TWENTY-FOUR LETTERS FROM MACEDONIA (1)

TWENTY-FOUR LETTERS FROM MACEDONIA
(taken from
http://library.ferris.edu/~cochranr/mac/macintr.htm

In late winter and early spring of 1903, John MacDonald, a British
journalist employed by the London Daily News, toured Macedonia as a
"Special Commissioner" to view the dangerous political and military
situation which was developing there. The events he witnessed later
became known as the Ilinden (St. Elias Day) Uprising.


The Macedonians who sought to shake off the yoke of their Ottoman
overlords were among the last of the Turkish subjects in Europe to make

this attempt. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-8 freed Bulgaria but
ultimately did not create the large political entity originally
planned. The Great Powers sought to limit Russia's influence in the
region by insisting, under the terms of the Treaty of Berlin, that
Macedonia and Thrace remain under Turkish rule.


MacDonald's sympathies were clearly with the aspiring Macedonians. A
generation earlier, the newspaper he worked for employed Januarius
Aloysius MacGahan, the American journalist who covered the
Russo-Turkish War in a series of spectacular articles revealing the
"Bulgarian Horrors". Shortly after his arrival in the Balkans,
MacDonald met a native Macedonian, Constantine Stephanove. Stephanove
had recently returned to his homeland after an extended stay in the
United States (where he earned a B.A. and an M.A. from Yale University)

and Germany, where he had done post-graduate work at the University of
Berlin.


The two apparently hit it off well. For MacDonald, the meeting was
doubly valuable. Not only was Stephanove an able translator
("dragoman") and familiar with the area, he was also the younger
brother of Madame Tsilka (Katarina Stephanova Tsilka) who had been
taken hostage by Macedonian revolutionaries with an American
missionary, Ellen Maria Stone in September 1901. The Stone-Tsilka story

was a very prominent one in the British and American press; hundreds of

newspapers followed the six month ordeal of the two women. Madame
Tsilka's pregnancy and birth of a baby girl, Elenche, in January 1902
only added to the drama. Following payment of a $66,000 ransom, the
incident ended, but the memory remained.


Both men would go on to other projects. MacDonald later wrote one of
the earliest historical surveys of Bulgaria - Czar Ferdinand and His
People, which appeared in 1913, while Stephanove produced the first
English-Bulgarian and Bulgarian-English dictionary (in several
editions) along with many articles and translations. For many years
Stephanove was a Professor of Philology at the University of Sofia. He
died in Sofia in 1940.


Follow the progress of John MacDonald and his dragoman in the first
twenty-four letters he published in the Daily News in 1903 by clicking
on the number on the left hand side of your screen. I transcribed them
in their entirety from photocopies of microfilmed copies of the
newspaper


I -- [February 6, 1903]


TURKISH HORRORS


TERRIBLE TALES OF THE REFUGEES


"DAILY NEWS" MAN AMONG THE MACEDONIANS


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[Dubnitza, Bulgaria (South-Western Frontier), Jan. 27]


Since the beginning of October some three thousand fugitives from
Macedonia have found refuge in Bulgaria. Nearly all of them are
distributed over the towns and villages of this miniature Switzerland,
if I may so call it; along the Macedonia border, and so close to it
that, as at the village of Katcherinovo, for example, they may
distinguish the Bulgarian sentry and the Turkish sentry passing each
other, bayoneted rifle on shoulder, on the dividing line. In small,
scattered bands, ragged, thinly clad, haggard with hunger and cold,
have they been drifting to this haven of refuge day by day during the
last three months. They are coming while I write. Nor will the
immigration cease until civilized Europe repairs the terrible mistake
it committed when, twenty-five years ago, in its jealousy of Russia the

liberator, it thrust back Macedonia once again under the heel of the
Turk.


