Middle Ages and Ottoman rule The
Slavs took advantage of the desolation left by the nomadic tribes and in the 6th century settled the Balkan Peninsula. Aided by the
Avars and the
Bulgars, the Slavic tribes started in the 6th century a gradual invasion into the Byzantine lands. They invaded Macedonia and reached as far south as Thessaly and the
Peloponnese, settling in isolated regions that were called by the Byzantines
Sclavinias, until they were gradually pacified. At the beginning of the 9th century, the Slavic
Bulgarian Empire conquered Northern Byzantine lands, including most of
Macedonia. Those regions remained under Bulgarian rule for two centuries, until the conquest of Bulgaria by the
Byzantine Emperor of the
Macedonian dynasty Basil II in 1018. In the 13th and the 14th century, Macedonia was contested by the
Byzantine Empire, the
Latin Empire, Bulgaria and Serbia but the frequent shift of borders did not result in any major population changes. In 1338, the geographical area of Macedonia was conquered by the
Serbian Empire, but after the
Battle of Maritsa in 1371 most of the Macedonian Serbian lords would accept supreme Ottoman rule. During the Middle Ages Slavs in
Macedonia were mostly defined as Bulgarians, and this continued also during 16th and 17th centuries by Ottoman historians and travellers like
Hoca Sadeddin Efendi,
Mustafa Selaniki,
Hadji Khalfa and
Evliya Çelebi. Nevertheless, most of the Slavic speakers had not formed a
national identity in
modern sense and were instead identified through their
religious affiliations. Some Slavic speakers also converted to
Islam. This conversion appears to have been a gradual and voluntary process. Economic and social gain was an incentive to become a Muslim. Muslims also enjoyed some legal privileges. Nevertheless, the rise of European nationalism in the 18th century led to the expansion of the Hellenic idea in Macedonia and under the influence of the Greek schools and the
Patriarchate of Constantinople, and part from the urban Christian population of Slavic origin started to view itself more as Greek. In the
Bulgarian Archbishopric of Ohrid the Slavonic liturgy was preserved on the lower levels until its abolition in 1767. This led to the first literary work in vernacular modern Bulgarian,
History of Slav-Bulgarians in 1762. Its author was a Macedonia-born monk
Paisius of Hilendar, who wrote it in the
Bulgarian Orthodox Zograf Monastery, on
Mount Athos. Nevertheless, it took almost a century for the Bulgarian idea to regain ascendancy in the region. Paisius was the first ardent call for a national awakening and urged his compatriots to throw off the subjugation to the Greek language and culture. The example of Paisius was followed also by other Bulgarian nationalists in 18th century Macedonia. File:Ethnographic map of the South Balkans, Pallas Nagy Lexikon, 1897.jpg|The nationalities of southeastern Europe according to
Pallas Nagy Lexikona, 1897. File:Macedonia - Point of View of the Serbs.jpg|Serbian map, presenting the group as Macedonian Slavs in South, as Serbs in North and in Eastern part as Bulgarians. File:Bulgarians in 1912.jpg|The regions of the Balkan Peninsula inhabited by ethnic Bulgarians in 1912, according to the Bulgarian point of view. File:Hellenism in the Near East 1918.jpg|Greek ethnographic map from 1918, showing the Macedonian Slavs as a separate people. File:Seals of Voden Bulgarian Municipality Crop.jpg|Bulgarian Exarchate seal of the
Voden (Edessa) municipality, 1870. File:Zoupanishta-Greek-school-pupils.jpg|Pupils of the Greek school of Zoupanishta, near
Kastoria. File:Solunska Gimnazija 11.maj.jpg|
Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki celebrating
Saints Cyril and Methodius Day, c. 1900. File:KonikovoGospel.jpg|The title page of the
Konikovo Gospel, printed in 1852. of
Kastoria during the
Ilinden Uprising of 1903.
