This May be of Interest

[drle]

http://condor.depaul.edu/~rrotenbe/aeer/v22n1/13_manos.pdf

Gday lads,

I think a few of you may be interested in this....the person who conducted this study is from Lerin and you might be surprised on what he has to say....

[Risto the Great]

Interesting article Drle.
Thanks.

Some interesting statements:

“Some accused me of trying to ‘hellenise’ the
village and others of being an aftonomistis. In the latter
case, it was someone who during the village’s panigiri had
wanted to dance a dance with a song in Slavic. I do not
care.

How can you "Hellenise" a village that is 100% Hellenic ????

Savvas grew up in a family “with contradictions,” as he
says. “My father and half of our relatives are right-wingers
and the other half left-wingers.” His family spoke Dopia,
which he calls Makedonika [Macedonian]. His mother
tongue is Greek. As he says, “it may be that our mother
tongue is theoretically the other one but in my consciousness
I learned to call the table trapezi [the Greek word]
and not masa [the Slavic word].”

It is the other one Savvas ... it is.

Dance is a means to practice politics and propaganda.
This is how it is here, on both sides. I don’t like anybody
who comes and tells us we need help and pretends to
help us. This is a pure instrument of politics. Because of
such people we then argue against each other. I have a
cousin who is the chairman of the other association in
the village. His mother and my father are siblings. He
tells me sometimes, “I will not dance Poustseno [24] and
the like.” And indeed he doesn’t dance Poustseno or anything
else. He does not want to be identified as aftonomistis.
We are together at work and one evening when we left
together he put a tape in with songs from Aidonia [25]
[Nightingales] and started clapping his hands.

My dear Greek friends ... instead of counting Vinozhito votes, why not look at the dance steps. Here is a clue .... I danced the pushteno at my wedding. (The place went wild)

It is our fault, the Greeks’ fault. It all started in the
Metaxas time. We did not have problems before. During
the Metaxas period people started going to prison, to be
arrested for language. But nobody knew Greek. Neither
my grandmother nor my mother. My uncle Pantelis was
playing a melody in a coffee shop during the Metaxas
time. A rural constable split on him. He was arrested and
beaten by policemen. Can he forget this and be a friend
of Greece?

No, no he cannot.

I joined the army in 1952. During our basic training we
were practising shooting. In these cases, two soldiers
warn the people by standing with two red flags at the two
edges of the shooting ground. One of those two came
from the region of Kastoria. Before the shooting, the
captain talked to us about the flag. He said, “The flag you
hold is heroic.” And the guy from Kastoria asked, “The
red?” “Come here,” the captain told him. He beat him so
hard that blood did not stop running. “Where are you
from? Kastoria? Keep quiet you dirty Bulgarians. I will
all load you on a ship and send you to exile right away.”
Who could say anything? How could we then fight for
the country?

What? Bulgarians in Kastoria? Now they worship the (German) monarchy and pray to Zeus every night.

The musician: He admitted he manipulated his
cultural background in a strategic way to obtain access to
situations from which he could benefit by earning money.

No, impossible!

The man from Florina remembered me. Talking about
the feast he asked me in Macedonian “Ne ke slusnam
Grtska pesna. Ako ne, ne ki gi zemas parite ke begas.” [I
won’t hear any Greek song. If not, you won’t get your
money and you will have to leave]. I told him “All right.”

Umm, can the Greeks understand this request? Can anyone understand the irony?

Yiayia Anastasia was born in 1924 and raised in the village
of Kato Idrusa, or Kotori [37] as she often calls it. The
majority of its population consists of villagers who see
themselves as Dopioi and the rest as Arvanites. In these
terms, she is an Arvanitissa. She moved to the town of
Florina in her mid-twenties during the Civil War. Her
mother tongue is Arvanitika but she speaks Dopia and
Greek equally well. When she plays with her great-grandchildren
she sings them songs in Greek, Arvanitika and
Dopia and she tells them to learn to dance Beratse and
Poustseno.
Her views and perceptions of the years she lived in the
village and her account of the relations between the two
categories did not reveal a view of two opposing groups.
On the contrary, she saw the community in terms of
conducting a common life in the same social environment,
participating in the same social events, going to school
together and protecting each other in dangerous and
tough periods for the village such as World War II and the
Civil War.

