Aegean Macedonia - Origins of The Term

Origins of The Term

The origins of the term seem to be rooted in the 1910s, most of its early appearances were in the writings of Bulgarian authors. Since the mid-1940s the term has appeared on maps circulated first in Yugoslavia and especially after 1991 in the independent Republic of Macedonia, which envisioned Greek Macedonia (referred to as "Aegean Macedonia") as part of a "Greater Macedonia", and is regarded as a non-recognition of current European borders, including the legitimacy of Greek sovereignty over the area.

During the Greek Civil War, the Greek government referred to the usage as a "new term" only recently introduced by Josip Broz Tito in Yugoslavia, implying that it considered it part of the Yugoslav campaign of laying claim to Greek Macedonia.

Tito's war-time representative to Yugoslav Macedonia, Svetozar Vukmanović-Tempo, is credited with promoting the usage of the regional names of the Macedonian region for irredentist purposes. In 1946, the Belgrade newspaper Borba (August 26, 1946) published an article under the title "Aegean Macedonia", it was also published in Skopje’s Nova Makedonija with a map of Yugoslav territorial claims against Greece. A month later, on September 22, the Premier of the People's Republic of Macedonia, Dimitar Vlahov (speech in Nova Makedonija, on September 26, 1946), announced, "We openly declare that Greece has no rights whatsoever over Aegean Macedonia...". Vlahov then went on to publish, "The Problems of Aegean Macedonia", Belgrade, June 1947.

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