Macedonian Struggle The Macedonian Bulgarians took active part in the long struggle for independent
Bulgarian Patriarchate and Bulgarian schools during the 19th century. The foundation of the Bulgarian Exarchate (1870) aimed specifically at differentiating the
Bulgarian from the
Greek population and the
Rum millet on an ethnic and linguistic basis, hence providing the conditions for the open assertion of a Bulgarian national identity. On the other hand, the
Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (IMARO) was founded in 1893 in Ottoman
Thessaloniki by several Bulgarian Exarchate teachers and professionals who sought to create a militant movement dedicated to the autonomy of Macedonia and
Thrace within the Ottoman Empire. Many
Bulgarian exarchists participated in the
Ilinden Uprising in 1903 with hope of liberation from the Porte. In 1883 the
Kastoria region consisted of 60,000 people, all Christian, of which 4/9 were
Slavophone Greeks and the rest 5/9 were Grecophone Greeks, Albanophone Greeks and
Aromanians. From 1900 onwards, the danger of Bulgarian control had upset the Greeks. The Bishop of
Kastoria,
Germanos Karavangelis, realised that it was time to act in a more efficient way and started organising
Greek opposition. Germanos animated the Greek population against the IMORO and formed committees to promote the Greek interests. Taking advantage of the internal political and personal disputes in IMORO, Karavangelis succeeded to organize guerrilla groups. Fierce conflicts between the Greeks and Bulgarians started in the area of Kastoria, in the
Giannitsa Lake and elsewhere; both parties committed cruel crimes. Both guerrilla groups had also to confront the Turkish army. These conflicts ended after the revolution of "
Young Turks" in 1908, as they promised to respect all ethnicities and religions and generally to provide a constitution.
Balkan Wars and World War I ,
Serres resettled in
Peshtera after the
Second Balkan War, 1913 During the Balkan Wars, many atrocities were committed by Turks, Bulgarians and Greeks in the war over Macedonia. After the
Balkan Wars ended in 1913, Greece took control of
southern Macedonia and began an official policy of
forced assimilation which included the settlement of Greeks from other provinces into southern Macedonia, as well as the linguistic and cultural
Hellenization of Slav speakers, which continued even after
World War I. The Greeks expelled Exarchist churchmen and teachers and closed Bulgarian schools and churches. The Bulgarian language (including the Macedonian dialects) was prohibited, and its surreptitious use, whenever detected, was ridiculed or punished. Bulgaria's entry into World War I on the side of the
Central Powers signified a dramatic shift in the way European public opinion viewed the Bulgarian population of Macedonia. The ultimate victory of the
Allies in 1918 led to the victory of the vision of the Slavic population of Macedonia as an amorphous mass, without a developed national consciousness. Within Greece, the ejection of the Bulgarian church, the closure of Bulgarian schools, and the banning of publication in Bulgarian language, together with the expulsion or flight to Bulgaria of a large proportion of the Macedonian Bulgarian intelligentsia, served as the prelude to campaigns of forcible cultural and linguistic assimilation. The remaining
Macedonian Bulgarians were classified as "
Slavophones". After the
Ilinden Uprising, the Balkan Wars and especially after the First World War more than 100,000 Bulgarians from Greek Macedonia moved to Bulgaria. There was agreement in 1919 between Bulgaria and Greece which provided opportunities to expatriate the Bulgarians from Greece. Until the
Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) and the
Population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923 there were also some
Pomak communities in the region.
Interwar period Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) During the Balkan Wars IMRO members joined the
Macedonian-Adrianopolitan Volunteer Corps and fought with the Bulgarian Army. Others with their bands assisted the Bulgarian army with its advance and still others penetrated as far as the region of Kastoria, southwestern Macedonia. In the Second Balkan War IMRO bands fought the Greeks behind the front lines but were subsequently routed and driven out. The result of the Balkan Wars was that the Macedonian region was partitioned between Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia. IMARO maintained its existence in Bulgaria, where it played a role in politics by playing upon Bulgarian
irredentism and urging a renewed war. During the
First World War in Macedonia (1915–1918) the organization supported Bulgarian army and joined to Bulgarian war-time authorities. Bulgarian army, supported by the organization's forces, was successful in the first stages of this conflict, came into positions on the line of the pre-war Greek-Serbian border. The Bulgarian advance into Greek held Eastern Macedonia, precipitated internal Greek crisis. The government ordered its troops in the area not to resist, and most of the Corps was forced to surrender. However the post-war