The personal narratives of these refugees revive the memories of the
crimes which shocked Europe on the eve of the war that ended in the
expulsion of the oppressor from Bulgaria. Many hundreds of these
fugitives are sheltered in the Alpine region between Dubnitza, low down

in the valley of the Struma and its affluents, and the great monastery
of Mount Rilo, nine hours' distant, high among the snows. Rilo, that
old sanctuary, which among all institutions of its order, stands
foremost in the history of Bulgaria, and in the veneration and
affection of the Bulgarian race. The first bands of fugitives from
Macedonia were rescued by Monseigneur the Archimandrite Joanike,
Igoumen (Oikoumenos), of, as we might say in English, the Abbot of the
Monastery of St. John of Rilo, and his good monks. Still larger numbers

are congregated in and around Dubnitza, where the Bulgarian Committee
for relief for the refugees has its headquarters. In another letter I
shall give an account of this society and its operations, and merely
remark in this place that I have had the good fortune to be accompanied

on this journey by the society's secretary, Mr. Stephane Tchaprachikov,

of the Bulgarian Foreign Office, who has been deputed to supervise new
arrangements for the distribution of food and clothing. The present
letter must be reserved for the first portion of my task, which is to
visit the refugees at peptide domiciles on the Rilo-Dubnitza route, and

to hear their own account of the causes that have compelled them to
abandon their homes at a season when to traverse the mountains subjects

the hardiest among them to the severest physical strain, and may mean,
as it often has meant, death to the weaker. It will be found that the
reasons of their flight offer the simplest, the fundamental,
explanation of the rise and progress of the Macedonian insurgent
societies -- as to the true character of which the most misleading
impressions have been propagated in Germany, France, and England.


SHAKING OFF FOUR CENTURIES OF TORPOR


In its ring of mountains, and with the picturesque zigzag of its
streets that in places overhang the river, Dubnitza suggests a
resemblance (a faint one, I admit) to some bits of Sanagar, the capital

of Cashmere. Externally the town has not undergone very much change
since the days when the Turk ruled the land. The unwieldy four-wheeled
bullock carts that, with their loads of tobacco leaf, wine, wood, and
grain, come creaking in slowly from distant villages, and block the
narrow lanes, are, you may be sure, of the same make as the
commissariat wagons which, twenty-two centuries ago, lumbered in the
rear of the armies of Alexander of Macedon--whose paternal kingdom lies

just over there, on the other side of that long, waving ridge, sharply
defined upon the spotless blue, the ridge of stately Mount Rilo, upon
whose crest the sun has just risen, a brilliant of dazzling radiance on

his robe of white. Upon that primitive contrivance, the common bullock
wagon of rural Bulgaria, you shall not discover as much as a farthing's

worth of iron. It is all of wood, clamped together with bolts of wood,
botched here and there with rope, with twine, with twigs. A usefully
elastic contrivance, perhaps, in a world now forgotten, and where roads

were bad. Most wonderful of all are the wheels. Not a single tyre of
iron have I seen in Dubnitza. And scarcely a wheel of decently round
shape. The tyre of the ordinary wagon wheel is formed of a number of
wooden blocks held together by wooden pins. And the triumphant result?
Not a circle in our too exacting sense of the word. But a five, or six,

or seven, or eight sided "circle" -- anything from a pentagon to an
octagon. Sometimes a wheel drags, while the other three plunge lazily
round with many a bump and jerk to the monotone of peptide everlasting
croak. All this would be hard upon the bullocks--but that the Bulgarian

peasant, good-natured, easy-going fellow, is in no greater hurry than
his beasts, and treats them with a man-an-brotherly indulgence. A few
years more, however, and the last of the old-world bullock wagons will
bump its last and vanish, to the tune of its old familiar croak. For
the Bulgarian peasant is waking up. He is shaking off the four
centuries' torpor begotten of his Turkish bondage. And if he is so
prosperous in spite of the primeval character of his implements and of
his notions about farming, what may he not accomplish when he takes to
scientific methods?


I have said that the outer aspect of Dubnitza remains much as it was in

the Turkish days. But in the demeanour, the spirit, the everyday life
of the people the change is enormous. I have been contrasting Dubnitza
with this or that Turkish town of my acquaintance--particularly in the
Asiatic provinces--some melancholy, sombre place, with something of
sinister significance in its stillness, and where the women are rarely
seen, and count for nothing, and the children are never young. The
boisterous energy of Young Bulgaria in the school playgrounds and in
the streets of this obscure country town is a striking and pleasing
reminiscence of the fact that the Turkish blight has passed away
forever. With its large, lofty rooms, flooded with sunlight and
ventilated to perfection, the new elementary public school of this
place would do credit to many an English School Board. In this border
town, as throughout Bulgaria, are complete freedom and security, and
indifference to distinctions of race and creed. In the Balkans, at this

