La Falsification de l’histoire de la Macédoine or in English, The Falsification of the History of Macedonia, is written by Nicolaos Martis and has been translated from Greek into French by Marc and Jean-André Vlachos.
In 1984, the Commercial Bank of Greece, in a serious effort to defend the historical truth, financed the translation of this book and copies were distributed to private and official Hellenistic organizations in order to provide the most complete information about Macedonia as an integral part of Greece from antiquity till now.
Nicolaos Martis starts off by quoting texts and using referrals from early antiquity, including the Macedonian kings, the Old Testament, the archaeological finds at sites all over Macedonia with special attention for its most northerly frontier with modern Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. Of course, much attention is given to Alexander the Great and his Empire, followed by the role played by Macedonia after antiquity, in Byzantine times.
A big jump is then made towards Macedonia’s contribution to the liberation of Greece from the Ottoman rule. This process started in the early 1800s when one Balkan country after the other became independent. These were very roaring times that are seldom tackled by modern historians. This part of history is indeed very complex but eventually, these events lead up to form a new country in 1929, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
At the end of WW2, in 1945, the monarchy was abolished and one year later the new Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia was officially established with President Tito as their leader. At his death in 1980, the country was renamed again to become the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, composed of six separate republics: the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Socialist Republic of Croatia, the Socialist Republic of Montenegro, the Socialist Republic of Slovenia, the Socialist Republic of Serbia and finally the Socialist Republic of Macedonia.
This latest name is what started all the confusion as it was meant to be a state of ethnic Macedonians, with “Macedonian” as their official language. As Nicolaos Martis manages to prove at the end of his book, there is no such language as Macedonian and there never was either – not even in the days of Alexander the Great! Besides, this Socialist Republic of Macedonia had nothing to do with Greece’s northern province of Macedonia.
As the book was written in 1984, i.e. before the dismantling of the six republics of Yugoslavia upon the death of President Tito, the question of the legitimacy of the new republic and the new name FYROM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) in 1991 is not discussed here. Meanwhile, i.e. since 2019, FYROM is renamed Republic of Northern Macedonia.
Tempers fire up regularly, mostly in FYROM as the Macedonian Greeks and Greece as a whole want to keep peace with their northern neighbors. This is obviously a very controversial matter and whatever people’s opinions and convictions, this is not the place to give vent to them. The reason for posting this book is purely informative. And it is not just any book since it received a prize from the Academy of Athens and has been dedicated to the President of the Hellenic Republic, Constantin Caramanlis.
The author, Nicolaos Martis was born in Moustheni (department of Kavala) in 1915. During WW2 he fought against the German invasion, participated in the battles of El Alamein and Rimini and the liberation of Athens in 1944. He held office as Secretary General of the Ministry of Northern Greece (1955-1956), State Secretary of Commerce (1956-1958), Minister of Industry (1958-1961), and finally served as Minister of Northern Greece (1974-1981). He died in 2013.
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