Treaty of Neuilly again denied Bulgaria what it felt was its share of Macedonia. From 1913 to 1926 there were large-scale changes in the population structure due to ethnic migrations. During and after the Balkan Wars about 15,000 Slavs left the new Greek territories for Bulgaria but more significant was the Greek–Bulgarian convention 1919 in which some 72,000 Slavs-speakers left Greece for Bulgaria, mostly from Eastern Macedonia, which from then remained almost Slav free. IMRO began sending armed bands into Greek Macedonia to assassinate officials. In the 1920s in the region of Greek Macedonia 24 chetas and 10 local reconnaissance detachments were active. Many locals were repressed by the Greek authorities on suspicions of contacts with the revolutionary movement. In this period the combined Macedonian-Adrianopolitan revolutionary movement separated into
Internal Thracian Revolutionary Organization and Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization. ITRO was a revolutionary organization active in the Greek regions of
Thrace and Eastern Macedonia to the river
Strymon. The reason for the establishment of ITRO was the transfer of the region from Bulgaria to Greece in May 1920. At the end of 1922, the Greek government started to expel large numbers of
Thracian Bulgarians into Bulgaria and the activity of ITRO grew into an open rebellion. Meanwhile, the left-wing did form the new organisation called
IMRO (United) in 1925 in
Vienna. However, it did not have real popular support and remained based abroad with, closely linked to the
Comintern and the
Balkan Communist Federation. IMRO's and ITRO's constant fratricidal killings and assassinations abroad provoked some within Bulgarian military after the coup of 19 May 1934 to take control and break the power of the organizations, which had come to be seen as a gangster organizations inside Bulgaria and a band of assassins outside it. The
Tarlis and
Petrich incidents triggered heavy protests in Bulgaria and international outcry against Greece. The Common Greco-Bulgarian committee for emigration investigated the incident and presented its conclusions to
League of Nations in Geneva. As a result, a bilateral Bulgarian-Greek agreement was signed in Geneva on September 29, 1924, known as
Politis–Kalfov Protocol after the demand of the League of Nations, recognizing Greek Slavophones as Bulgarians and guaranteeing their protection. This agreement constituted the first official acknowledgement by Greece that a Bulgarian minority existed there. The
Bulgarian National Assembly quickly ratified it in October. The protocol obliged Greece to treat all members of this minority according to the terms of the
Treaty of Sèvres. The Greeks agreed to sponsor Bulgarian-minority schools, to allow the presence of
Bulgarian Exarchate priests if they obtained Greek citizenship and to open a minority affairs bureau in
Thessaloniki and to administer minority rights. Meanwhile, in Greece, internal reaction against the Protocol arose because public opinion stood against the recognition of any
Bulgarian minority in
Northern Greece. Belgrade also was suspicious of Greece's recognition of a Bulgarian minority and was annoyed that would hinder its policy of forced “
Serbianisation” in
Serbian Macedonia. On February 2, 1925, the
Greek Parliament, claiming pressure from the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which threatened to renounce the
Greek–Serbian Alliance of 1913, refused to ratify the agreement. On 29 May 1925, the Greek government maintained that Greece was open to any suggestions concerning the "Slavic-speaking linguistic minority" but that the existence of Bulgarian minority was completely unacceptable. Next month a Slavic language primer textbook in Latin known as
Abecedar published by the Greek ministry for education, was introduced to Greek schools. During the 1920s the Comintern developed a new policy for the Balkans, about collaboration between the communists and the Macedonian movement. The idea for a new unified organization was supported by the
Soviet Union, which saw a chance for using this well developed revolutionary movement to spread revolution in the Balkans. In the so-called
May Manifesto of 6 May 1924, for first time the objectives of the unified Slav Macedonian liberation movement were presented: "independence and unification of partitioned Macedonia, fighting all the neighbouring Balkan monarchies, forming a
Balkan Communist Federation". In 1934 the Comintern issued also a
special resolution about the recognition of the Slav Macedonian ethnicity. This decision was supported by the
Greek Communist Party. The 1928 census recorded 81,844
Slavo-Macedonian speakers or 1.3% of the population of Greece, distinct from 16,755 Bulgarian speakers. Contemporary unofficial Greek reports state that there were 200,000 "Bulgarian"-speaking inhabitants of Macedonia, of whom 90,000 lack Greek national identity. At the beginning of the occupation in Greece most of the Slavic speakers in the area felt themselves to be Bulgarians. Only a small part espoused a pro-Hellenic feelings.
