The Alphabet of Discord

2.6 The “involvement” of Cyril and Methodius

As mentioned above, the use of the Latin instead of the Cyrillic alphabet provoked strong reactions in the Bulgarian press. In fact, once more precise information about the “character and tendencies of this primer” (Shishmanov 1926: 2) was released, anger seized all social circles, without distinction (ibid.). It is interesting to remark that the Greek authorities, in defending their choice, argued that Latin characters were easier to learn than Cyrillic and better suited to the sounds of the language; they recalled that Latin characters had already been used for writing other Slavic languages such as Croatian, Polish and Czech and that, by using some specific diacritical marks, they were able to make the most of the specific phonology of Slavic languages (Michailidis 1996: 339). It is clear that this comparison is accurate from a purely technical and linguistic point of view, but not from a cultural and historical one, since the Slavic peoples mentioned belong to the Catholic sphere of influence and, for them, unlike for the people of the Orthodox faith, the Cyrillic alphabet had no symbolic meaning.

In discussing the phenomenon of the creation of new writing systems, it is essential to evaluate the importance of some extralinguistic factors (Fishman 1977: xii): the application of a writing system to a language is impossible without the imposition of conventions that are accepted as binding by virtually all those who read and write that language (Wellish 1978: 41). In this case, the will of the people was certainly not taken into account in the choice of a Latin-based alphabet. It was not so much a question of abandoning fidelity to previous writing conventions, since the majority of the population were illiterate, but rather of breaking the bond with the Cyrillic alphabet of the liturgical books and icons in the local churches: that is, with the Orthodox religious tradition.

The Bulgarian and Greek governments, as well as the government of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, were all aware of the “power of writing,” that is, of the fact that writing, and therefore literacy, would have a great impact on the speakers of a language and their society (Biscaldi, Matera 2016: 91). They also knew that the conventions of writing systems were inherently sacred and that one writing system could only be replaced by another by force (cf. Wellish 1978: 42). In Bulgaria, the concern about alphabet reform in Latin letters for the Slavophone population in Greece was linked to the belief that this would represent a disruption in the cultural and religious tradition inaugurated by Saints Cyril and Methodius, and this would have extremely significant consequences for this minority’s identity. This was also the immediate reaction of the local Slavic population to the news of the publication of the primer in Latin characters, who exclaimed: “Are they also going to make us Catholics now?” (Kuševski 1983: 186)—a reaction which shows that use of the Latin alphabet was automatically associated with the Catholic sphere of influence.

In Bulgaria, on the news of the publication of the primer for the Macedonian Bulgarians, the philologist Miletich bitterly commented that it was not written “with their centuries-old Cyrillic alphabet, which they gave to the Slavic world through the Cyrillo-Methodian script, but with a kind of Latin alphabet” (Miletich 1925: 230; my translation). Moreover, Miletich criticized the very definition of Abecedar, which was in itself controversial: “The primer is called ‘Abecedar,’ a name that the Bulgarian population would hardly understand, since it is derived from the first letters of the Latin alphabet.” According to Miletich, the Greek government treated its Bulgarian subjects as “a new nation, a recently discovered one, without legitimacy, without its own writing and literacy, without its own literary tradition and standardized literary language” (Miletich 1925: 230; my translation).

In his text, the philologist Shishmanov addressed the Greek Ministry of Education and demanded an explanation for choosing the Latin alphabet for the Slavic people living on Greek territory. Since the Ministry recognized the existence of this minority, he wondered, was it not necessary to retain the Cyrillic script used by this population in all their “many and thriving” schools, whose existence preceded the Greek occupation? Shishmanov also insisted, much like Miletich, on the fact that the Slavic alphabet (referring in his case to the Glagolitic alphabet, not the Cyrillic) was, “as commonly known, created by the brothers Cyril and Methodius on the model of the Greek script.” He explained that the Greek authorities’ choice in 1925 was provoked by the strong fear on the part of Greek institutions of Bulgarian cultural—and hence political—influence. Consequently, the minority population was deprived of the possibility of reading books and newspapers printed in Cyrillic letters in Bulgaria, and was materially and symbolically isolated from its most “natural” context of reference. Shishmanov also raised a very practical question, wondering what would happen to the Slavic liturgical books if the Greeks were really to force the Slavophone minorities to use the Latin alphabet for education:

Must these also be translated into the Bitola-Prilep dialect and printed in Latin letters? And from where will “Slavic” priests be taken henceforth who know how to use the Latin alphabet? These disturbing questions have not been answered by the official Greek authorities because they have not thought about these implications at all. They knew very well that in the end it was a simple “bluff.” (Shishmanov 1926:14; my translation)

In the Bulgarian national conception of which both Miletich and Shishmanov were representatives, the population of Aegean Macedonia was seen as dependent on the Bulgarian cultural and religious sphere and therefore inseparable from the Cyrillic alphabet (see Tramontano 1999: 323). According to a vision associated with the Slavic Orthodox cultural tradition, indeed, writing exercised a function far beyond the mere graphic representation of phonemes, since alphabet and faith were intimately connected. This is not an exclusive feature of Slavic Orthodox culture, for in other Eastern Christian traditions, as well as in the Islamic world (and also beyond), the value of the written word is also extremely strong (see Cardona 2009b: 133), especially when it occurs in a form perceived as “native.” So, in addition to the Glagolitic alphabet for Bulgarians and Croats (as we will see in Chapters 7 and 10), the Cyrillic alphabet for Bulgarians, Serbs, Russians, etc., we also have the examples of the Armenian alphabet for Armenian communities worldwide (associated with the Armenian Apostolic Church; see, for example, Maksoudian 2006, Uluhogian 1996), the Georgian alphabet (see Gamkrelidze 1994) for Georgians, as well as the Ge’ez alphabet for Ethiopians and Eritreans (see Cardona 1986: 151) and their respective Tewahedo Orthodox Churches (see Bekerie 1997).

The value of the Cyrillo-Methodian mission can be understood by its “revolutionary” historical value: at a time when the dogma of the three languages (Biblical Hebrew, Latin, Greek) was in force for the transcription of the Holy Scriptures, a Slavic language was able to assert itself and gain legitimacy thanks to a new work of alphabetic creation. In Shishmanov, the desire to maintain the Orthodox cultural and writing tradition coexisted with a broad international commitment at the European level, as he was one of the founders of the so-called Paneuropean Union, an embryonic version of today’s European Union (cf. Koneva 2011). Shishmanov was a great advocate of the idea of a united continent, which included respect for the rights of minorities as a fundamental value. His support for the message of Cyril and Methodius probably also stemmed from his attachment to the deeply European ideals of protecting and promoting cultural and linguistic diversity in every part of the continent.

Cyril and Methodius were “invoked” not only by Miletich and Shishmanov. Reference to their work also appeared in the reaction of an anonymous reporter published in the Bulgarian press in the Macedonian region of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Macedonian News (Nouvelles Macedoniennes) (Press of the Revolutionary Association VMRO), although the two saints were credited with creating the Cyrillic alphabet and not the Glagolitic one (cit. in Tramontano 1999: 324). The use of the Latin alphabet was also condemned by the pro-Bulgarian organizations of Macedonian refugees in Sofia, who demanded the immediate introduction of the Cyrillic alphabet (cf. Michailidis 1996: 336). In an article published in the daily Word on 15 October 1925, the Bulgarian politician and journalist Georgi Kulishev expressed his opinion on the subject, referring to the memory of the Cyrillo-Methodian mission:

The great work of Saints Cyril and Methodius has been eclipsed [...] three Greek specialists [...] have graced the Bulgarian people of Western Thrace and Macedonia with a new writing and a new manual for education. It is true that this writing is not so new—it is the Latin alphabet adapted to a not very beautiful cause, a semi-barbaric one. (in: Shishmanov 1926: 4; my translation)

In the same article, the author stated that the Abecedar represented something completely unheard of and “monstrous.” The Greeks had so achieved their goal that the Bulgarians had difficulty in recognizing their own language in the manual, a language subjected to “unheard-of tortures in their martyrology” (ibid.).

Similarly, in a text published in the journal Macedonian Review (Makedonski Pregled) in Sofia, the historian Georgi Strezov expressed his dissatisfaction with the way the Bulgarians were treated by the Greek authorities in Aegean Macedonia, condemning the violation of their cultural and national rights (Strezov 1926: 146). Strezov affirmed that such actions stemmed from the Greek will to uproot this minority from its land and to appropriate everything that was Bulgarian by every means at their disposal—“imprisonment, exile, pitchforks, primers”—and above all by banning their language: all with the aim of “de-Bulgarianizing” Macedonia. The Greeks hence aimed to eliminate all historical evidence of Bulgarian cultural presence in the area. “But we do not want to leave, we are obedient subjects of the Greek state, and we want only one thing—to pray to God in our mother tongue and to read books in Bulgarian” (Strezov 1926: 148; my translation).

