"Navigating Nationality in the Emigration of Minorities between Bulgaria and Greece, 1919–1941," Eastern European Politics and Societies, 2009.

185

Author’s Note: Research for this article was funded by grants from the Kokkalis Program on Southeast and East-Central Europe at Harvard University, the Social Science Research Council, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and the American Historical Association. An early draft of this article was presented at the History-Migration-Anthropology: New Perspectives on European Migration and Migration History conference (University of Erfurt, Germany, November 2002). I wish to thank Andrea Klimt and Urlich Raiser for comments on the article.

East European Politics and Societies

Volume 23 Number 2Spring 2009 185-212

© 2009 SAGE Publications10.1177/0888325408326787

http://eeps.sagepub.comhosted at

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Navigating Nationality in the Emigration of Minorities between Bulgaria and Greece, 1919–1941Theodora DragostinovaOhio State University, Columbus

The 1919 Convention for Emigration of Minorities between Bulgaria and Greece was an important prototype for minority handling and population exchange in Eastern Europe after World War I. Based on research in Bulgarian and Greek archives, this article offers a comparative analysis of the conflicting pursuits of the two countries and the multiple opinions of various groups affected by displacement. Despite the optimism of the League of Nations that the Convention would solve ethnic conflict by bolstering individual rights, people’s unwillingness to prioritize nationality undermined the exe-cution of voluntary exchange. Instead, emigration occurred as an “actual exchange,” and refugees fled their birthplaces under harsh circumstances. Yet individuals inven-tively navigated their nationality and often defied the priorities of the nation-states to further their personal strategies. Because of the failure of this first international exper-iment of voluntary exchange in Eastern Europe, future proponents of population man-agement adopted the principle of compulsory exchange.

Keywords: Bulgaria; Greece; nationalism; minorities; refugees

Following World War I, in conjunction with the Neuilly Peace Treaty from 27 November 1919, the defeated Bulgarian government signed the Convention for

Voluntary and Reciprocal Emigration of Minorities between Bulgaria and Greece. The mission of the Convention was “to regulate the reciprocal and voluntary emigra-tion of the racial, religious, and linguistic minorities between Greece and Bulgaria, [and] to facilitate emigration . . . by securing for the emigrants the payment of the real property that they leave behind.”1 The resettlement of minorities occurred between 1924 and 1925 while the property compensation, under the supervision of

186 East European Politics and Societies

a Mixed Commission, was carried out between 1926 and 1931. The Convention was applied to 1,011 localities: 251 in Bulgaria, 501 in Greek (mainly Aegean) Macedonia, and 259 in Greek (Western) Thrace. A total of 154,691 people submitted declarations for emigration and property liquidation: 101,800 Bulgarians and 52,891 Greeks.2 Close to 40,000 on both sides emigrated but did not avail themselves of the Mixed Commission for various reasons. Finally, some 140,000 Bulgarians and 12,000 Greeks remained in their places of birth as minorities.3 Ultimately, this voluntary exchange affected approximately 350,000 people, and more than half of them chose to resettle.

The Bulgarian–Greek Convention was the first population exchange treaty sanc-tioned and implemented by the League of Nations, yet it has received little attention in the literature, despite the fact that it constituted an important precedent in the execution of a minority exchange under the supervision of the international community. Earlier attempts to reach such agreements did not come to fruition. A Convention between Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire signed in November 1913 affected Bulgarians and Turks who lived in the 50 km border zone in Eastern Thrace following the end of the Second Balkan War, and an Agreement between the Ottoman Empire and Greece from May 1914 provided for the exchange of Greeks in Ottoman Asia Minor for Muslims in Greece. Yet the two treaties never took effect because of World War I.4 At the Paris Peace Conference following the Great War, the Greek Prime Minister Elevtherios Venizelos pursued a minority exchange between Bulgaria and Greece through the Committee on New States that was formed during the negotiations.5 The Bulgarian delegation was reluctant about the plan, but it was partially satisfied with the voluntary character of the proposed emigration; for this reason, Bulgarian representatives requested that the Convention be put in effect together with sustainable policies for minority protection.6 The Mixed Commission in charge of the resettlement empha-sized “the voluntary and individual character” of the emigration, and it guaranteed individuals in both countries the choice to either remain in their places of birth as a minority population or to relinquish their current citizenship and relocate to the coun-try that best reflected their national sympathies.7 In the next twenty years, representa-tives of Bulgaria, Greece, and the League of Nations worked to implement the stipulations of this first controlled experiment of “ethnic unmixing” in Europe.8

This article argues that the Bulgarian–Greek Convention for Emigration was an important prototype for minority handling and population exchange in Eastern Europe after World War I.9 Its execution was characteristic of the tense relationship between revisionist and pro–status quo countries in the rest of the region.10 The Bulgarian–Greek minority question dominated relations between the two countries (and the rest of the Balkans) throughout the interwar period. The implementation of the Convention was linked to the most urgent priorities of territorial expansion, national consolidation, and administrative centralization in the two states. Because of their conflicting claims over the former Ottoman provinces of Macedonia and Thrace, the Greek and Bulgarian govern ments pursued diverging goals with the exchange. Bulgaria attempted to avoid the application of the Convention’s terms in order to preserve the Bulgarian minority

Dragostinova / Minority Emigration between Bulgaria and Greece 187

in Greece, which would allow the government to insist upon the revision of the territo-rial provisions of the Neuilly Treaty. Greece pushed for its immediate enforcement because a minority exchange would contribute to the national homogenization of the diversely populated “new lands” that the country had acquired following the Great War. These conflicting interests explain why the negotiations between the two coun-tries pertaining to the Convention continued from its signing in 1919 until the begin-ning of World War II in 1939, and the governments linked emigration and its financial costs to the most important diplomatic issues in the interwar period.11 The tensions between Bulgaria and Greece also determined their different roles in the interwar Balkan alliances; because of its revisionism and insistence on minority rights, Bulgaria was generally at odds with its neighbors and pursued its policies in isolation. Finally, unresolved territorial and minority issues determined the Bulgarian and Greek partici-pation in World War II on the sides of the Nazis and the Allies, respectively.12

The dynamics of the Bulgarian–Greek exchange also reveal the diverse responses to nationalization and emigration in the two societies. The behavior of the population targeted by the Convention was indicative of the contradictory tendencies of identi-fication with a territorially bounded nation-state in the interwar years.13 The dissolu-tion of the Ottoman Empire did not change people’s dispersed loyalties overnight. Instead, the wavering of collective identification was evident in the various percep-tions of national belonging and the multiple degrees of national commitment among individuals and communities. The evolution of the Bulgarian–Greek emigration challenges the notion that minorities naturally wished to “unite” with their “national homelands” as universal panacea to nationalization. Instead, the majority of the population hesitated to emigrate and did not want to become refugees. People pre-ferred to remain minorities in their places of birth and were willing to make major concessions with their nationality in order to integrate into the host society. Remarkably, because of the voluntary character of the Convention for Emigration, individuals possessed a range of options in their interactions with the national administrations. In fact, many utilized the fact that the provisions of the Convention were voluntary and that its criteria were ambiguous for their own ends, defying the national priorities that their governments officially pursued. In this situation, state officials and regular citizens constantly interacted and adapted their policies and demands, so that the national allegiances of the population became a subject of end-less negotiations and redefinitions. The contingency of nationhood was strikingly clear in the context of voluntary migration; when people chose to relocate, they considered multiple factors, and not only nationality, in this life-changing decision.

The first part of this article engages the existing literature on the Bulgarian–Greek minority exchange. It highlights the conflicting national interpretations in the histo-riography, outlines studies of other cases of population exchange that provide excit-ing theoretical insights, and promotes a comparative interpretive framework that inscribes the Bulgarian–Greek exchange in a broader Eastern European perspective. The second part turns attention to official motivations behind the exchange. It


emphasizes how the positions of the Bulgarian and Greek governments were complementary, analyzes the rhetoric of reciprocity utilized at the upper bureaucratic and diplomatic levels, and stresses how minority policies were in constant flux. The third part explores how the different social groups involved in the emigration internal-ized the increasing pressures to adopt clear-cut national loyalties. Tensions existed between the priorities of the state and the interests of individuals, and people perceived events in conflicting ways according to their personal circumstances. Finally, the last part delineates the various views of nationhood that were evident in the context of emigration and integration. It detects frequent national mimicry among the population and shows that nationality was only one among several forms of identification that individuals balanced during these turbulent times. Ultimately, compared to other cases of “ethnic unmixing” in Eastern Europe, the voluntary minority exchange between Bulgaria and Greece demonstrates the constant fluctuation in official national policies and the profound ambiguity of everyday national claims in the interwar period.

Interpretations

The existing Bulgarian and Greek historiography regarding the exchange of minorities is split along national lines. In Bulgaria, the Convention for Emigration has been studied as a crucial factor for the de-Bulgarization of the Greek territories in the 1920s.14 It has also justified Bulgarian interwar revisionism and the occupation of Northern Greece during World War II, which many Bulgarians saw as the rightful “liberation” of Bulgarian lands.15 Cited as a cause of the refugee problem in the interwar years, the Convention has been portrayed as contributing to the social tur-moil during this period. Bulgarian historians have assumed that the refugees that arrived in Bulgaria integrated successfully because they already had Bulgarian nationality, and scholars have overlooked the formation of a refugee mentality among the newcomers.16 Simultaneously, there has been no interest in the Greek community of Bulgaria, and the few available studies have presented the Greeks as a peripheral and “non-materialized” minority.17

In Greece, on the other hand, the 50,000 immigrants from Bulgaria have seemed insignificant compared to the 1,500,000 refugees from the Ottoman Empire that the country received in the 1920s. All Greek surveys of the Bulgarian Greeks suggest that the reasons for their emigration were their loyalty to the Greek national cause and the pressures that they experienced in Bulgaria because of their minority status.18 At the same time, Greek historians maintain an inconsistent stance regarding the national affiliations of the Bulgarian minority affected by the Convention: the people who left Greece are considered Bulgarians yet their relatives who remained in Greece are treated as “Slavic-speaking” (Slavophonoi) Greeks. This minority population has been variously called Bulgarian-speakers, Bulgarian-minded, foreign-speakers, Slavic-speakers, Slavic-minded, and (Greek) Slavo-Macedonians.