Axis occupation of Greece during World War II and Resistance The Bulgarian occupying forces began a campaign of exterminating
Greeks from
Greek Macedonia. The Bulgarians were supported in this ethnic cleansing by the Slavic minority in Macedonia. In the city of
Drama in May 1941, over 15,000 Greeks were killed. By the end of 1941, over 100,000 Greeks were expelled from this region. Unlike Germany and Italy, Bulgaria officially annexed the occupied territories, which had long been a target of
Bulgarian irredentism. A massive campaign of "
Bulgarisation" was launched, which saw all Greek officials deported. This campaign was successful especially in Eastern and later in Central Macedonia, when Bulgarians entered the area in 1943, after Italian withdrawal from Greece. All Slav-speakers there were regarded as Bulgarians and not so effective in German-occupied Western Macedonia. A ban was placed on the use of the Greek language, the names of towns and places changed to the forms traditional in Bulgarian. In addition, the Bulgarian government tried to alter the ethnic composition of the region, by expropriating land and houses from Greeks in favour of Bulgarian settlers. The same year, the German High Command approved the foundation of a Bulgarian military club in Thessaloníki. The Bulgarians organized supplying of food and provisions for the Slavic population in Central and Western Macedonia, aiming to gain the local population that was in the German and Italian occupied zones. The Bulgarian clubs soon started to gain support among parts of the population. Many Communist political prisoners were released with the intercession of Bulgarian Club in Thessaloniki, which had made representations to the German occupation authorities. They all declared Bulgarian ethnicity. In 1942, the Bulgarian club asked assistance from the High command in organizing armed units among the Slavic-speaking population in northern Greece. For this purpose, the Bulgarian army, under the approval of the German forces in the Balkans sent a handful of officers from the
Bulgarian army, to the zones occupied by the Italian and German troops to be attached to the German occupying forces as "liaison officers". All the Bulgarian officers brought into service were locally born Macedonians who had immigrated to Bulgaria with their families during the 1920s and 1930s as part of the Greek-Bulgarian Treaty of Neuilly which saw 90,000 Bulgarians migrating to Bulgaria from Greece. These officers were given the objective to form armed Bulgarian militias. Bulgaria was interested in acquiring the zones under Italian and German occupation and hopped to sway the allegiance of the 80,000 Slavs who lived there at the time. Following the defeat of the Axis powers and the evacuation of the Nazi occupation forces many members of the Ohrana joined the SNOF where they could still pursue their goal of secession. The advance of the
Red Army into Bulgaria in September 1944, the withdrawal of the German armed forces from Greece in October, meant that the Bulgarian Army had to withdraw from Greek Macedonia and Thrace. There was a rapprochement between the
Greek Communist Party and the Ohrana collaborationist units. Further collaboration between the Bulgarian-controlled Ohrana and the
EAM controlled
SNOF followed when it was agreed that Macedonia would be allowed to become autonomous. Finally it is estimated that entire Ohrana units had joined the SNOF which began to press the
ELAS leadership to allow it to raise the SNOF battalion to division in Greek Macedonia. There had been also a larger flow of refugees into Bulgaria as the Bulgarian Army pulled out of the Drama-Serres region in late 1944. A large proportion of Bulgarians and Slavic speakers emigrated there. In 1944 the declarations of Bulgarian nationality were estimated by the Greek authorities, on the basis of monthly returns, to have reached 16,000 in the districts of German-occupied Greek Macedonia, but according to British sources, declarations of Bulgarian nationality throughout Western Macedonia reached 23,000. In the beginning of the Bulgarian occupation in 1941 there were 38,611 declarations of Bulgarian identity in Eastern Macedonia. Then the ethnic composition of the
Serres region consisted of 67 963 Greeks, 11 000 Bulgarians and 1237 others; in
Sidirokastro region- 22 295 Greeks, 10 820 Bulgarians and 685 others;
Drama region- 11 068 Bulgarians, 117 395 Greeks and others;
Nea Zichni region – 4710 Bulgarians, 28 724 Greeks and others;
Kavala region – 59 433 Greeks, 1000 Bulgarians and 3986 others;
Thasos- 21 270 and 3 Bulgarians;
Eleftheroupoli region- 36 822 Greeks, 10 Bulgarians and 301 others. At another census in 1943 the Bulgarian population had increased by less than 50,000 and not larger was the decrease of the Greek population.
