period of one year throughout Macedonia. Cases were reported for each kaza giving the name and religion of perpetrators and victims (see Table 6), which makes the list more valuable and informative than Shopov’s report. Note that the cases enumerated here took place after the intervention of the great powers (Mürzsteg, 1903), therefore it also demonstrates the powerlessness of the recently organized international gendarmerie. This list provides the possibility of tracing certain phenomena and to observe certain tendencies (the spatial pattern of violence, the role of border areas, the correlation between the ethnicity and religion of perpetrators and victims, etc.), though the cause of conflicts still remain obscure. Although the names of the victims and the perpetrators do not provide unquestionable evidence of their nationality, the sectarian composition may be more or less precisely reconstructed, thus permitting an investigation of religious or ethnic tensions.64

But this did not represent the peak of violence by any means. After the failure of international intervention, the number of people killed increased quickly: in 1908 a total of 1,080 “political murders” were committed throughout Macedonia (while in 1905, the number of all victims of Chetas—including all types: dead, injured and missing—was only 772), claiming among its victims 649 Bulgarians, 185 Greeks, 130 Muslims, 39 Serbs, 36 Vlachs and 40 soldiers according to the report of the Englishman Harry Lamb.65 Compared to their proportion of the entire population, Muslim victims seem to be underrepresented and Bulgarian victims a bit overrepresented. The reinstatement of the constitution in 1908 proved to be more effective than any other earlier measures: over the last five months of that very year, only 71 political murders took place, constituting seven percent of all murders, while during the first four months of the year it almost reached 50 percent.66 One cannot avoid the assumption that the armistice among bands in 1908–1909 as a consequence of the rise to power of the Young Turks contributed to the stabilization of the situation to a greater degree than the constitution and the parliamentary elections, events that rarely entail immediate results.

Comparing the Bulgarian and the Austro–Hungarian sources one may arrive to the following conclusions: first, that violent acts committed by Chetas became more frequent between 1905 and 1908 in Macedonia (772 killed and injured compared to 1,080 killed); second, that Austro–Hungarian documents are more detailed and therefore more suitable for conducting further analysis; and three, that everyday violence (or acts not reported as political murders) was apparently as frequent as political violence. (Just to compare the two types of violence: during the first four months of 1908, 450 people were killed by Chetas throughout Macedonia, while in the first four months of 1905, 197 people were killed in everyday violence within the much smaller area of the examined sanjak).

In some places of the Sanjak of Skopje in 1905, the average number of victims per attack exceeded four or five (like in the Bulgarian statistics with Cheta involvement, where seven victims per attack were counted), which makes it evident that in these cases not simply personal antagonism or economic conflict, but rather ideological or intergroup tensions represented the source of violence. The names and occupations in Table 6 reveal that many of the victims (especially the four women) can hardly be identified as members of paramilitary units (their activity may have been confined to providing information or supplying troops) and that in many cases they were victims of blood feuds motivated by rivalry between communities or were victims of punitive actions or intimation on the part of Chetas. Based on the high average number of victims per attack, the Bulgarian source focuses much more on the activity of Chetas, emphasizing the paramilitary-revolutionary character of the violent acts, while the Austro–Hungarian report enumerates single cases as well, when perpetrators were not Cheta members, though their actions fit into the category of everyday violence.67

The fearless early usage of coercion and violence against civilians and activists as well is clearly confirmed by a document called “Reglement für die Bulgarisch-Adrianopeler Revolutionären Comités”68 dating from the year 1900. These revolutionary committees had their internal secret police as well, which was divided into two branches. The duty of the first branch, the investigative police, was not only to observe foreigners, non-Cheta members and government officials, but to examine the deeds and actions of Cheta members as well. The second branch was called the executive secret service, the task of which was not only to support the leaders in case of internal crisis, but also to punish activities reported by the observers. The revolvers mentioned in the document summarizing the resources of the IMRO from 1906 were used by this branch of secret police. In addition to the spies and Ottoman bureaucrats who impeded the activity of revolutionaries, not only activists, but even members of the civil population were allowed to kill regardless of their ethnicity if they threatened the goals of the committees and disregarded the first warnings and fines. This punishment was extended to Bulgarians living either in Bulgaria or abroad if they engaged in activity serving to exacerbate discontent among revolutionaries. Even those were sanctioned who had acted under pressure, were forced to commit violence or were tortured by enemies of the committee. Mentioning the name of a committee member to the authorities or in public for the second time also entailed a death sentence.69 These punitive measures could also have been in the background of the escalation of everyday violence, as very often the community did not know of killings or did not dare inform authorities of them. (It is also not surprising that communist activists and ideologists visiting the Balkans and well acquainted with the Macedonian cause, like Trotsky, implemented these methods effectively in organizing secret police in their homeland. Even the terms used, such as “Arbeit”, reappear in these documents).

Neither the high concentration of IMRO weapons nor the ethnic heterogeneity of districts always resulted in the escalation of violent activities. The activity of IMRO cannot alone explain all forms of “everyday violence:” in Kočani, which was well-supplied with ammunition, everyday violence was rare, although here Albanians and Muslims also lived together with Bulgarians. The extent of violence was also relatively low in Veles, although IMRO had plenty of bullets and weapons and half of the district was Turkish. In Kriva Palanka and in Kratovo, the high ratio of victims measured to the total population (Table 7) at first glance seems to be due to the fact that an extremely high 22 percent of the population supported the IMRO (Table 2). However, the percentage of sympathizers supplied with weapons was quite low here (five percent). Furthermore, both territories were mainly Exarchist in character, therefore neither interethnic tensions nor the clashes with the Turkish authorities can explain the spread of violence here (these conflict types are excluded from the term “everyday violence.”)70

 

Kaza	Attacks	Killed	Injured	Missing	Christian victims	Muslim victims	Unknown	Total	Victims per 1,000 Inhabitants
Skopje	8 (average of 5 killed)	41	8	2	30 (2 f)	19 (4 f, 1 c)	3 (1 f)	52 (7 f, 1 c)	0.71
Kumanovo	9	36	9	4	21 (1 f)	12	16	49 (1 f)	1.07
Kriva Palanka	24	24	9	5	15 (4 f)	–	24	38	1.55
Kratovo	13	13	5	4	9	3	10	22	0.97
Kočani	3	3	1	1	4	1	–	5	0.13
Maleš	3	3	5	2	3	2	5	10	0.37
Radovište	23	23	4	2	25 (2 f)	3 (2 f)	1	29	1.57
Štip	11 (average of 4 killed)	42	11	10	44	13 (1 f)	6	63	1.37
Veles	12	12	1	5	8	5	5	18	0.33
Total	106	197	53	35	159 (9 f)	58 (7 f, 1 c)	70 (1 f)	287 (17 f 1 c)	0.82

 

Table 7. Types of violent activity and the territorial and religious distribution of victims in Skopje Sanjak between May 11 and September 13, 190571 f = females; c = children

Kaza	Christians		Christians Altogether	Muslims		Muslims Altogether	Unknown Cases	Total
	Against Christians	Against Muslims		Against Christians	Against Muslims
Skopje	5	3	8	8	3	11	26	45
Kumanovo	3	2	5	10	3	13	12	30
Kriva Palanka	2	–	2	1	–	1	7	10
Kratovo	4	–	4	–	–	1	9 + 1*	14
Radovište	2	1	3	9	1	10	6	19
Štip	6	1	7	13	1	14	29	50
Veles	2	1	3	2	3	5	3	11
Total	27 (14%)	7 (4%)	34	43 (22%)	11 (6%)	55	101 53%)	189

 

Table 8. The religious and territorial distribution of perpetrators committing crime between May 11 and September 13, 1905 (only known perpetrators included) 72

* Muslim attackers and one unknown victim.

 

As the authors pointed out earlier, the Austrian source offers possibilities for deeper investigation (cases committed by soldiers or police are not included!). Most of the victims (including deaths, injuries and missing) were Christian (55 percent) (Tables 7–8). The proportion of Muslims was 20 percent, while 25 percent remained unknown. Compared to their proportion of the entire population of the sanjak (40 percent), Muslim victims were somewhat underrepresented (Table 1). With regard to the perpetrators, these ratios are not more than estimates, as more than 50 percent of cases remained unresolved. This demonstrates the low effectiveness of imperial and international authorities. Based on known cases, Muslims mainly attacked Christians (22 percent of the total, four times more frequent than Muslim attacks on Muslims), while the proportion of Christian perpetrators committing violent crime against Muslims was only four percent of the total (Table 8). Attacks within the Muslim community ranged up to six percent of the total, while violence between Christians constituted more than 14 percent of the total in Skopje Sanjak (this was a greater percentage value than that of Christian crimes against Muslims!). One may arrive to the conclusion that the Exarchist-Patriarchist rivalry was more important here (compared to the relatively small ratio of Patriarchists in the territory) than the hostility of Christians towards Muslims and that violence within the Muslim community was more frequent than violence toward other communities.

The spatial pattern of violence can be investigated too: in Štip kaza Christians primarily attacked Christians, while Muslims in Štip, Kumanovo and in Radovište mainly attacked Christians. These phenomena were not connected to ethnic predominance: in Kumanovo, Muslims composed only 30 percent of the population, while in Štip they constituted the majority. In the vicinity of Kriva Palanka and Kratovo,73 all known Christian attacks were targeted against other Christian communities. This may be explained by the fact that though these kazas were ethnically homogenous, the national conflict between Bulgars and Serboman troops was fierce (one should not forget that 50 percent of cases were unresolved, therefore the numbers have limited statistical relevance). The spatial distribution of victims and perpetrators (Table 9–10) shows that the largest absolute numbers of victims were located in Skopje, Štip and Kumanovo kazas. Nevertheless, these absolute numbers are not representative, as these kazas had larger populations. The proportion of victims measured against the total population is more representative. With this in mind, victims of violent activities were overrepresented in Kumanovo, Kriva Palanka, Kratovo, and especially in Radovište and Štip kazas. These territorial units were located in the mountainous periphery far away from the administrative center and from the Vardar-axis (which was serving as the main connection route to adjacent areas).

 

Percent	Skopje	Kumanovo	Kriva Palanka	Kratovo	Radovište	Štip	Veles
						(Ištib)	(Köprülü)
Population	21	13	7	6	5	13	15
Victims	18	17	13	8	10	22	6
Perpetrators	24	16	5	7	10	26	6

 

Table 9. The proportion of perpetrators and victims compared to the population in the sanjak (considered as 100 percent) in 1905 (in order to examine underrepresentation and overrepresentation). 74 Kočani and Maleš were omitted due to small case number.

 

Kaza	Christian Victims/ Christian Population	Muslim Victims/ Muslim Population	Christian Perpetrators/ Christian Population	Muslim Perpetrators/ Muslim Population	Distance from Center*	Distance from State Border
Skopje	1.35	0.69	0.41	0.46	1	2
Kumanovo	0.61	0.89	0.24	1.58	2	2
Radovište	2.09	0.18	0.38	0.93	4	3
Štip	1.65	0.37	0.33	0.50	3	4
Veles	0.70	0.78	0.43	1.28	2	5

 

Table 10. Spatial and religious differences of violence in 1905 based on the comparison of victims and perpetrators. Values over 1 indicate overrepresentation.

Kriva Palanka and Kratovo was omitted due to the large proportion of unknown delinquents, Kočani and Maleš was omitted due to small case numbers

* Distance from the center or from the border was measured using graph theory based on the number of nodes (local centers) that had to be passed in order to reach the territory in question.

 

The same conclusions can be made with regard to the data on perpetrators. Measured against the entire population, perpetrators were overrepresented in Skopje, Radovište and Štip, nearly the same kazas in which the ratio of victims compared to population was the largest. In the latter two kazas, the proportion of perpetrators and victims was twice as high as the proportion of the population of the kaza compared to the total population of Skopje Sanjak (Table 9). This is not surprising, since based on the conscription of 1903 the proportion of Muslims was quite high in these places (see the map of Kančov or the map published in Carnegie Report).75 Based on the absolute numbers of perpetrators and victims, these attacks were the bloodiest, reaching an average of between four and five deaths per attack. Christian victims measured against Christian population were overrepresented in Skopje, Radovište and Štip kazas, but it did not mean that Christian victims76 were killed solely by Muslims (see Tables 8 and 10), while Muslim perpetrators compared to Muslim population were overrepresented in Kumanovo, Radovište and Veles. Muslim victims and Christian perpetrators were not overrepresented anywhere.

 

Proportion of Christians vs. Proportion of Christian Victims*	–0.75	Proportion of Muslim Perpetrators vs. Distance from Administrative Center	–0.47
Proportion of Christians vs. Proportion of Christian Perpetrators*	0.41	Percentage of Unknown Cases vs. Distance from Administrative Center	0.36
Proportion of Christians vs. Proportion of Muslim Victims*	–0.42	Percentage of Unknown Cases vs. Distance from Border	–0.55
Proportion of Christians vs. Proportion of Muslim Criminals*	–0.31	Proportion of Muslim Criminals vs. Distance from Borders	0.55
Percentage of Christian Victims vs. Percentage of Christian Perpetrators	–0.78	Proportion of Muslim Victims vs. Distance from Borders	0.40
Proportion of Muslim Victims vs. Proportion of Muslim Perpetrators	0.33	Percentage of Muslim Victims vs. Distance from Center	–0.76
Percentage of Christian Victims vs Proportion of Muslim Perpetrators	0.29	Percentage of Muslim Perpetrators vs. Percentage of Christian Perpetrators	0.19

 

Table 11. Correlation table between variables related to violence in 1905 (only those who are known to have committed crimes are included)

* Substituting Christians with Muslims, the strength of correlation does not change.

Contrary to some well–distinguished territorial patterns, violence in the sanjak (as a total) was characterized mainly by weak correlations, thus general features are overshadowed by local patterns. Although significant, but reversed correlation was measured between the proportion of Christian victims and the proportion of Christian perpetrators (k=–0,78),77 other relations did not show such strong correlation due to the previously mentioned ethnic heterogeneity and due to the diversity of conflict types enumerated earlier (Table 11).78

Since perpetrators were mainly Muslims both in kazas with a Muslim majority (Štip) and with a Muslim minority (Veles), while victims were Christians, the pattern of violence at the kaza level was not determined solely by the religious character of the population, but by other factors (distance from borders, violence among those of the same religion). Violence in central territories was relatively rare (even despite the higher population density), while it was more frequent in peripheral kazas along the Bulgarian and Serbian borders. We may assume that Christian perpetrators were overrepresented along the Bulgarian border and in Slavic-speaking territories, while Muslim perpetrators were more frequent in the Kumanovo, Veles and Radovište kazas along the Muslim-dominated Vardar-axis. As the distance measured from the centers grew, the proportion of Muslim perpetrators decreased (r=–0.8). The clearance rate also draws attention: a general tendency is that police were the most inefficient along the easily penetrable Bulgarian border. Unresolved cases ranged from 60 percent (Maleš) up to 100 percent (Kočani!) in the peripheries.79 Spatial differences regarding violence and driving factors were collected to summarize our analysis in Table 12.

Conclusions

Summarizing that mentioned above we can draw the following conclusions:

the borders between the different types of violent actions triggered either by sectarian and school conflicts or by customs law gradually faded;

the supporting policy of small states shifted irreversibly from construction to destruction;

the activity of the irregular troops was limited only by the change of seasons (neither Ottoman authorities nor the withdrawal of support could stop them any longer);

Chetas became highly organized and self-subsistent groups through involvement in agriculture (opium, tobacco, smuggling) or expropriation of state and private properties;

loyalty to the state also faded: in addition to troops pursuing nationalist ideas, ethnically and religiously mixed mercenary bands also existed and were hired;

the representatives of the state did not even attempt to address the economic and political problems. Their violent and intolerant interference, despite the temporary successes, hastened the escalation of conflict into anarchy;

the “usual” social conflicts (between public officers and citizens, security forces and inhabitants, etc.) also became uncontrollable,80 and became overshadowed by the new types of conflict; the practices of Chetas were adopted by other violent (state and guerilla) organizations;

the nationalistic movements declared total warfare in which, compared to the years prior to 1903, not only were the Ottoman administration or military forces and the active members of the movements (ideologists, like teachers and priests) regarded as targets, but the passive masses as well, as they could provide shelter, information, ammunition and an economic base for rivals;

the economy had collapsed by 1912, fields remained uncultivated due to the wave of violence, which triggered emigration.