Essentially, the “Slavic-speakers” are denied a Bulgarian link, despite the fact that in the interwar period the Greek governments were concerned with the Bulgarian national feelings of the minority.19

The archives in Bulgaria and Greece largely confirm this split in interpretations.20 The research presented here was carried out in Bulgarian and Greek archives, and this comparative work created the perception that two different “mirror-images” of history were documented in the two countries. Many occurrences that were established as “genuine” historical facts in one archive were portrayed as having happened in a dif-ferent way in the other. The most glaring inconsistencies relate to the treatment of minorities, and the two archives generally contradict each other in the rendition of the minorities’ interaction with the administration. This situation demonstrates how dif-ficult it is to “trust” archives that have been compiled with the explicit goal of preserv-ing (and creating) a certain version of the collective memory of the nation.21

By emphasizing the positions of the individual nation-states, Bulgarian and Greek scholars have ironically undermined the significance of the Bulgarian–Greek emi-gration. As a result, the Convention, studied as an issue of unilateral national con-cern, has been relegated to a simple footnote in the English-language literature.22 Instead, a comparative methodology in the examination of the events should inter-rogate the diverging points within the archival records, consider the perspectives of all sides, and complicate the national categories used by the practitioners of the nation-states. In addition, the historical facts should be inscribed in the broader Eastern European context of refugee movements and nationalization policies after World War I, demonstrating the implications of the Bulgarian–Greek minority exchange for the evolution of European policies of population management.

There has been large amount of scholarship exploring the population exchange between Greece and Turkey, implemented with the Lausanne Treaty of 1923, which affected two million people, dramatically changed the ethnic composition of the region and set the precedent for compulsory population exchange.23 Scholars have established the problematic nature of this principle of compulsory relocation enforced on the basis of religion, which compelled, in one instance, the Greek-speaking Muslims of Crete and the Turkish-speaking Orthodox inhabitants of Pontus to resettle into what were ultimately foreign environments. The Greek–Turkish exchange has convincingly demonstrated the idiosyncrasy of collective identifica-tion during the disintegration of the multiethnic Ottoman Empire, and numerous studies have revealed the peculiar ethnic character of the exchanged population and the variations in its national loyalties over several generations.24 Although people became citizens of nation-states that privileged the dominant ethnic group to which they belonged, many of the newcomers, arriving in these countries against their will, felt like strangers among their own “brethren.”25 Despite the League of Nations’s involvement and various international initiatives of economic assistance, the popula-tion faced numerous problems of integration, creating a dual-speed society and undermining national unity in the two ethnically homogenous nation-states.26


Similarly, plentiful studies have described the population movements and ethnic cleansing that occurred in Central Europe during World War II and following the Potsdam accords of 1945, which changed the ethnic picture in large portions of Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Ukraine through the forced migra-tion of up to sixteen million individuals.27 The recent opening of archives in Eastern Europe has greatly facilitated new research on the topic, which has refuted argu-ments that partition and population exchange are successful methods of homogeniz-ing nation-states, reducing tensions between countries, and avoiding civilian casualties.28 These studies have revealed the role of postwar contingencies in the process of “ethnic unmixing” and demonstrated the drastic effects these exchanges had on state structures; they have underscored the limited resources available to people during resettlement and highlighted individuals’ plight in adapting to the new environments after migration.29 Scholars have tackled the persistent problems of socioeconomic adjustment, the tensions between local and newcomers, and the various cultural impediments to integration.30 In their entirety, these studies have constituted a vehement criticism of the inadequate understanding, shown by decision makers, of the magnitude of the “transfers” from human and moral viewpoints. Generally, these are sympathetic views of the exchanged population, but in some sense they have replicated the mechanistic handling of individuals by the architects of exchange because most works have focused on official motivations.31

Because the population exchanges ultimately served the goals of homogenization and consolidation of the nation-states involved (and especially the victors in the two world wars), it is necessary to examine these programs in the context of nation building in Eastern Europe since World War I. A particularly useful analytical perspective comes from the work of historians who have focused on the instability of nationality, demon-strating that the national allegiances of large portions of the population were in flux until quite late in the process of nation-state formation and centralization.32 In the Balkans, the Lausanne Treaty secured the national homogenization of Greece by settling the refugees in territories with minority populations, but throughout the interwar years suc-cessive governments tried to forge the Greek loyalty of the refugees as well as the remaining minorities.33 Greek society saw a split of allegiances during the combined Italian, German, and Bulgarian occupations in World War II, when some Bulgarian-speakers (now officially called “Slavic-speakers”) supported the Bulgarian administra-tion.34 In Central Europe, after 1939 Nazi Germany enacted policies of population management, which took advantage of the flexible nationality of the occupied popula-tions and enlisted local Slavs in the category of Volksdeutsche by exercising force but also offering incentives.35 During the postwar German expulsions, because of the large degree of interethnic mixing, authorities faced difficulties in deciding how to handle individuals based on nationality, which was especially true in the case of mixed mar-riages.36 Putting unstable nationality at the center of analysis, it is obvious that the national allegiances of the population fluctuated throughout the time period, and this tendency crucially influenced the articulation of official nationalization policies.


The Bulgarian–Greek emigration of minorities shares features with these cases of minority and refugee experience. The interwar period witnessed continuous debates between state officials and ordinary people how to guarantee the rights of minority individuals while simultaneously satisfy national interests. Politicians targeted minority populations with particular policies because of their ascribed nationality but people were not obedient guardians of state-sponsored national agendas. It was impossible to furnish stable criteria and define minorities as coherent, uniform groups, and the shifting meanings of nationality were even more evident in the con-text of displacement. As the earliest population exchange ever implemented in mod-ern Europe, the Bulgarian–Greek minority exchange reveals important trends in official policies and individuals’ patterns of behavior during impending emigration.

Governmental Concerns and Diplomatic Rhetoric

The fates of the Bulgarian and Greek minorities after World War I were closely intertwined because the Convention for Emigration provided for reciprocity in the relocation and financial compensation of the populations. Most decisions of the Mixed Commission that supervised the exchange were made under the terms of diplomatic reciprocity, and each policy-making decision in one country was fol-lowed by similar measures in the other. During the negotiations regarding the Convention, both governments anticipated each other’s reaction, presented analo-gous arguments, and sought reciprocal compromises.37 Even the experience of the population and its decision to emigrate were influenced by reciprocal agreements pertaining to minority treatment and refugee settlement.38 In the early stages, mem-bers of both minorities hoped to remain in their places of origin and expected that the two governments would enter into treaties guaranteeing the survival of their communities. However, mass emigration unfolded as a chain reaction affecting minorities and refugees in both Bulgaria and Greece, and in some cases people were forced to make decisions under extremely strenuous circumstances.

Bulgarian and Greek politicians had divergent expectations of the exchange, so they pursued conflicting policies in its implementation. The Greek government attempted to enforce the Convention as broadly as possible even though, or exactly because, it was voluntary and the minority populations hesitated to emigrate. After World War I, officials hoped to colonize the “new lands” that Greece had recently acquired in Macedonia and Thrace because they were inhabited by significant Muslim and Bulgarian minorities. Greek colonization policies served several pur-poses: to modify the ethnic composition of the new territories in a way beneficial to Greece, to create a buffer zone around the Greek–Bulgarian border and counter Bulgarian propaganda and military intervention, and to supply the country with the labor force necessary for postwar reconstruction. The idea was to create a wave of Greek settlers from Bulgaria that would strengthen the Greek ethnic character in


these problematic areas with large minority communities while force the minorities to emigrate.39

The Greek government feared that, given the voluntary character of the Convention, many Greeks would choose to remain in Bulgaria and voluntarily relinquish their nationality because of Bulgarian pressures or incentives.40 Furthermore, the small numbers of the minority, its enviable socioeconomic status, and the intensifying Bulgarian nationalization policies gradually assimilated the Greeks into Bulgarian society. While the Greek communities discussed the issue of political autonomy for the Black Sea areas with compact Greek population, the Greek government realized that the small numbers of the minority precluded Greek demands in these parts of Bulgaria. Instead, Greek politicians focused on emigration. But in the early 1920s the Bulgarian Greeks demanded that Greek envoys secure their survival as a minority in Bulgaria; they believed that the government sacrificed their interests for other national priorities and hesitated to leave their prosperous communities.41

The Bulgarian officials, on the other hand, discouraged the emigration of the Bulgarian minority in Greece because they wanted to uphold the Bulgarian ethnic presence in the new Greek territories. The government insisted on the voluntary nature of the Convention and maintained that the only way to apply its provisions would be to allow members of the population, displaced during the wars, to return to their places of birth. Diplomats claimed that the Convention pressured minorities to emigrate and thus contradicted the minority clauses of the Sèvres Treaty of 1920, which allowed minority individuals to remain in their country of origin. During the negotiations, the Bulgarian representatives emphasized the need to secure the minor-ity rights of the population, while the Greek officials tried to accelerate the comple-tion of the exchange.42 Caught in this diplomatic limbo, in the early 1920s some 30,000 refugees residing in Bulgaria decided not to file applications for compensation with the Mixed Commission, hoping that they would be allowed to return to their places of origin in Greece. This was exactly what the Greek government wanted to prevent.43

Both Greek and Bulgarian politicians recognized that nationality would not be the main reason for emigration and understood that persuasion would play an important part in the application of the Convention. Because the Greek minority was reluctant to emigrate, the Greek Military Mission in Bulgaria, special government agents, and members of the local communities were mobilized in a huge propaganda effort. The Military Mission completed a census of the Greek communities and identified the prosperous urban population as a potentially hesitant group that had to be converted to the idea of emigration. The Greek envoys invoked the deep patriotic feelings of their “compatriots” and urged them to “save” their nationality through emigration. They presented the likely Bulgarization of the minority as “national death,” prom-ised prosperity to everyone who resettled in the “motherland,” and emphasized the duty to posterity and “Great Greece.”44 On the other hand, the Bulgarian members of the Mixed Commission attempted to dissuade the Bulgarians in Greece from filing


declarations for emigration. They used their tours in Greek territories to offer moral support to the population, demonstrate the concern of the government for them, and instruct local leaders on how to give a “Bulgarian color to the Macedonian question.”45

This wavering of opinions and testing of policies lasted on both sides for four years after the signing of the Convention. Initially, very few individuals submitted declarations for emigration; by June 1923, only 197 Greek and 166 Bulgarian fami-lies had indicated willingness to emigrate.46 During this period, members of the minorities often practiced national mimicry and some attempted to assimilate within the host country. Yet this hesitancy ended abruptly after the Greek-Turkish war of 1920 to 1922. Numerous Greek Orthodox refugees fled the Ottoman Empire and were settled in the Greek “new lands,” occupying existing Bulgarian and Muslim homes and pushing the minority populations out of their areas. In 1923, the Lausanne Treaty between Greece and Turkey permanently ceded Western Thrace to Greece, and Greek officials interned entire Bulgarian villages from this province to continen-tal Greece and the Aegean islands.47 These developments resulted in a wave of Bulgarian refugees from Greek Thrace and Macedonia who found asylum in Bulgaria and opted for Bulgarian citizenship under the Convention for Emigration. The Bulgarian government underscored the voluntary character of the exchange and demanded the repatriation of these refugees back to Greece. Most Bulgarians wanted to return to their places of birth, but were prevented from doing so by the Greek government, which had no interest in allowing the return of the minority. Instead, the Greek administration focused on settling the newly arrived Greek Orthodox refugees in the vacated Bulgarian (and Muslim) properties.48