Greek Civil War During the beginning of the Second World War, Greek Slavic-speaking citizens fought within the Greek army until the country was overrun in 1941. The Greek communists had already been influenced by the Comintern and it was the only political party in Greece to recognize Macedonian national identity. As result many Slavic speakers joined the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and participated in partisan activities. The KKE expressed its intent to "fight for the national self-determination of the repressed Macedonians". In 1943, the
Slavic-Macedonian National Liberation Front (SNOF) was set up by ethnic Macedonian members of the KKE. The main aim of the SNOF was to obtain the entire support of the local population and to mobilize it, through SNOF, for the aims of the
National Liberation Front (EAM). Another major aim was to fight against the Bulgarian organisation
Ohrana and Bulgarian authorities. During this time, the ethnic Macedonians in Greece were permitted to publish newspapers in Macedonian and run schools. In late 1944 after the German and Bulgarian withdrawal from Greece, the
Josip Broz Tito's
Partisans movement hardly concealed its
intention of expanding. It was from this period that Slav-speakers in Greece who had previously referred to themselves as "Bulgarians" increasingly began to identify as "Macedonians". By 1945 World War II had ended and Greece was in open civil war. It has been estimated that after the end of the Second World War over 20,000 people fled from Greece to Bulgaria. To an extent the collaboration of the peasants with the Germans, Italians, Bulgarians or
ELAS was determined by the geopolitical position of each village. Depending upon whether their village was vulnerable to attack by the Greek communist guerrillas or the occupation forces, the peasants would opt to support the side in relation to which they were most vulnerable. In both cases, the attempt was to promise "freedom" (autonomy or independence) to the formerly persecuted Slavic minority as a means of gaining its support.
National Liberation Front The National Liberation Front (NOF) was organized by the political and military groups of the Slavic minority in Greece, active from 1945 to 1949. The
interbellum was the time when part of them came to the conclusion that they are Macedonians. Greek hostility to the Slavic minority produced tensions that rose to separatism. After the recognition in 1934 from the
Comintern of the Macedonian ethnicity, the Greek communists also recognized Macedonian national identity. That separatism was reinforced by Communist Yugoslavia's support, since Yugoslavia's new authorities after 1944 encouraged the growth of Macedonian national consciousness. Following World War II, the population of Yugoslav Macedonia did begin to feel themselves to be Macedonian, assisted and pushed by a government policy. Communist Bulgaria also began a policy of making Macedonia connecting link for the establishment of new
Balkan Federative Republic and stimulating in Bulgarian Macedonia a development of distinct Slav Macedonian consciousness. However, differences soon emerged between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria concerning the national character of the Macedonian Slavs – whereas Bulgarians considered them to be an offshoot of the
Bulgarians, Yugoslavia regarded them as an independent nation which had nothing to do whatsoever with the Bulgarians. Thus the initial tolerance for the
Macedonization of
Pirin Macedonia gradually grew into outright alarm. At first, the NOF organized meetings, street and factory protests and published illegal underground newspapers. Soon after its founding, members began forming armed partisan detachments. In 1945, 12 such groups were formed in Kastoria, 7 in Florina, and 11 in
Edessa and the
Gianitsa region. Many
Aromanians also joined the Macedonians in NOF, especially in the Kastoria region. The NOF merged with the
Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) which was the main armed unit supporting the Communist Party. Owing to the KKE's equal treatment of ethnic Macedonians and Greeks, many ethnic Macedonians enlisted as volunteers in the DSE (60% of the DSE was composed of Slavic Macedonians). It was during this time that books written in the Macedonian dialect (the official language was in process of codifying) were published and Macedonians cultural organizations theatres were opened. Given their important role in the battle, the KKE changed its policy towards them. At the fifth Plenum of KKE on January 31, 1949, a resolution was passed declaring that after KKE's victory, the Slavic Macedonians would find their national restoration as they wish.
Refugee children The DSE was slowly driven back and eventually defeated. Thousands of Slavic speakers were expelled and fled to the newly established
Socialist Republic of Macedonia, while thousands more children took refuge in other
Eastern Bloc countries. This data is confirmed by the
KKE, which claims that the total number of political refugees from Greece (incl. Greeks) was 55,881.