On the eve of the First Balkan War there was no functioning state administration and economy in the Sanjak of Skopje, which had turned into a frontier zone.

Archival Sources

Österreichisches Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv (ÖHHStA, Vienna), Politisches Archiv, VII. 434; XXXVIII. 399, 430; 19 Nachlaß August Kral.

Централен Държавен Архив, (ЦДА, Sofia), ф. 331k. oп. 1; 332k oп. 1; 335k. oп. 1.

Kriegsarchiv (Vienna) AOK-Evidenzbureau, Kt. 3483.

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Stavropoulo, Livanios, D. “Conquering the souls: nationalism and Greek guerilla warfare in Ottoman Macedonia 1904–1908.” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 23 (1999): 195–221.

Strauss, Adolf. Grossbulgarien [Greater Bulgaria]. Posen–Leipzig–Warsaw–Budapest: Mitteleuropäischer Buch- und Lehrmittelverlag, 1917.

Толева,Тeодора. Виянието на Австро-Унгария за създаването на албанска нация, 1896–1906 [The Contribution of Austria–Hungary to the Creation of the Albanian Nation]. Sofia: Ciela, 2012.

Tsanoff, Radoslav Andrea. “Bulgaria’s case.” Reprinted from The Journal of Race Development 8, no. 3 (1918): 296–317.

	Skopje	Kumanovo	Egri Palanka	Kratovo	Kočani	Štip	Veles	Total
All members	6,000	3,448	5,280	5,536	4,640	5,028	5,200	35, 132
In Towns	2,500	0	210	156	320	2,381	0	5,567
IMRO Supporters as Percentage of Total Population	8.3%	7.6%	22%	25%	12%	11%	10%	12%
IMRO Supporters among Exarchists	25%	15%	25%	32%	25%	25%	18%	24%
Rifles (Mannlicher and Berdan, Gras)	250	140	311	208	300	345	440	1,994
Old Rifles from the Crimean War	9	28	0	107	200	293	20	657
Pistols	85	40	37	26	42	44	35	309
Bullets	17,300	4,570	22,660	45,000	56,000	55, 000	48,650	249,180
Bullets	1,550	313	1,710	800	1,700	1,760	1,050	8,883
Bullet / Weapon	67	27	73	143	112	86	106	94
Weapons to Supporters in Percentage	4.32	4.87	5.89	5.69	10.78	12.69	8.85	7.55
Bombs, Dynamite	122	15	60	125	58	36	0	416
Bulgarian Villages	no data	1	no data	63	56	50	50	over 220
Serbian Villages	11	23	8	1	0	0	8	51
Turkish Villages	20	54	0	2	16	70	40	202
Mixed	S-4, T-9	0	S-3	T-5		T-7	S-2	S-9, T-21
Ethnic Character	Bulgarian-Muslim	Turkish-Serbian	Bulgarian	Bulgarian	Bulgarian-Turkish	Turkish-Bulgarian	Bulgarian-Muslim
Dominant Character of Violence in 1905	Muslim against Christian	Muslim against Christian	Low Case Number	Christian against Christian	Unknown	Muslim–Christian	Muslim against Muslim; Muslim against Christian
Income	500	436	250	574	500	770	1,500	4,530

 

Table 2. The forces of IMRO and the ethnic distribution of the population in 1906. Data calculated from: Биярски, Цочо and Ива Бурилкова, eds., Вътрешната македоно-одринска революционна организация. (1893–1919). Документи на централните ръководни органи, vol. 1, Архивите говорят, 45 (Sofia: Universitetsko Izdatelstvo Sv. Kliment Ohridski, 2007), 608–09. Nr. 209.

 

	Never Exarchist	Became Serboman between 1889–1903	Became Serboman between 1903–1908	Became Bulgarian again after 1908
Skopska Kaza	Banjani,* Gornjani,* Čučer,* Brovec,* Kučevišta,* Kučkovo*	Raženičino, Pakoshevo, Novo Selo, Gorno Orizari, Vizbegovo, Vučedol, Dolno Slivari	Tavor (12), Pobože (15+60)
Veleška Kaza		Rudnik (45+10**), Bašino selo (34+150), Bogomila, Orahovdol (32+58), Kapinovo (14), Mokreni (64), Nežilovo (30+38), Teovo (50+60), Gabrovnik (12+19), Omorani (96+17), Lisiče (19+58)	Vladilovci (75+2), Smilovci (36), Oreše (73+29), Pomenovo (45), Starigrad (43), Novoselo (28+15), Izvor (44+16), Martinci (39), Stepanci (60), Nikoladin (46+83),	Oreše, Izvor, Nežilovo, Novoselo, Smilovci, Pomenovo, Vladilovci, Orahovdol
Kratovska Kaza		Šalkovica (13), Šopsko Rudari (20+75), Kratovo town (340+550 Muslim)	?
Kumanovska Kaza	Staro Nagorično* (130 was never exarchist of the 145),	Dumanovci (34+6), Četirci (62)	Karlovci (15), Koinci (25), Vragoturci (42), Maložino (60), Ramno (67), Arbanaško (42), Dlbočina (40), Dejlovci (62), Žegnjane (50), Stepanci (45), Kokino (50), Bajlovci (114), Osiče (15), Ženovino (33), Alinci (48), Breško (12), Svilanci (24), Kanarevo (46), Drenak (82), Orah (85), Ruginci (65), Bukovljani (24), Čelopek (62+15), Dobrača (12+6), Strezovci (40+13), Janinci*, Pelinci*, Beljakovci (52+21), Kučkarevo (10)
Palanečka Kaza		Stačna (20+12)	Carcorija (75), Dobrovnica (55), Lukje (140), Ogut (125), Podarži kon (116), Metirevo (55), Osiče (50), Baštevo (33), Gaber (102), Dlbočnica (69), Petrilica (305), Ljubinci (24), Radibuš (127), Stečna (32), Gulinci (45), Opošnica (90), Krivi kamen (27), Rankovci (135), Vražogranci (15), Ginovci (75), Milutinci (72)	Ginovci, Radibuš, Milutinci, Osiče, Krastov dol, Lukje (100+40), Ogut, Baštevo***, Carcarija***, Dobrovnica***, Dlbočnica***, Gaber (14+88), Rankovci
Tetovska Kaza		Brezno, Rogačevo, Staro Selo, Vratnica	?	Dolna Lešnica
Gostivarsko Kaza		Zubovci (50+50),	Balil dol (30+50 Muslim), Dobreše (40+110 Muslim), Vrutok (24+45), Pečkovo (17+15), Leunovo (79+38+16 Muslim), Mavrovo (121+31), Nikiforovo (77), Železni Rečani
Kočanska Kaza			Nivičane (60+8), Gradče (32), Leški (21), Pašadžik (12), Pantalej (14+28)	Nivičina, Gradče, Leški, Pašadžik

 

Table 3a. Settlements accepting the authority of Patriarchate between 1889–1908

* Never Exarchist, mostly refugees from Stara Srbija between 1689–1739 in the so-called Skopska Crnagora.

** The first number in brackets represents Patriarchist households, the second Exarchist. Muslims are usually indicated.

*** Patriarchist Bulgarian villages. ЦДА, ф. 335k. oп. 1. a.e. 205. л. 112–25.

 

Skopska Černogoria	Nikola Janković, Angelko Slavković +10 men
Veles	Ivan Martulčanec (Azot) + 10 men, Dušan (Orahovdol) + 10 men
Egri Palanka	Georgi Skopjanče(to) (Kozjak Mts.) + 10 men, Spas Garda (Petralica)
Kumanovo	Jovo Kapitan, Denko Genin, Pop Dičo vojvoda
Kočana	Turkish-Serbian mixed Cheta led by the Serbian teacher from Kočani with the approval of the kaymakam
Skopje	Petko Kapitan (Staro Nagoričano)
Porečie, Kičevo, Azot	Grigor from Nebregovo with 30 men, Stefan with 10 men, Ivan Dolgač(ot) with 15 men, Pavle from Bač (Albania) with 7-8 men around Dibra
Prilep	Ivan/Jovan Babunski and 15 men, Boško vojvoda from Vir with 10 men

 

Table 3b. Location of Serbian Cheta leaders in 1907 (approximately 170 men). Стайко Трифонов, Величко Георгиев, eds., История на българите в документи,
vol. 1 of 2. 1878–1912 (Sofia: Просвета, 1996), 290–91.

Arrested	Convicted	Acquitted	Still under Investigation	Ethnic Group
1,607 (80%)	313 (20%)	993 (62%)	301 (18%)	Bulgarian
349 (17%)	79 (22%)	99 (28%)	171 (50%)	Greek
52 (3%)	4 (8%)	41 (80%)	7 (13%)	Serb
2,008 (100%)	396 (20%)	1,133 (55%)	479 (25%)	Total
Confrontations	Wounded	Killed	Captured Alive	Adversary
68 (61%)	6	320 (81%)	65 (16%)	Bulgarian Chetas (total cases: 391)
30 (27%)	12	93 (33%)	165 (61%)	Greek Chetas (total cases: 270)
13 (12%)	2	96 (86%)	13 (11%)	Serbian Chetas (total cases: 111)
111 (average of seven people per confrontation)	20	509 (66%)	243 (31%)	Total: 772
?	122	86	–	Related to Turkish Authorities

 

Table 5. Distribution of violent acts between ethnic groups in 1905 thoughout Macedonia according to Shopov. ЦДА, ф. 332k. oп. 1. a.e. 17. л. 544–55.

	Skopje	Kumanovo	Kriva Palanka	Kratovo	Kočani	Maleš (Osmanie)	Radovište	Štip	Veles
Distant from Center (x), Near Borders (y)		y	xy	xy	xy	xy	x	x
Proportion of Unresolved Cases is Significant	x		x	x	x	x		x
Proportion of Muslim Population is Significant	xx				xx	x	xx	xx	x
Proportion of Victims Compared to Population is Significant		x	x				x	x
Proportion of Perpetrators Compared to Population is Significant	x						x	x
Muslim–Christian Conflict	x	x					x	x
Christian–Christian Conflict	x	x		x				x
Muslim–Muslim Conflict	x	x							x
Majority of Known Perpetrators is Muslim		x					x	x	x
Majority of Known Perpetrators is Christian				x
Christian Victims Are Overrepresented	x						x	x
Muslim Victims Are Overrepresented		x

 

Table 12. Summary table: characteristics of wave of violence in 1905, Sanjak of Skopje (May 11–September 13, 1905)

Gábor Egry

Phantom Menaces? Ethnic Categorization, Loyalty and State Security in Interwar Romania

In this article, I analyze practices of defining and applying concepts of ethnicity, loyalty and state security in Greater Romania. While state policies were based on a basic assumption of the equation of ethnic belonging and loyalty (Romanians being loyal, non-Romanians disloyal), the complexity of the very administrative apparatus and the problems of unification opened up a space in which the concepts of loyalty and ethnicity were contested. The case studies of the use of the term irredentist and the language exams of minority officials in the mid-1930s shed light on a related but different question. The basic equation of loyalty and ethnicity resulted in the use of an otherwise empty concept of irredentism as a term to denote little more than ethnic “otherness,” a vagueness that enabled local authorities to apply it deliberately, either to restrict or to permit members of minorities to engage in activities that had some bearing on questions of identity. The ways in which the language exams were administered indicate the existence of a large group of non-Romanian public officials who were treated by their colleagues and immediate superiors as equal members of a public body serving the nation state, people who in exchange redefined their loyalty and identity as one based primarily on this professional group membership while still preserving their ethnic belonging. These deviations from the basic equation also reveal how the layered and geographically diverse nature of the state administration influenced the contested nature of the ethnic categories.

Keywords: ethnicity, loyalty, security, Greater Romania, minorities, Transylvania

Ethnicity, loyalty and state security, concepts central to this study, were and are intricately interwoven. Their relationship, far from straight and simple in a given period and in the specific context of a newly enlarged nation-state after World War I, will be the main concern of my work. This approach presumes that what I try to outline is a story of construction and negotiation, addressing how these concepts were understood, defined, redefined and instrumentalized by different actors, and always relating these concepts to one another. Not only were these concepts used in descriptions of society, they also underpinned certain policies and administrative practices and legitimized different forms of control over the population. They therefore inevitably became topics of contestation in their content and their practical consequences for the lives of individuals. Success in defining what loyalty consisted of, how loyalty was related to ethnic belonging, and what constituted a threat to the security of the state meant power, because definitions of loyalty and threat were used to legitimate restrictions on or extensions of liberties, and these liberties were never simply abstractions, but rather always involved smaller or larger spheres of personal activity.

The construction of ideals and abstractions is usually accompanied by contestation, and contestation always means more than one actor, but historical actors are rarely equal in terms of resources, power, or efficiency, and their asymmetric relationships often mean that one of them can limit the others. Concerning loyalty and state security, it is usually the state that has the strongest power to establish definitions, both as a matter of law and a matter of public opinion, as was the case, for instance, in interwar Romania. Obviously, the state had the necessary means to define (what it perceived as) threats to the existing order (including the very existence of the state) and what constituted the proper behavior of a citizen with a single word: loyalty. In some cases, this power to define loyalty was unilateral, for instance in the case of ethnic categorization, which was usually legally or structurally defined, leaving the individual little room to negotiate his or her membership, except when a census was taken.1 Thus the logic of the state and how it approached ethnicity, loyalty and state security had a considerable impact on the behavior of other actors.

However, states are rarely homogeneous entities. Indeed one of their chief characteristics is their complexity. As a consequence, even when a given state has a clearly defined goal accompanied by a well-articulated concept of state security and loyalty, many actors are responsible for the implementation of policies and the administration of society at different levels and under different circumstances.2 This plural nature of the (single) state and the resulting potential for varying interpretations and understandings of security, and ethnicity opens up spaces for redefinitions of the concept of loyalty, either entirely or at least with regards to part(s) of its content. Add to this the personal flexibility of individual administrative officials and the fact that even totalitarian regimes were never fully able to control individual responses to and attitudes towards their expectations and the result is often a surprisingly large semantic space in which contestation of these concepts (security, ethnicity, and loyalty) took place with very different outcomes, depending on various factors. Thus even in the case of state security (which is usually associated with strict control and enforcement) and its relationship to ethnicity and loyalty one can expect dynamic stories with varying trajectories, the usual narrative of political and/or national oppression notwithstanding.

In this study I attempt to trace the dynamics of the concepts under investigation in interwar Romania, firstly as an exemplary case of a wider phenomenon (nowadays a popular topic of historical research), namely the notion of ethnicity as a social construct3 and then as an alternative to the usual narratives of the specific history of the Hungarian minority in interwar Romania. Concerning the latter aim, I do not intend to rewrite this story.4 I would rather provide a complementary narrative and demonstrate why it is necessary to go beyond the generalized view of historical actors in order to understand even broader social processes within the ethnic minority communities.

I also intend to offer a tacit challenge to the existing secondary literature, Hungarian and Romanian alike. There is, however, an important difference between Hungarian and Romanian works dealing with minorities and minority policy. The bulk of Hungarian historiography since the 1960s employs more constructive methodologies in the creation of this macro perspective, and works that were written after the late 1980s implement important theoretical insights from nationalism studies and social sciences. With a few notable exceptions,5 Romanian historiography lags behind. Most of the scholarship in question is descriptive or consists of individual source publications, and articles complied from transcripts of documents without contextualization.6 Some of the most prominent works are uncritical of their sources, repetitively reproducing their perspectives, opinions and assessments, and this is also true of the source publications.7 This does not mean that these works do not contain a huge amount of information and data, but the way they narrate the history of minorities is centered on politics and framed by a perspective from above.

In contrast, I intend to dissociate my story from what we usually understand as politics, the activity of political actors at national level or that of members of political parties in a given context, or the even narrower perspectives of legal texts produced by politicians. First, my aim is to show how lower levels of the administration dealt with their immediate subjects, so I offer insights into the practical meaning of certain concepts and policies and not political intentions in the aforementioned sense. Second, my point of departure is state security, not minority policy, which is usually based on the very existence of the state, irrespective of its nature (be it democratic , authoritarian, or dictatorial) or dominant ideology (be it liberal, nationalist, communist or fascist etc.). Every state has an understanding of state security and every state uses similar practices to further this aim.