Simultaneously, the Bulgarian government urged local authorities to tolerate the Greek minority and prevent its emigration from Bulgaria. The newly arriving Bulgarian refugees from Greece were settled in the homes of local Bulgarians and Greeks on an equal basis, because the government believed that otherwise even more members of the Bulgarian population in Greece would be forced to leave their homes.49 In exchange, the Greek government assured its Bulgarian colleagues that it would investigate the “similar refugee anomaly” in Bulgarian-populated areas of Greece and curb the excesses of Greek refugees against the Bulgarians.50 Despite these promises, refugees continued to be settled in Bulgarian villages in Greece, and the Bulgarian government, unable to stop the Bulgarian exodus from Greece, revised its policies against the Greek minority.51 Various violent incidents occurred between Bulgarian refugees and the Bulgarian Greeks throughout 1924, and growing tensions contributed to the decision of the Greek minority to emigrate.52

The signing of the Geneva Protocol for the Protection of Minorities between Bulgaria and Greece on 29 September 1924 brought a temporary halt to forced migra-tion. This document guaranteed to both the Bulgarian and Greek minorities the right to educational and religious autonomy and provided mechanisms for their protection under the supervision of the League of Nations. Because the agreement recognized


the existence of a Bulgarian minority in Greece and thus angered Serbia, the close ally of Greece that pursues its own interests in the area, the Greek Parliament refused to endorse the Protocol in February 1925.53 Despite the assurance of the Greek gov-ernment that it would abide by the minority regulations of the Sèvres Treaty, more Bulgarian refugees fled Greece because of pressures in their places of origin. In response, the Bulgarian government adopted reciprocally restrictive measures against the Greek minority within its borders.54 The Greeks in Bulgaria emigrated en masse, and the exchange of the two minorities was completed by the end of 1925.55 Harsh administrative measures were first practiced in Greece after the disastrous war against the Ottoman Empire, and then in Bulgaria when it became clear that the exodus of the Bulgarians from Greece was inevitable. During this period, the escalating refugee crises in both countries resulted in the eruption of violent episodes between minorities and refugees that the two governments had not anticipated and could not control.

The Mixed Commission attempted to address this precarious situation, noting that “the smallest incident with a member of ethnic minority in one of the states immediately creates a spirit of reprisal in the other.” Its international members believed “the perfect intentions and decisions of the political authorities in the two counties often cannot be put in action because of mutual distrust, and no one wants to make the first step before they guarantee the application of a reciprocal measure.”56 The execution of the Convention thus proved to be more reciprocal than voluntary because it pressured the minorities to resettle and ultimately functioned as an “actual exchange.”57 It never guaranteed the freedom of emigration or the possibility for repatriation of those, mainly Bulgarians, who had been forced to relocate by mili tary conflicts. Both states experienced emigration on a scale that exceeded the most pes-simistic forecasts. Events escalated in an unpredictable manner, and voluntary emi-gration transformed into the forced “repatriation” of largely reluctant minorities.

Conflicting Visions of Migration and Integration

Apart from the actions and motivations of the two governments, the various social groups involved in the exchange pursued distinct strategies in the process of emigra-tion and adaptation. There was a marked difference between the national priorities of the state and the interests of the minorities and refugees. While governments and officials aimed at national homogenization and the immediate assimilation of the refugees into the existing state structures, the “new citizens” prioritized their own secure economic integration and social adjustment. This tension resulted in a fre-quently contradictory reaction to the nation-state’s policies at the level of local com-munities. Refugees, immigrants, local inhabitants, lower administrators, upper bureaucrats, and international agents were some of the interest groups involved in the exchange, and they all had disparate visions of the Convention.


The Bulgarian refugees from Greece were far from a unified group because they arrived in Bulgaria under diverse circumstances, belonged to various professions and social groups, and possessed conflicting opinions on the Bulgarian national priori-ties.58 There was a pronounced disparity between the population interned from Western Thrace that arrived in Bulgaria after 1923 penniless and devastated and the wealthy inhabitants of Solun/Thessaloniki who brought considerable financial assets to Bulgaria when they relocated in 1913.59 Because their wartime activism had made their remaining under Greek administration impossible, some refugees followed the Bulgarian army in 1913 and 1918 when it withdrew from territories that became part of Greece. Other Bulgarians stayed in their places of birth under Greek rule hoping for minority rights and emigrated only as a result of intensified pressures in 1924–1925. In Bulgaria, the slow settlement process, the lack of land, and the high unem-ployment rate caused tensions between the refugee communities and among individual refugees. The “new citizens” felt that “the replacement of one population with another [wa]s not an issue of pure arithmetic.”60 The corruption of the adminis-trators, the inertia and clientelism of the regional authorities, and the “fake patrio-tism” of the host communities were ubiquitous. The bitterness of the refugees originated in the fact that they were “expelled from our places of birth because we are Bulgarians, yet here we are not provided for because we are refugees.”61

Because all Bulgarian governments after 1919 emphasized a strong commitment to territorial revisions in Greek Macedonia and Thrace, the Bulgarian minority in Greece was a cause of constant concern for the Greek administration. In the border regions with Bulgaria (Eastern Macedonia and Western Thrace), local officials attempted to expedite the emigration of Bulgarians under the pretext that the population assisted guerilla bands and hindered the pacification of the country. However, minority indivi-duals in Western Macedonia, further away from the border, were encouraged to live as loyal Greek citizens.62 In this situation, the role of “clever professionals” and “active propagandists” who tried to influence the population in their choice of residence was prominent.63 The Greek authorities knew that “the natural nostalgia of the Bulgarian immigrants . . . toward their places of birth [wa]s a subject of recurrent political exploitation” by various interest groups.64 Indeed, Macedonian and Thracian organiza-tions in Bulgaria pressured their compatriots to act collectively, organized rallies against Greece, and attempted to shape a unified opinion of all Bulgarian refugees. Often the refugees had no choice but to support the national activists, because these “professional Bulgarians” (ex epangelmatos Voulgaroi), acting as leaders of the dis-placed population, staffed the various refugee settlement committees and had a pro-found influence on the process of wealth redistribution.65

Bulgarian national priorities often contradicted the needs of the Bulgarians in Greece. Many adhered to the official line of remaining as a minority in Greece, but their decisions were not based on national loyalty. As one diplomat noted, “The remaining [Bulgarians] are quite happy under Greek rule. . . . The great majority of these refugees (the peasant and workman class) really only want to return to the


homes of their forefathers, and to be left in peace. They will probably settle down to become loyal Greek subjects.”66 Another foreign observer pointed out, “The Greeks made no pretence that they give the Bulgarians the schools and rights to use their own language provided for in the Minority Treaties . . . on the other hand, there is no open and obvious terrorism. The people speak Bulgarian freely in the presence of the Greeks and came forward quite readily.”67 A balance was achieved between the Greek government’s attempts at national unity and the concerns of the Bulgarian minority regarding its survival within the Greek national polity. Such willingness to compromise worried the Bulgarian politicians who requested that the minority actively demonstrate its national affiliations. Yet in the early 1930s, local Bulgarian leaders in Greece emphasized to diplomats that “the tranquility of the population is secured . . . and economic freedom and equality complete,” and they insisted that demands for minority rights, as pursued by the Bulgarian government, would only complicate matters for the Bulgarians in Greece.68

Local Greek authorities pursued a uniform national policy toward the Bulgarians in their areas, and cultural politics played a crucial role in the nationalization campaigns. This was evident in the compulsory sightseeing tour of Athens that Greek military teachers gave to Bulgarians from Thrace and Macedonia that were conscripted into the Greek army in the early 1920s. The educators explained to the “foreign-speaking” (xenophonoi) soldiers that they were “heirs of the great philosophers Socrates, Xenophon and Sophocles”; they were not “Bulgarian barbarians, blood-drinkers, thugs (komitadzis), but pure Greeks who were unfortunately educated by [Bulgarian] teach-ers and priests.”69 In the mid-1920s, Greek officials took measures to Hellenize the “foreign and bad-sounding” names of localities in areas with minority populations.70 In the course of time, the administration abandoned the label Voulgarophonoi, or Bulgarian-speakers, that it had previously used to refer to the minority, and it instead opted for the term Slavophonoi, or Slavic-speakers, avoiding any reference to a Bulgarian connection.71 Local Greek officials replicated the government’s stance that all individuals of Bulgarian nationality had left Greece under the auspices of the Convention and those who remained were Slavic-speaking Greeks. According to this logic, the selection of residence in Greece constituted “the most concrete proof about the national feelings of this population” and confirmed their loyalty to Greece.72 However, the link between nationality and emigration remained blurred, and in the early 1930s Prime Minister Venizelos admitted, “Without any doubt there is a minority among the Slavic-speakers who do not have Greek national awareness or whose national feelings are wavering and indefinable [koleblivi i neopredelimi].”73

The Greeks that lived in Bulgaria faced similar complex circumstances in the pro-cess of emigration. There was a marked divergence between the experience of the Greeks from “Old Bulgaria” and those from the “new lands” that the country acquired after the wars. The “old Greeks” around Plovdiv/Philippoupolis in Thrace or Varna and Burgas/Pirgos on the Black Sea coast resettled to Greece as immigrants. They benefited from the provisions of the Convention, received compensations for their


properties, and possessed a pragmatic attitude toward their nationality and the exchange. They used the fact that the Bulgarian governments tolerated the minority population within its state borders to bargain with the Greek authorities for the conditions of their emigration. These potential emigrants emphasized to the Greek agents the “enormous economic damage resulting from our departure from Bulgaria” and demanded proper remuneration if they agreed to sacrifice for the national idea.74 On the other hand, the Greeks from “New Bulgaria,” the fringes of Thrace and Macedonia around Ahtopol/Agathoupolis, Ortakeuy (today Ivaylovgrad), and Melnik/Meleniko, amounted to refugees. They were forced to leave their places of birth due to military operations in their localities or because these territories were incorporated into Bulgaria after the Great War. These individuals fled their villages without selling their real estates and suffered severe economic deprivations after arrival in Greece. Their strong national allegiances were undermined by a growing sense of disillusionment with the advantages of becoming part of a nation-state.75