moment, there are at least two Turks who appreciate the fact. They are
the two deserters from the nearest Turkish garrison, that of Djumaia,
who, in their red fez and regimental uniform (much tattered) came
trudging into town the day of my arrival. It is possible that an event
so apparently insignificant as the desertion of two Turkish soldiers
may have been reported in the foreign news of the London papers. In the

circumstances, however, it is not quite as insignificant as it looks;
and as the story they told the Sub-Prefect of Dubnitza, together with
Mr. Tchaprachikoff and myself, may serve as a sort of introduction to
my interrogation of the Macedonian refugees, I shall here make the
shortest possible summary of it.


STORY OF TURKISH DESERTERS


Their answer to my first question was worth all the rest. Why, I asked,

did you desert? Because, replied the spokesperson of the two, "we were
often beaten by our officer. We told him we would not be whipped as if
we were Slavs. He ordered us again punished; then we escaped." There
was a grim, ironical, unconscious humour in the expression, "whipped
like Slavs," blurted out with soldier's frankness before the local
representative of a people whom the Turk regards as Slavic and despises

as Christian. Karaman Seduk and Achmet Mahmud, of the 65th Regiment,
took their hardships as a matter of course, did not appear to mind
them. Their pay of a pound a month was always in arrears. But so was
everybody's. And when they received a penny or two on account--as on
festival days--they had fun therewith, and forgot the dark side of
military life. Had they witnessed any maltreatment of
Macedonians--Christians--Slavs, and such-like folk, in the Caza
(district) of Djumaia, from which they themselves had come, and the
refugees from which were not in Dubnitza? They had not. They had always

been quartered in the town, where there was no disturbance; they knew
nothing, personally, of what might have been going on in the villages.
Had they heard anything? Many a time--from their comrades quartered in
the villages; they had heard of villages plundered, of people beaten
and killed, of women violated. Did they believe these reports? Yes; why

not? Why should their comrades lie? Had they been told why the
Christians had rifles in hiding, and they were helping the armed bands
in the mountains. What did Karaman and Achmet wish for now? To go to
Plevna, their father's birthplace, and there find something to do. So
to Plevna the Sub-Prefect promised to transfer them. And at Plevna, or
anywhere else in Bulgarian they will be as free as any Christian, any
"Slav," subject of his Royal Highness Prince Ferdinand. I have given
their story merely for what it is worth, and without any comment.


VICTIMS OF THE ATROCITIES


Here, in Dubnitza, I have interrogated a large number of refugees, from

thirty-six villages in eight Cazas (administrative sub-divisions) of
Macedonia. Caza Djumaia, touching the Bulgarian frontier, has
contributed a larger number of witnesses than any other. The first
refugees whom I examined were a group of five men from the Caza of
Petrich. Among them was the schoolmaster of Gorema village, Stoyan
Angeloff by name. After many days' wandering in the mountains they
succeeded in eluding the Turkish outposts, and crossed the frontier
last night. The schoolmaster was in rags, not, perhaps, that his
appearance may have been much more in keeping with the dignity of his
office before he took to flight, Stoyan Angeloff, an intelligent man,
was prompt and precise in his answers. He gave me the names of seven
villagers of Gorema village who had either been killed outright or had
died after maltreatment. The first victim was an old man--between
seventy and eighty. His name was Dimitri Zatkoff. The others were Tasse

Arxanoff, Tasse Mitreff, Georgi Petroff (a lad of sixteen), Ivan
Stoiloff, Georgi Mamoloff, Christo Zvetkoff. No others, said the
schoolmaster, had been killed or had died of their wounds in Gorema
village except those seven. But, he added, with the air of one to whom
such incidents seem as natural as the weather, there were few in Gorema

who had not been struck, or kicked, or whipped, or maltreated in one
way or another. Some houses in Gorema, had, the schoolmaster continued,

been burnt by the Turks. And in a village near Gorema a girl ten years
old and four women had been violated by the soldiers. The Church of St.