Nevertheless, the context of minority politics in interwar Romania is significant in order to highlight the potential differences between situations that resulted from the varying acts of different actors. Most works on this issue draw a distinction between the first and the second decade of the interwar era and they also point out the different stances of National Liberal and National Peasant Governments. The 1920s, dominated by the liberals, are usually characterized as an era of legal unification based on the notion of the equality of all citizens and rejection of the necessity of specific minority rights (with all the consequences this entailed for minorities that were accustomed to particular legal systems). In other words, the dismissal of minority rights as a legitimate state concern notwithstanding, the period is regarded as one in which liberal policies prevailed concerning the citizens’ status, peaking in the decentralizing accommodation attempts of the National Peasant governments between 1928 and 1933. In contrast, the 1930s is usually seen as an era of growing nationalist sentiment, during which mainstream parties tacked to the right, adopting increasingly extreme positions under pressure from the extreme right movements.8 The distance between politics and implementation, minority policy and state security allows one to test this general opinion as a hypothesis at the lower levels of the administration and from the perspective of state security organs, which I intend to do in the following sections.9

A Triangle of Concepts

The point of departure for this essay is the concept of loyalty, a notion that was potentially directly connected both to ethnicity and state security. According to Peter Haslinger and Joachim von Puttkamer,10 loyalty as a social phenomenon (a set of norms, expectations and practices) has three important aspects. The first one is an emotional-ethical one, which entails individual and collective activity, while mutuality of the relationship between individuals and groups or states remains central. The second one is a relational aspect, concerning the acceptance or rejection of a state, which enables the actors to perform, demand, control and sanction loyalty. The third one is a discursive one, (re)interpreting loyalty in relation to the usually stable discursive identity that makes it possible to gain room for maneuver despite the fixed assumptions of behavior and practices usually associated with identity. The three aspects not only situate loyalty as a discourse but also make it distinguishable in most social contexts, beyond a mere speech-act and also as an often embedded practice.

A close relationship between loyalty and ethnicity was characteristic to the new nation states of interwar Europe. It was exemplified by rhetoric that often confounded ethnic belonging with a presupposed attitude towards the existence and goals of the nation states.11 It did not, however, necessarily mean a complete identification of these concepts. They were seen rather as existing in a causal relationship between one’s ethnicity and one’s loyalty. According to the principle of national self-determination, a cornerstone of the new European order after World War I, ethnicity implied a tendency towards the establishment of new entities and the striving for sovereignty. Additionally, since the states that had lost the war sought at least partial revision of the peace treaties, revisionism based on claims on behalf of ethnic kin in other states represented another form of politics that made loyalty questionable on the basis of ethnicity. Irredentism and revisionism, the two frequently mentioned threats to the territorial integrity of the successor states, were sometimes complemented with a third problem that also put ethnic minorities in the limelight as sources of danger: the minority treaties signed by the new nation states of Eastern Europe. Successive Romanian governments saw these documents as a result of unjust Great Power pressure and an infringement on their own sovereignty. They were therefore reluctant to give them precedence over national legislation, first and foremost the Constitution of 1923, which declared the equality of every citizen irrespective of ethnicity and failed to incorporate the few specific rights listed in the Minority Treaty.12 It is not surprising that minority organizations were vulnerable to allegations that they were undermining the state, especially when they based their claims on the Minority Treaty.13

Under these circumstances, ethnic categorization became crucial in determining one’s loyalty, and in accordance with the essentialist logic of ethnicity, suspicions concerning loyalty were easily extended to the whole ethnic group. If ethnicity implied an attachment to or longing for a different form of statehood, then ethnic minorities were inevitably suspected of subversion. State security demanded observation and control of ethnic groups and their activity. Cultural practices that were regarded as peculiar to (and possibly essential to) a particular ethnic group were easily seen as expressions or rejections of the state precisely because of they were interpreted as representations of one ethnicity in a state that was perceived as the embodiment of another. Thus the three concepts were connected to one another in a complex triangle of relationships in which ethnicity had a bearing on one’s presumable behavior and this presumption easily made a person seem disloyal in the eyes of the authorities, thus automatically making him or her a threat to the state. Those responsible for the security of the state could all too easily equate ethnicity with loyalty (or disloyalty in the case of a minority) and define minorities as dangers. As a consequence, ethnic categorization was often about determining or at least alleging varying degrees of loyalty.14

Beyond this gaze from above, the complexity of the state and society and the limitations of the state’s executive capacity allowed for contestation of these concepts and also their relationship to one another, which was regarded as straightforward by most security organs. Perceptions and expectations were not necessarily accepted and fulfilled, while the approach of the state security organs and their practice of categorization inevitably impacted on the activity of those affected. However, the impact itself depended on many factors and sometimes resulted in unexpected outcomes, as other actors made other contributions to the process of defining ethnicity and loyalty and how ethnicity and loyalty affected state security. The contingent, fluid nature of ethnicity in particular posed a challenge to the simplistic causality implied in the action of state organs, as it often disrupted the connection between ethnicity and loyalty.

Security and Ethnicity

If one examines the concept of security in interwar Romania from the perspective of the state, i.e. the higher levels of administration, it is easy to discern signs of the blurring of the concept of ethnicity and loyalty. The loyalty of ethnic others was a permanent concern for the administration and in particular for the organs of security, such as the police, the gendarmerie and the State Security Police (Siguranţa, a branch of the police). But as the local outlets of these organs were politically subordinated to the county prefects, (politicians who had administrative duties, were invested with extensive powers, and represented the central government), the problem was an important issue in the political sphere as well. As a consequence, in addition to the regular reports of the police and gendarmerie, the political reports of the prefects also gave extensive descriptions of alleged subversive activities among members of the ethnic minority population.

The readiness with which the implicit assumption that the minority population as such posed a danger to the state was adopted and accepted is illustrated by how this concern figured in tens of thousands of political reports (of which I could only gain access to more than one-thousand from all over Romania) over the course of the two decades in question. Not only did these reports consistently contain separate sections on the activities of these minorities in the respective counties, the headings of these sections often explicitly labeled the groups as problems (problemă minoritară, maghiară, etc.), questions (chestiunea minoritară, germană, etc.) or movements (mişcarea minoritară, maghiară, etc.), terms suggesting something that should be overseen and kept under control.15 It is also noteworthy how much these fears and the resulting perception of minorities as threats was characteristic for Romanian political thinking and discourse in their entirety, creating a situation in which views dominant in the public sphere and state practices reinforced one another, even on the level of semantics.16

Two important things stand out concerning this labeling. First, they did not draw any distinction between the various minorities. Even minorities without an external homeland or territorial claims, such as Jews, appeared regularly in these reports. Thus there was a clear distinction between the majority and the minorities in terms of potential threat, and minority status alone sufficed as a substantiation of the subversive potential of these ethnic groups. The generalization that underlies this practice is important for the conceptualization of loyalty too, because it makes plausible and palpable how non-Romanians were essentially seen as more or less incompatible with the existing order, much like other subversive groups, and this is the second point concerning the categorization of minorities in the reports. That they posed a potential threat went without saying, as was the case with communists, fascists, and workers, but it was also regarded as self-evident that the workers’ problem or student problem was equally important, not least because of the violence associated with these movements.17 The fact that minorities figured alongside them in the reports certainly meant that they were also seen as suspicious and even potentially capable of violence.

But however simple and effective this categorization seems (minorities are disloyal and the majority is loyal simply because of their ethnicity, thus ethnicity is a reliable marker of loyalty), it did not remain unproblematic. Especially in the new provinces of Greater Romania (Transylvania, the Banat, Bukovina, Bessarabia) and more markedly at the fringes, often along the borders, the loyalty of the Romanian population was also called into question.18 On the basis of observations made by the authorities and complaints lodged by individuals, they were increasingly seen as unreliable, dangerous, and a challenge to the authority of the state. However, with a strange twist the bond between ethnicity and loyalty was maintained intact with the claim that these Romanians were not actually Romanians. They were either “denationalized” (Magyarized, Russianized, Polonized, Ukrainianized etc.) Romanians or they were not Romanians at all, but rather a mixed population, and this was reflected in their everyday practices: language use, attitude towards official celebrations, and consumption of cultural material goods.

Thus the strong link between ethnicity and loyalty was restored with the categorization of people on the basis of their behavior and the identification of certain practices with a specific ethnicity. But when the notion of behavior and cultural practices as the litmus test of ethnicity was applied on a day-to-day basis, it did not prove sufficient to determine one’s loyalty or disloyalty in a viable manner. At least this is what an exchange of letters between the central apparatus of the Siguranţa and the local police units located in the smaller cities around Cluj (Kolozsvár) suggests. In a letter, the central administration not only complained that the local police failed to report the threats posed by the regular activities of minorities in the respective cities, but also instructed the police as to what it meant to be irredentist and, as such, disloyal. The letter practically claimed that every single activity of a minority organization was part of irredentist propaganda and conspiracy, so the police had to report on them in detail and hinder them, whether they regarded these activities as potentially dangerous or not.19 While this approach concurred entirely with the simple equation of ethnicity and loyalty that prevailed in police and political reports, it was clear to the local police that it would have created an unmanageable situation on the ground. The reaction of the police, who de facto neglected the order (as I discuss below), reveals that the discrepancy between local and central actors concerning the definition of loyalty and the relationship between loyalty and ethnicity could not be eliminated by simple order. It also sheds light on the practices through which concepts were redefined, which I address in more detail later.

Not surprisingly the simple equation of ethnicity and loyalty pervaded other fields of ethnic categorization, seemingly farther from the immediate concerns of state security. But in a paradoxical way, to a certain extent these practices showed that according to the specific situation and the immediate aims of the state there was a chance of loosening the strong bond connecting ethnicity and loyalty. Census taking is one of the obvious examples, especially as it was the moment when one’s ethnicity was formally registered in a legally binding form. But while police and political reports suggest no differences among minorities as far as their potentially dangerous nature was concerned, the census contradicted to this strict rule and revealed a certain pecking order of dangerousness. In this case, the aim of the state was to weaken the (allegedly) most dangerous ethnic groups by strengthening others by revealing the “true” ethnicity of people who (purportedly) had been Magyarized or Russianized before World War I. In Transylvania, the most important groups subject to this practice were Germans and urban Jews. They were often compelled to register as Jews and Germans and were threatened with fines if they failed to comply.20

However, once again the case was less straightforward than it seems. Individual census commissioners often did not entirely share the official view and treated every minority as equally dangerous. One of them even saw the census as an opportunity to search the home of every Hungarian and to reveal hidden depots of arms and ammunition, their supposed armed conspiracy against Romania,21 once again highlighting the practical importance of what the executors of state policies actually thought of these issues. On the other hand, the police reports imply that the differences in the danger these groups posed could only have been a difference of degree, for example in the practice of Bessarabian police organs the Jews as an ethnicity were equated with ethnic danger and communism simultaneously, making them probably the most subversive group in the eyes of the authorities.22

While recent secondary literature suggests that actual policy towards minorities in interwar South Eastern Europe was mainly influenced by the relationship between the kin-state, the home state, and Great Power influence if its support was important for the homeland,23 such considerations do not seem to have had an impact on the perception of ethnicity as a threat to the state. At least in the case of Germans neither Romanian attempts to gain German support at the end of the 1930s nor the Antonescu regime’s alliance with the Third Reich diminished concerns or reduced the amount of paperwork dealing with the supervision and control of the German minority as a permanent danger, despite significant political concessions to their demands.24 The reports still related every detail of the German problem, and the police continued to devote considerable attention to German activity in the country.

Irredentists and Minority Officials

In the previous section, I mentioned how the perspective of central organs was characteristic of the state apparatus and how the equation of loyalty and ethnicity was embedded in the workings of its organs. But even at this macro level and in spite of the simplicity of the premise, it was not always easy to apply, although the equation remained the basis on which many of the acts and policies of the organs of state security were based. However, it is not always possible to discern on the basis of these sources alone how the concepts of loyalty, ethnicity and state security were contested, reshaped, and reconstructed through the interactions of different actors.

In the following section, I use two exemplary cases to highlight this process in more detail. The cases I have chosen represent two different situations for the participants. The first one, which concerns how the concept of irredentism was used by organs responsible for state security, shows the effects of unilateral, often secret categorization, while the second one, which involves the language exams taken by minority public officials in 1934–1935, shows how a supposedly fixed identification was often successfully negotiated in its content throughout this process. The unilateral nature of categorization and the secrecy, which was only broken by often politically motivated trials that were not intended to reveal the “truth” about the accused but rather to reinforce state legitimacy through the discovery of enemies, made it almost impossible to negotiate the content or label of irredentism. Individuals registered as irredentists remained passive in the face of this charge, except in the case of a trial, but the concepts were still not used uniformly. The differences in the ways in which the notion was defined and applied are very instructive concerning the working of categorization within a complex structure. Thus they shed some light on the differences in definitions within the state and also on the basic definition of nation/ethnicity.

The second example, which involves language exams, offers a look at a more dynamic and complex context in which every actor gained a certain level of agency in determining and defining ethnicity. Although the basic equation of ethnicity and loyalty remained seemingly uncontested, the many variations of what really constituted ethnicity in the case of minority officials, whose minority position and identity was a fixed element of the process, often led to a de facto redefinition of their ethnic belonging. In this case, many actors exerted influence one way or another on the result, the central state organs, local politicians, representatives of the public officials as a profession, and the examinees themselves, resulting in a very intriguing set of tactics and strategies.

Irredentism and Irredentists

The basic equation of ethnicity and (dis)loyalty made it seemingly quite simple for the authorities to identify dangerous people and groups whose often permanent supervision was necessary for the security of the state. Earlier research has already demonstrated that police practice applied the uniform view of ethnic groups as dangerous per se. Kathrine Sorrels analyzes how Jews were seen in Bessarabia and concludes that the police practically bound their ethnicity with subversive activity, be it bolshevism or ethnic secession.25 However, she concentrated on the group as a whole, implicitly accepting the contemporaneous official perspective, and did not attempt to look for differences within the state or interrogate the practical content and meaning of concepts like irredentist and Bolshevik. She used only police reports, while different types of sources, combined with the paper trail of individual cases, offer a glimpse at both the meaning of the concept of irredentism as it was used by state authorities and the process of construction/application of this concept in a complex administrative system. Lists of people to intern in case of military mobilization as of 1933,26 a period of internal politics that was still relatively peaceful,27 provides a basis for an analysis of the social backgrounds of irredentists in comparison with other allegedly subversive groups and also data that can shed some light on the meanings of the concept.

Reports on the activity of lower level police organs reveal that the lists were not exhaustive. In other words, there were more people suspected of irredentist activity than actually on the lists. Thus we can take the lists as a register of a “core” group, the presence of which was seen as the most acute potential danger to military efforts due to its social activity and influence on the minority population. In this sense, the lists were not really inventories of potential irredentists not even of people who had fallen under the suspicion of the authorities. Rather, they were records of people believed by the authorities to constitute a group the removal of which would forestall any potential irredentist political activities among the members of minority groups.

The lists consist of 1,262 people suspected or accused of having engaged in all kinds of subversive activity. While data from some Transylvanian counties are missing, a summary of the number of people to intern as of 1936 and scattered lists from individual counties from other years suggest that the overall number for Transylvania was not much higher than the number found in these partial lists, making the sample a legitimate basis of analysis.28 There was no consistent use of the label irredentist among state organs, so it is not possible to determine precisely who was treated as a dangerous irredentist. Nevertheless, the use of two different filters could certainly include everyone whom the authorities classified as an irredentist. One should therefore draw a distinction between “hard” or “core” irredentists, who were registered explicitly as irredentists, and “soft” irredentists, who figured on the list as chauvinists who held some anti-Romanian sentiment or were labeled with some similar accusation. 440 people belonged to the core and an additional 178 people to the soft irredentist group, comprising almost 49 percent of all registered people. Even if one adds the 23 spies, the number is hardly half of the dangerous elements in the register, suggesting that irredentism was less of a concern for the authorities than is usually presumed.29

In the eyes of the authorities, the phenomenon of irredentism was not solely an urban one, but was also found in a concentrated form in a few larger localities. 383 people, 62 percent of the combined, soft and hard irredentist group, lived in only 13 cities across Transylvania. However, there was no straight correlation between the size of a city or the proportion of Hungarians living there and the number of irredentists registered. The authorities needed a certain number of Hungarians to “find” a larger group of irredentists among them, but a larger group of Hungarians did not automatically mean a larger group of irredentists. This finding suggests that the authorities were not obliged or under pressure to produce a certain number or percentage of irredentists. Also, there is no visible tendency indicating that the presence of non-Hungarian minority groups proportionally raised the number of irredentists in the particular locality. This suggests that Hungarians were somewhat more likely to fall under such suspicion than members of other nationalities, a hypothesis further corroborated by the internal division of the irredentist groups according to ethnicity. In this regard Hungarians, made up around 80 percent of both “core” irredentists and the combined “core” and “soft” irredentist groups, while their share of the minority population in these counties was only 65.6 percent.30

The social composition of Hungarian irredentists shown in tables 1 and 231 reveals the extent to which the concept, when applied, was limited to a small and very specific group of Hungarians.