In Bulgaria after World War I, the Greek Military Mission often worried that its activities confirmed open Greek intervention into the process of emigration, which was something “unnecessary and detrimental because the drafting and filing of dec-larations should look as an initiative of the emigrants and not forced upon them by external propaganda.”76 The official Greek stance insisted that all Bulgarian Greeks who valued their nationality and wanted to live a nationally upright life should relo-cate to Greece.77 The government promised land to the agricultural population and lucrative positions to the professionals; the latter’s knowledge of Bulgarian was a particularly valued skill in the new provinces with Bulgarian-speaking populations. The extensive land reclamation projects in the Greek “new lands” were considered as an “enterprise of paramount national importance” (ergo ipsilis ethnikis spoudaio-titas) that both strengthened the Greek presence in the area and provided land for the Greeks from Bulgaria.78 Such economic benefits, together with the warning directed toward the hesitant Greeks that in their birthplaces they would “remain under Bulgarian yoke” and could not expect any Greek help, converted many to the national idea that the Greek government advocated in the early 1920s.79

However, in the first years after resettlement the immigrants experienced a profound disenchantment because “departing from Bulgaria with the hope of obtain-ing at least a roof and some land to cultivate and earn their living, they found only tents in the marshes near Thessaloniki and a little sand in which to bury their loved ones.”80 The Greeks were promised rich vine-growing estates, yet upon arrival in Greece in 1925 they discovered that the Asia Minor and Pontus refugees had already occupied the prime available land. In the process of their integration, they had to compete with a group of “compatriots” who were perceived as much more destitute and deserving state subsidies. In fact, the Refugee Settlement Commission in charge of refugee settlement in Greece initially refused financial assistance to the Bulgarian Greeks because they had received money from the liquidation of their properties in Bulgaria.81 Although numerous government agents over the five years preceding


their relocation had assured the potential emigrants that they would receive various benefits, the newcomers quickly discovered that most promises would remain unfulfilled because of the complicated situation in Greece following the arrival of the Asia Minor refugees.

In Bulgaria, local patriotic organizations, such as the National Naval Union, sug-gested methods of nationalizing the remaining Greek population that would do “greater miracles than education”; they argued that the Greeks could be transformed into model Bulgarians if the government sent some “not so flexible Bulgarians” (apo tous mallon elastikous Voulgarous) in each Greek town and quartered Bulgarian soldiers in the homes of prominent Greeks.82 While such associations never attracted numerous followers, their rhetoric was indicative of the extreme nationalist ideas circulating after the war. In general, the minority was rarely discussed in Bulgaria after 1925, and, with the exception of attempts to regulate matters of citizenship and military conscription, the Greeks were marginalized culturally and politically and practically erased from Bulgarian public life. In this situation, the remaining minor-ity population attempted to stay “invisible” and “unnoticed” within its communities “without attracting the attention of the Bulgarians.”83 Some considered the freedom to speak Greek to be a reasonable compromise that, combined with their good eco-nomic standing, justified their assimilation into Bulgarian society.84

Unstable National Allegiances

Despite the official rhetoric of national unity in both countries, the variations in the national commitment of the population in the early 1920s were striking. In Bulgaria, the Greeks were split between the urban and rural communities. According to Greek officials, the most “uncompromising” (phanatikoi) Greeks were those among the agri-cultural population that showed an unwavering devotion to the national cause. Others were “patriotic and brave” (philopatridas kai gennaious) but “not so firm” (ochi toso statherous). The inhabitants of the cities, for example, preserved their ethnic heritage jealously, but as a “local population” (ithageneis) they exhibited “cosmopolitanism” and maintained “various connections with the Bulgarians, due to mixed marriages, socializing, and [economic] interests.”85 There were the idiosyncratic Gagaouz, the Turkish-speaking followers of the Greek Orthodox Church, which successfully ignored Bulgarian nationalization endeavors and zealously supported the Greek Patriarchate in its struggle with Bulgarian authorities. Also, the nomadic Karakachans, Greek speakers with transient lifestyle and no citizenship, frequently traveled between Bulgaria and Greece and changed their allegiances.86 Finally, “the Bulgarians who speak Greek,” derogatorily called grâkomani or “Greek-maniacs” in Bulgaria, were ethnic Bulgarians who pursued Greek education and followed Greek manners.87

The Bulgarians in Greece could not be described as a unitary group either. After World War I, Greek officials classified the inhabitants of their “new lands” into


five categories: “Greeks, Bulgarian-speaking schismatics (before 1913), Bulgarian-speaking Patriarchists, Muslims, and others.”88 Within the Bulgarian-speaking population, they saw three distinct groups that built upon old controversies over religious affiliations in the Ottoman Empire.89 First, there were those loyal to the Bulgarian national cause who were willing to resettle to Bulgaria immediately. Second, the Bulgarian-speaking Patriarchists were the Greek-minded Bulgarian-speakers who had recognized the religious authority of the Greek-dominated Patriarchate in Istanbul when Macedonia was still an Ottoman province before 1913. Finally, the Bulgarian-speaking “schismatics” were the followers of the Exarchate, the Bulgarian national church that split from the Patriarchate in 1870. After the establishment of Greek administration in Macedonia in 1913, this group was incor-porated into the Greek Orthodox Church, and following World War I Greek officials saw them as population that could be converted to the Greek cause.90 The prospect of influencing the wavering affiliations of such individuals became the most impor-tant project of national consolidation for the Bulgarian and Greek governments.

The closest allies of the governments in this enterprise were the elites within the individual communities. Emigration led to the redistribution of political power and economic resources in the new setting. For that reason, elites played a crucial role in the socioeconomic placement of the new inhabitants as well as in the articulation of their national allegiances. The Greek and Bulgarian governments continuously por-trayed emigration as a matter of national emergency, and the economic aspects of integration were directly linked to a moral imperative of actively identifying with a straightforward national idea. Elites frequently published historical pamphlets that re-imagined clear-cut national sagas and erased conflicting perceptions of nation-hood among their compatriots.91 These books were often used as evidence in prop-erty compensation negotiations or demands for territorial adjustments between Bulgaria and Greece. In one example, Drakos Mavrommatis’s history of Anhialo/Anchialos, a Greek town in Bulgaria, explicitly stated, “The purpose of this book is . . . to express my compatriots’ gratitude to the Free State for all that it has done and will continue to do for the timely resolution of all pending issues with Bulgaria and primarily . . . the compensation of Anchialists for their financial losses.”92 Because of the political function of these historical narratives, their authors accentu-ated the national message and generously employed the theme of the perennial ani-mosity between Bulgarians and Greeks. These versions of history were complementary to the official view, but they also reflected the local power struggles within the communities that competed for the limited resources of integration by emphasizing their contributions to the nation.93

The precarious balance between state interests and local needs explains the lack of clear commitment to the national cause among the minority and refugee popula-tions in both countries. In the opinion of the Mixed Commission, “the Bulgarian populations manifested a sort of local solidarity with regard to the choice for or against migration. ‘If the other Bulgarian villages in Thrace go, we shall go,’ said the


Bulgar[ian]s in Thrace in 1924. Whereas the Bulgar[ian]s of Western Macedonia, for instance, were practically unanimous not to emigrate.”94 While elites promoted the rhetoric of national unity, the less privileged people were mainly concerned with the practical aspects of emigration and integration. After relocation, the refugees widely believed that the nation-states forfeited their well-being for the sake of grandiose national projects. Leaders acknowledged, “Other Greek [territorial] aspirations had to be strengthened elsewhere and . . . the Greek populations in [Bulgaria] were sacrificed. . . . [The government made] many promises to sweeten the bitterness of exile.”95 The failure of the two states to secure the smooth socioeconomic adjustment of the “new citizens” fostered alternative visions of group belonging focused on refugee experience.96 Most refugees were settled in distinct areas, Thrace and Macedonia in Greece and the Plovdiv/Philippoupolis and southern Black Sea areas in Bulgaria, and the newcomers preferred to re-constitute their neighborhoods after relocation to maintain the link with their fellow villagers.97 This regional configura-tion maintained a refugee mentality among the new Bulgarians and Greeks that estranged them from the larger nations.

Due to the significant number of refugees, the population in both countries divided between “locals” and “newcomers.” In Bulgaria, the refugees constantly complained of the union between “venal Bulgarians” and “Greek zealots” and despaired that the local population petitioned against refugee settlement in their areas.98 The affluent Greek minority was better off than the Bulgarian refugees, and local Bulgarians often preferred their Greek neighbors to the impoverished “new” Bulgarians.99 In this con-text, social status assumed greater importance over nationality in the struggle for everyday survival. The Bulgarians remaining in Greece pursued a peaceful life and hoped for advancement in the local government, which was more important than commitment to the Bulgarian national cause. In the 1930s, members of the Bulgarian minority “show[ed] complete willingness to become Greeks. They want[ed] Greek schools for their children because they dream[t] that one day they could become public servants, attorneys, judges, members of parliament, ministers, [or] military officers.”100 In the difficult interwar years, neighborhood camaraderie and mundane considerations often ignored national divisions. Because local solidarity was so important for the survival of these marginalized groups, local and national identities were in constant interplay.101 This alternative form of group cohesion, focused on locality, undermined nationality as the main form of identification and determined the contingency of national allegiances in a variety of situations.

