1. It will be highly instructive for us Macedonians, a nation which has succeeded in forming its own literary language only within the last decades, to know what were in general the basic characteristics of the development of the literary languages in the Slavic world. It will be instructive especially because of the fact that we will find in this development a number of analogies to what has happened in our own case, and because we will be able to note certain regularities where it might otherwise seem that a certain phenomenon exists only as a result of our particular situation.

2. There are at present twelve modern Slavic literary languages. These are: in the eastern group - Russian, Ukrainian, and White Russian, in the western group - Polish, Czech, Slovak, Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian (or Upper and Lower Lusation) and in the southern group - Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian.

An attempt to form a Kashubian literary language (the Kashubians live in Poland on the Baltic Sea) led only to the creation of a regional literature, without all the characteristics of a cultural activity which strives towards the affirmation of a distinct national consciousness.

All of these literary languages are the result of regular historical processes. There are, however, significant differences between them, in respect to the size of the community using the given language and the functions which it performs, as well as in respect to the degree of their standardization. The Russian language, for example, serves a multi-million community and in recent times is becoming more and more important as a world language, whereas on the other hand the Sorbian languages are used by a hundred thousand people and that in a bilingual situation, in which the use of the German language is constantly on the rise. Of course there is no automatic relationship between the size of a linguistic community and degree of linguistic standardization and the affirmation, through the relevant cultural phenomena, of its literary language. We can easily find examples of this with in the Slavic linguistic group. All these remarks concern, first, a specific situation, that of the present, which is by no means static, and second, the external environment in which these separate languages function, and are not an evaluation of their structural qualities.

3. It is well known that the Slavs were first given literature in their own language during the second half of the 9th century. Old Church Slavonic, the first literary language of the Slavs, was used, after the mission of Cyril and Methodius and their disciples, among both West and South Slavs, and afterwards transmitted to the East Slavs. However it was only for a short time that this language had a chance to establish itself as a language of the literature of all the medieval Slavic nations. The battle between Constantinople and Rome, which led to a schism between the two churches, had among other consequences the effect of early dividing of the Slavic world between Orthodoxy and Catholicism.

Thus split into two spheres, each with its own separate religious, political and cultural characteristics, the Slavs were subject to differing influences on the development of the language of their literature as well. In the Catholic sphere, Old Church Slavonic was soon banished from the West Slavic area. It was retained only among the Croatian "glagolashes". On the other hand, among the Orthodox Slavs this language, in its different variants or rescissions, remained as a common literary language almost to the beginning of the 19th century.

4. Such a linguistic situation could not help but influence the development of the modern Slavic languages as well. The Church Slavonic tradition was strongest in Russia, which from the 14th century onwards became an ever stronger state. On the other hand, this tradition could not be maintained to the same degree among the Orthodox Slavs in the Balkans, because they had lost their statehood and had long been subject to Turkish rule. When in the 18th century, under Peter the Great, the framework was laid for the creation of the modern Russian literary language, it was natural for its structure to include a number of Church Slavonic elements. This was an expected outcome of the above-mentioned tradition. The modern Russian literary language was created, first among all the modern Slavic languages in the eastern sphere, in such a way that it represents, generally speaking, a synthesis between Church Slavonic and the popular language of the higher levels of Russian society in the 18th century. A dominant role in this involvement of popular language in the formation of the literary language was played by the dialect of Moscow, the main economic and cultural center of Russia. All of the other modern literary languages in the eastern sphere were formed later, in the 19th or even in the 20th century. The participation of Church Slavonic was not as strong or direct in the process of their formation as in the case of the Russian literary language, considering the already mentioned fact that the Church Slavonic tradition itself did not have the same scope in the other countries as is did in Russia. It could even happen, as in the case of the development of Serbian literacy, that there existed an especially critical view of this tradition, such as that expressed in the linguistic reforms of Vuk Karadzic. In the Bulgarian literary language, on the other hand, the participation of elements inherited from the language of older Slavic literature is significant. But this is due not only to the direct influence of this literature, but to a significant extent also to the influence of the Russian language, via which such elements were transmitted indirectly to the Bulgarian literary language.