	Hungarian	German	Jew	Romanian	Other	Total
Worker	10	1	–	–	–	11
Peasant, agricultural laborer	6	–	–	–	–	6
Artisan, skilled worker, trader, smallholder	32	5	–	–	–	37
Public services	29	4	1	–	–	34
Education, religion	60	4	2	–	–	66
Liberal professions	82	4	17	–	1	104
Proprietor	26	2	–	–	–	28
Private official	19	2	1	–	–	22
Commerce, restoration, pharmacist	23	8	9	–	–	40
Politics	4	–	–	–	–	4
Housewife, pensioner	16	5	2	1	–	24
n. a.	–	–	1	–	–	1
Total	307	35	33	1	1	377

 

Table 1: Occupational division of registered “core” irredentists according to ethnicity

 

	Hungarian	German	Jew	Romanian	Other	Total
Worker	32	2	–	4	4	42
Peasant, agricultural laborer	7	6	–	2	–	15
Artisan, skilled worker, trader, smallholder	56	15	–	4	1	76
Public services	36	6	1	–	–	43
Education, religion	75	10	3	–	–	88
Liberal professions	98	6	21	–	1	126
Proprietor	32	2	–	–	–	34
Private official	25	5	4	–	–	34
Commerce, restoration, pharmacist	34	10	10	–	1	55
Politics	4	–	–	–	–	4
Housewife, pensioner	26	8	2	1	–	37
n. a.		–	1			1
Total	425	70	42	11	7	555

 

Table 2: Occupational division of registered “core” and “soft” irredentists, according to ethnicity

 

The most important characteristic of these groups was the reduced presence of workers and peasants, although together they represented the largest occupational group among Hungarians.32 The absence of these categories from the group of irredentists is even more striking considering that 44 percent of all Hungarians assigned to internment were registered as communists, showing that ethnicity alone did not determine one’s categorization. But a tendency to become communist according to official categorizations was even more prevalent in the case of lower middle class or petty bourgeois groups.33 In this case, 63 percent of all registered individuals were classified as communists.

On the other hand, representatives of the liberal professions and the intelligentsia were significantly overrepresented among irredentists, irrespective of their nationality. Among Hungarians 40 percent of irredentists, whether core or soft, belonged to this occupational category, compared to 13 percent among the Hungarian population. If one adopts a broad definition of middle class, adding private officials, some proprietors, and independent entrepreneurs in commerce, restoration, pharmacist or public servants it is safe to conclude that at least 60 percent of those categorized as irredentists belonged to the middle class. If we bundle together middle class defined in this manner, the elite and the better situated part of the lower middle class, their ratio together could reach as much as 80% of registered irredentists of Hungarian nationality. Therefore, it seems that irredentism was not really equal with ethnicity alone, but with ethnicity and profession or social status. Belonging to the middle-class meant that one either was not seen as suspicious or, if you were, you were still only perceived as an irredentist by the authorities.

A look at the gender aspect and some paradoxical cases corroborates this finding. Regarding gender, not only did a mere sixth of women registered belong to the “core” irredentist category, almost without exception their social roles were classic middle class housewife, while many working women figured among communists. It is also telling that a few individuals who otherwise either were leaders of the legal Social Democratic Party (associated with the workers’ problem in police reports) or already known to the authorities as communists still figured among irredentists. In all likelihood, this was due to their occupation, namely journalism.34

Obviously, stereotypes played an important role in the practice of categorization. While ethnicity was not unrelated to the decisions of authorities, it was only one factor. It was necessary but not adequate to qualify someone as irredentist. As in the case of Jews, who were associated with bolshevism due to their nationality and the respective stereotypes (for this reason mainly people from lower and lower-middle class groups are found on the lists as alleged communists), irredentist Hungarians were predominantly middle class, often well educated people, in harmony with the stereotypical image of Hungarians.35

Looking behind the often simplistic labels on the list, which were intended to describe the threats these people posed to state security, irredentism, as is clear from the two-tier analysis of the social composition of this group, reveals a wide range of meanings beyond the non-Romanian ethnic middle class status. Irredentist was not the only term used by the state authorities to designate people who were suspected of irredentism. The authorities applied a number of synonymous words, often arbitrarily or just to avoid the negative stylistic effect of the accumulation or repetition of a word. Sometimes the modification was only a phrase attached to or involving a derived form of “irredentism,” like “Hungarian irredentist, feverishly zealous, great propagandist.”36 In other cases it was a substitution or a synonym, often used in analogous phrases, like “great chauvinist, hates everything Romanian,” “irredentist and Hungarian propagandist.”37 There was a third type, namely the seemingly accurate description of a particular case, but these descriptions often rested on stereotypes, and there was also a very pliant label, subversive, which could refer to irredentism or other potentially dangerous activities as well.

The concept of irredentism was to a certain extent treated as a matter of common knowledge. The term was used with minimal or no explanation, implying the self-evidence of its meaning.38 When the term was used in a context in which it went beyond this simplistic formulation and suggested something concrete, this implied meaning could have been a general attitude, a permanent activity or a single case. The most intriguing of its implied meanings was simply the notion of a general attitude that was usually summarized as hostility to Romania and discontent with the situation in the country, and this attitude always involved a critical stance with regards to the prevailing circumstances. Sometimes even oblique, general criticism (for example in the form of a theater play in which state officials were depicted in a negative light, even if the setting of the play was not specified) was enough to raise the suspicion of the authorities.39 These kinds of manifestations of alleged disloyalty were usually seen through the lens of ethnicity. If criticism came from a non-Romanian, it was easy to assume that the reason was the alien soul of the critic who imagined a solution outside the framework of the Romanian nation state. Social roles or positions were often confounded with pursuits in attempts to define irredentism. Although in many cases the authorities substantiated their categorizations with mention of the specific acts of the accused, as these actions usually were closely related to the profession of the person concerned the decision to designate him or her as “irredentist” was a condemnation of his or her pursuits in their entirety. These activities were usually carried out in civic societies and associations, and logically the activity of these institutions was also categorized as irredentist.40 As a consequence, everyone involved automatically became an irredentist.41

Concerning specific acts that were regarded by the organs of the state as irredentist, apart from cases of violence against the authorities, open rebellion or participation in the Hungarian-Romanian armed conflict during and after World War I (i.e. in the past), these acts consisted primarily of banal expressions of nationalist sentiment and everyday gestures of ethnic belonging.42 Singing the wrong songs, wearing the wrong clothes, using the wrong paints, or buying or selling the wrong bouquet figured on the long list of potential transgressions of the law. These cases are interesting from an analytical perspective in part because of the possibility that Romanians could commit mistakes that qualified them as Hungarian irredentists.43 However, this did not loosen the tie between ethnicity and loyalty, since the gestures or acts that could make a Romanian seem “Hungarian” in the eyes of the authorities were gestures and acts specifically associated with Hungarian identity and culture.

One of the main consequences of this diversity of applications was the fuzzy character of the definition itself. Due to the multiple uses of the term and the lack of clear-cut guidelines, the police apparatus created a vague concept that could apply to anyone if necessary. As the pervading view of the minorities and especially the Hungarian minority was characterized by growing paranoia and hysteria throughout the interwar period, the emerging discourse (or at least part of it) posited every act of a member of a minority as a sign of irredentism. However, even in the late 1930s one still found expressions in this discourse of the hope that workers and peasants could be separated from the Hungarian “oligarchs,” highlighting the extent to which the police practice of categorization reflected political perceptions of the minorities.44

Paranoia was prevalent in police documents as well, not least because of the unfamiliarity of the police and gendarmerie with Hungarian (and sometimes Transylvanian Romanian) milieus.45 There was a language barrier too. Often police officers from the Old Kingdom even confused German with Hungarian, and they were rarely able to detect negative references in translated texts.46 But this reinforced the determination of the authorities, who often treated irredentism as a one way street. Once something led to the registration of a person as an irredentist, it was impossible for him or her ever to be granted absolution for this qualification. One small deed remained a permanent stigma.47

However, the vague definition of the concept, the inability of the center to apply it in a consistent manner, and the discrepancies between certain local contexts led to an unexpected result, namely the emergence of a space in which the definition of irredentism depended entirely on the local representatives of the state. Although nominally a serious problem and a reason for strict observation and control of anyone suspected of disloyalty, irredentism became an arbitrary category often used without any consequences, even if on other occasions it was the justification for severe punishments. There was no automatic classification of people with the same profession or occupation. For example, while in Cluj or Odorhei Secuiesc (Székelyudvarhely) the most important Hungarian politicians were labeled irredentists, in Târgu Mureş (Marosvásárhely) only one man, György Bernády, was regarded as meriting this designation. At the time, Bernády had been in opposition to the Hungarian party, although he was also an opponent of the governing National Peasant Party.48 Similar discrepancies were frequent concerning secondary school teachers or priests, and in individual cases there is evidence indicating that the authorities (the gendarmerie and the Prosecutor’s Office, for example in Zălău) tried to bury denunciations.49

The importance of local contexts highlights the problems and contingency of categorization even in a seemingly simple case and shows how individuals who had access to the police personnel via networks or because of their social position were able to negotiate the content of an operative term, in this case irredentism. Local police representatives still had to take official expectations into account, but at times they also found ways of feigning compliance without actually carrying out orders. As soon as they realized that compliance with orders to exercise permanent control over every minority activity would disrupt everyday life, they started to pay lip service to central demands, often imitating the exact wording of their superiors.50 The most illustrative example of this tactic was the manner in which the Dej (Dés) police handled an order issued by the regional police inspectorate in 1937. The police units in the cities around Cluj were warned to abandon their usual habit of filing lapidary reports in which they described the activity of Hungarians only vaguely and with reference to stereotypes, usually saying little more than something like, “Hungarians behave like they used to.” They were instructed in harsh terms that every organization and every event that was in some way attached to Hungarian identity or Hungarian culture served the goal of collecting money for territorial revision and propaganda. It is not clear how the other police chiefs reacted, but the Dej reports remained largely unchanged, with verbatim repetition of the phrases used in earlier reports with the addition of a half-sentence that affirmed the revisionist nature of these (perfectly ordinary) events.51 Thus while the concept of irredentism remained seemingly unaltered, in reality it became extremely fragmented and retained only one element: a correlation with ethnicity and social status.

Examining Minority Officials

Loyalty was crucial in the process of language exams for minority officials too. While nominally they were obliged as of the early 1920s to pass an exam (the first nationwide, compulsory exam was organized in 1924) in order to be employed in the public sector, examinees were often treated leniently52 and retained even when they did not possess adequate language skills. A decade later, amidst growing political pressure from stronger nationalist currents, the government decided to oblige minority public officials to take another language exam, without exception. The situation was seemingly unambiguous. Only minority officials were obliged to pass the exam. That is, ethnicity was the sole criterion and ethnicity, regarded as an unchangeable, fixed characteristic of individuals, itself was a mark of potential disloyalty.

Without describing the process in detail or analyzing the composition of the group of minority officials (a group that was much larger than it was portrayed in the contemporaneous discourse and much larger than is usually presumed in the secondary literature),53 I will focus on two aspects: the identification of minority officials as it can be examined on the basis of the exams and the ways in which prefects reacted to the explicit demand for mass layoffs from Bucharest. The first aspect involves the question of loyalty and ethnicity because the exams were potentially an expression of different forms of loyalty to the state. The second shows how different actors in different positions interpreted state security and loyalty.

The potential to test and express one’s loyalty arose from the structure of the exams. Examinees were subject to an oral and a written examination. Officials with higher levels of education had to speak about a topic selected by the committee and compose an essay. Those with lower levels of education only had to write down a text. The topics varied greatly across Transylvania, but they basically revolved around three larger issues: a rather general one with certain national content, a professional one, and a question that involved some aspect of the applicant’s personal life. The first dealt with history, geography, or culture, inviting the candidates to talk about national issues. They were free to decide whether to tell a boiler-plate version or deviate from it, and in case of the latter they could also choose the extent of the deviation. This usually was not surprising, especially for those who entered public service after 1919, because they were requested to take a competency exam that usually contained similar questions.54 A language exam, however, was slightly different. Manner of expression was the main issue in principle, not content.55

The second type, the professional question, was either strictly professional (a description of one’s working day or an outline of the rights and duties of the communal administration) or obliged the applicant to discuss the social roles of public servants, especially in rural areas, where the state was perceived as the main driver of modernization and progress. It certainly reflected the self-perception of the state and created a situation in which the candidates could prove their loyalty to the state project through the imaginary enactment of these duties. Essay topics in this category ranged from the role of village notaries in the fight against alcoholism to their role in the peaceful coexistence of minorities and Romanians.56

The third type of language exam question, which involved some aspect of the applicant’s personal life, was often posed in a general manner to rural officials and usually more specifically to urban officials, implicitly differentiating the role of the state in the two social spaces. While rural officials were seen as missionaries of modernization, urban ones were expected to set an example of urban middle-class life. Thus, examinees in urban areas were sometimes asked to describe how they had spent their most recent holidays or to summarize the content of a novel they had recently read, while village employees were asked to give general description of their personal lives or recount a few significant events from them.57

How could these different types of questions trigger broader questions of identification? The topics themselves were certainly indicators of the expectations of the examiners. The candidates could decide how to frame their answers and themselves, i.e. whether to portray themselves as mere professionals or whether to relate to national issues in their discussions of the foundations of the nation-state in history and culture, indicating loyalty and identification beyond the obvious sense of duty. While in principle the exams were not about the content of the text but rather only the mastery of the language, the applicants could hardly have failed to consider the perceived expectations of those assessing the essays.

In the light of this general pattern, it is not surprising that most candidates tried to portray themselves as professionals and members of a specialized professional body. Within this general framework, however, there was significant room to express how exceptionally attached and loyal some applicants were. It was customary to emphasize one’s long and dutiful public service58 or for an applicant to boast of his or her credentials as a competent administrator, indispensable to the future of the country. One finds a very interesting variety of this professional identification with the state in the essay by applicant David Eugen.59 Eugen expressed his extraordinary devotion to Romania by portraying himself as an orphan who had found his new family and home in the community of Romanian public servants.

Although a detailed analysis of essays written by a large enough number of examinees from different backgrounds on the same topic60 reveals intriguing, small deviations from a general pattern of identification, the exams offered primarily a relatively easy and comfortable strategy of identification as a professional public servant whose loyalty was strong without necessarily containing any unambiguous acceptance of Romanian nationalist discourse. The whole process was designed to steer the candidates towards this kind of professional identification, and even in situations in which other possibilities were available most of them opted for this one. There was also a clear difference between the urban and rural personnel. In the case of the former, they had to act as role models of middle-class life, while in the case of the latter they were supposed to serve as pioneers of the state in improving conditions in the villages. In this world, the city as characterized in the essays was a world of progress driven by the state where the nationalities coexisted peacefully, enjoying the equality of civic rights (again a reproduction of the state’s perception of itself).