Because there were no clear definitions of nationality, individuals navigated offi-cial national ascriptions in inventive ways, a widely practiced tactic during the war-time period when people manifested various loyalties with the advent of the different armies. The frequent national mimicry among Bulgarians in Greece was troubling to the Greek bureaucrats who demanded “to clearly define who should be considered Bulgarian and which property Bulgarian . . . because the definition of their either Greek or Bulgarian origins is a strategy whose implications and importance for


[Greek] Macedonia is self-evident.”102 But transparent criteria for nationa lity were impossible to furnish because the population successfully adapted to official attempts to classify individuals according to the national principle. For example, Bulgarians who longed to return to their places of birth in Greece often manipulated their bilin-gualism. They circumvented the Greek ban on the repatriation of Bulgarian refugees, acting as “common Greeks” (gnostoi Ellines) to acquire Greek passports from the Greek Embassy in Bulgaria. They were so familiar with the local culture and dialect that the authorities recognized them as “hostile elements” (echthrika stoi cheia) only after their arrival in Greek territory.103

The shifting between citizenship was also widespread, and people often changed official state affiliations in order to further their economic interest or avoid taxes and the military draft. After the mobilization of the Greek army against the Ottoman Empire in 1920, many Greeks from Bulgaria living in Greece applied for Bulgarian citizenship and returned to Bulgaria to avoid the draft, to the dismay of Bulgarian diplomats who worried that “the Bulgarian citizens in Athens reached such a number that one would think this is [the Bulgarian capital] Sofia.”104 Because the provisions of the Convention were frequently altered, the emigrants filed and withdrew declara-tions for emigration as it benefited their personal circumstances, and they did not hesitate to use the mainstream national rhetoric in petitions that served their better social placement.105 Greeks who had filed declarations for emigration in the early 1920s later returned to Bulgaria as Greek citizens and continued their business enter-prises in their birthplaces.106 Others switched from Bulgarian to Greek citizenship in the troublesome 1920s and then switched back to Bulgarian citizenship in the 1930s when residence permits were required of foreign citizens.107 Only in the late 1930s did the governments enforce rigid measures of residence and citizenship, and bureaucrats attempted to purge their territories of unwanted minorities that had man-aged to disguise themselves as loyal citizens.108

The implementation of the Convention did not end with the completion of the work of the Mixed Commission in 1931. The final exchange occurred from 1939 to 1941 during the deterioration of the diplomatic relations between Bulgaria and Greece, when both governments deported individuals who had filed declarations for emigration in the 1920s but had never emigrated.109 Yet the instability of national loyalty remained a troubling phenomenon for the governments during World War II when additional shifts in the population’s allegiances occurred. In the course of the war, a prohibition against the navigation of Greek vessels in the Black Sea triggered a wave of applications for Certificates of Bulgarian Origin from Greek fishermen in the Black Sea communities.110 Likewise, the Greek authorities faced a considerable number of “Slavic-speakers” who adhered to Bulgarian nationality during the Bulgarian occupation of Greece in 1941-1944. Attempting to explain such actions, officials again distinguished between several groups within the minority population: the Bulgarian-minded (Voulgarophronoi) “traitors” with marked anti-Greek feel-ings; the Bulgarian-speaking Greeks (Ellines Voulgarophonoi) among the elites, a


“fortress of Hellenism”; and those with “flexible consciousness” (oi revstis syneidi-sis) who required the “stabilization” (statheropoiisi) of their nationality.111 Even at the end of this third major military conflict between Bulgaria and Greece in the twentieth century, politicians were unable to clearly define the national allegiances of their populations.

Is a Voluntary Minority Exchange Possible?

Twenty-two years lapsed between the signing and the completion of the Bulgarian–Greek population exchange, and during this period various policies and strategies formulated by the two governments and by the minority or refugee com-munities were proposed, implemented, and adapted. On the eve of World War II, the actual outcome of the Convention differed drastically from the initial forecast in 1919. One important reason that predictions diverged from execution was the fact that, throughout this period, people with fluctuating national loyalties hesitated to permanently identify with a nation-state. This cautious approach to uniting with a “national homeland” was indicative of the workings of nationhood during military operations, border shifts, and population displacement and complicated the assimi-lationist policies of the governments. The incorporation of minorities within the state structures had apparent limits because of the adaptability of the population and the mixed signals that it sent to the administrations. Even the “compatriots” among the refugees who belonged to the same ethnic group showed idiosyncrasies in the expres-sion of their national belonging. Officials attempted to fashion citizens according to a homogenous image of the all-encompassing nation, but they had to accommodate the priorities of actual living people.

In this context of unstable nationality, the Bulgarian–Greek Convention had mixed results and controversial consequences. By emphasizing the voluntary prin-ciple, it strove to secure the optionality of emigration. Diplomats were proud that “for the first time between two countries in the Balkan peninsula—where there have been many large movements of emigration—a settlement was carried out based on the respect of individual rights.” They insisted that the Convention did not sanction a population exchange but instead it created an “individual contract between [the Commission] and each applicant.”112 The agreement had the positive result of creat-ing a mechanism for compensating the refugees and facilitating their resettlement. The Mixed Commission claimed that, because of its work, the minority populations have become “emigrants on the way to become peaceful citizens, instead of refugees addicted to [unrest] (comitadjilik).”113 Granting citizenship to the newcomers and compensating them for their financial losses gave closure to many in their search for permanent residence and helped them start their new lives. But the Convention also had negative consequences. The Mixed Commission admitted, “Although the choice for or against emigration belonged to each member of the minorities individually, the


influence of the general question of racial supremacy was universally felt.”114 The Convention accelerated emigration in some areas that might have retained their diverse ethnic composition; now, because of official enforcement, peer pressure, and the existence of streamlined policies for handling emigration, many people in the border areas were forced to resettle. The execution of the Convention revealed that a voluntary minority exchange could devolve into a program of involuntary migra-tion, and in 1925 observers admitted that the Bulgarian–Greek emigration frequently functioned as an “actual exchange.”115

The most contentious aspect of the Convention involved the preservation of minority communities in both countries: some 10,000 Greeks and 82,000 Bulgarians, according to official data. The remaining Bulgarian minority in Western Macedonia, in particular, was a source of conflict as its presence was treated with contentment in Bulgaria and concern in Greece.116 Constantly shifting ideas of how to delimit nationality were at the center of this controversy. The Neuilly Convention proposed a broad definition of “ethnic minorities by religion or language” (minorités eth-niques de religion ou de langue).117 The Mixed Commission expected that all minor-ity individuals “of active Bulgarian sympathies” would flee Greece while the remaining “would be prepared to become ‘loyal’ citizens.” Yet as it became clear with the implementation of the exchange, the “idea of persons choosing Greek nationality [i.e., citizenship] but remaining Bulgarian in sympathies does not seem to have occurred to the Commi[ssion].”118 Instead, the architects of voluntary exchange encountered the unwillingness of individuals to privilege nationality over other considerations for or against emigration. According to the rules of the Convention, the minorities were asked to choose their citizenship and place of resi-dence based on national sympathies, but there was no reliable mechanism of verify-ing their nationality or testing their national loyalties. Voluntary emigration defied straightforward national policies in the way that the national administrations or the international agents wanted to implement them. Every so often, instead of facilitat-ing official preoccupations with national homogenization, individuals manipulated the definitions of nationality to further their personal strategies.

The crucial question remains whether a voluntary minority exchange is at all pos-sible. C. A. Macartney, the utmost expert on interwar minority issues, points out, “If conditions are settled and the relations between minorities and majorities happy, exchange is unnecessary, and an appeal for a voluntary exchange would meet with no result. . . . [The Bulgarian–Greek] experience has shown that a voluntary exchange simply does not take place, except under conditions which amount, in rea-lity, to compulsion.”119 As evident in the execution of the Neuilly Convention, nationality was not enough to convince the population to emigrate. This reluctance led future politicians to conclude that if the objective was to change the population composition of a particular area, only compulsory migration could guarantee a com-prehensive demographic adjustment. Thus, when the Turkish–Greek population exchange was discussed in Lausanne, the parties opted for compulsory exchange.120


The difference between the Bulgarian–Greek emigration and later, compulsory population exchanges was a fundamental shift in the rationale of relocation. Voluntary exchange in theory allowed individuals the right to choose their residence irrespective of state interest, and the representatives of the League of Nations mediated between the two states to guarantee that right. Compulsory exchange by definition allowed the state to dictate policies to its citizens irrespective of their desires and sought to secure national homogenization at all cost.121 After various proposals for amending the population composition across national borders, a voluntary minority exchange failed to fulfill its promise to balance individual and state interests, and in 1923 compulsory exchange sanctioned the centrality of state interest and replaced any facade of guaranteeing individual rights.

Notes

1. Memorandum on the Mission and Work of the Mixed Commission on Greco-Bulgarian Emigration (n.p., 1929), 2.

2. André Wurfbain, L’échance Gréco-bulgare des minorités ethniques (Lausanne, Switzerland: Payot & cie, 1930); Commission Mixte d’émigration Gréco-Bulgare, Rapport des members nommés par le Conseil de la Société des Nations (Lausanne, Switzerland: Imp. Réunies, 1932), 42, 60-61, 64-66; Stephen Ladas, The Exchange of Minorities. Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey (New York: Macmillan, 1932), 49-74, 123; G. P. Genov, Nioyskiiat dogovor i Bâlgariia (Sofia, Bulgaria: Hr. G. Danov, 1935); Sava Penkov, Bâlgaro-grâtski maltsinstveni problemi sled Pârvata Svetovna voyna (Sofia, Bulgaria: 1946).

3. About 30,000 Bulgarians never filed declarations hoping to return to their places of birth in Greece, and 10,000 Greeks and Bulgarians filed declarations that were rejected as incomplete or late. Commission Mixte d’émigration Gréco-Bulgare, Rapport des members, 42, 60-61. There were also emi-grants who did not have estates to liquidate and others who sold their property before emigrating, but their number is difficult to estimate. The figures of 140,000 Bulgarians and 12,000 Greeks who chose to remain minorities are approximations from Bulgarian and Greek censuses. The Bulgarian census from 1934 estimated 9,601 Greeks in Bulgaria, but some 2,000 could be added to include the Karakachans and Gagaouz who often had Greek sympathies. The Greek census of 1928 counted 82,000 Bulgarian-speakers, yet in 1933 the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs pointed to the number 140,000. See Istoriko Archeio Ypourgeiou Exoterikon (IAYE), Athens, Greece (renamed Ypiresia Diplomatikou kai Istorikou Archeiou in 2001), 1933, A/6/Ia. Memo of the First Political Section regarding the Bulgarian-Greek Question from 20 April 1933, 6.

4. Ladas, The Exchange of Minorities, 18-23; Penkov, Bâlgaro-grâtski maltsinstveni problemi, 451. 5. Ladas, The Exchange of Minorities, 27-31; Penkov, Bâlgaro-grâtski maltsinstveni problemi,

451-52. Venizelos’s idea of a population exchange between Bulgaria and Greece originated in 1915 when he proposed ceding Thrace to Bulgaria to secure Bulgarian support for the Greek effort to acquire Ottoman Asia Minor. See Ladas, The Exchange of Minorities, 29.

6. Ibid., 29-41. 7. Memorandum on the Mission and Work of the Mixed Commission, 2, 4. 8. The term ethnic unmixing has been extremely useful in conceptualizing the breakdown of empires

after World War I. See the influential work of Rogers Brubaker, “The Aftermath of Empire and the Unmixing of Peoples,” In Karen Barkey and Mark von Hagen, eds., After Empire. Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building: The Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg Empires (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997), 155-80.


9. For forced population movements in Europe, see Norman Naimark, Fires of Hatred. Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).