The populations in Aegean Macedonia and Western Thrace that were considered “Bulgarian” by the above-mentioned authors already possessed their own written literary tradition, comprising books, newspapers, writers, printing houses, churches, clergy and schools, one which had reached an enviable level: in short, all the cultural characteristics of an advanced society (see also Rossos 2008: 147). The decision to introduce a different writing system and deprive them of such civilizational elements was incomprehensible to the Bulgarian public and unacceptable from a moral, linguistic, cultural and religious point of view. Referring to the population in question, Shishmanov asked: “What benefit could they derive from this Latin writing system? The result will be their inability to read not only a Bulgarian book, but also a Serbian or Russian book” (Shishmanov 1926: 9; my translation).

Certainly, one can conclude that the Greek commission did not adhere to what, in modern sociolinguistics, is considered to be the basis of linguistic and orthographic planning (cf. Fishman 1977: xv). In any project aimed at introducing a new writing system for educational purposes in a speech community, there are indeed a number of crucial decisions to be made: first of all, the choice between using an existing writing system and one created specifically for that language. The proponents of script reforms cannot decide arbitrarily on this fundamental aspect, but should take into account the reaction of the native-speaking population at all stages of the planning process (Berry 1977: 5).

2.7 Conclusions: the fate of the Abecedar after 1925

The function of writing systems as a tool to represent the “distinctiveness” of an ethnic group has been familiar to national movements in the Balkans, and Eastern Europe in general, since the 19th century. In many cases, when an alphabet had already been in use for centuries but no extensive literature existed in the vernacular, it was retained and given a slightly different coloration to distinguish it from the writing system of the dominant power or of a competing ethnic group (Wellish 1978: 43). In the case of the Slavic population of Aegean Macedonia, it was the Greeks themselves who cleverly exploited this element, becoming the protagonists of a “graphopoietic” work, without realizing that they had thus set an important precedent precisely for the “Macedonian cause” that worked against their own interest.

Since one of the main characteristics of the graphic aspect of language, exceeding even the oral aspect, is the fact of its being socially controllable, writing proves to be a strong instrument of power (Cardona 1982: 6). In the Bulgarian case, the alphabet revealed itself to be an essential tool of the “symbolic cultivation” (Smith 2009) of national identity and unity, appearing as an element of continuity in the history of its people: hence, literacy practices themselves became means capable of engaging the public in official debates and rhetoric. After all, literacy itself is based on a system of symbols, since writing is a set of symbolic elements used for communicative purposes that inevitably acquires a strong social meaning (Barton 1994: 43).

At the beginning of his review of the Abecedar, Miletich noted that, despite its serious shortcomings, the text at least represented recognition of the wishes of a minority population that boldly demanded its children’s right to be taught in their mother tongue. But how closely did this statement correspond to reality? What was the fate of this school manual and what were the reactions of the affected population? Certainly, this school manual did not fulfill its intended role, which was to serve the education of local Slavophones. Rather, it represented an attempt at “imposed literacy” (cf. Barton 1994: 78) by the Greek authorities, as well as a restriction of the Slavophones’ possible literacy practices, which were oriented towards different social and religious goals.

A few copies of the controversial Abecedar reached the Slavic-speaking villages of Aegean Macedonia in early 1926, several months late due to the Incident at Petrich, the aforementioned invasion of Bulgaria by Greece. However, these copies of the primer encountered an unfortunate fate: in one village, the incomprehensibility of the text to one of the few literate inhabitants (who could read Cyrillic) led the population to throw all copies into a nearby lake (Tramontano 1999: 327). The distribution of the Abecedar in the village of Amyntaion, near Florina, proved disastrous: the residents reacted violently and burned all the books, which they considered an insult to their “Greekness” (Michailidis 1996: 341)! The inhabitants of this village, both Slavophones and Hellenophones, protested together for days, finally deciding to send a telegram to the Foreign Minister to express their exasperation at the introduction of an undesirable language into the their children’s schools. As if that were not enough, they also sent a message of protest to the League of Nations, which was published in the Greek daily Newspaper of the Balkans (Efimeris ton Valkanion) on 2 February 1926 (Michailidis, ibid.):

We pray that our Government will transmit to the League of Nations our and our children’s strong protest against the grave insult to our national pride and consciousness.