The government was not content with the number of examinees who failed the exams, and Secretary of State Dumitru Iuca raised the threshold for passing after the examinations were finished and the results had already been announced.61 He wanted to see a more sweeping purge of the minority officials. His subordinates, the county prefects, reacted with surprising consternation and almost unanimously tried to parry the order, adopting a wide variety of tactics. Some of them openly stated that without the minority officials county administration would stall.62 Others challenged the order with legal arguments and engaged their superior in negotiations, in the end gaining significant concessions.63 Often prefects tried to sabotage or at least circumvent the order by various means, among them tricky reevaluations of past exams,64 pretending not to know the relevant sentences of the Supreme Court of Cassation65 or blaming the previous administration for having created a legal trap that made the layoffs impossible.66

Another frequently used tactic was transferring responsibility to other organs that were either reluctant to carry out the order or sometimes neglected it entirely. Prefects subjected their failed subordinates to disciplinary procedures in which Disciplinary Committees reexamined and reinstated them,67 and Local and National Commissions of Revision overturned the ministerial order en masse.68 Sometimes prefects replied to the inquiries of their superiors with the contention that other officials (city mayors, ministerial directors, etc.) were responsible for the failures to comply with the order, and they claimed to have no influence on them at all.69 Even if they failed to save some people’s careers, they did manage to offer escape routes (for example pensioning) that the ministry also tried to block.70

The last method of subverting the order was reexamination itself. It was unusually lenient. Most of the examinees who initially had passed the exam passed it again, but Iuca’s order obliged them to take it yet again. Committees tried to give them topics tailored to their fields of activity.71 Often examinees with poor written essays were given exceptionally high grades on their oral exams.72 In general officials who did the exams again got much higher average grades than their initial results. Furthermore, many of those who failed were still retained in their positions with or without the consent of Bucharest.73 It seems that in the end only between 15 and 20 percent of the minority officials were laid off, a significantly lower ratio than Bucharest would have wanted.

Taken together, the process, the essays, and the aftermath of the exams proved the existence of a professional identity among minority public officials and the strength of professional solidarity among public servants, irrespective of nationality. The exam topics and written exams point to the primacy of professional identification too. It made the minority officials, who were suspicious simply as members of a minority, an asset worth fighting for. The successful tactics of the prefects highlights how misleading it is to treat the Romanian state as monolithic entity that only pursued nationalizing goals. It is impossible to understand how and why nationalizing policies were executed, hindered, and sometimes even sabotaged if one fails to account for the local contexts and the different logics that prevailed at different levels of the administration.

Below the Surface, on the Fringes

In the public discourse and the workings of the organs of state security the relationship of the three aspects of loyalty was based on the simple equation of ethnicity with loyalty. Ethnicity was seen as conducive to loyalty or disloyalty. Despite initial attempts by the minorities to establish a relationship with the Romanians based on mutual recognition of civic rights and duties74 and a shared hope to arrive at a common, regionalist concept of statehood and belonging (both of which would have led to a new understanding of loyalty),75 the understanding of ethnicity as (dis)loyalty remained dominant and unchanged, despite differences in minority policies under the alternating governments. There are also signs that this undiscriminating stance with regards to loyalty was universal on the whole territory of Greater Romania. 76

At the lower levels of administration, in everyday practice neither the more relaxed nor the hardliner versions of policy led to much systematic difference. The divergent approaches to implementation depended on other factors. On the other hand, the organs of state security did not abandon their often paranoid view of minorities. Thus “practicing” one’s ethnicity became a sign of disloyalty, and this left little space for a citizen to be a non-Romanian who was loyal to the Romanian state. Furthermore, if one sought to express or demonstrate loyalty, practically this meant the acceptance of Romanian ethnicity at least in praxis. But this expectation was not applied uniformly to every social group. The concept of irredentism, as it was used by the authorities, defined Hungarian ethnicity as the sum of the middle-class and its activities, while workers and peasants were seen as inclined to become communists.

A closer look also reveals that at local/micro level the relationship of the three aspects was easily reconfigured and replaced with a more balanced one. Obviously this depended on the local context and on the personal attitudes of those who were responsible for the implementation of state policies.77 But in the end it was possible to establish an informal setting in which mutual recognition played a larger role than the public discourse would have suggested. The strong link between ethnicity and loyalty was loosened on the basis of common norms, values and the social practices of the middle-class, and these were often determined by Hungarians or Germans, as they held dominant positions in Transylvanian urban societies.

The language exams exemplify another means of redefining loyalty and ethnicity and generating a sphere in which mutual recognition determined the understanding of loyalty, while here alternative discourses also emerged. In exchange for accepting a specific identification which paired professional self-perception and a modified version of Hungarian ethnicity, minority officials were regarded as equal members of a professional body. Their loyalty was not questionable in the eyes of their immediate superiors and colleagues. Their contributions were indispensable for the good conduct of administration and they shared the modernizing goals of the state. Even if their ethnicity was regarded as fixed and unalterable (because it was the foundation on which their group was constructed as the cohort of minority officials), they were not treated with the same suspicion that was felt towards ethnic minorities in general.

Such informal reconfigurations certainly relieved individuals of pressure and sometimes even made it possible to develop alternative discourses of identity and loyalty. But these discourses always remained within a closed sphere or the boundaries of a locality, and they rarely challenged the dominant public discourse. In order to resolve the resulting tensions, such settlements were rarely spoken of and were excluded from larger public discourses. As a result, sometimes the respective groups, for instance minority public officials, remained hidden, figuring in the public discourse only when they were the target of nationalizing policies. It was possible to be a loyal Hungarian in Romania, but only below the surface and on the fringes.

Archival Sources

Arhivele Naţionale Istorice Centrale, Bucureşti [National Central Historical Archives in Romania].

Directia Generală a Politiei

Fond Sabin Manuilă

Ministerul Justitiei, Direcţia Judiciară, inventar 1116

Ministerul Justitiei, Direcţia Judiciară, inventar 1117

Ministerul de Interne, inventar 754

Arhivele Naţionale Secţia Judeţeană Cluj. [National Archives, Section County Cluj]

Inspectoratul de Poliţie Cluj

Arhivele Naţionale Secţia Judeţeană Mureş

Direcţia Regională Ministeriul Afacerilor Interne Mureş-Autonomă Maghiară inventar 1235

Arhivele Naţionale Secţia Judeţeană Braşov

Legiunea de Jandarmi Braşov, Biroul Poliţiei, inventar 24

Prefectură Judetului Brasov, Serviciul Administrativ, inventar 374

Arhivele Naţionale Secţia Judeţeană Timiş

Prefectură Judeţului Severin

Legiune Jandarmilor Severin, inventar 828

Prefectură Judeţului Timiş-Torontal, fond 69

Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára [National State Archives of Hungary]

Nemzetiségi és kisebbségi ügyosztály K28

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Buruiana, Ovidiu. “Partidul Naţional Liberal şi minoritarii etnici în România interbelică. Problema naţionalismului liberal” [The National Liberal Party and the Ethnic Minorities in Interwar Romania. The Problems of Liberal Nationalism]. In Partide politice şi minoritări naţionale în România în secolul XX [Political Parties and National Minorities in Romania in the Twentieth Century], vol. 3, edited by Vasile Ciobanu and Sorin Radu, 103–16. Sibiu: Editura Techno-Media, 2008.

Ciobanu, Vasile. Contribuţii la cunoaşterea istoriei saşilor transilvăneni [Contributions to a Better Understanding of the History of Saxons in Transylvania]. Sibiu: Hora, 2001.

Edensor, Tim. National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life. Oxford: Berg, 2002.

Egry, Gábor. “An Obscure Object of Desire: the Myth of Alba Iulia and Its Social Functions in Past and Present.” In Proceedings of the Conference Myth-Making and Myth Breaking in History and the Humanities, edited by Claudia-Florentina Dobre, Ionuţ Epurescu-Pascovici, and Cristian Emilian Ghiţă. Accessed August 29, 2013. http://www.unibuc.ro/n/resurse/myth-maki-and-myth-breain-hist-and-the-huma/docs/2012/iul/02_12_54_31Proceedings_Myth_Making_and_Myth_Breaking_in_History.pdf.

Egry, Gábor. “A megértés határán. Nemzetiségek és mindennapok Háromszéken a két világháború között” [The Boundaries of Understanding: Ethnicities and Everyday Life in Háromszék between the two World Wars]. Limes 25, no. 2 (2012): 40–1.

Egry, Gábor. “A Crossroad of Parallels: Regionalism and Nation Building in Transylvania in the First Half of the Twentieth Century.” In Hungary and Romania Beyond National Narratives. Comparisons and Entanglements, edited by Anders E. B. Blomqvist, Constantin Iordachi, and Balázs Trencsényi, 239–76. Oxford–Bern–Berlin–Bruxelles–Frankfurt am Main–New York–Vienna: Peter Lang Verlag, 2013.

Egry, Gábor. “Sérelmek, félelmek és kisállami szuverenitásdogma. A román külpolitikai gondolkodás magyarságképe a két világháború között” [Fears, Grievances and Small State Sovereignty: Hungarians in the Romanian Political Thinking between the Two World Wars]. Limes 21, no. 2 (2008): 81–92.

Egry, Gábor. “Tükörpolitika. Magyarok, románok és nemzetiségpolitika Észak-Erdélyben, 1940–1944” [Hungarians, Romanians and Minority Policy in Northern Transylvania, 1940–1944]. Limes 23, no. 2 (2010): 97–111.

Eiler, Ferenc. Kisebbségvédelem és revízió. Magyar törekvések az Európai Nemzetiségi Kongresszuson (1925–1939) [Minority Protection and Revision: Hungarian Pretensions at the European Minority Congress, 1925–1939]. Budapest: Gondolat–MTA ENKI, 2007.

Feischmidt, Margit. “Megismerés és elismerés: elméletek, módszerek, politikák az etnicitás kutatásában” [Recognition and Acknowledgement: Theories, Methods and Politics in Ethnicity Research]. In Etnicitás. Különbségteremtő társadalom [Ethnicity: Societies that Produce Difference], edited by Margit Feischmidt, 7–29. Budapest: Gondolat–MTA ENKI, 2010.

Fodor, János. “Egy helyi társadalomszervezési kísérlet. Bernády György és a Magyar Polgári Demokratikus Blokk kísérlete” [A Local Attempt to Organize Society: György Bernády and the Hungarian Democratic Bloc]. Transindex.ro. Accessed May 30, 2014. http://itthon.transindex.ro/?cikk=21305.

Fox, Jon E., and Cynthia Miller-Idriss. “Everyday Nationhood.” Ethnicities 8, no. 4 (2008): 536–63.

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Haynes, Rebecca. “Reluctant Allies? Iuliu Maniu and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu against King Carol II of Romania.” Slavonic and East European Review 85, no. 1 (2007): 105–34.

Hegedűs, Nicoleta. Imaginea maghiarilor în cultura Românească din Transilvania (1867–1918) [The Image of Hungarians in the Culture of Transylvanian Romanians, 1867–1918]. Teza de doctorat [Unpublished PhD dissertation]. Cluj-Napoca: Universitatea Babeş–Bolyai, 2010.

Judson, Pieter M. Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006.

Kertzer, David I., and Dominique Arel, “Census, Identity Formation and Political Power.” In Census and Identity: The Politics of Race, Ethnicity and Language in National Censuses, edited by David I. Kertzer and Dominique Arel, 1–42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Kós, Károly, “Kiáltó szó!” [Exclamative Word]. In Trianon. Nemzet és emlékezet [Trianon: Nation and Remembrance], edited by Miklós Zeidler, 498–502. Budapest: Osiris, 2003.

Kulcsár, Beáta. “Közelharc a Park szállóban és a ‘hős zászlótartó’ legendája” [Skirmish in the Park Hotel and the Legend of the Valiant Ensign]. Pro Minoritate 20, no. 2 (2012): 31–53.

Leuştean, Lucian. România, Ungaria şi tratatul de Trianon, 1919–1920 [Romanians, Hungarians and the Treaty of Trianon, 1919–1920]. Iaşi: Polirom, 2002.

Leuştean, Lucian. România şi Ungaria în cadrul “Noii Europe” (1920–1923) [Romania and Hungary in the “New Europe,” 1920–1923]. Iaşi: Polirom, 2003.

Livezeanu, Irina. Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building and Ethnic Struggle, 1918–1930. Ithaca–London: Cornell University Press, 1995.

Mitu, Sorin. “Local Identities from Transylvania in the Modern Epoch.” In Western Civilization, Politics, Ideologies, Dystopias, edited by Marius Jucan, Sorin Mitu, and Cosmin Braga, Transilvanian Review 23, Supplementum (2013): 237–48.

Möckel, Andreas. Umkämpfte Volkskirche: Leben und Wirken des evangelisch-sächsischen Pfarrers Konrad Möckel (1892–1965) [Hotly Contested People’s Church: the Life and Deeds of the Transylvanian Saxon Lutheran Priest Konrad Möckel (1892–1965)]. Cologne–Weimar–Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2011.

Mylonas, Harris. The Politics of Nation Building: Making Co-Nationals, Refugees and Minorities. Cambridge–New York: Cambridge Univerity Press, 2012.

Opra, Pál. “Erdély lakosságának foglalkozások szerinti megoszlása az 1930-as népszámlálás alapján” [The Distribution of the Population of Transylvania based on their Occupation in the 1930 Census]. Pro Minoritate 18, no. 2 (2010): 29–40.

Păna, Virgil. Minorităţile etnice din Transilvania între anii 1918–1940, Drepturi şi privilegii [Ethnic Minorities in Transylvania between 1918 and 1940. Rights and Privileges]. Târgu Mureş: Editura Tipomur, 1995.

Popa, Klaus: ed., Akten um die “Deutsche Volksgruppe in Rumänien”. Eine Auswahl. 1937–1945 [Documents on the German Volksgruppe in Romania: A Selection. 1937–1945]. Frankfurt a. M.–Berlin–Bern–Bruxelles–New York–Oxford–Vienna: Peter Lang Verlag, 2005.

Rigó, Máté. “A felejthető pogrom. Az 1927-es nagyváradi zavargások fogadtatása” [A Forgettable Pogrom: Responses to the 1927 Riots of Oradea]. BUKSZ 24, no. 2 (2012): 126–41.

Scurtu, Ioan, and Liviu Boar, eds. Minorităţile naţionale în România 1918–1925 [The National Minorities of Romania in 1918–1925]. Bucharest: Arhivele Statului România, 1995.

Sheehan, James J. “The Problem of Sovereignty in European History.” American Historical Review 111, no. 1 (2006): 1–15.

Sora, Florin Andrei. “Étre fonctionnaire ‘minoritaire’ en Roumanie. Ideologie de la nation et pratiques d’état (1918–1940)” [State Functionaries from Minorities in Romania: Ideology of the Nation and State Practice]. In New Europe College Ştefan Odobljea Program Yearbook 2009–2010, edited by Irina Vainovski-Mihai. Bucharest: New Europe College, 2011.

Sorrels, Kathrine. “Ethnicity as Evidence of Subversion: National Stereotypes and the Secret Police Investigation of Jews in Interwar Bessarabia.” Transversaal 3, no. 2 (2003): 3–18.

Spânu, Alin. “Huţanii (huţuli) în studiul Serviciului de Informaţii al Jandarmeriei (1943)” [The Huculs in the Documents of Secret Services and Gendarmerie]. In Partide politice şi minoritări naţionale în România în secolul XX [Political Parties and National Minorities in Romania in the Twentieth Century], vol. 3, edited by Vasile Ciobanu and Sorin Radu, 197–211. Sibiu: Editura Techno-Media, 2009.

Spânu, Alin. “Lipovenii în studiul lui Mihail Moruzov, şeful Serviciului Special de Siguranţă din Dobrogea (1919)” [Lipovans in the Observations of Mihail Moruzov, Chief of Secret Service in Dobruja, 1919]. In Partide politice şi minoritări naţionale în România în secolul XX [Political Parties and National Minorities in Romania in the Twentieth Century], vol. 3, edited by Vasile Ciobanu and Sorin Radu, 50–59. Sibiu: Editura Techno-Media, 2008.

Varga, E. Árpád. “Az erdélyi magyarság főbb statisztikai adatai az 1910 utáni népszámlálások tükrében” [The Main Characteristics of the Transylvanian Hungarian Population according to the Censuses After 1910]. In Magyarságkutatás. Magyarságkutató Intézet Évkönyve 1988, edited by Gyula Juhász, 37–65. Budapest, Magyarságkutató Intézet: 1988.

 

Note on Nomenclature: City and Place Names

I have used place names in this article either in their English form—if one exists—or

in the form officially adopted by the states in control (Romania) during the time period

in question. For the first reference to each place, I give alternative versions of the place

name for that location. Here are the most frequently mentioned city and other place

names in their various forms, for quick reference.