10. For the role of minorities in the new states, see C. A. Macartney, National States and National Minorities (London: Oxford University Press, 1934). For German revisionism as it related to minorities, see Anthony Komjathy and Rebecca Stockwell, eds., German Minorities and the Third Reich. Ethnic Germans of East Central Europe between the Wars (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1980); Richard Blanke, Orphans of Versailles: The Germans in Western Poland, 1918-1939 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1993). For the role of refugees in revisionist Hungary, see István I. Mócsy, The Effects of World War One. The Uprooted: Hungarian Refugees and their Impact on Hungary’s Domestic Politics, 1918-1921 (New York: Brooklyn College Press, 1983). For the national question in Transylvania, which reminds the Greek–Bulgarian controversy over Macedonia and Thrace, see Sándor Bíró, The Nationalities Problem in Transylvania, 1867-1940: A Social History of the Romanian Minority under Hungarian Rule, 1867-1918 and of the Hungarian Minority under Romanian Rule, 1918-1940 (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 1992).

11. These issues include Greek compensations for the Bulgarian refugees from Greece, the Bulgarian reparations payable to Greece, the remunerations for communal property left in the other country, and the trade balance between Bulgaria and Greece. See Georgi V. Dimitrov, Iliuzii i deystvitelnost. Sporove za prava i imoti na bâlgarite ot Egeyska Makedoniia i Zadarna Trakiia, 1919-1931 (Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria: 1996).

12. For a general outline of Bulgarian and Greek history, see Richard Clogg, A Concise History of Greece (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and R. J. Crampton, Bulgaria (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

13. For a theoretical outline that uses multiple examples from Eastern Europe, see Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). For Greek Macedonia, see Anastasia Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood: Passages to Nationhood in Greek Macedonia 1870-1990 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). For a parallel in East–Central Europe, see Tara Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900-1948 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008).

14. Georgi V. Dimitrov, Maltsinstveno-bezhanskiiat vâpros v bâlgaro-grâtskite otnosheniia 1919-1939 (Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria: 1982).

15. Georgi Daskalov, Dramskoto vâstanie 1941 (Sofia, Bulgaria: Universitetsko izdatelstvo “Sv. Kliment Ohridski,” 1992); Georgi Daskalov, Bâlgarite v Egeyska Makedoniia. Mit i Realnost (Sofia, Bulgaria: Makedonski Nauchen Institut, 1996); Georgi Daskalov, Uchastta na bâlgarite v Egeyska Makedoniia, 1936-1946 (Sofia, Bulgaria: Makedonski Nauchen Institut, 1999).

16. The most comprehensive account on refugees in interwar Bulgaria is Georgi V. Dimitrov, Nastaniavane i ozemliavane na bâlgarskite bezhantsi (Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria: 1985).

17. Galia Vâlchinova, “Grâtskoto naselenie i grâtskata identichnost v Bâlgariia: Kâm istoriiata na edno nesâstoialo se maltsinstvo,” Istorichesko bâdeshte 2 (1998): 147-64; Galia Vâlchinova, “Gârtsi,” In Anna Krâsteva, ed., Obshtnosti i identichnosti v Bâlgariia (Sofia, Bulgaria: Petexton, 1998), 207-20.

18. Areti Tounta-Phergadi, Ellino-voulgarikes meionotites. Protokollo Politi-Kalfov, 1924-1925 (Thessaloniki, Greece: IMHA, 1986); Lena Divani, ed., Ellada kai meionotites. To systima diethnous pros-tasias tis Koinonias ton Ethnon (Athens, Greece: Nepheli, 1995); Xanthippi Kotzageorgi, ed., Oi Ellines tis Voulgarias. Ena istoriko tmima tou periphereiakou ellinismou (Thessaloniki, Greece: IMHA, 1999).

19. Vasilis Gounaris, Giakovos Michailidis, and Georgios Agelopoulos, eds., Tavtotites sti Makedonia (Thessaloniki, Greece: Papazisi, 1997); Tasos Kostopoulos, I apagorevmenni glossa. Kratiki katastoli tov slavikon dialekton stin elliniki Makedonia (Athens, Greece: Mavri lista, 2000); Giakovos Michailidis, Metakiniseis slavophonon plithysmon (1912-1930). O polemos ton statistikon (Athens, Greece: Kritiki, 2003). In Bulgaria, all Greek Bulgarian-speakers are considered Bulgarians, supported by the fact that most of the minority population that emigrated as a result of the interwar exchange settled in Bulgaria. For a typical Bulgarian interpretation, see Daskalov, Bâlgarite v Egeyska Makedoniia. To further complicate matters,


Macedonian scholars claim that the minority population in western Macedonia possessed Macedonian iden-tity. This controversy is beyond the scope of this article, but the Macedonian question remains one of the most heated debates in Balkan history. Two recent books that shed light on the competing historical claims and current debates are Victor Roudometof, Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict. Greece, Bulgaria, and the Macedonian Question (London: Praeger, 2002); and Keith Brown, The Past in Question: Modern Macedonia and the Uncertainties of Nation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003).

20. For similar concerns in the examination of the Macedonian question, see Duncan Perry, The Politics of Terror: The Macedonian Liberation Movement 1893-1903 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1988), xi-xiii. For an analysis of the interpretative divide in the Polish-Ukrainian case, see Timothy Snyder, “‘To Resolve the Ukrainian problem Once and for All’: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ukrainians in Poland, 1945-1947,” Journal of Cold War Studies 1:2 (Spring 1999): 86-120.

21. For archives in the Greek context, see Penelope C. Papailias, Genres of Recollection: Archival Poetics and Modern Greece (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

22. Dimitris Pentzopoulos, The Balkan Exchange of Minorities and its Impact upon Greece (Paris: Mouton, 1962), 60-61; Christa Meindersma, “Population Exchanges: International Law and State Practice—Part 1,” International Journal of Refugee Law 9:3 (1997): 336n2; Onur Yildirim, Diplomacy and Displacement: Reconsidering the Turco-Greek Exchange of Populations, 1922-1934 (New York: Routledge, 2006), 41, 57.

23. Ladas, The Exchange of Minorities; Pentzopoulos, The Balkan Exchange of Minorities; Yildirim, Diplomacy and Displacement; Harry Psomiades, The Eastern Question: The Last Phase. A Study on Greek-Turkish Diplomacy (Thessaloniki, Greece: IMHA, 1968); Elisabeth Kontogiorgi, Population Exchange in Greek Macedonia: The Rural Settlement of Refugees, 1922-1930 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006).

24. Renée Hirschon, Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe: The Social Life of Asia Minor Refugees in Piraeus (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1989); Maria Vergeti, Apo tin Ponto stin Ellada. Diadikasies diamor-phosis mias ethnotopikis tavtotitas (Thessaloniki, Greece: Ad. Kyriakidi, 1994); Peter Mackridge and Eleni Yannakakis, eds., Ourselves and Others. The Development of a Greek Macedonian Cultural Identity Since 1912 (Oxford, UK: Berg, 1997); Nikos Marantzidis, Giasasin Millet/Zito to ethnos. Prosphugia, katohi kai emphilios. Ethnotiki tavtotita kai politiki symperiphora stous Tourkophonous ellinoorthodox-ous tou Dutikou Pontou (Irakleio, Greece: Panepistimiakes ekdoseis Kritis, 2001); Renée Hirschon, ed., Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey (New York: Berghahn, 2003).

25. See in particular Mackridge and Yannakakis, Ourselves and Others; Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood; Gounaris, Michailidis, and Agelopoulos, Tavtotites sti Makedonia.

26. For the struggle for integration of both Orthodox refugees in Greece and Muslim refugees in Turkey, see the contributions in Hirschon, Crossing the Aegean; as well as Bruce Clark, Twice a Stranger: The Mass Expulsions that Forged Modern Greece and Turkey (London: Granta, 2007). Other critical stud-ies of the exchange include Evtichia Voutira, “Population Transfers and Resettlement Policies in Inter-war Europe: The Case of Asia Minor Refugees in Macedonia from an International and National Perspective,” In Mackridge and Yannakakis, Ourselves and Others, 111-31; Peter Loizos, “Ottoman Half-Selves: Long-Term Perspectives on Particular Forced Migrations,” Journal of Refugee Studies 12:3 (1999): 237-63; Dimitra Giannuli, “Greeks or ‘Strangers at Home’: The Experience of Ottoman Greek Refugees during their Exodus to Greece, 1922-1923,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 13:2 (1995): 271-87; George Kritikos, “State Policy and Urban Employment of Refugees: The Greek Case (1923-1930),” European Review of History 7:2 (2000): 189-206.

27. Eugene Kulicher, Europe on the Move. War and Population Changes, 1917-1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948); Malcolm Proudhood, European Refugees, 1939-52: A Study in Forced Population Movement (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1956); Joseph Schechtman, European Population Transfers, 1939-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946); Joseph Schechtman, Postwar Population Transfers in Europe, 1945-1955 (Philadelphia: University of


Pennsylvania Press, 1962); Theodor Schieder, The Expulsion of the German Population from Czechoslovakia (Bonn, Germany: Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims, 1960); Mark Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945-1951 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998); Philipp Ther and Ana Siljak, eds., Redrawing Nations: Ethnic Cleansing in East-Central Europe, 1944-1948 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).

28. See in particular Mark Kramer, “Introduction” and Philipp Ther, “A Century of Forced Migration: The Origins and Consequences of “Ethnic Cleansing,” In Ther and Siljak, eds., Redrawing Nations, 1-41 and 43-72. Other studies include Snyder, “‘To Resolve the Ukrainian problem Once and for All’”; Eagle Glassheim, “National Mythologies and Ethnic Cleansing: The Expulsion of Czechoslovak Germans in 1945,” Central European History 33:4 (November 2000): 463-86; Bradley Abrams, “Morality, Wisdom and Revision: The Czech Opposition of the 1970s and the Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans,” East European Politics and Societies 9:2 (1995): 234-55.

29. Ther and Siljak, Redrawing Nations.30. Philipp Ther, “The Integration of Expellees in Germany and Poland after World War Two: A

Historical Reassessment,” Slavic Review 55:4 (Winter 1996): 779-805.31. One refreshing exception is Benjamin Frommer, “Expulsion or Integration: Unmixing Interethnic

Marriage in Postwar Czechoslovakia,” East European Politics and Societies 14:2 (2000): 381-410.32. Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood; Zahra, Kidnapped Souls; Jeremy King, Budweisers

into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848-1948 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); Gary Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861-1914 (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2006); Pieter Judson, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); Chad Bryant, Prague in Black: Nazi Rule and Czech Nationalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007); Theodora Dragostinova, “Speaking National: Nationalizing the Greeks of Bulgaria, 1900-1939,” Slavic Review 67:1 (Spring 2008): 154-81.

