The Shrinking of the Slavic Cultural and Linguistic Space in the Southern Balkans (1st half of XX c.)

The article refers on the legal obligations imposed by the international community on the Greek government by the Treaty concerning the protection of minorities in Greece signed at Sevres on August 10, 1920. The provisions of Articles 7, 8, 9 regulated the rights of the numerous Macedonian Slavic population living in Macedonian lands ceded to Greece as a result of the Balkan wars of 1912‒1913. The treaty was ratified by the Greek government on the 30th of October 1923 but has never been implemented. The Greek authorities introduced a whole list of restrictive measures. The Slavic surnames of local Macedonian population were changed to Greek as well as geographic names. Slavic inscriptions in churches and monasteries were erased, a ban was introduced on the performance of folk songs and the use of the Macedonian language even in the private life of citizens of Greek Macedonia etc. As a result of the Greek government assimilation policy and demographic and migration shift in the Aegean Macedonia in accordance with the Treaty of Neuilly from 1919 and Treaty of Lausanne from 1923, the Slavic cultural and linguistic space in Greece in fact has been erased. Similar processes in relation to the Slavic ‒ Serbian and Macedonian population previously occurred in other parts of the Southern Balkans, in Kosovo and Metohia, are currently intensifying in North Macedonia and southern Serbia. This leads not only to aggravation of the problem from an ethnocultural point of view, but also opens the path to transforming the political space of the South Slavic countries in the future.

Hellenism, Slavism, Treaty of Sevres from 1920, League of nations, Macedonian Slavic population, Aegean Macedonia, minority rights