Cluj (Hungarian: Kolozsvár)

Odorheiu Secuiesc (Hungarian: Székelyudvarhely)

Târgu Mureş (Hungarian: Marosvásárhely)

Zălău (Hungarian: Zilah)

Dej (Hungarian: Dés)

Făget (Hungarian: Facsád)

 

 

Penka Peykovska

Literacy and Illiteracy in Austria–Hungary. The Case of Bulgarian Migrant Communities

The present study aims to contribute to the clarification of the question of the spread of literacy in East Central Europe and the Balkans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by offering an examination of Bulgarian migrant diasporas in Austria–Hungary and, in particular, in Hungary, i.e. the Eastern part of the Empire. The study of literacy among migrants is important because immigrants represent a possible resource for the larger societies in which they live, so comparisons of the levels of education among migrants (for instance with the levels of education among the majority community, but also with the levels of education among the communities of their homelands) may shed light on how the different groups benefited from interaction with each other. In this essay I analyze data on literacy, illiteracy and semi-literacy rates among migrants on the basis of the Hungarian censuses of 1890, 1900 and 1910. I present trends and tendencies in levels of literacy or illiteracy in the context of the social aspects of literacy and its relationship to birthplace, gender, age, confession, migration, selected destinations and ethnicity. I also compare literacy rates among Bulgarians in Austria–Hungary with the literacy rates among other communities in the Dual Monarchy and Bulgaria and investigate the role of literacy in the preservation of identity. My comparisons and analyses are based primarily (but not exclusively) on data regarding the population that had reached the age at which school attendance was compulsory, as this data more accurately reflect levels of literacy than the data regarding the population as a whole.

Keywords: Bulgarian migrants, literacy, religion, age, destination, Austria-Hungary, identity

Literacy is a dynamic concept the meaning of which has changed over time. The ability to read written texts has gradually become commonplace in the Western world and the public significance of the written text has increased dramatically. In the Middle Ages, the main literate stratum was the clergy, since literacy was considered a path to a more perfect knowledge of God, which was a blessing bestowed on only a few.1 The transition to widespread literacy took place in the period between the beginning of the seventeenth and the end of the nineteenth centuries, and it was intertwined with the rise of the bourgeoisie and the development of services and technology that generated economic demand for literate workers. This transition was a slow and gradual process and took place at different paces in different geographical regions, but from a global point of view it was marked by unprecedented social transformation: while in the mid-nineteenth century only 10 percent of the adult population of the world could read and write, by the twenty-first century, despite the five-fold increase in population, 80 percent is regarded as possessing basic literacy.2 In recent decades this transformation prompted considerable interest in research on the history of literacy and the processes of overcoming illiteracy, but attempts to study literacy in Eastern Europe (including the Balkans) have yielded only modest results, although there is a wealth of information in various statistical sources (such as household inventories, censuses) and personal records (letters, diaries, travel notes, memories, etc.) in the former territories and successor states of the Russian and Austro–Hungarian empires.3

On the Subject of My Inquiry

One of the diasporas I examine in this inquiry is the Bulgarians of the Banat (a region the majority of which lies in Romania today, though the southern part extends into Serbia and also Hungary). The Banat Bulgarians, who were Western-rite Catholics, numbered 14,801 in 1890 and 12,583 in 1910. By the late nineteenth century, they had already been settled in the Habsburg Empire for a century and a half. They were refugees from Chiprovtsi (a town and municipality in northwestern Bulgaria) who had left Bulgarian lands after the unsuccessful anti-Ottoman uprising of 1688. Together with the Bulgarian Paulicians,4 they traveled through Wallachia and southwest Transylvania (the latter of which was under Austrian rule) in the 1730s and settled in the Banat, which had been devastated and depopulated during the period of Ottoman rule and then fallen under Austrian rule. There they were given new places to settle permanently. In 1738, the Paulicians founded the village of Star Beshenov (today Dudeşti Vechi, Romania) and in 1741 the migrants from Chiprovtsi (along with some of the Paulicians) founded the privileged town of Vinga (today in Romania).

In the second half of the nineteenth century (after the bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1848/49 and the abolition of serfdom), Banat Bulgarians developed as a rural community. Only Vinga had the status of a town, which representatives of the town wanted to disclaim in 1882 because the community was unable to pay the necessary taxes for the relevant rights. Nonetheless, according to the 1886 Law of Hungary’s administrative-territorial division Vinga became a settled council town, if only for a short time (until the early 1890s). From the perspective of levels of education among migrant communities this is important because in general rural populations have lower levels of literacy than urban populations. The question is whether or not this was true of the Bulgarian settlements.

When studying literacy, one should keep in mind that earlier levels of literacy exert a significant effect on subsequent levels of literacy, as literate parents seek to educate their children. In this sense, the tradition of education is relevant to levels of literacy. Banat Bulgarians brought from their homeland in Bulgaria centuries of the Franciscan educational tradition, which originally developed in connection with the active spread of Catholicism and Catholic teachings and followed the principle of mandatory primary education.

The Banat-Bulgarian literary revival began in the mid-nineteenth century, a few years before the Austrian–Hungarian Compromise of 1867. Until then, Bulgarian was taught in Banat Bulgarian schools on the basis of either German or “Illyrian” (Croatian) textbooks. In Bulgarian churches, priests held sermons in the “Illyrian” language.5 Banat Bulgarians were exposed to strong Orthodox propaganda by the neighboring Serbs because of their linguistic closeness. After Banat again became part of Hungary in 1860 and fell under the jurisdiction of the Hungarian government, the Hungarian Catholic clergy decided to support initiatives to allow the use of Bulgarian in schools and churches and efforts to establish Bulgarian literature in order to neutralize the growing Croatian and Serbian influence over Bulgarians, to hinder the spread of the Pan-Slavic (i.e. “Illyrian”) movement, and to foster among the Bulgarians a sense of distinctive national identity and an attachment to the multi-national Hungarian state.6 The newly created Banat Bulgarian literary language was written not with Cyrillic but with the Latin alphabet.

Labor migrants from Bulgaria constitute the other significant group on which I focus in this inquiry. They were primarily seasonal migrants, Orthodox market-gardeners (vegetable growers and vegetable traders). In 1910, they constituted 88 percent of the Bulgarian community in Budapest. The other 12 percent was comprised of artisans and traders who were already settled and who belonged to different confessions. The growth in this community can be traced on the basis of the census data on citizenship (though the numbers should be understood as approximations, their apparent precision notwithstanding):7 817 people in 1890, 1,674 people in 1900, and 3,139 people in 1910.

The source of this seasonal migration was the county of Veliko Tarnovo (in North-Central Bulgaria) and in particular the districts of Gorna Oryahovitsa, Elena, Tarnovo, Kesarevo, Dryanovo, Svishtov, and Sevlievo. The social group of agricultural workers, which came into being in the region during the period of Ottoman rule and specialized in vegetable farming, could not earn an adequate living in their homeland. The lack of sufficient fertile land and markets prompted the farmers from Lyaskovec, Draganovo, Polikraishte and other villages around Veliko Tarnovo and Gorna Oryahovitsa to migrate first to neighboring countries (Romania, Serbia) and then to more distant destinations (Austria–Hungary, Germany, and Russia). At first, Bulgarian market-gardeners were drawn to the Habsburg Empire in the mid-nineteenth century by the growing markets in Hungarian towns. Following the Austrian–Hungarian Compromise, the increasingly rapid industrialization and modernization of the capitalist economy led to a tremendous increase in the urban population, which needed to be fed.

A characteristic feature of this seasonal labor migration was that it consisted almost exclusively of young men. In 1900, they constituted 80 percent of the group that spoke Bulgarian as its mother tongue and 90 percent of the group with Bulgarian citizenship. The primary reason for this was the way in which the work was organized. The workers formed associations called “taifas.” A taifa was organized by a gazda, who was the leader of the group. The members of a taifa participated in a joint venture, investing both their capital and labor. They worked together, ate together, and lived together, and at the end of the working season they distributed the profits according to their participation and their investment of labor. Bulgarian market-gardeners usually resided in Austria–Hungary while working in the gardens, which they did from early spring to late autumn. They then left the country and returned the following spring. So they worked abroad seasonally for several years until they they were able to set aside capital. Compared to a Bulgarian small-holder, whose yearly revenue from the sale of crops did not exceed 800 francs, gardeners in Hungary earned more than 2,000 francs in a season. However, even in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries very few of these migrant workers chose to settle in Hungary or stay for longer periods of time. In this regard, the number and proportion of families was small and birth rates were low.

At first glance, the timing of the sources seems to set the chronological limits of this inquiry, specifically the two decades between 1890 and 1910. In a broader sense, however, the lower chronological limit is determined by the proportion of literate among the oldest group recorded in the first census (i.e. those over 60 years of age), who began learning to read and write in the 1830s. In fact, literacy, which was one of the categories in the three censuses in question, referred to the ability of the population to read and write, an ability that could have been acquired in previous decades. In other words, the results of the censuses actually yield insights into this process among members of the Bulgarian migrant population (as well as the rest of the population) for almost the whole nineteenth century and the first decade of twentieth century. In the case of the Banat Bulgarians, the process of learning to read and write continued (to the extent possible) during their exodus from Transylvania to Banat. It then continued after they had settled in Banat. There already existed a network of schools in Banat. The Jesuits had been the first to create an organized educational system in the region following the liberation of the area from Ottoman rule. But while the Jesuits had only provided educational opportunities for boys from wealthy families, the Franciscan monks attempted to educate the poor.8 The Franciscan tradition was preserved primarily in the educational initiatives of Vinga citizens, who had had their own school since the late 1740s and early 1750s.9 In Beshenov, a school for the “children of the people” was also created in 1804, and there was another one, a private one (for children of the wealthy), led by a Hungarian teacher (where instruction was in Hungarian). In 1845, a school was opened in Bolgártelep (today Colonia Bulgară, Romania). These were all primary schools. Vinga was the only settlement to have a higher, two-year Latin School, and it only had it for a short period of time. In the second half of the nineteenth century there were ten Bulgarian schools at different times in Temes and Torontál counties, specifically in the settlements of Bolgártelep, Brestye (today Romania), Vinga, Denta (today Romania), Kanak (today Konak, Serbia), Lukácsfalva (today Lukino Selo, Serbia), Módos (today Jaša Tomić, Serbia), Óbesenyő (today Dudeştii Vechi, Cтар Бешенов, Star Beshenov, Romania), Székelykeve (today Skorenovac, Serbia), and Szőlősudvarnok (today Banatski Dušanovac, Serbia). In these schools children learned to read and write in Bulgarian and, as of the last decade of the nineteenth century, in Hungarian as well. Where there was no Bulgarian school, Banat Bulgarians attended Hungarian schools or schools of other ethnic communities. Similarly, for example, the Bulgarian school in Bolgártelep was attended by the children of settlers from other national communities, including Germans, Croats, Hungarians, and Romanians.

On the Features of Censuses and Data

Bearing in mind the specifics of the censuses as historical sources, in this essay I regard mother tongue as a marker of ethnicity (as has become commonplace in the historiography, even if this assumption merits some interrogation). I present the diaspora of seasonal labor migrants from Bulgaria on the basis of statistical information on the Bulgarian (i.e. speaking Bulgarian as its mother tongue) population of Budapest, municipal towns (so-called “törvényhatósági jogú városok,” of which there were 30), and settled council towns (“rendezett tanácsú városok,” of which there were 110 in 1910), which for the sake of brevity I will refer to simply as “towns.” In this case, the selection of these sources is justified by the fact that the seasonal migrant workers (market-gardeners) settled primarily in the capital and in Hungarian towns, where they rented land and created their gardens and were better able to sell their vegetables. For 1900, I also consider the data for larger municipalities (“nagyközségek”) that were subsequently elevated to the status of settled council towns and were listed as such in the 1910 census.

In Hungarian censuses the Banat Bulgarians (who lived in Temes and Torontál Counties) can be identified on the basis of the data on those who declared Bulgarian to be their mother tongue and the data on those who practiced Western-rite Catholicism. Krashovans, who were also Catholics and who resided predominantly in Krassó-Szörény (the third county in Banat), were added to the Bulgarians in the Hungarian statistics. They figured together in a column headed “mother tongue Bulgarian, Krashovan.” The reason for this lay in the fact that at the time scholars in Austria–Hungary were of the opinion that the Krashovans were of Bulgarian ethnic origin. Krashovans were strongly influenced by Croatian culture, but in the eighteenth century they still identified themselves as Krashovans (after the Karash River, on the banks of which their settlements lay). Therefore I have deducted their numbers from the total number of Bulgarians in Austria–Hungary, using the data from the primary tables for literacy where they were specifically noted.

In censuses (both Hungarian and Bulgarian), the question of language was not an issue in the assessment of literacy. In other words, someone who could read and write in any language was considered literate regardless of the language. Language as a category was included as early as the first modern Hungarian censuses of 1870 and 1880, but literacy was not correlated to mother tongue. For the Eastern part of the Austrian–Hungarian Empire, we have literacy data correlated to Bulgarian mother tongue from 1890, 1900 and 1910. Literacy data from 1890 referred to Temes and Torontál counties and were correlated with mother tongue and age. Data from 1900 and 1910 referred not only to the Banat, but also to towns throughout Hungary and separately to Budapest, i.e. they reflected literacy within both groups, Banat Bulgarians and (seasonal) labor immigrants. In 1900, census data on literacy included confession as well, and the data of the 1910 census correlated literacy and level of education.10

In the Hungarian censuses of 1890, 1900 and 1910, literacy was measured according to three categories. One could be classified as literate (i.e. able to read and write, regardless of education), semi-literate (able to read, but not write), or illiterate (able neither to read nor write). The semi-literate were presented in a separate group in accordance with the realities of the epoch. Semi-literateness was typical among women. In the particular case of the Hungarian censuses, the reason for the creation of the category of semi-literate lay in the perception of writing as a man’s job, which was widespread among the Hungarian peasantry. It was regarded as adequate for a woman to be able to read the Bible and prayer books, which is why girls were given less opportunity to attend school. They were taught to read, but not to write well, and often, since they were given few if any opportunities to practice writing, they forgot what little writing they might have learned.11

In practice (with rare exceptions), anyone with at least one year of elementary school was regarded as literate in the Hungarian censuses, even if he or she did not use or had already forgotten how to read and write because of illness or due to aging. In Hungary, illiteracy was examined for the population over the age of 6. The population under the age of 6 was a priori considered illiterate. The literacy of children in their first year of school was recorded in accordance with their declarations in questionnaires.12

Regarding indicators of literacy and illiteracy within the community of Bulgarian seasonal migrants, one should keep in mind that, given their horizontal mobility and the very small number of newborns, children, and adolescents, the numbers reflected mostly the achievements of the Bulgarian education system, which were then “reported” according to the “model” of the Hungarian one, since only a smaller number of children of wealthy and permanently settled Bulgarian migrants actually studied in the schools in Hungary (which, since the first Bulgarian school was not established until 1917, were either Hungarian schools or schools in which the languages of other national minorities were used as the language of instruction).

In Hungary, compulsory elementary education was introduced for boys and girls between the ages of 6 and 12 by the 1868 Educational Act, while in Bulgaria this occurred only later, in 1879, with the formation of the new Bulgarian state and the ratification of the Tarnovo Constitution. Thus one should bear in mind that the Bulgarian educational system during the period in question was in a state of flux. It began to assume a modern form later than in other European countries. The architects of the Bulgarian educational system did have the advantage of being able to learn from the mistakes that were made elsewhere, however, and thus were able to create an institutional framework that was quite modern for its time. Drawing on the experiences of other countries, the Bulgarian educational system bore affinities with the Hungarian one. Basic compulsory education, for instance, was extended from 4 years of schooling to 6 in 1891, after which pupils could pursue two further degrees, the first of which took 4 years to complete (this was introduced in 1906), while the second took an additional 3 years (this was introduced in 1909). In both cases schooling was tuition-free. There were some differences, however. For instance, from the outset education in Bulgaria was independent of the church and primary education was free. In Hungary, elementary school was tuition-free only as of 1908. Unlike in Hungary, in Bulgaria the laws on public education treated the number of obligatory years of schooling and the age of compulsory school attendance differently. Obligatory elementary school lasted for 3, 4 or 6 years (usually 4 years), and the mandatory age at which a child had to attend school ranged from 7 to 13, 6 to 12, and 7 to 14. The new and completely different cultural and educational environment of the host country (Austria-Hungary) influenced the seasonal migrants from Bulgaria. This influence was indirect at first, simply a consequence of the perceptions among migrants of the well-established, time-honored traditions in Hungarian society for children to learn, and then quite direct, when the migrant families began sending their children to Hungarian schools. This practice was followed not only by wealthy and prosperous immigrants, but also by the poor. Since they were constantly moving between Austria–Hungary and Bulgaria, they took home their positive foreign influences from the host country. It is no coincidence that in Bulgarian literacy statistics by districts in the years leading up to the outbreak of World War I Tarnovo county stood out among the counties in Bulgaria. In 1905, the average literacy rate in the county for the population at the age of compulsory school attendance and over was 47.4 percent (64 percent among men and 31 percent among women), while the average for the country as a whole did not exceed 34.8 percent (50.6 percent and 18.2 percent respectively).13

Literacy, Gender, and Age

Gender is a crucial factor in the question of literacy. Women were predominant among the illiterate, which was one of the important factors in their disadvantageous position in society, reflecting gender inequalities in education (for instance) in the nineteenth century. Gender imbalance is a common phenomenon in the history of illiteracy. Due to migrations and regional effects, the level of this imbalance varied.14

 

Literacy (%)	Men			Women
	Literate	Semi-literate	Illiterate	Literate	Semi-literate	Illiterate
County	1890
Temes	66.3	0.9	32.8	52.7	3.1	44.2
Torontál	62.4	0.3	37.3	44.6	3.4	51.9
1910
Temes	80.5	0.7	18.8	72.0	4.0	24.0
Torontál	76.0	0.6	23.4	62.4	5.1	32.5

 

Table 1. Illiteracy rates among the Bulgarian15 population over the age of 6 in Temes and Torontál counties by gender in, 1890 and 191016

As a comparison of the data on the two genders reveals, literacy rates among the Banat Bulgarians did not differ from the typical trends. Literacy rates were higher among men and there were more semi-literate women as a percentage than men. Both trends emerge clearly on both the county (Table 1) and the village level (Table 3). The trend for the entire period was towards an increase in literacy and a corresponding drop in illiteracy in both counties and for both genders, while differences between the genders were gradually diminishing.