In the western sphere, during the Middle Ages, Latin fulfilled the same function as did Church Slavonic for the other Slavs. The national languages gradually began to be affirmed in literary activity, mainly from the 14th century on, at first functioning only as a lower stylistic level in contrast to Latin, which retained its place as the language of high culture. A new impulse to the development of literary languages on a national basis was given by the Reformation, with all its well-known consequences and the radical alterations which it elicited. The two Slavic literary languages affirmed earliest and most completely in the western sphere were Polish and Czech. Among the South Slavs in the western sphere there were also significant achievements in this respect, in the period before the 19th century, the most important literary activity taking place in Dalmacia and Dubrovnik, but all the same this activity did not succeed in going beyond regional limits to the same extend as was the case in Poland and Czechoslovakia.

The Polish literary language, whose origins date to the 13th or 14th century at the earliest, is unique among the Slavic literary languages in that it has developed without interruption from its beginnings until the present. Since it was created long ago, its original dialect basis is not so obvious as is that of the younger Slavic literary languages. There are still arguments as to whether the language was based on the Little Polish or the Great Polish dialects. The Czech literary language, affirmed between the 14th and the 17th centuries, particularly under the influence of the Hus site movement, suffered a period of decline after the Hussite defeat at Bila Hora in 1620. When at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century there began a nationalist movement in Bohemia, the linguistic task was not to create a new literary language and to choose a dialect basis, but rather to bring to life and to perfect that form of the literary language which had already been created in the past.

Thus we may state that three contemporary Slavic literary languages had been formed before the 19th century - Russian, Polish and Czech. (We must however keep in mind here that the last of these represents a new attempt to establish the continuity of a literary language of the past). All the other Slavic literary languages were formed during the last two centuries. It is natural that there should be more or less influence on the process of their formation from those Slavic literary languages already in existence. Still more important is the fact that, as we will see, for most of them the existence of already formed Slavic literary languages had a significant effect on their development as independent literary languages. All of these phenomena were furthermore dependent on historical processes which led to the creation of the contemporary Slavic nations, because a literary language is in the modern world one of the essential means of constituting a national unit.

5. Unlike Russian, Polish and Czech, other modern Slavic literary languages, created since the 18th century, had to be formed on a new dialect basis. Thus Serbo-Croatian is based on the Herzegovina dialects, Bulgarian on eastern dialects, Slovak on central dialects, Macedonian on central dialects, etc. In none of these cases do we have the introduction of a pure dialect type as the basis of the literary language, but rather the selection to a greater or lesser extend of features of a wider speech area. Combining the features of several dialects is for example characteristic of the Slovene literary language and is due to the great dialect differentiation of the Slovene linguistic territory, such that a single dialect could not be proscribed decisively. However it may be, these languages are marked by a greater similarity to contemporary popular speech than is the case for languages which continue in some way a longer literary tradition. The history of the creation of these languages, including Macedonian, shows us that the selection of their dialect basis can not be arbitrary, but that it is conditioned by a number of factors of objective character in the process of national consolidation of the given nation. The dominant role is played here by economic and cultural centers, which are particularly significant in this process and contribute especially to the breakdown of regional divisions by the gradual creation of a feeling for supradialectal linguistic bonds within a national unit. Of course it makes some difference whether a dialect type has enough features characteristic for the given language. Thus the attempt of Anton Bernolak, at the end of the 18th century, to create a Slovak literary language based on west Slovak dialects, did not succeed, one reason, among others, being that this basis was too close to the Czech language. It should be noted that when a literary language has once been created, it functions as a specific structure which can not be treated as any single dialect and which in many respects follows its own path of further development.

6. In addition to the selection of a dialect basis, contact with a language or languages of a higher culture is a particularly important factor in the development of new literary languages. The effect of this factor is quite naturally felt in the process of formation of the Slavic literary languages. The language of a more advanced culture helps the new literary language to develop more rapidly all those means of expression which it requires for carrying out its function in modern society.

Considering this question in detail, with attention paid to every Slavic language, would carry us far afield, for such influences are manifold. It is enough to give an overview of the matter and to emphasize some of its more significant aspects. In the western sphere primarily Latin and later German were those languages manifesting such influence. Contact with German was natural inasmuch as most of the Slavic nations in this sphere lived within the borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the eastern sphere Church Slavonic and later Russian had a significant influence on the formation of the contemporary Slavic literary languages. Of course the degree of this influence varied in each case, in both extent and force. Leaving aside the East Slavic languages, within the South Slavic group this influence was stronger for Bulgarian than for Serbo-Croatian.

