Following the
Treaty of Bucharest in 1913, the southern part of Ottoman
region of Macedonia was annexed to the
Kingdom of Greece, with
Bulgarians making up a debated portion of the overall population at the time, with estimates ranging from 10% to a 30% plurality. Under the 1920
Treaty of Sèvres, Greece opened schools for minority-language children, and in September 1924 Greece agreed to a
protocol with Bulgaria to place its
Slavic-speaking minority under the protection of the
League of Nations as Bulgarians. However, the
Greek parliament refused to ratify the protocol due to objections from Serbia, considering the Slavic speakers to be
Serbs rather than
Bulgarians, and from Greeks who considered the Slavic speakers to be Greeks rather than Slavs. Vasilis Dendramis, the Greek representative in the League of the Nations, stated that the Macedonian Slav language was neither Bulgarian, nor Serbian, but an independent language. Although some books reached villages in Greek Macedonia, it was never used in their schools. In one village, threats by local police led to residents throwing their copies into a lake. Anthropologist
Loring Danforth has argued the
Abecedar was printed in the Latin alphabet "precisely to ensure that it would be rejected by all parties concerned" so "it would not contribute to the development of ties between the Slavic-speaking people of northern Greece and either Serbia or Bulgaria." The
Macedonian historiography has seen it as a demonstration that a separate
Macedonian language and
people existed in northern Greece in 1925, and the Greek government recognized them as such. Bulgarian researchers indicate that this textbook was printed in order to mislead the international organizations that the educational rights of the Bulgarians in Greece are respected – in the moment when the Council of the League of Nations treated the question about protection of the Bulgarian minority in Greece. According to sociologist Victor Roudometof, the incident led to significant change in the Greek government's stance toward Slavic-speaking citizens. Henceforth, they were deemed to be neither Serbs nor Bulgarians, and their difference was regarded as solely linguistic, not ethnic or political. ==Second and third editions==