33. For the ambiguous identities of the refugees, see Renée Hirschon, Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe; and Clark, Twice a Stranger. For the nationalization of the “Slavic-speakers,” see Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood; and Kostopoulos, I apagorevmenni glossa.

34. John O. Iatrides, ed., Greece in the 1940s: A Nation in Crisis (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1981); Mark Mazower, ed., After the War was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation, and State in Greece, 1943-1960 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); Richard Clogg, Greece 1940-1949: Occupation, Resistance, Civil War: A Documentary History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Raimondos Alvanos, “Slavophonoi dopioi kai Pontioi prosphyges. I mnimi kai i empeiria tis deka-etias tou 40 se dyo choria tis periochis Kastorias,” Istorika 33 (2000): 289-318.

35. For discussion of Nazi policies in occupied Czechoslovakia, see Chad Bryant, “Either German or Czech: Fixing Nationality in Bohemia and Moravia, 1939-1946,” Slavic Review 61:4 (Winter 2002): 683-706; as well as Bryant, Prague in Black.

36. Frommer, “Expulsion or Integration,” examines the problem that interethnic marriages posed to authorities. Also see Benjamin Frommer, National Cleansing: Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

37. The Mixed Commission that was constituted in November 1920 included two representatives of the Council of the League of Nations, one Bulgarian, and one Greek member who supervised all decisions linked to emigration. During its most active period in 1927, the commission’s staff reached 380 employ-ees who operated in twenty-one regional centers, subcommittees, or expert groups in Greece and Bulgaria. By the end of its work on 31 December 1931, the commission examined some 69,000 dossiers. Commission Mixte d’émigration Gréco-Bulgare, Rapport des members, 64-66.

38. Dimitrov, Maltsinstveno-bezhanskiiat vâpros; Tunta-Phergadi, Ellino-voulgarikes meionotites.39. Tsentralen Dârzhaven Archiv (TsDA), Sofia, Bulgaria, f. 176k, op. 4, a.e. 1670, ll. 70-82. Report

of the Bulgarian Embassy in Athens from 3 May 1921; IAYE, 1920, 5.5.1. Memo of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 17 February 1920.


40. IAYE 1919, A/5/II, 4. Undated Telegram of Venizelos concerning the Greeks in Bulgaria.41. IAYE 1919, A/5/II, 4-5. Reports of the Greek Military Mission in Bulgaria from 1918 and 1919;

TsDA, f. 176k, op. 4, a.e. 1670, ll. 70-82. Report of the Bulgarian Embassy in Athens from 3 May 1921.42. TsDA, f. 322k, op. 1, a.e. 438, ll. 18 and 24. Reports of the Bulgarian Embassy in Athens from

9 and 13 August 1924; IAYE 1921, 12.6. Reports of the Greek Delegate in the Mixed Commission from 29 June and 12 August 1921.

43. Commission Mixte d’émigration Gréco-Bulgare, Rapport des members, 42.44. IAYE 1920, 5.5.1-2. Reports of the Greek Military Mission in Bulgaria from 1918 and 1919.45. IAYE 1923, 31.3. Memo of the General Directorate of Solun/Thessaloniki from 8 June 1923;

TsDA, f. 176k, op. 4, a.e. 2885, ll. 261-63. Report of the Bulgarian Delegate in the Mixed Commission from 26 June 1924.

46. Ladas, The Exchange of Minorities, 105.47. For the internment of Bulgarians, see IAYE, 1923, 12.1. Report of the General Administration of

Thrace from 24 September 1923; Macartney, National States and National Minorities, 440. For Bulgarian eyewitness accounts see Nedelcho Chalâkov, Edna stranitsa ot grâtskiia varvarizâm v XX vek nad bâl-garite v Zapadna Trakiia (Plovdiv, Bulgaria: Moderna pechatnitsa, 1924); Dimitâr Dodenov, Zhivotât i imenata na nekoi bâlgaski plennitsi v grâtskite ostrovi (Plovdiv, Bulgaria: Gutenberg, 1926).

48. IAYE 1923, 31.2. Commission Mixte, Fiche documentaire relative au délai pour prévaloir de la Convention d’émigration en Macédoine et Thrace, 5 December 1923.

49. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 12, a.e. 35, l. 185. Telegram of the Ministry of the Interior from 16 July 1924.

50. IAYE 1923, 21.4.1. Report of the Greek Representative in the Mixed Commission from 19 September 1923.

51. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 4, a.e.2370, ll. 162 and 233. Telegrams of the Bulgarian Embassy in Athens from 5 and 28 November 1924.

52. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 12, a.e. 35, ll. 165-66. Memo of the Ministry of the Interior from 7 March 1925; IAYE, 1925, G/65aa. Liste comprenent les principaux crimes, persécutions et divers méfaits vommis par le Bulgares contre l’élement grec en Bulgarie durant les années 1924-1925.

53. Tunta-Phergadi, Ellino-voulgarikes meionotites; Dimitrov, Maltsinstveno-bezhanskiiat vâpros; Iakovos Michailidis, “Minority Rights and Educational Problems in Greek Interwar Macedonia: The Case of the Primer ‘Abecedar,’” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 14:2 (1996): 329-43.

54. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 12, a.e. 35, l. 165. Memo of the Ministry of the Interior from 17 March 1925.

55. IAYE 1924, A/5XII, 5. Report of the Greek Embassy in Sofia from 10 August 1924.56. IAYE 1923, 31.2. Memo of Representative de Roover from 8 September 1923.57. For its characterization as an “actual exchange,” see Hilda Clark, “Greece and Bulgaria. The

Exchange of Populations,” The Friend, 1 July 1927.58. This paragraph is based on Theodora Dragostinova, “Competing Priorities, Ambiguous Loyalties:

Challenges of Socioeconomic Adaptation and National Inclusion of the Interwar Bulgarian Refugees,” Nationalities Papers 34:5 (November 2006): 549-74. A comprehensive history of Bulgarian refugees is Dimitrov, Nastaniavane i ozemliavane na bâlgarskite bezhantsi.

59. TsDA, f. 322k, op. 1, a.e. 390. Correspondence between the Bulgarian Embassy in Athens and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1922-1923 regarding Western Thrace; IAYE 1923, 21.4.1. Report of the Greek Representative in the Mixed Commission from 10 March 1923.

60. Nezavisima Makedoniia, 4 July 1924.61. Trakiia, 16 and 9 November 1924.62. IAYE 1923, 21.4.2. Report of the General Directorate of Thrace from 20 November 1923.63. IAYE 1922, 106.4.1. Letter of Representative Corfe from 26 April 1921.64. IAYE 1921, 12.6. Report of the Greek Representative in the Mixed Commission from 29 June 1921.


65. IAYE 1923, 21.4.1. Report of the Greek Representative in the Mixed Commission from 19 September 1923.

66. IAYE 1922, 106.4.1. Letter of Representative Corfe from 26 April 1921.67. Clark, “Greece and Bulgaria.”68. TsDA, f. 322k, op. 1, a.e. 783, l. 314. Report of the Bulgarian Embassy in Athens from

14 November 1932.69. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 4, a.e. 1674, l. 11. Report of the Bulgarian Embassy in Athens from

23 February 1922; IAYE 1922, 16.5. Report of the Greek Embassy in Sofia from 24 February 1922.70. TsDA, f. 322k, op. 1, a.e. 534, ll. 1-32. Report of the Bulgarian Embassy in Athens from

14 October 1926, including a list of renamed localities.71. This author noticed a gradual shift in the terminology while researching Greek archives for the

period 1901-1944. While in the early twentieth century Greek reports talked about “Bulgarians” and “Bulgarian-speakers,” by the 1930s correspondence referred to the “Bulgarian question” but called the minority “Slavic-speakers.” See, for example, IAYE, 1933, A/6/Ia. Memo of the First Political Section regarding the Bulgarian-Greek question from 20 April 1933.

72. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 5, a.e. 712, l. 38. Report of the Bulgarian Embassy in Athens from 24 November 1928.

73. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 5, a.e. 1127, ll. 10-21. Report of the Bulgarian Embassy in Vienna from 5 January 1931.

74. IAYE 1920, 5.5.1. Petition of the Commission of All Unredeemed Greeks from 20 January 1920; IAYE 1920, 53.2. Petition of Greek citizens from Varna from 18 November 1920.

75. IAYE, 1922, 106.2. Petitions of the Thracian Association “Unredeemed Ortakeuy,” Thracian Union “Unredeemed Agathoupolis,” and representatives of Vassiliko to the Mixed Commission from 4 March 1922.

76. IAYE 1920, 53.2. Report of the Greek Embassy in Sofia from 21 November 1920.77. TsDA, f. 322k, op. 1, a.e. 383, ll. 1-94. Report of the Bulgarian Embassy in Athens from 15 May 1920.78. TsDA, f. 322k, op. 1, a.e. 380, ll. 1-18. Report of the Bulgarian Embassy in Athens from

6 November 1920; IAYE 1920, 5.5.2. Memo of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 24 April 1920.79. IAYE 1920, 5.5.2. Memo of the Governmental Representative in Western Thrace from 29 April 1920.80. Apostolos Doxiadis, “Ai televtaiai imerai tis ellinikis Stenimachou,” In Kosmas M. Apostolidis,

O Stenimachos (Athens, Greece: Typois Pyrsou, 1929), 79.81. The report of the Refugee Settlement Commission (RSC) from September 1926 included the

Greeks from Bulgaria, but sources testify to the different treatment of the refugees from the Ottoman Empire and the emigrants from Bulgaria. See Doxiadis, “Ai televtaiai imerai tis ellinikis Stenimachou,” 79-80. The RSC report is found in League of Nations, The Refugee Settlement in Greece (Athens, Greece: Trochalia, 1997).

82. IAYE 1922, 94.4. Report of the Greek Embassy in Sofia from 1 September 1922.83. IAYE 1924, A/5XII, 5. Report of the Greek Consulate in Burgas from 29 November 1924.84. The 1926 census counted 12,782 Greeks based on language and 10,861 Greeks based on national-

ity, which confirms the mimicry among the Greeks. See Obshti rezultati ot prebroiavaneto na naselenieto v kniazhestvo Bâlgariia ot 31 dekemvri 1926 godina (Sofia, Bulgaria: Dârzhavna pechatnitsa, 1927). The best summary of Bulgarian statistics pertaining to the Greek minority is Kotzageorgi, Oi Ellines tis Voulgarias, 216-29.

85. These descriptions belong to the chief of the Greek Military Mission in Bulgaria after World War I, Colonel Konstantinos Mazarakis-Ainian. See IAYE 1919, A/5/II, 4. Report of the Greek Military Mission from 5 February 1919.