This influence could be direct or indirect. Thus Church Slavonic had a direct effect upon the form of the Macedonian literary language at the beginning of the past century. Russian influence, on the other hand, reached Macedonia for the most part indirectly through Bulgarian, and to a lesser extend, through Serbian. In addition to this radiation, which covers a fairly wide cultural sphere, we have influences of more limited scope, which are also a normal phenomenon.. For example, contacts with both Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian affected the formation of the Macedonian literary language in that certain elements of these two languages have been adopted by the latter. The contact between Russian on the one hand and Ukrainian and White Russian is still more extensive.

Contact with a prestige language is such an essential factor in the process of formation of new literary languages that its effect is sometimes found even where at first glance it might not be suspected. Thus several Slavic languages of the western sphere show a marked tendency towards the derivation of new, domestic words, where in these cases other languages use international words. If in Czech or Slovak we find the word dejiny or definy, in Slovene zgodovina, in Croatian povijest, we can not satisfactorily explain why these languages avoid using an international word of the type (h)istonja unless we take into account the fact that in German it is usual in this situation to employ the domestic word Geschichte instead of an international word. We have in this only one example of how the lexicon of one language is structured according to models which it takes from a prestige language. Many of those features which separate the Croatian from the Serbian variant of the Serbo-Croatian literary language are due directly to the differing stimuli which these languages encountered in inter-lingual contacts. If one does not realize this, one gains a false idea of the causes of differentiation in a number of concrete cases. On the other hand, this example taken from the case of Serbo-Croatian is sufficient to illustrate that the stimuli mentioned combine within a language territory and that the division which we have made should not be understood schematically.

We have shown the importance to the development of a new literary language of contact with the language of a higher culture and of those positive stimuli which result from such contact. However, the question has another angle. The position of the prestige language may be so strong that in certain historical situations it may act as a deterrent to the full affirmation of a new literary language. Thus, for example, in Croatia and Slovenia in the past century the influence of the German language was so strong within the circle of the intelligentsia that the literary language based on the speech of the populace had a difficult time in coming into its own. "In almost every house of our Croatian cities - writes Mirko Bogovic in 1852 - you will hear no word other than a German one. Men and women, when appearing in public, speak only in German, business affairs seem simpler to most people when carried out in German, the same amusements more pleasing - if only they are inspired by the German language and spirit. The most noble human sentiments are expressed in German. Our marvelously lovely girls and women, when they pray to God in church, do so in German and from German prayer books." The situation in Slovenia is described by E. Kardelj as follows:

"Slovene was a "popular language", and German and Italian - languages of the intelligentsia. This Slovene language was adopted as a spoken language of the middle classes by the time of literary societies, in the sixties and seventies of the 19th century" (Razvoj sIovenachkog nacionalnog pitanja (The development of the Slovene National Question), Beograd, 1958, p.212). Of course in both these cases cultural domination combined with and was supported by practical political actions of Vienna and Budapest, designed to hinder the independent national development of these South Slavic lands.

As we mentioned earlier, the influence of the Russian language upon Ukrainian and White Russian is especially strong. Russian is used to a great extend in cities as a colloquial language. The linguistic situation is so structured that it serves as a sort of filter between peasant speech and the literary language. In the development of the Macedonian literary language as well, contact with prestige languages played and still plays a definite role. Still it must be noted that there is a difference in that the prestige of these languages, Greek, Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian, was never as great as in the previously discussed cases, for the simple reason that these languages themselves were still developing throughout the last hundred and fifty years.

7. Throughout the past two centuries the process of formation of the modern Slavic literary languages exhibited convergence and divergence, reflecting the varied conditions under which the national development of the Slavic nations took place.

Essential differences appear in the history of the Slavic nations in these two centuries. For a long period Russia was the only independent Slavic state, while among the South Slavs only two groups succeeded in creating their own states (Serbia and Bulgaria) in the course of the 19th century, and the other groups, as was the case with the West Slavs, belonged to states dominated by nations speaking other languages, up until the end of the First World War.