Demetri, in Gorema, had been desecrated and pillaged, and images
broken. The soldiers, he continued, took away all our wheat and all our

cattle. The account given by the schoolmaster and his companion
regarding Turkish misdeeds in the villages of Vrakoupavitza, Krapolivo,

Kruchitza, Tsapareva, and Ribnitza corresponded generally with the
foregoing. In Tsapareva village a Christian girl had escaped death by
converting to Islamism. Why should the Turk soldiers stop you from
coming to Bulgaria? the school-master was asked. The Caimakams (local
Governors) and the Commissaries of Police, also the officers, was the
reply, prevent news from getting abroad. When we try to escape they
turn us back. We may as well die in the mountains as remain in our
homes that the soldiers and the police have pillaged. Many of our
people, said he, are still hiding in the mountains, and have gone to
join the bands, meaning the armed bands that are in readiness for an
insurrection before Easter. The foregoing is an ordinary specimen of
the sort of evidence given my the refugees.


Most of the fugitives in the town of Dubnitza are sheltered in the
Khan, a large rambling building, or, rather, series of buildings,
surrounding a quadrangle. The first of them whom I questioned was a
priest of the Bulgarian Church--"Pope" Michael Nicoloff. Pope Nicoloff
was arrayed in black, tall cylindrical hat, long, black gown, and baggy

trousers. He wore a brown sash and yellowish slippers, from which
leathern thongs were round his calves. His brown beard was long and
thick. His hair fell in waving masses half-way down his back, in the
traditional fashion of the Orthodox Church. His father before him was a

Pope, and had lately been put in prison on account of his alleged
relations with the insurgent bands. Pope Michael's statement confirmed
the schoolmaster's as regards the difficulty which refugees experience
in making their way into the Principality. He had been one of a company

of nearly two hundred who on their way to the frontier were intercepted

by the Turkish troops. Only a small remnant reached Bulgaria. The rest
were driven back to their villages, or made their way to the hills in
the interior. One of their women was killed--with the child she was
carrying on her back. The Turkish soldiers and police, said the Priest,

leave us nothing; their usual grounds for molesting us are our supposed

concealment of arms; in searching for arms they have opened the floor
of the Church of St. Archangel, near my village of Troskova; in
Troskova they massacred Athanas Aggelos, bayoneted Athanas Aritzonoff,
and a woman named Ilinka Aritzonoff, whom some soldiers criminally
assaulted, died soon after. On this disagreeable subject of criminal
assaults, Pope Michael Nikoloff spoke in a matter-of-fact manner, as if

incidents of the kind were an ordinary experience.


But on this particular theme a fugitive from the large village of
Serbinovo was more explicit than Pope Michael Nikoloff. It was curious
to watch his demeanour and that of the group of his fellow refugees
round about him, as they recounted the names of women whom they knew
and who had been criminally assaulted. Rather stolidly reticent at
first, they grew excited as they each detailed their personal
knowledge, or corrected some mistake in the identification of a victim.

A list of the alleged victims' names was taken down, not only by
myself, but also by Mr. Tchaprachikoff, who, as already said, is
Secretary of the Relief Committee. Here it is:


Ivanko Stryanova (young, married), Matria Iliova, Istata Giorgiovo,
Mitra Tsvetkova, Mitra Christova, Petra Christova, Giorgia Velianova,
Stoika Andonova, Velika Seraphimova, Aggelia Christova, Petra Lavleva,
Temenuga Tassovo, Maria Niccolova, Petra Pavleva, Temenuga Tassova,
Maria Niccolova, Petra Ivanova, Varvara Aggeloff, Borjana Petreva,
Borjana Strianova, Velika Christova, Djina Giorgiova.


PITIABLE AND REPULSIVE TALES


At the end of the recital one of the group reminded his fellow-refugees

that there were two victims of the same name--Velika Seraphimova. Among

those killed in Serbinova there were, according to the same witnesses,
two children, one four years old, the other twelve. The Redifs
(reservists), said they, desecrated the church; they deprived the
villagers of their provisions and other property, including a large
quantity of tobacco, the cultivation and manufacture of which are a
special industry of the Serbinovo district. Next came groups of
refugees from a long list of villages. Their depositions (with which I
have filled a notebook) are, in general, a monotone of the same
pitiable, dreary, and often repulsive tale of churches defiled,
villages pillaged, men, women and children maltreated, men sometimes
tortured, women subjected to unamenable insults, people escaping to the

mountains, to wait there it may be for the hour of vengeance. In the
village of Vlaki, Giko Athanasaf was killed right out; Ilya Nedelkof,
Milka Yotkef, Marco Dosheff died soon after "maltreatment"; Pope
Aritzanoff's beard was plucked out by the roots. A refugee from Burievo

