Interview of Ioannis Ambatzoglou with Isaias Konstantinidis in the context of the book launch of the trilogy "The Agreement of Prespa and the Struggle for Macedonia", which dposted on e- Mystras on April 19, 2023.
- What, in your opinion, Mr. Ambatzoglou, are the real historical roots of the modern "Macedonian" issue, i.e. where does this major problem originate?
ANSWER: First of all, Mr. Konstantinidis, thank you very much for the interview and for the book launch of my trilogy that you prepared on your own initiative.
The Macedonianness of the Slavs was invented by Russia at the end of the 19th centuryth century in the context of pan-Slavism in order for it to be able to have access through Bulgaria to the Aegean Sea. Access to the "warm seas" was a burning desire of the Russians. Then the Macedonianness of the Slavs was supported and promoted by communism.
In recent years this issue has been shaken up and supported by the great powers USA and Germany due to their geopolitical interests in the Balkan region.
Of course, not only the external factor was enough, the willing had to be found inside Greece in order to deliver Macedonianness to the Slavs. And this because only Greeks could deliver Macedonianness to non-Greeks since Macedonianness is a constituent element of Greekness. And the willing ones were found. They are the ideological descendants of those who participated in 1949 in the second conference of the Slovak National Liberation Front (СНОФ, Словяномакедонски Народно Ослободителен Фронт – Slavic Macedonian People's Liberation Front) held in the Fishermen of Prespa, i.e. the pro-Bulgarian communist sympathizers who at that conference proclaimed the right to self-determination of the "Macedonian people" and founded KOEM (Communist Organization of Aegean Macedonia - Communist Organization of Aegean Macedonia) as part of KKE1. So after 69 years, the dream of these people came true. They betrayed Macedonia! Although they were the losers of the civil war in the end as a tool of the USA and Germany in 2018 they got their revenge. They completed their betrayal and in fact in the same village, the Fishermen of Prespa.
- Is it really "our name, our soul", i.e. the language is everything (as Mr. Kostas Zouraris also claims), therefore the defense of the name takes precedence over the Macedonian territories, over time?
ANSWER: Surely our name is our soul. The name carries with it all the rest. If the state of Skopje has even only the term "Macedonia" in its name, then in the long run this will drag with it the identification of its inhabitants and their language, even if these were not given to them by the Prespa Agreement - the inhabitants of Macedonia will be referred to as Macedonians, their language will be the language of the inhabitants of Macedonia so it will also be referred to as Macedonian, etc. – and finally at some point there will be a demand to include in their state the territories of the real Macedonia, that which is in Greece. Therefore the name of this state has immense significance. If we lose the game at the level of the name in the long run we will also lose the territory of our Macedonia.
- For what reason, since the depths of the centuries, the Macedonian area is considered the geopolitical heart of Hellenism and, therefore, a potential loss of Macedonia constitutes for the Greeks a matter of national survival?
ANSWER: Macedonia since ancient times was the Greek region that functioned as a wall and repelled the barbarians in their attempt to enter the Greek area.
But its importance is not the only one, the union of the Greeks started from Macedonia. Indeed, during the heyday of the ancient Macedonian kingdom, Philip II united the Greeks and then his son Alexander III created his world empire. This was the result of the unity of the Greeks under the leadership of the greatest Greek leader, the Macedonian Alexander the Great. Thus Hellenism became universal and the spirit of Greece reached the ends of the then known world.
And in the modern era, however, Macedonia was a very crucial region for the survival of Greece. Typically, Pavlos Melas used to say that "Macedonia is the lungs of all of Greece and without them the rest of Greece cannot live"2.
Consequently, any loss of Macedonia will put the existence of Greece as a whole in immediate danger.
- In your opinion, is there a risk that in the future the state of Skopje will be integrated into a "greater Bulgaria" and thus revive the old threat of the Treaty of Saint Stephen?
ANSWER: At the moment, it seems that international actors want Skopje to be independent from Bulgaria. While in the past the Macedonianism of the Slavs was expressed as Bulgarian Macedonianism – after all, EMEO was a Bulgarian organization3 (VMRO), the Bulgarians founded it and the Bulgarians broke it up – today there is an attempt to unhook it from the Bulgarian factor and continue independent as something different.
However, we should not overlook the fact that the Albanians of Skopje, who live mainly in areas of the country bordering Albania and Kosovo, are constantly developing and growing stronger not only in terms of population but also politically. They are already the regulators of the political life of Skopje. In the future, a secession of these territories in order to join them with Albania and Kosovo cannot be ruled out. In this case, Bulgaria will certainly claim the region of Skopje which is adjacent to it, but the result of this event will be far from the Great Bulgaria that had emerged from the Treaty of Saint Stephen. Greece is a very powerful power in the Balkans and we are certainly not in the year 1878 where Russia was a superpower and in the context of pan-Slavism created Great Bulgaria in a collapsing Ottoman Empire.
- In the end, what was the underlying reason for writing the texts that make up your trilogy "The agreement of Prespa and the struggle for Macedonia"?
ANSWER: My fight against the Prespa Agreement started out of national indignation at the selling out of Macedonianness to the Slavs of Skopje. It was an internal mental need, which I felt and externalized in this way. In the context of this struggle, the writing of the articles that initially aimed to prevent the ratification of the Prespa Agreement in the Greek Parliament is included, and when this was not achieved, the purpose of my article writing became the annulment of this shameful agreement. All these articles have formed chapters in my three books so far under the title "The Prespa Agreement and the struggle for Macedonia". The articles written after the third book will form the chapters of the fourth and probably final book in this series. In any case, the baton has already been taken up by the Hellenism Committee, an association based in Thessaloniki, the establishment of which arose out of necessity through my article and, apart from the Skopje issue, also deals with all the other national issues of our homeland.
- https://www.dimokratia.gr/apopseis/401057/mia-istoria-tha-sas-po/
- Natalia Mela, Pavlos Melas, 1992nd edition, Dodoni publisher, 401, p. XNUMX.
- Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (EMEO, Bulgarian: ВМРО). It was founded by Bulgarians in 1893 and dissolved by the Bulgarian Tsar Boris III in 1934.
*Ioannis Ambatzoglou is a Radiophysicist in Medicine, doctor of the Medical Department of the University of Athens, Scientific Head of the Department of Medical Physics of the University General Hospital of Alexandroupolis and President of Hellenism Committee.
Photo Government of the Republic of Macedonia from Macedonia - Signing the agreement on the Macedonian-Greek dispute [17.06.2018, Prespa], Common Property, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/