This historical reality is directly reflected in the development of the Slavic literary languages, especially as concerns divergent and convergent tendencies in this development.

In tsarist Russia movements towards the formation of the Ukrainian and White Russian literary languages did met not only with sup-port from the progressive forces of Russian society, but also with an unambiguous resistance and pressure on the part of the autocracy. Thus in the period from 1867 to 1905 it was strictly forbidden to publish scholarly or publicistic works in Ukrainian. Only belletristic literature was allowed, and that mainly in Russian orthography. The tsar's power interfered with the printing of books in White Russian as well, a language which had in the past century started to develop as a modern literary language, and even forbid the use of the term White Russia (1840). Only the October Revolution granted them the privilege of being used as independent literary languages and made it possible to establish for them grammatical and orthographic norms. The autocracy defended the position of a single Russian nation which should have a single literary language, and accorded Ukrainian and White Russian the status of dialects. Such an approach is typical and is always found under similar historical conditions, such as was the case also in Macedonia. What happens is that an organized state power, with unitaristic aims, hinders the national affirmation of nations which are in the process of forming their own national consciousness. This power wishes to present such a process as an attempt, at destruction, as an unreasoning attack on national unity, and on the other hand presents itself in the role of guardian of this unity and builder of a harmonious community.

Among most of the West and South Slavs, as we have mentioned, there was during the past century no such organized Slavic power which could intervene for its own purposes in the development of the literary languages. Such intervention could come only from a foreign government, motivated by political contingencies. Since most of the Slavic groups in this area were only starting to develop into modern nations it was not yet clear which path this development should take, nor was the selection of a literary language definitely resolved. Both questions had several answers, and within these nations themselves there were movements towards a variety of solutions.

Thus, among the South Slavs, a markedly convergent tendency led in the first half of the past century to the Illyrian movement. The IIlyrians considered that there was only one South Slavic nation and that it was necessary to create for it a unified literary language. A major result of this insistence was the creation of a unified literary language for the Serbs and Croats, however with two variants. Illyricism had little effect among the Slovenes, although it had as one of its representatives Stanko Vraz, whereas among the Bulgarians and Macedonians it found only indirect echoes. In the middle of the past century, as we know. there was a tendency towards the creation of a single common Bulgaro-Macedonian literary language, supported by a number of eminent men of culture. As we can see, this tendency was part of a wider context of national cultural development in the South Slavic area, and had the distinguishing features of such.

Among the West Slavs, in the first half of the past century, in present Czechoslovakia, a Slovak language made its first appearance alongside the Czech literary language. But for a long time even the Slovaks themselves would have trouble agreeing on the question of this language. Thus Jan Kollar and Pavel Jozef Shaflarik, the most prominent cultural and literary men of the times in Slovakia, supported the view that a single unified literary language be created for the Czechs and Slovaks. However, further developments went against this and led to the affirmation of an independent Slovak literary language.

Until now we have spoken of divergent tendencies in the development of the Slavic literary languages, considering the relations between the various Slavic nations. But such tendencies can be found within the history of a single nation. A particularly good example of this is the language situation in Slovenia during the first decades of the past century. At one point there were three variants of the literary language. First of all we have the basic variant, which is founded upon the language of writers during the Reformation and is based on dialects of Dolenjsko with features of the dialects of Gorenjsko. On the other hand, Frantisek Metelko attempts in his well-known grammar (Lehrgebaeude der slowenischen Sprache, 1825), to narrow the basis to a limited area of Dolenjsko. Still more divergent is the viewpoint of Peter Dajnko, author of a grammar (Lehrbuch der windischen Sprache, 1824) based on the dialect of Styria, who considered that Slovenes should write in three literary languages: those of Kranj, Carinthia and east Styria.