village, in the Stovmitza sub-division, tells me that his brother,
Anton Mankhoff, was massacred, and that five girls, carried off by the
Turks, have not since been heard of. Mitradinoff, a fugitive from
another village in the same district, alleges that his brother Vassil
was killed, and that after four days the body was found half-devoured
by dogs; and that the village church has been turned into a barracks.
The refugees from Oshtava village, in the Caza of Melnik, say that
their Church of St. Theodore has been turned by the Turkish troops into

stables for their horses. In Medjkul, a village of the same Caza, Anton

Giorgiov had his feet and hands cut off; Christo Blagoff was
bayonetted; Petre Nicoloff was beaten to death; some houses were burnt;

assaults (of the character already indicated) were committed; the
Church of St. Elias was appropriated for military uses.


The worst tales were those narrated by the refugees from the villages
in Djumaia. In these villages, say they, tortures have been frequent.
In Gradevo, Christo Yoseph's ears were cut off and his eyes put out. In

Djelezendz village, Aggel Kileff was suspended by his feet over burning

straw. A man from Vronovo described, suiting the action to the word,
how the cord torture is applied over one's head, until the eyes start
out, and the victims in their agony confess to all their tormentors
wish. In the village of Prokovnik, said another refugee, some
prisoners, put into an outhouse, were drenched with ice-cold water
during the night. A man from Klissoura village knelt down to show how
prisoners have been forced backwards and head downwards, to be beaten
with the stick upon the naked breast and stomach. Three refugees from
the village of Strumsi Chitlik show me how they themselves had been
beaten with the stick. A villager of Drenovo, lately a man of substance

according to his own account, narrated how the Christian headman of a
neighboring village, a baker by trade, had been thrust for a time into
his own oven, and how, when taken out, he was spitting blood. Did you
see that? he was asked. No, but the headman, who was his friend, had
told him all about it. The same witness showed the wound on his right
hand that had been pierced by a Turkish solder's bullet; he had been
sent as a prisoner of Serres. On his release, and returning to his
village, he found that the Turkish troops had taken away his four
hundred okes of tobacco and his stores of wheat and destroyed his home,

so that he and his family were destitute. But there is something worse
than that. He declares that his wife was criminally assaulted.


This witness's name is Velichko Stoichoff. He is well known in Djumaia.

An impartial Commission of Inquiry into alleged barbarities of the
Turkish soldiery and Civil administrators could easily test the value
of his statements. Velichko Stoichoff's wife is here among the
refugees. She came forward and corroborated her husband's assertions.
She says that before the three Turkish soldiers--three of
them--committed their crime, they robbed her of the money she carried
in her girdle. But enough of this recital.


"WHY HAVE THEY LEFT IT?"


The foregoing paragraphs contain but a bare summary of the details
given to me by the fugitives at Dubnitza. The instances I have quoted
are taken at random, and are typical of the whole. I have no reason to
suppose that what the refugees ar the village of Rilo and elsewhere may

have to say about themselves will differ in any material respect from
what I have already recorded. Why have these three thousand Macedonians

fled into Bulgaria? The Turkish Government alleges that the tales of
pillage, flogging, maiming, killing, and the rest are either false or
grossly extravagant, got up for the purpose of discrediting the Porte
in European estimation and of furnishing and excuse for Bulgarian
agitators. As if three thousand Macedonians had braved the mountain
snows, abandoned their homes, sacrificed all that was dear to them, for

the sake of spiting the Sultan! Those priests, village schoolmasters,
headmen of Christian communities, cultivators, artisans, have not come
to Bulgaria for nothing. It is worth noting in this place that, like
the Bulgarians, the Macedonian small farmers are proprietors of the
soil they till. They are as strongly attached to the land they till.
They are as strongly attached to the land as are the cultivators of the

Principality. Why have they left it? The stories I have set down from
the lips of the refugees themselves furnish the answer. Those stories
can be subjected to searching inquiry. For, unlike the victims of the
Armenian massacres, there are at least three thousand Macedonians who
have not been dispersed, or otherwise disposed of, beyond recall, and
who may be taken to their respective villages and there confronted with

their alleged prosecutors.

.

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