Translation:A Manifesto from the Provisional Government of Macedonia - 1881

A MANIFESTO OF THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF MACEDONlA

23 March 1881

Macedonians,

Our dear fatherland Macedonia was once one of the most glorious countries. The Macedonian nation established the foundations of the art of war; with their victorious phalanx and Aristotle’s enlightenment, they civilized humanity and Asia. And now our fatherland, so glorious in the past, is on the verge of destruction, thanks to our mistakes and carelessness. Foreign and suspicious nations want to conquer our homeland and destroy our nation, which, shining with such a light, will never be destroyed. Our mother Macedonia became now as a widow, lonely and deserted by her sons. She does not fly the banner of the victorious Macedonian army. Today she is just a geographic term. Much like if someone is trying to hide her victorious nature with the veil of oblivion. Conspirators have dug her grave and roam through our land, injecting poisons in her. These conspirators are the undertakers of our glorious and great fatherland, they want to dismember it and lay it as a prayer in front of the victorious army of Austria-Hungary. If one joke is replaced with yet another, the revival of Macedonia will become impossible, and our nation will be eradicated. This moment is of utmost importance for Macedonia, it is a question of life or death.

Real Macedonians, faithful offspring of your fatherland!

Will you let your fatherland be destroyed? Look at her, how she is suffocated in slavery, bleeding from the wounds that the surrounding nations have inflicted her with! Look at the heavy chains that the Sultan has put her in! In such a helpless state, all in tears, our dear Macedonia, our beloved fatherland is calling you: my faithful children, you descendants of Aristotle and Alexander the Great, you in whose veins flows Macedonian blood, don’t leave me to die, help me! It would be a great shame for you, true Macedonians, if you remain silent witnesses of my burial. No, no, here are my awful bloody wounds, here are my heavy chains: beak them, heal my wounds, do whatever is in your power so the words “Allied and United Macedonia” can be written on the banner that I will raise. When you succeed victoriously, drive away the killer from this land, who fly the banner of discord and sow perilous ideas, dividing you, my children, into countless nations, and so united under the banner of Macedonia, as one nation, rise high that glorious banner and prepare to write single-mindedly on it:

“Long live the Macedonian nation! Long live Macedonia!”

This is the voice of our country; this is our freedom – our national inheritance. If you proclaim these words, you will be greeted by the free thinking nations and all graceful hears will hurry up to join you and fight with you, to help you gain the holy freedom that has been taken away from us for so many centuries.

Macedonians, remember your ancestry, and don’t give up on it!

Kustendil, 11th/23rd March 1881 True to the original Dospat 18th/30th April 1881.

President, Vasil Chomo

Secretary, Nikola Trajkov

Central State Archives of the October Revolution and Socialist Construction in Moscow (Section Count Ignatiev, No 730, Description No 1, ed. hr. 79), Ljuben Lape, Odbrani tekstovi za istorijata na makedonskiot narod II del Skopje 1976 str. 256-258.

This manifest is mentioned by the Bulgarian Patriarch Kiril in the Book: Б’лгарската екзархија в Одринско и Македонија след Освободителната војна (1877-1878), vol. 1/1, Софиа: Синодално издателство, 1969, p. 461-466, 485. In this book he mentions that one of the most active members of the Macedonian National Assembly was Leonidas Vulgarakis, hence he concludes that the Assembly was supported by the Greek government.

Манифест на Привремената Влада на Македонија - 1881