His viewpoint had some effect among his countrymen. (In 1834 there were already about 50,000 copies of books written in the variant suggested by Dajnko.) In addition to all these tendencies we have the insistence of certain men such as Stanko Vraz, Urban Jarnik and Matija Majar that the Illiryian program should be carried out. Despite all this disagreement, the modern literary language was essentially formed by the 1850's. Regional variation and still insufficient national unity were in this case cause for such differences in opinion on the selection of a literary language. Another reason for the existence of variants of the literary language, based on various dialects, could be that a nation was divided between two or more states. Thus in those parts that were not permitted to communicate freely there might appear rather significant differences in the form of the developing language. This was the case with the Ukrainian literary language, which developed in one variant in tsarist Russia, with Kiev as a cultural center, and in another in Galicia (Austro-Hungary), with L'vov as a cultural center. In Galicia one group of intelligentsia, the Ruthenians, even expressed the opinion that the Galician Ukrainians were a separate nation and that their language was different from that of the eastern Ukraine. Political action may even have as its goal to elicit divergent tendencies in the development of a literary language. Such an attempt was made, for example, during the years of the Informbiro campaign among Macedonian emigrants in the eastern lands, in that these emigrants were offered, instead of the literary language of SR Macedonia, a variant based supposedly on the dialects of Aegean Macedonia, but actually modeled on the Bulgarian literary language. However, this attempt found no support among the emigrants, who refused to accept anything other than a unified Macedonian literary language.

In the first decades of this century, with the breakup of the Turkish and Austro-Hungarian empires, and in general as a result of the First World War, new states were formed among the West and South Slavs, multinational ones - Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. The dominant role played by certain nations in these states during the period of bourgeois rule was expressed in determined action of the state in a unitaristic spirit. Thus, despite all eventual differences in social situation and in degree of activity, there was created a situation analogous to that which had existed in Russia. This situation differs radically from that of the 19th century, when tendencies towards language unification appeared spontaneously among the unfree nations of the West and South Slavic groups.

In the 19th century most of the Slavic literary languages had not yet been formed and the directions of development were still being sought, in accordance with the characteristic phases of development of national awareness of the Slavic nations. By the 20th century the process of formation of the individual Slavic literary languages had been completed. In the 19th century people believed with romantic fervor in the possibility of a future which they thought promised a deeper brotherly solidarity among the Slavs than was possible in reality. Among them were people such as the Macedonian Grigor Prlichev, who attempted to create a common Slavic literary language. Now, under these changed conditions, the autocratically oriented powers attempted, with the support of the state, to force the acceptance of their unitaristic conceptions. It is obvious that the difference between these two moments in the history of the Slavic nations is very great, and that there is a different significance to the two cases, even though at first glance they may appear identical. The fact that Jan Kollar was not in favor of the existence of an independent Slovak language can not be used as an argument against it, nor can Stanko Vraz's attitude towards the Slovenian language or Rajko Zhinzifov's towards the Macedonian language be used as arguments against their existence as independent literary languages. However, the autocratic approach does just this, in complete disregard of history.

We find an analogy between the above discussion and the events of the national development of Macedonia, including the process of formation of its literary language. Still, since the Macedonian literary language was the last to be formed of all the Slavic literary languages, there are certain specific features involved, which should not be passed over without mention. Since the national question was basically solved in Yugoslavia, the Macedonian literary language assumed its functions more rapidly and with greater scope than was the case for some of the languages in the other multinational states. However, for the first time, in the development of the Slavic literary languages it has happened that a language, spoken in a state guaranteeing it full rights of free use, has been subjected to political and associated scholarly attacks on the part of neighboring states. Of course this can not help but question on state integrity, and it represents a substantial obstacle in the path of development of international relations in the Balkans.

8. The development of the modern Slavic nations and of their literary languages leads to the question of the choice of a name for these nations and theirlanguages. Considering the various regional traditions and the fact that during the middle ages only a few national names were widely used among the Slavs, the choice was a significant one in its effect on the process of differentiation of the Slavic nations.

We will now discuss a few cases which are especially characteristic in this respect. In the East Slavic group, the term Rusin (Russian) was used among the Ukrainians and White Russians almost up to the 19th century, and the term ruskij (Russian) among the Great Russians. The common name for the languages of all three nations was ruskij (Russian). During the past century, the development of the modern East Slavic nations led to an ever greater need for a differentiation of these terms. The term ruskij (now restricted to the usage of earlier velikoruskij or Great Russian) was joined by the new terms ukrainskij (Ukrainian) and beloruskij (White Russian), used for the languages as well as the nations.