86. Mazarakis included these two groups in his report concerning the Greek population of Bulgaria. See IAYE 1919, A/5/II, 4. Report of the Greek Military Mission from 5 February 1919. For the Gagaouz and Karakachans in Bulgaria, see Zhivka Stamenova, “Gagauzi” and Zhenia Pimpireva, “Karakachani,” In


Krâsteva, Obshtnosti i identichnosti v Bâlgariia, 190-206 and 243-59; Ivan Gradeshliev, Gagauzite (Dobrich, Bulgaria: 1993); Zhenia Pimpireva, The Karakachans in Bulgaria (Sofia, Bulgaria: IMIR, 1998). In Greece, this group is called Sarakatsani. See J. K. Campbell, Honour, Family and Patronage: A Study of Institutions and Moral Values in a Greek Mountain Community (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1964).

87. IAYE 1924, A/5XII, 8. Report of the Greek Embassy in Sofia from 7 March 1924; TsDA, f. 176k op. 5, a.e. 256, l. 28. Memo of the Ministry of Interior from 13 July 1925.

88. IAYE 1920, 5.5.1. Letter of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 17 February 1920. 89. In 1870, the Ottoman government recognized an independent Bulgarian national church, the

Exarchate, which challenged the authority of the Greek-dominated Patriarchate in Istanbul. In 1872, the Patriarchate declared schism with the Exarchate. In the Ottoman provinces of Macedonia and Thrace, many who identified as Bulgarians chose the jurisdiction of the Exarchate while those with Greek loyal-ties remained under the Patriarchate. For the role of religion in the national struggles of Bulgarians and Greeks, see Vemund Aarbakke, Ethnic Rivalry and the Quest for Macedonia, 1870-1913 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 2003).

90. IAYE 1920, 5.5.1. Letter of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 17 February 1920. 91. Some Bulgarian historical narratives from the interwar period include Ivan Altânov,

Mezhdusâiuznicheska Trakiia (Sofia, Bulgaria: Sâiuz na bâlgarskite ucheni, pisateli i hudozhnitsi, 1921); Stoiu Shishkov, Trakiia predi i sled evropeyskata voyna (Plovdiv, Bulgaria: Izdatelstvo “Hr. G. Danov,” 1922); Ivan Ormandzhiev, Trakiyskiiat vâpros kato kumir na bâlgarskata dârzhava (Sofia, Bulgaria: Trakiyski vârhoven izpâlnitelen komitet, 1929); Anastas Razboynikov, Obezbâlgariavaneto na Zapadna Trakiia, 1919-1924 (Sofia, Bulgaria: Trakiyski nauchen institut, 1940). The most famous histories of the Bulgarian Greeks are Apostolidis, O Stenimachos; K. Myrtilos Apostolidis, I tis Philippoupoleos istoria apo ton archaiotaton mechri ton kath’imas chronon (Athens, Greece: Ekdosis tis Enoseos ton Apantachou ex Anatolikis Romylias Ellinon, 1959); Drakos Mavrommatis, I Anchialos mes’apo tis phloges (Athens, Greece: 1930); Konstantinos Papaioannidou, Istoria tis en Ponto Apollonias-Sozopoleos. Apo tis idryseos tis mechri simeron (Thessaloniki, Greece: Efemerida ton Valkanion, 1933); Emmanouil Papadopoulos, “Ta dikaia tou en voreio Thraki Ellinismou,” Archeion Thrakikou Laographikou kai Glossikou Thysavrou 9 (1942-1943): 75-156; Polydoros Papachristodoulou, I katastrophi tou Voreiothrakikou ellinismou 1878-1914 (Athens, Greece: Etairia Thrakikon Meleton, 1945); Adamandios Diamandopoulos, I Anchialos (Athens, Greece: 1954); Margaritis Konstantinidis, I Apolonia par’ Evxinou (Sozopolin nyn). Apo ton chronon tis apikiseos avtis mechri ton 1913-14 (Athens, Greece: 1957).

92. Mavrommatis, Anchialos mes’apo tis phloges, 7. 93. For detailed analysis of historical narratives, see Theodora Dragostinova, “Between Two

Motherlands: Struggles for Nationhood among the Greeks in Bulgaria, 1906-1949” (PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2005), 248-60.

94. Memorandum on the Mission and Work of the Mixed Commission, 7. 95. Papadopoulos, “Ta dikaia tou en voreio Thraki Ellinismou,” 76. 96. See refugee publications such as the Bulgarian newspapers Trakiia, Makedoniia, and Nezavisima

Makedoniia and the Greek journals Archeion Thrakis and Archeion Thrakikou Laographikou kai Glossikou Thisavrou.

97. For the regional breakdown of refugee settlements in Greece, see M. Maravelakis and A. Vakalopoulos, Oi prosphygikes engatastaseis stin periochi Thessalonikis (Thessaloniki, Greece: Vanias, 1993). For Bulgaria, K. Hitelov, ed., Selskostopanskoto nastaniavane na bezhantsite (Sofia, Bulgaria: Glavna direktsia za nastaniavane na bezhantsite, 1932). The refugees often established new neighborhoods and villages that carried the names of their places of origin, such as Nea Varna, Nea Agathoupolis, or Anchialos Makedonias in Greece and Makedontsi and Trakiets in Bulgaria. See Maravelakis and Vakalopoulos, Oi prosphygikes engatastaseis stin periochi Thessalonikis; Nikolay Michev and Petâr Koledarov, Rechnik na selishtata i selishtnite imena v Bâlgariia, 1878-1987 (Sofia, Bulgaria: Nauka i izkustvo, 1989).


98. Trakiia, 26 June 1924. 99. For the difference between the local Bulgarians and the Bulgarian refugees, see D. K. Vogazlis,

“Boulgaroi kai Ellines. Sigkritiki meleti,” Archeion Thrakikou Laographikou kai Glossikou Thisavrou 17 (1952): 101-46.

100. IAYE 1930, A/6/I. Report of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Michalakopoulos from 29 September 1930.

101. This tendency is also evident in the ethnographic narratives published by elites. See Mavrommatis, I Anchialos mes’apo tis phloges; Papaioannidou, Istoria tis en Ponto Apollonias-Sozopoleos; Papachristodoulou, I katastrophi tou Voreiothrakikou ellinismou 1878-1914; Diamandopoulos, I Anchialos; Konstantinidis, I Apolonia par’ Evxinou (Sozopolin nyn); Apostolidis, O Stenimachos; Vogazlis, “Boulgaroi kai Ellines”; D. K. Vogazlis, “Ithi, ethima kai prolipseis ton Ellinon Voreiothrakon os kai ton synoikon tous Voulragon,” Archeion Thrakikou Laographikou kai Glossikou Thysavrou 21 (1956): 177-234.

102. IAYE 1923, 21.4.1. Memo of the Directorate of Kozani from 21 April 1923.103. IAYE 1922, 106.2. Report of the General Directorate of Thrace from 29 July 1922.104. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 9, a.e. 1543, l. 3. Report of the Bulgarian Embassy in Athens from 1 April 1921.105. See the extensive correspondence regarding various irregularities and petitions related to the

Convention in IAYE 1927, 4.1.2; TsDA, f. 176k, op. 22, a.e. 185 and 186. For analysis of the national rhetoric of petitions, see Dragostinova, “Speaking National,” 176-79.

106. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 22, a.e 217, ll. 69-70. Memo of the Ministry of the Interior to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Denominations from 21 April 1929.

107. See the extensive correspondence regarding citizenship issues in TsDA, f. 176k, op.26, a.e. 36; TsDA, f. 176k, op. 9. a.e. 1543; TsDA, f. 176k, op. 7, a.e. 1202, 1203, and 1204.

108. For the Bulgarian–Greek deportations in the late 1930s, see the extensive correspondence in IAYE 1939, 20 and 1939, 15.1-2.

109. TsDA, f. 176k, op. 32, a.e. 97, ll. 45, 78-79. Memos of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Denominations from 25 and 27 May 1940.

110. Vâlchinova, “Gârtsi,” 212.111. Gennadius Library Archive, American School of Classical Studies, Athens, Greece, Archive of

Philipos Dragoumis, 68.1, 11. Confidential Memo of Samaras from 27 February 1945.112. Memorandum on the Mission and Work of the Mixed Commission, 3, 10.113. Memorandum on the Mission and Work of the Mixed Commission, 11. Comitadjilik was defined

as being “members of revolutionary committees or bands.” See n. (x).114. Memorandum on the Mission and Work of the Mixed Commission, 7.115. Clark, “Greece and Bulgaria.”116. Ladas, for example, considers the remaining minority to be a deficiency of the Convention,

which is explained with his pro-Greek perspective. See Ladas, The Exchange of Minorities, 40-41. For a critique of this position, see Macartney, National States and National Minorities, 441. Today, Greek concerns over the minority are connected to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The Macedonians acquired the status of a separate nation within Yugoslavia after World War II when the People’s Republic of Macedonia was proclaimed and the Macedonian language codified. Ever since the Republic of Macedonia’s declaration of independence in 1991, Greece has contested the new country’s use of the name Macedonia because, according to the Greek view, it implied territorial aspirations toward the northern Greek province with the same name. See Loring M. Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). In 2008, Greece vetoed the Republic of Macedonia’s NATO membership because of this unresolved problem.

117. See the text of the convention in Ladas, The Exchange of Minorities, 739-43.118. Macartney, National States and National Minorities, 437.119. Macartney did not agree with the idea of minority exchange, and his overall conclusion was that

“the genuine voluntary and reciprocal emigration which the Convention was designed to effect never occurred at all, except on a minute scale.” Ibid., 441, 449.


120. The idea of compulsory exchange originated in the Greek leader Elevtherios Venizelos, who, given the totality of the Greek exodus from the Ottoman Empire in 1922, wanted to guarantee the resettle-ment of the Greek Muslims. After the end of the negotiations, with the outcry of public opinion, all sides in the negotiations denied their support for this principle. See Ladas, The Exchange of Minorities, 340-42; Meindersma, “Population Exchanges,” 338-42; Yildirim, Diplomacy and Displacement, 45-59.

121. Definitions of minorities also changed. If the Neuilly Convention discussed the exchange of “racial, religious and linguistic minorities,” Lausanne opted for an exchange based on religion, targeting “Turkish citizens of the Greek-orthodox religion established in Turkish territory and Greek citizens of the Muslim religion established in Greek territory.” See Ladas, The Exchange of Minorities, 41, 345, as well as the texts of the conventions in the appendix, 739-43, 787-94.

"Navigating Nationality in the Emigration of Minorities between Bulgaria and Greece, 1919–1941," Eastern European Politics and Societies, 2009.

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