In 1890, in the Bulgarian population at or over the age of compulsory school attendance in Temes and Torontál counties (taken together) the ratio of the literate to the illiterate (including the semi-literate) was 57 to 100 for men. This number dropped to 29 by 1910. In 1890, there were 112 illiterate women for every 100 literate women, a figure which decreased to 51 by 1910. Analyzing the dynamics of elementary literacy education in both counties (together and separately), for the period between 1890 and 1910 in Table 2 one finds an approximately equal drop in illiteracy among women and men, though this drop was a bit more rapid in the case of women.

 

Gender	Men		Women
County	Temes	Torontál	Temes	Torontál
1890	52	60	90	127
1910	24	32	40	60
Total for 1890	57		112
Total for 1910	29		51

 

Table 2. Number of people regarded as illiterate (or semi-literate) for every 100 literate people in the Bulgarian population over the age of 6 in Temes and Torontál counties, by gender, 1890, 191017

In addition to gender, another prominent factor in the question of literacy and trends in literacy is age. Although the importance of gender to illiteracy is much more striking than age, the two are in fact closely interrelated. Literacy data correlated to age for Banat Bulgarians is available only for the male population of Vinga. In the Bulgarian male population of Vinga, the literacy rate in the age group of 11–15-year-olds and 16–20-year-olds, i.e. among those who had been born after the Hungarian educational reform of 1868 (which introduced compulsory primary education), was the highest (88 percent and 85 percent respectively). According to Table 3, literacy rates declined as the age of the cohort group rose, especially in the groups over the age of 50, i.e. among those who had been born in the 1830s and 1840s. Among the group of people 60 years of age and older, the literacy rate did not exceed 50 percent. Groups among which illiteracy was high were comprised largely of people who had grown up in periods of significantly less educational opportunity.

 

Mother tongue	Bulgarian	German	Hungarian	Romanian
Age (born in ...)	literacy as a percent of the total population
Under 6 (after 1885)	0	0	3	0
6–10 (1880–1884)	73	61	89	27
11–15 (1875–1879)	88	98	92	31
16–20 (1870–1874)	85	91	90	50
21–30 (1860–1869)	79	95	83	32
31–40 (1850–1859)	80	91	97	28
41–50 (1840–1849)	76	85	95	16
51–60 (1830–1839)	59	76.5	100	18
Over 60 (before 1830)	51	87.5	94	0
Total	75.3	87	92.6	27.2

 

Table 3. Literacy among the male population of Vinga by mother tongue and age, 189018

Literacy and Confession

Research on literacy has long demonstrated a close interrelationship between denominational belonging and literacy, since religion has played a key role in its spread.19 I examine these relationships in the Bulgarian communities in Austria–Hungary on the basis of the data for municipal towns and settled council towns, where the population (migrants from Bulgaria or Banat) belonged to different denominations. In 1900, Uniates20 (Eastern-rite Catholics) and members of the Eastern Orthodox Church prevailed (43 percent and 41 percent respectively). Western-rite Catholics comprised only 15 percent of the total population.

These percentages were slightly different among women. Western-rite Catholics (63 percent) dominated, while only 26 percent of the female population was Orthodox and only 10.5 percent was Eastern-rite Catholic. Bulgarian diasporas in Austria–Hungary were clearly defined by religious affiliation. The members of the Orthodox Church were (seasonal) labor migrants, primarily market-gardeners and a small number of craftsmen. The Catholics of the Eastern rite were former seasonal migrants who had settled and changed their faith as a sign of their loyalty to the host country (and in the interests of ensuring their well-being and welfare). The fact that their children attended Hungarian schools was unquestionably a significant factor in this shift. In the towns, Western-rite Catholics were migrants.

In 1900, literacy rates were highest among Western-rite Catholics in urban Bulgarian diasporas (regardless of gender). Western-rite Catholics represented 54.7 percent of literate Bulgarian men and 58.5 percent of literate Bulgarian women. The second-highest rates were found among Eastern-rite Catholics, with 28.5 percent of men and 24.4 percent of women being able to read and write. Literacy rates were lowest among the Orthodox (16.5 percent and 17 percent respectively; Figure 1).

On the basis of data regarding illiteracy within different age groups, I examine the pace at which literacy rates changed among the different confessions (Table 4). For Western-rite Catholic men, who were Banat Bulgarians migrating from villages to towns, illiteracy gradually decreased in the younger age groups. Table 4 shows that among children between 6 and 10 years of age who were enrolled in school after the implementation of 1892/93 educational reform illiteracy completely disappeared. It decreased by 18 percent among the group of people who had been born between 1860 and 1869, i.e. among students who were enrolled in school after compulsory education was introduced in 1868.

Indicators of illiteracy among Orthodox men vary widely and no clear trends emerged. Illiteracy is conspicuous in the group of youths between the

Figure 1. Literacy rates in urban Bulgarian populations over the age of 6 in Hungary (including Croatia-Slavonia, without Budapest), by confession and gender, 190021

 

ages of 11 and 15. They were adolescents from poor families who sought work abroad instead of studying to earn a living or support their families. The smaller proportion of the illiterate is noteworthy among adolescents between the ages of 16 and 20 who went to school in Bulgaria in the late 1880s and early 1890s, when the modern Bulgarian educational system had finally taken clear form.

 

	Men			Women
Confession   Age (born in ...)	Orthodox	Eastern-rite Catholics	Western-rite Catholics	Orthodox	Eastern-rite Catholics	Western-rite Catholics
Under 6 (after 1895)	100	100	100	–	100	100
6–10 (1894–1890)	50	–	0	0	–	62.5
11–15 (1889–1885)	77	20	12.5	0	–	20
16–20 (1884–1880)	44	29	0	20	0	50
21–30 (1879–1870)	69	6	20	75	50	67
31–40 (1869–1860)	41	33	21	100	73	50
41–50 (1859–1850)	71	75	39	–	0	80
51–60 (1849–1840)	50	–	37	–	100	75
Over 60 (before 1839)	67	–	69	–	67	71
Total (for the population ages 6 and over)	53	24.5	18	56	54.5	62

(–) No people in the group.

 

Table 4. Illiteracy rates (%) in urban Bulgarian populations in Hungary (including Croatia-Slavonia) by confession and within different age groups, by gender, 190022

Illiteracy rates among Eastern-rite Catholic men were average and were declining. This drop in illiteracy can be observed in the group of men between the ages of 21 and 30 who studied reading and writing immediately after the introduction of compulsory education in Hungary.

Orthodox women born before Bulgaria’s liberation (1878/79) were illiterate. An acute change is noticeable in the group of women between the ages of 16 and 20 who started schooling just after the creation of the independent modern Bulgarian state, when literate women predominated among the women who chose to migrate. There was no illiteracy at all among the Orthodox women who were at or above the age of compulsory school attendance (they were settled young women). Among Western-rite Catholic women illiteracy rates were similar to rates among Orthodox women.

The available data for the Bulgarian diaspora in Budapest regarding the correlation of literacy, confession, and age were reported separately in the 1900 census for people born in Bulgaria and people born in Hungary (Table 5). Comparing these data with the data for towns in Table 4, one notices similar overall trends: illiteracy was highest among Orthodox men (all of whom were born in Bulgaria). Illiteracy rates were second highest among Eastern-rite Catholics, while they were lowest among Western-rite Catholics (especially those born in Hungary).

There are some striking and significant differences in the data depending on whether the members of the cohort group were born in Bulgaria or Hungary, and these differences suggest conclusions that might otherwise not have been evident. Specifically, in the Orthodox community there were no illiterate men over the age of 50, which could be an indication that only men with the ability to read and write dared undertake long, international journeys in search of work as migrant laborers. The same was true of women. The few Orthodox women who had been born in Bulgaria were all literate.

Illiteracy was significantly lower among Eastern-rite Catholic men born in Bulgaria than it was among members of the Orthodox Church between the ages of 16 and 40, which implies a positive impact of the local educational environment in Austria-Hungary on the Bulgarian migrants. This effect was most pronounced among children between the ages of 6 and 10, among whom the literacy rate was zero. The fact that among Western-rite Catholic men who had been born in Hungary the illiteracy rate was also zero offers further support for this conclusion.

 

	Men			Women
Confession Age (born in ...)	Orthodox	Eastern-rite Catholics	Western-rite Catholics	Orthodox	Eastern-rite Catholics	Western-rite Catholics
	Born in Bulgaria
Under 6 (after 1885)	–	–	–	–	–	–
6–10 (1880–1884)	–	0	–	–	–	0
11–15 (1875–1879)	0	15	–	–	100	–
16–20 (1870–1874)	31	18.5	–	–	–	–
21–30 (1860–1869)	33	26	50	0	–	–
31–40 (1850–1859)	75	33	0	–	–	–
41–50 (1840–1849)	33	40	100	–	100	–
51–60 (1830–1839)	0	50	–	–	–	–
Over 60 (before 1840)	–	0	–	–	–	–
Total (for the population at compulsory age and over)	35.4	22.1	40	0	100	0
	Born in Hungary
Under 6 (after 1885)	–	100	–	–	–	–
6–10 (1880–1884)	–	–	–	–	–	–
11–15 (1875–1879)	–	–	0	–	–	–
16–20 (1870–1874)	–	–	12.5	–	–	0
21–30 (1860–1869)	–	0	25	–	–	–
31–40 (1850–1859)	–	0	25	–	100	–
41–50 (1840–1849)	–	–	0	–	–	–
51–60 (1830–1839)	–	–	–	–	–	–
Over 60 (before 1840)	–	100	–	–	–	–
Total (for the population at compulsory age and over)	–	40	14.3	–	–	75

 

(–) No people in the group.

Table 5. Illiteracy rates (%) among Bulgarian populations in Budapest by confession, birthplace, gender, and age, 190023

Illiteracy among Orthodox men was higher in provincial towns than it was in Budapest, regardless of age. It was 53 percent among Orthodox men in towns and only 35.4 percent in Budapest. The same was true of Eastern-rite Catholic men, among whom the illiteracy rate was 24.5 percent in the towns and 22.1 percent in Budapest (among people who had been born in Bulgaria). The opposite trend prevailed among Western-rite Catholics: illiteracy rates among people who had been born in Bulgaria were lower in the towns (18 percent) than in the capital (40 percent) and evidently higher than for Hungarian-born Catholics, among whom the illiteracy rate was 14.3 percent (Tables 4, 5).

Literacy and Migration

In this discussion of the social nature of literacy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the ways in which literacy varied according to gender, age and confession, questions regarding the relationships between literacy and processes of migration have arisen repeatedly. I offer an additional example indicating a clear relationship between literacy and migration, specifically the literacy levels among the Bulgarians of Budapest in 1900 correlated with place of birth, i.e. whether one was born in Bulgaria or Hungary (Table 6). In this case, the effect of the foreign cultural milieu on the wider spread of literacy among Bulgarian men born in Hungary in comparison with Bulgarian-born migrants is not negligible.

 

	Men			Women
Birthplace	Literate	Semi-literate	Illiterate	Literate	Semi-literate	Illiterate
Hungary	74.1	3.7	22.2	40	–	60
Bulgaria	75.3	0.3	24.4	40	–	60

 

Table 6. Literacy rates among Bulgarian populations in Budapest ages 6 and over by birthplace and gender, 190024

 

The conclusions I have drawn here regarding the relationship between literacy and migration confirm the findings of earlier scholarly inquiries. Migrants are unusual, “select” individuals, and literacy is a common feature among them. Usually literacy rates are higher among migrants than they are among people who remain in their homelands, regardless of background, age or gender.25 Literacy influences not only the willingness of an individual to choose to emigrate, but also the distance he or she may be willing to travel.26 Literacy rates are only slightly higher among migrants who travel only short distances than in the communities they leave behind, but literacy rates are significantly higher among migrants who travel long distances.

What are the peculiarities of the relationships between literacy and other factors among the Bulgarian migrant communities in Austria–Hungary? The case of Banat Bulgarians in the town of Nagybecskerek (today Zrenjanin, Serbia), who were migrants from neighboring villages with compact Bulgarian communities, offers insights into the relationship between literacy and distance traveled in the case of migrants from communities that were relatively nearby. In the Bulgarian diaspora of Nagybecskerek, the Banat Bulgarians predominated. In 1890 they constituted 94 percent of the Bulgarian community, 95 percent in 1900, and 90 percent in 1910. How did literacy rates of a small Banat Bulgarian migrant community change over time in an urban environment? The literacy rate among Bulgarian men was 67 percent in 1890, 76 percent in 1900 and 72 percent in 1910, while the literacy rate among women was 21 percent (1890), 38 percent (1900) and 79 percent (1910). The decline in literacy among men between 1900 and 1910 was due to an influx of Orthodox Bulgarians. According to the available data, literacy rates among Bulgarian men in Nagybecskerek were as high as they were among men in traditional Banat Bulgarian villages. Unlike Bulgarian men in Nagybecskerek, according to the three censuses all Bulgarian women were Western-rite Catholics. The data regarding literacy among Bulgarian men in Nagybecskerek in 1890 was also broken down by age (Table 7). The pattern differed from the pattern observed in the compact Bulgarian community in Vinga. In Nagybecskerek, the illiteracy rate among people between the ages of 6 and 40 was zero. The literacy rate among men was as high as it was among men in traditional Banat Bulgarian villages. Among women in Nagybecskerek, however, in earlier censuses literacy rates were low, but they peaked in 1910, just as they did among women in the compact Bulgarian village diaspora in Banat. Thus while among women the urban milieu had a positive influence with regards to the spread of literacy, among men the impact was negative.

	In Figures		Percent
Age (born in ...)	Literate	Illiterate	Literate	Illiterate
Under 6 (after 1885)	0	2	0	100
6–10 (1880–1884)	3	0	100	0
11–15 (1875–1879)	1	0	100	0
16–20 (1870–1874)	2	0	100	0
21–30 (1860–1869)	2	0	100	0
31–40 (1850–1859)	4	0	100	0
41–50 (1840–1849)	4	3	57	43
51–60 (1830–1839)	0	1	0	100
Over 60 (before 1840)	0	5	0	100
Total	16	11

 

Table 7. Literacy among male Bulgarian Western-rite Catholic populations in Nagybecskerek by age, as absolute figures and percentages, 189027 (compare with Vinga, Table 3).