Ummm, my people come from here. Note the Albanian woman came in the 1920's. They ended up being 25% of the village. I call them "guests" ... but they are mostly very lovely people. All Greeks now though

Mind you, she speaks that "Dopia" thingo language as well. In Greece the Macedonian language is like Lord Voldemort of Harry Potter ... the "language that cannot be named".

The objective of the paper has been to show that belonging
is a matter of negotiation and political manipulation
related to the power dynamics that prevail at certain
periods.

Drle, a remarkable piece of research. Political manipulation of Macedonians has created Frankenstein culture that should either be put to death or restored.

From those negatively
disposed to the existence of the minority, it is elders
that mostly use the term Bulagrians while the rest have
adopted the terms aftonomistes or Macedonians.

Oh, I see ... the indoctrinated hatred perpetuated by the Greek State saw the older people use Bulgarians as a term to make us Macedonians look bad.

The younger ones have learned to simply hate autonomists or "Macedonians".

Who else should they hate?

Turk is the term attributed by the Dopioi and
Arvanites to some of the refugees who settled in the region
in the 1920s coming from certain parts of Turkey and
speaking Turkish

But, but ... they were pure Greeks .... Giorikas, tell me it is not so!

The term Kotori is the previous name of the village.
The complete name was Dolno Kotori or Kato Idrousa
today. The names were changed by the Greek state in the
1920s.

My ancestral village. Greece, change the name back please.

Excellent stuff indeed.

Thank you very much for this link.

Imagine how a real country would deal with these dilemmas. It might (God forbid) believe it is a multi-cultural nation. Of course that is what it is now .... but we all know who the majority were back in the good old days in Macedonia. ....hint .... Lord Voldemort.

[drle]

its okay Risto....I'm just sick of these proud Kozi telling us what's right...

[Risto the Great]

It just gets me pumped up.
Wanna start a dance group?
Real guns

[drle]

The man from Florina remembered me. Talking about
the feast he asked me in Macedonian “Ne ke slusnam
Grtska pesna. Ako ne, ne ki gi zemas parite ke begas.” [I
won’t hear any Greek song. If not, you won’t get your
money and you will have to leave]. I told him “All right.”

I thought its renown as SLAVIKA or VOULGARIKA by the locals in Greece? I never knew it was referred to as Macedonians by the locals....well slap a cowboy hat on me and call me Roy Rogers...it is Macedonian according to the locals Giorkas...ebati kozi ebati....

[Risto the Great]

I note he was an older man. He was around before Lord Voldemort. All this "nashe", "dopia" bullshit is relatively recent.

[drle]

Ne bre Riste...according the Modern Greeks they've been virgin Greeks....nothing but the purest...there is no such thing as Nashi, Dopii, or Macedonian...We're all Bulgarians remember..

[Risto the Great]

Pure as the driven Turk.
Ummm, and then mixed in with the Christian Turk.

[drle]

As well as the odd Arvanite...And especially in Lerin...they stick to their own...

I remember going to Drosopigi or Belkamen with my uncle who is actually a professor at the University of Florina and inside this restaurant as you go into Belkamen he was telling me how these Arvanites or Arnauti as we call them in Lerin stick to their traditions depsite being in Greece for over 100 years....

[Risto the Great]

Mixing is still frowned upon.

[drle]

Yeah and what kills me is they would still make an excuse....typical of em...

What does everyone think? Any Greeks out there who can respond to this debate? Or have you conceeded the fact that a Greek citizen has exposed the lies and propaganda of these racist Greeks?

[Rogi]

Not so much among the younger generation though.

I know an old man who lives in a village south of Voden who said "mojto vnuche je meshano, ne je chisto Makedonche, ot sega imame meshana krv so prosfigite vo sojot".

So he clearly frowns up on it, though obviously his children do not.

[Risto the Great]

The children do it to rebel, they know how bad it is and are very much aware of it as they get older.

A bizarre social experiment.

[drle]

I guess its like any mixed marriage...not everyone is satisfied with the outcome in the end....

[Pelister]

This is amazing stuff.