Mr. Unfortunate
The person is Georgi Dimitrov (1882-1949), from Kovachevtzi, Bulgaria. He was the Bulgarian Prime Minister who was the first Communist leader of Bulgaria, from 1946 to 1949.This is a story about one of the biggest tragedies in Bulgarian history, and the key Bulgarian figure associated with it.

At the time of his leadership, the leader of the Soviet Union was Joseph Stalin and as you probably know, after the Second World War, Bulgaria (who fought on the side of the Axis) became a country in the so called Eastern (or Soviet) bloc. In other words, most of the political decisions concerning Bulgaria were dictated from Moscow.

One such decision was the creation of a new republic – the People’s Republic of Macedonia, which would be an autonomous republic as part of the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. Stalin’s idea was to make the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia stronger, so that it could act as a barrier against the “imperialist aggressors”. He though the way to do this was to create this new autonomous republic in the Balkans. Stalin wanted Dimitrov to work on the creation of a Macedonian national consciousness in the Pirin region (in the southwest part of Bulgaria).

So how was a whole new nation created in the middle of the 20^th century and how were centuries of history rewritten in just one night? Georgi Dimitrov received considerable political pressure from Stalin and did not have much of a choice, but the fact is that during the 10^th plenum of the Communist Party (July 1946), he just repeated the words ordered to him by Stalin for the creation of the new People’s Republic of Macedonia. This new autonomous republic was built in 1946 on a territory which was previously mostly owned by Serbs, Bulgarians, Albanians and Greeks.

Now that they had the territory, where did the nation and the “Macedonians” come from? Well, they came from people who lived within the borders of the new country and were forced to take on the Macedonian citizenship. The new borders literally ran through towns, villages and even houses. There were many cases where people who lived in the same house and were born by one mother suddenly became people from two different nations. In addition, there were around 10,000-20,000 Bulgarians from Aegean Macedonia who after the war sought refuge in Bulgaria as Bulgarians, so they would not become Hellenized and were denied permission to stay in Bulgaria. Instead, they were forced to go and settle in the newly created People’s Republic of Macedonia which was “hungry” for population. Thousands of letters were written by these refugees to the office of Georgi Dimitrov. These letters were all requesting one thing: to be given permission to go back to their homes. They remained unanswered.

For those who awoke to discover they no longer lived in Bulgaria, but now lived in the People’s Republic of Macedonia, there were consequences which were often tragic, bordering on the ridiculous. In many cases, people began life as one nationality and now had to immediately adopt another:

• When the first school teachers in the new republic went to the Pirin region, they were instructed to tell the students that they were Macedonians, but until then they did not know it, because before that there was no one to tell them that.
• Students in school were Bulgarians in, for example, third grade and Macedonians in fourth grade.
• Young men went into the army as Bulgarians and came back as Macedonians.

One of the strangest things was that no one knew the “Macedonian language” that had to be taught to students in class – such a language had to be invented. Who invented it?

Again, the orders came from Moscow and as most of the population in the newly-created country was originally Bulgarian, the Bulgarian government was given the task of creating the new Macedonian language. Bulgarian authors, teachers and scientists were ordered by their own country to create the alphabet of the new language and to use it while writing books. And, of course, this language was created in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. Essentially, the “Macedonian language” is written with letters almost identical to the letters in the Bulgarian alphabet and it can be seen as a dialect of the Bulgarian language. That is why most Bulgarians (even children) have absolutely no problem in understanding the vast majority of it.

So maybe now you can get a feeling of how Bulgarians feel about everything connected to Macedonia and how delicate the question about it is for us. Historically speaking (world history, not only Bulgarian), Macedonia is an artificially created country with a population that was brain-washed at the time of its creation and afterwards. It seems that the old adage “If you repeat one lie a hundred times, it becomes truth” proves to be appropriate here.

Now I want to point out that Bulgarians have very mixed feelings about Georgi Dimitrov. Many think he has betrayed Bulgaria by giving up on things for which our ancestors have given their blood and honor for. Others assume that he did a great job in building a great relationship between the Soviet Union and Bulgaria, but the reality is that sadly the map of Europe now shows a border between Bulgarians and Macedonians which technically just divides people who were brothers and sisters some 70 years ago. Overall, I believe that Georgi Dimitrov is a great example of a Prime Minister of a small country who during his mandate was so unfortunate to be the person who happened to cause so much pain to his own country, even though it was not his goal.