Source: A1 News
By Goran Momirovski
Translated from Macedonian to English and edited by Risto Stefov
July 22, 2007
The Greek government in 1920 admitted in official documents that Macedonians live in Greece.
In a census organized by Athens, under pressure from the League of Nations, Greece published a chart of graphs in Greek and French showing the existence of Serbian, Bulgarian and Macedonian speakers living in Greece.
The official results from this census were never made public. A greater part of the census including accompanying documentation and copies was destroyed just like the Abecedar, the Macedonian language primer published in 1926 for Macedonian speaking children.
Fortunately parts of the census survived, saved by some Greek historians. The census documents which clearly show that the Macedonian language was part of Greek government politics was re-introduced in the second publication of the Abecedar promoted only a few days ago in Ofchareni, Lerin Region by Vinozhito.
“The majority of the people today don’t know that in 1920 there was such information, where during the taking of that census people were asked about their mother tongue. Those parts of the census that refer to Macedonia were never published” said Dimitrios Lithoxou from Vinozhito.
The part of the census document that survived clearly shows that two decades before Tito, Greece had recognized the Macedonian identity.
A year and a half ago, these documents were given to Matthew Nimitz, the Greek-Macedonian name dispute envoy. According to diplomatic sources in A1, these historical facts lead Nimitz to change his position in the name dispute making it more favourable for the Macedonia side, which was immediately rejected by Athens.