 

Bulgarian census data from 1900 and 1910 on Banat Bulgarians who returned to Bulgaria shed light on the relationship between literacy and distance traveled in the case of migrants from communities that were relatively far away. The return of a significant number of Banat Bulgarians to Bulgaria in the 1880s and 1890s was caused in part by high birth rates for a period of decades, as a result of which the land they had been given by the Hungarian state was no longer sufficient to ensure their livelihood. It was also prompted in part by a few consecutive years of agricultural hardship (1880–81), when due to high taxes the members of the Bulgarian diaspora were forced to travel across the country in search of work to make a living as laborers. Problems related to the ability of the Banat Bulgarians to earn a livelihood motivated many among them to return to the recently liberated “homeland” in the hopes of finding a reliable livelihood and a better life. I focus in this inquiry on five compact villages founded by returning emigrants: Asenovo (Nikopol district, Pleven county), Dragimirovo (Svishtov district, Veliko Tarnovo county), Gostilya (Dolna Mitiropolia district, Pleven county), Bardarski Geran (Byala Slatina district, Vratsa county) and Bregare (Dolna Mitiropolia district, Pleven county), which was already inhabited by Orthodox Bulgarians and where their ethnic presence was most notable. Literacy data was broken up according to nationality in the censuses, with the use of the category “nationality Bulgarians (without Pomaks28).” However, literacy rates were not broken up according to confession, which would have helped us distinguish the level of literacy among Banat Bulgarians (as Catholics) from that of the other (local Orthodox) Bulgarians. (Data on confession refer to the entire population of the settlement.) The data on literacy was also not broken up according to age.

In 1900, of the five villages Asenovo had the highest literacy rate (54 percent) among Bulgarian men, followed by Gostilya with 52.2 percent and Bardarski Geran with 47.4 percent (Table 8). These figures were much lower than the average for the Banat villages ten years earlier. In 1900, Asenovo was almost entirely a village of Banat Bulgarians. 98 percent of the men and 95 percent of the women were Banat Bulgarians, so the rest of the Bulgarian population (Orthodox and Protestants) had only a minor impact on the overall literacy rates.29 The majority of Banat Bulgarians in Asenovo came from Vinga, and they returned to Bulgaria after 1889. Literacy rates among them in 1900 were far below the literacy rates in Vinga even in 1890, which had been 67.3 percent (Table 8). Banat Bulgarians in Gostilya came originally from Star Beshenov and Ivanovo (today in Serbia), and those in Bardarski Geran came from Star Beshenov. Literacy rates among men there were lower than literacy rates among men in Star Beshenov in 1890 (55.6 percent) (Table 8). Literacy rates among female Banat Bulgarians who had returned to their homeland were highest in Asenovo, where the literacy rate was 38.2 percent in comparison with 57.9 percent among female Banat Bulgarians in Vinga in 1890 (Tables 8, 9). Gostilya was second with 24.2 percent and Bardarski Geran was third with 20.1 percent in comparison with 39.3 percent among female Banat Bulgarians in Star Beshenov in 1890 (Tables 8, 9). The Bulgarian migrants who returned to Bulgaria in the 1880s from the region of Banat were mostly poor, landless,30 and, as evidenced by the statistical information presented here, less able to read and write than their compatriots in Banat. Thus those who were illiterate also comprised a kind of “select” group of migrants. They usually came from regions in which literacy rates were above average and where they consequently found themselves at a disadvantage and therefore were more inclined to consider returning.31 As the statistics indicate, many people who were unable to read or write also traveled significant distances. In this sense, with respect to migration literacy constituted an important factor in at least two distinct ways. On the one hand, the ability to read and write seems to have made someone more likely to consider emigration (a significant decision involving risk and investment), while at the same time illiteracy may have been a contributing factor in the decision to return to the country of origin, an equally significant decision requiring similar investment. Whatever the case, in their “old-new” country these immigrants represented a significant human resource with special skills, whether in their new countries or upon return to their homelands.32 For instance, Banat Bulgarians brought farming technology from Banat, where agriculture was at a higher level than in the post-liberation Bulgaria. They introduced the so-called “Austrian iron plow,” which was pulled by horses, and other new agricultural tools. And as I demonstrate below, even the illiterate among them quickly embraced the innovations and “absorbed” the culture of the host country.

 

	1900		1910		Increase
	Men	Women	Men	Women	Men	Women
Asenovo	54.0	38.2	68.8	64.1	+14.8	+25.9
Bardarski Geran	47.4	20.1	60.5	49.9	+13.1	+29.8
Bregare	37.5	6.2	54.6	21.7	+17.1	+27.9
Dragomirovo	35.7	15.8	46.4	21.8	+10.7	+6.0
Gostilya	52.2	24.2	54.0	32.3	+1.8	+8.1

 

 

Table 8. Literacy rates (%) in the whole population of Bulgarian nationality (excluding the Pomaks) in the villages of Asenovo, Bregare, Bardarski Geran, Gostilya and Dragomirovo, by gender, 1900, 191033

 

In the early twentieth century, literacy rates among the Bulgarians of Banat were higher than the average literacy rates in the Bulgarian villages (with the exceptions of Dragomirovo and Bregare for men and Bregare for women) (Table 7). According to the first Bulgarian official statistics, in 1890 the average literacy rate was not more than 5 percent among men and 1.5 percent among women. Within two decades, these rates rose to 41.8 percent and 14.9 percent respectively (without excluding the population under the age of 6).34 But during the post-liberation period, Bulgaria made an educational jump and school attendance became a central part of its educational system. The immigrant community also benefited from this process. In 1910, literacy rates among the denizens of the five aforementioned villages were still growing. Asenovo led in literacy among men (68.8 percent), followed by Bardarski Geran (60.5 percent), Bregare (54.6 percent) and Gostilya (54 percent) (Table 7), each of which had literacy rates higher than the Bulgarian average. Literacy rates among women grew by twice as much as they did among men (in Gostilya the difference was four and a half times as much) (Table 7).

 

	1890				1910
	Men
Mother tongue County, village	Bulgarian	Hungarian	German	Other	Bulgarian	Hungarian	German	Other
Temes
Vinga	67.3	72.7	72.3	Romanian 22.7	54.6	76.8	35
Torontál
Bolgártelep	52	64.3	35.7		64.3	45.5	66.1
Star Beshenov	55.6	69.4	57.3		65.1	54.1	82.5
Ivanovo	50.8	28.6	55		61	55.8	64.3
	Women
Temes
Vinga	57.9	×	×	×	72.3	54.6	76.8	Romanian 35
Torontál
Bolgártelep	35.4	43.5	36.7		52.6	40	64.7
Star Beshenov	39.3	59.3	45.6		54.4	57.9	65.2	Romanian 0
Ivanovo	29.8	14	37.9		54.2	41.6	55.8

 

× No data.

Table 9. Literacy rates (excluding people who had completed secondary or high school) in the total population by gender in some villages in Temes and Torontál (with a Bulgarian population of over 100 people), 1890 and 191035

Levels of Education in 1910

In the 1910 Hungarian census the question of literacy was broken down according to additional factors. In addition to the question of the ability to read and write (to which one responded by indicating one of the three aforementioned categories, literate, semi-literate, or illiterate), two further questions were asked about the level of education and separate columns were included for those who had completed elementary school (“általános/elemi iskola”) and those who had completed secondary school (“középiskola”). In Hungary, one received one’s first degree after having completed elementary school, which consisted of six classes and two upper classes called “repeating school” (“ismétlőiskola”), which were not visited by masses. The focus of education in elementary school was on acquiring the ability to read and write. One received one’s second degree after having completed “secondary school,” which included eight classes and was offered in institutions of two types, gymnasia (in which pupils were given classical and humanitarian education) and “real” secondary schools (which prepared students for careers in engineering). A level of “general education” was achieved through training in the first four years of secondary school.

Records in the original census tables show that Bulgarians in Austria–Hungary (primarily Banat Bulgarians) attended elementary school only up to the fourth grade, after which few were enrolled in secondary school. I analyze the levels of literacy among Bulgarians in Austria–Hungary, drawing a distinction between the capital city and provincial towns in the case of seasonal migrants. I also examine town-village relations in the case of Banat Bulgarians (Table 10). In the Banat region, I take the data into consideration separately for each of the three counties, omitting towns, since the Catholic Bulgarians were a rural population. I present the towns separately in the three counties, because the Bulgarian population in these counties was of mixed confession. As I have already mentioned, Banat Bulgarians were Western-rite Catholics, seasonal migrants were Orthodox, and Eastern-rite Catholics were converts from the Orthodox church who had settled down permanently.

In Temes county, I take into account the towns of Fehértemplom (today Bela Crkva, Serbia) (a settled council town), Temesvár (Timişoara, Romania), and Versec (Vršac, Serbia), both of which were municipal council towns. Temesvár had the largest Bulgarian population. Of the 64 men, one had completed each of the three levels, while none of the women had. In Versec, one of the six Bulgarian men had completed the fourth grade. In Torontál county there was

	Males who completed the			Females who completed the
	8th grade	6th grade	4th grade	8th grade	6th grade	4th grade
	of the high school			of the high school
Temes county (without the towns)	0.46	0.06	0.13	0.0	0.0	0.26
Temes county – towns	1.37	1.37	3.2	0.0	0.0	0.0
Torontál county (without the towns)	0.07	0.04	0.23	0.0	0.0	0.02
Torontál county - towns	0.0	0,0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Krassó-Szörény county (without the towns)	2.94	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Banat region (total)	0.24	0.05	0.19	0.0	0.0	0.26
Budapest	0.6	0.6	0.8	0.0	5	5
Towns in Hungary (without those in Banat)	0.4	0.2	0.6	0.0	3	0.0
Individual towns
Temesvár	1.56	1.56	1.56	0.0	0.0	100

 

Table 10. Bulgarian high school graduates as a percentage of the literate Bulgarian communities in Banat, the capital city of Budapest, and towns throughout Hungary (including Croatia-Slavonia), also broken down by gender, 191036

 

one municipal council town, Pancsova (Pančevo, Serbia), and two settled council towns, Nagybecskerek and Nagykikinda (Kikinda, Serbia), in which there were small communities of Bulgarians of different confessions. Not one of them completed high school. In Krassó-Szörény county there were two settled council towns, Lugos (Lugoj, Romania) and Karansebes (Caranşebeş, Romania). None of the members of the Bulgarian communities of these two settelments completed secondary school either. According to the Hungarian censuses (summarized in Table 10), Banat Bulgarians from the villages in Temes county had higher levels of education than those from villages in Torontál county. They had a comparatively sizeable number of eighth-grade graduates, which largely exceeded the number of sixth-grade and fourth-grade graduates. In the early twentieth century, girls in the communities of Banat Bulgarians did not attend high school (with the exception of a few girls from Temes county, who completed the fourth grade), although in the Eastern part of the Monarchy girls were granted access to high schools as early as 1895.

Among the men of the Bulgarian community of Budapest (568 of the total 608 people who were Bulgarian by mother tongue), who were of various confessions (though the Orthodox Church dominated), the proportion of students who studied at high schools was greater than among the men of the Banat Bulgarian communities. Bulgarian women in Budapest (the other 40 people), who were mostly migrants, had lower levels of elementary literacy than the Bulgarian women of Banat, but those who pursued studies were seeking to acquire a better education.

Conclusion: Parallels of Literacy

As a kind of conclusion, I compare literacy rates among the Bulgarian migrant communities in Austria-Hungary with the levels of education prevailing among the populations of the Dual Monarchy and Bulgaria in general. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the general trend among the Bulgarians in Austria–Hungary was towards higher literacy rates. Among women, this was lower than for men in both groups (the Banat Bulgarians and Bulgarian seasonal workers). In this respect, the Bulgarian immigrant women were not an exception, neither in comparison with women in Hungary nor in comparison with women in other European countries.

In 1910, literacy among men was the highest in Budapest, and it was higher among Banat Bulgarians than among Bulgarian market-gardeners in provincial towns (Table 12). The highest literacy rates were found among the men of the Budapest Bulgarian community, among whom there was a big jump in the first decade of the twentieth century (from 75.2 percent in 1900 to 87.8 percent in 1910). Literacy rates were higher among the women of the Banat Bulgarian community than among female seasonal migrants.

One trend among Bulgarian women is noticeable: in Budapest and in the provincial urban diaspora women who had the opportunity to pursue studies strove to acquire a better education. This is revealed by the 1910 census, which includes not only data regarding literacy but also data concerning people who had completed secondary school. 9 percent of the women among the literate Bulgarian migrants in Budapest had completed secondary school in comparison with only 2 percent of the literate men, and in provincial towns (except in Banat) 3 percent of literate women had completed secondary school in comparison with 1.2 percent of literate men.

In 1910, elementary literacy rates were higher among Banat Bulgarians than the average for Hungary (including Croatia-Slavonia), which was 66.7 percent. 37 This was also the case in earlier censuses. In 1890, the average level of elementary literacy among Banat Bulgarians was 58 percent (taking both women and men into account), compared with 50.6 percent for the lands of the Hungarian crown (i.e. including Croatia-Slavonia). Within the diaspora of labor migrants, in 1900 it was 65 percent (again taking both women and men into account) among Bulgarians in Budapest and the towns, whereas the national average was 59.3 percent.38

It is worth noting that the elementary literacy level of seasonal Bulgarian migrants, most of whom were market-gardeners, was much higher than the average of 30 percent for Bulgaria at the time39 and the average of 22 percent for the rural population in Bulgaria. This again confirms the relevance of literacy and education as factors in the processes of emigration.40 But illiteracy data on Bulgarian seasonal migrant market-gardeners in Budapest are not so favorable compared to the host country. The illiteracy rate was above the municipal average, while among Banat Bulgarians in Temes County illiteracy was lower (23% in 1910), than the county average (30 %) (but still higher than illiteracy among Bulgarians in the capital city).41

 

Nationality by mother tongue	1890
	Men	Women	Total
Banat Bulgarians	56	44	50
Croats	50	34	42
Hungarians	59	48	54
Germans	68	58	63
Romanians	11	8	14
Ruthens	13	7	10
Serbs	39	22	31
Slovaks	51	37	43

 

Table 11. Literacy rates in Hungary (including Croatia-Slavonia and the population under the age of compulsory school attendance) by nationality and gender, 189042

In the lands of historic Hungary Bulgarians lived in multinational communities. According to quantifiable data regarding literacy (in this case including the population below the age of compulsory school attendance), Banat Bulgarians were in the forefront. In 1890, they were third after the Germans and Hungarians, taking men and women into account separately (56 percent and 44 percent, respectively) and as a whole (50 percent) (Table 11). For Banat Bulgarians, higher education was a natural pursuit, since in the second half of the nineteenth century they experienced their literary revival.

 

	Men				Women
Educational level County, Budapest, towns	Literate	Semi-literate	Illiterate	Total	Literate	Semi-literate	Illiterate	Total
1890
Temes and Torontál counties	63.8	0.5	35.7	100	47.5	3.3	49.2	100
1900
Budapest	75.2	0.6	24.2	100	40.0	0.0	60.0	100
Towns	65.6	0.6	33.8	100	77.8	0.0	22.2	100
1910*
Budapest	87.8	1.2	11.0	0	59.5	5.4	35.1	100
Towns not including towns in Temes and Torontál counties	68.8	0.6	30.6	100	48.9	0.0	51.1	100
Temes and Torontál counties	76.7	0.7	22.6	100	65.5	4.5	30.0	100

 

* “Literate” also includes people who continued their education.

Table 12. Literacy rates among Bulgarians at or over the age of compulsory school attendace in Temes and Torontál counties, Budapest, and other Hungarian towns by gender, 1890–191043

 

During the period under examination, from the perspective of literacy Hungary lagged behind the countries of Western Europe (England, France, Germany). For example, by 1911 England had already overcome illiteracy (which had been reduced to 1 percent, both among women and men). In 1900, the rate of illiteracy in France was 5 percent among men and 6 percent among women. In 1870, the rate of illiteracy in Prussia for the population over 10 years of age was 10 percent among men and 15 percent among women. In the Western part of the Austro–Hungarian Empire (Cisleithania), the average rate of illiteracy for the population over the age of 10 was 21 percent among men and 25 percent among women. However, Hungary was far ahead compared to the Balkan countries, including Bulgaria, and this undoubtedly contributed to the higher rates of literacy and higher levels of education among the Bulgarian immigrant population. In 1899, the illiteracy rate among the population at or above the age of compulsory school attendance in Romania was 78 percent. It was 61 percent in Greece in 1907 and 80 percent in Serbia in 1900.44 In Bulgaria, the rate of illiteracy for the population over the age of 7 was 70 percent in 1900 and 58 percent in 1910.45

Archival Sources

Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára (Hungarian National Archives, further MNL OL), KSH-XXXII-23-h

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Translated by Thomas Cooper