Post-war period Since the end of the Greek Civil War many ethnic Macedonians have attempted to return to their homes in Greece. A 1982 amnesty law which stated "all Greek by descent who during the civil war of 1946–1949 and because of it have fled abroad as political refugees had the right to return", thus excluding all those who did not identify as ethnic Greeks. This was brought to a forefront shortly after the independence of the
Republic of Macedonia (now North Macedonia) in 1991. Many ethnic Macedonians have been refused entry to Greece because their documentation listed the Slavic names of the places of birth as opposed to the official Greek names, despite the child refugees, now elderly, only knowing their village by the local Macedonian name. These measures were even extended to Australian and Canadian citizens. Despite this, there have been sporadic periods of free entry, most of which have only ever lasted a few days. Despite the removal of official recognition to those identifying as ethnic Macedonians after the end of the
Greek Civil War, a 1954 letter from the Prefect of
Florina, K. Tousildis, reported that people were still affirming that the language they spoke was Macedonian in forms relating to personal documents, birth and marriage registries, etc.
Recent history Since the late 1980s there has been a Macedonian ethnic revival in much of Northern Greece, especially where Macedonian speakers have not been minoritised. In 1984 the "Movement for Human and National Rights for the Macedonians of Aegean Macedonia" was founded, and was followed by the creation of the "Central Committee for Macedonian Human Rights" in Salonika in 1989. In 1990 a manifesto by this group was presented to the
Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe on behalf of the ethnic Macedonians. The bilingual Macedonian and Greek-language "
Ta Moglena" newspaper was first put into print in 1989, and although restricted to the
Moglena region had a readership of 3,000. In 1989 the first attempts at establishing a "House of Macedonian Culture" in Florina began. MAKIVE participated in the 1993 local elections and received 14 percent of the vote in the Florina Prefecture. According to a study by anthropologist Ricki van Boeschoten, 64% of the inhabitants of 43 villages in the Florina area were Macedonian-language speakers. According to a 1993 study, of the 90 villages in
Florina Prefecture, 50% were populated only by Slavic speakers, while another 23% with mixed population of Slavic speakers and other groups. One study of the archives in
Langadas and the
Lake Koroneia basin in
Thessaloniki Prefecture found that most of the 22 villages in the area contained a population primarily made up of former Slavic speakers. In January 1994,
Rainbow (, ) was founded as the political party to represent the ethnic Macedonian minority. At the 1994 European Parliament election the party received 7,263 votes and polled 5.7% in the Florina district. The party opened its offices in Florina on September 6, 1995. The opening of the office faced strong hostility and that night the offices were ransacked. In 1997 the "Zora" (, lit. Dawn) newspaper first began to published and the following year, the Second All-Macedonian congress was held in Florina. Soon after the "Makedoniko" magazine also began to be published. In the 1990s, the
European Commission's
Euromosaic Project documenting minority languages recorded the geographic distribution and language status of Slavic (Macedonian/Bulgarian) speakers in Greek Macedonia. During this period ethnic Macedonians such as Kostas Novakis began to record and distribute music in the native
Macedonian dialects. Ethnic Macedonian activists reprinted the language primer Abecedar (), in attempt to encourage further use of the Macedonian language. However, the lack of Macedonian-language literature has left many young ethnic Macedonian students dependent on textbooks from the Republic of Macedonia. In 2008 thirty ethnic Macedonians from the villages of
Lofoi,
Meliti,
Kella and
Vevi protested against the presence of the Greek military in the Florina region. Another ethnic Macedonian organisation, the Educational and Cultural Movement of Edessa (), was formed in 2009. Based in
Edessa, the group focuses on promoting ethnic Macedonian culture, through the publication of books and CD's, whilst also running Macedonian-language courses and teaching the
Macedonian Cyrillic alphabet. Since then Macedonian-language courses have been extended to include
Florina and
Salonika. Later that year Rainbow officially opened its second office in the town of
Edessa. In early 2010 several Macedonian-language newspapers were put into print for the first time. In early 2010 the Zadruga (, ) newspaper was first published, This was shortly followed by the publication of the "Nova Zora" newspaper in May 2010. The estimated readership of Nova Zora is 20,000, whilst that of Zadrgua is considerably smaller. In 2010 another group of ethnic Macedonians were elected to office, including the outspoken local chairman of
Meliti, Pando Ašlakov. According to reports from North Macedonia, ethnic Macedonians have also been elected as chairmen in the villages of
Vevi,
Pappagiannis,
Neochoraki and
Achlada. The Church of Saint Zlata of Meglen in
Aridaia is the only Macedonian Orthodox Church in Greek Macedonia, operating under archimandrite
Nikodim Tsarknias. ==Ethnic and linguistic affiliations==