We confirm our decision to support until death our fathers’ institutions and the pure Greek tradition of Alexander the Great.

We declare a bloody war against any violent and illiberal plot against our Greek mother tongue.

We reject the instruction of the Macedono-Slavic dialect in schools, reviving memories of violence, fear, terror, gallows—i.e., the traditional means of Bulgarian practice. […] (in: Michailidis, ibid.)

Undoubtedly, such externalization of Greek identity and rejection of the Bulgarian—or “Slavic”—one can be comprehended on the basis of at least two considerations. Firstly, and rather predictably, by the fact that a population generally prefers to learn and use a writing system that is as close as possible to the prestige language that surrounds it, in order to better integrate into the social context of reference (Berry 1977: 5). Secondly, it should not be forgotten that illiteracy rates were very high at the time, a context that favored the control and manipulation of literacy practices for assimilationist purposes by Greek institutions in various ways.

To conclude, it is clear that the Greek government decided to use Latin characters expecting that the Abecedar would be rejected by all actors for this very reason. After various protests from the addressees, almost all copies of this primer were destroyed, and those that remained were withdrawn from circulation. There was no more discussion of education in the mother tongue and in 1927 the Greek government issued a directive aimed at removing all Cyrillic inscriptions from churches, tombstones, icons, and all other monuments in the area: a veritable campaign against this alphabet, revealing an assimilationist and mono-ethnic policy (Rossos 2008: 147). Such destruction of the cultural heritage of minority writing would be repeated on many occasions in the following history of the Balkan region, and not only in Greece.10 In addition to this, in August 1926, the Greek government and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes signed a protocol recognizing the Serbian nationality of the Slavic-speaking minority in Greece (Tramontano 1999: 328), a move clearly aimed at keeping Bulgaria out of the matter in every respect.

We can observe two other a posteriori elements in relation to the Abecedar, which, in a sense, seem to contradict each other. The first is that, at the time of its publication, this primer, which “teemed with errors” (Kočev 1996: 54), certainly did not help create a writing tradition or keep an existing one alive. In fact, as a result of this affair, and especially after a new law passed in 1936 (cf. Tramontano 1999: 328), the local Slavic language spoken by the population in Aegean Macedonia was also banned in its oral form in public places, surviving only in the domestic environment (Kočev, 1996: 54). In light of this, we can see a further reinforcement of the Greek campaigns of cultural assimilation, confirming that, in the process of creating an independent state after a previous imperial condition, nationalism inevitably coincides with the emergence of forms of “cultural centralism” (Zakhos-Papazahariou 1972: 150).

The second consideration to be made is that, although in practice the primer never reached the school desks of the children of the Slavic-speaking community, it is still considered by Macedonians today11 as one of the most significant testimonies to the existence of a significant national Macedonian community in Greece, and to its language and thus identity (Andonovski 1985: 8).12

1 See on this topic the works Orientalism, by Edward Said (1978) and Imagining the Balkans, by Maria Todorova (1997).

2 The term “Significant Others” is used in social psychology to refer to those persons who are of sufficient importance in an individual‘s life to influence his or her emotions, behavior, and sense of self. The first definition of Significant Others dates back to the American psychiatrist Harry Sullivan in 1940. This term can be used at the “macro level” in the study of ethnopsychology or “national psychology”.

3 Other publications of the period dealing with these issues are La protection des droits des minorités dans les traités internationaux de 1919-1920 by M. V. Vishniak (1920), Le problème des minorités devant le droit international, by Jean Lucien-Brun (1923), Les minorités, l‘État et la communauté internationale by Dragolioub Krstitch (1924).

4 See Roudometof: “the Bulgarian crusade for a national church entailed a direct challenge to the whole Ottoman concept of administration, which identified nationality with religious confession. This was because the Bulgarians did not possess a state of their own (at least until 1878), and therefore there was no territorial political unit that could be directly linked to a Bulgarian church” (2002: 85).