The situation in Croatia and Slovenia also deserves our consideration. Croatian writers of the 18th century and earlier often called their language by terms such as slovinski, slovenski, slavonski, slavinski or ilirski (Illyrian) rather than hrvatski (Croatian). In addition we find regional terms, such as bosanski (Bosnian), dubrovachki (Dubrovnik). Ivan Broz, discussing the situation at the beginning of the 19th century, tells us: "the Croatian language was called by most writers hrvatski, slovinski, ilirski and srpski (Serbian). These different names for one language were a direct cause for errors and confusion, trace of which has not yet been lost even today" (Crtice iz hrvatske knizhevnosti (Sketches of Croatian Literature), Zagreb, 1886, p.162). In the first half of the 19th century, in connection with the Illyrian movement, the term ilirski became popular for the name of the language. A long time passed before the term hrvatski came to be used as the common name for the Croatian language. Meanwhile, ilirski, being regionally unmarked, was a suitable term for referring to the literary language which was being formed at the time and which, as we know, was conceived as a common South Slavic literary language.

Until the 19th century the Slovenes also had no general name for their nation and language. The best known of the regional terms was kranjski (referring to the region known in German as Krain). Even in the second half of the 18th century there was still often a distinction drawn between the kranjski language and the vindski (Windish or Wendish) language (used in Carinthia and Styria). In 1779 Blaz Kumerdej addressed the Slovene philologists: "... the pleasant moment has come when there is no reason for us to be ashamed if we speak kranjski. All sorts of effort are being made this hidden language might emerge from darkness into light". E. Kardelj tells us: "Kumerdej, at least in the beginning, kept rather closely to the terms Kranjci (for the people) and kranjski. Jernej Kopitar was a freer spirit who came to the conclusion that the Slovene literary language must be unified. He was joined in this reasoning only by Gutsman from Carinthia. Therefore Kopitar's grammar of 1809, which rose above regional prejudices, is an epochal work in the process of national arousal" (op. cit., p.224). Oswald Gutsman, in his dictionary of 1789, tells us that kranjski and vindski "are shoots of the common Slavic language." Valentin Vodnik uses the term kranjski for the local language, and slovenski for the language of all Slavs. The grammar of Jernej Kopitar, written in German, appeared under the title:

Grammatik der slavischen Sprache in Krain, Karrn ten und Steyermark. Only by the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century is there ever greater use of the term slovenski, which, as we have seen, was more common in Croatian literary activity. Again a regionally unmarked term was given preference for use in referring to a national and linguistic community, still in the process of formation.

We have dealt with two typical cases of the selection of names in the history of the Slavic nations. Among the East Slaves a need arose for three terms to replace one general term, in order to reflect more closely historical reality. Among the Croats and Slovenes, on the contrary, there was a need for a single name to replace the earlier regional names.

In the case of the Macedonian national name and the name for the Macedonian language, use was made of a regional name with a long tradition, the scope of which changed with time. Within the Turkish empire non-Slavic neighbors usually called the Slavic population Bulgarians and their language Bulgarian (with the exception of the Albanians, who used the term Shqe meaning Slavs). This terminology took no account of the differences between the Slavic nations. Thus in the 17th century Evli Celebi speaks of Bulgarians even in Belgrade and Sarajevo. This name was used to some extent among the Macedonians as well, along with other general or regional terms. It is another matter to how great an extent the term was used and with what significance. One might realize here that within Bulgaria itself during the Turkish period the name Bulgarian had disappeared in several areas. The phrase "simple Bulgarian language (of to lower Myzia)" is found in several of the Macedonian so-called "Damascene" writings, as well as in the writings of Krchovski and Pejchinovich.

Those Macedonian cultural and literary men of the past century who were in favor of a common literary language for the Macedonians and Bulgarians imparted to the term a new significance, motivated by their national inclinations. Meanwhile, at the same time the term Macedonian was coming into use and served to express the conception of a separate nation and language.

From what we have said, it is evident that the Macedonian case was not an isolated one as concerns the selection of names, but rather a normal phenomena in the development of the modern Slavic nations and their literary languages. On the other hand, it would be hasty to conclude that the 19th century was a period of differentiation of something which had previously been unified and that this process was reflected in the differentiation of names. Actually unity is much greater during this period, despite all the national differentiation, than it was at any period in the past, under any so-called national unity. The process of formation of the modern nations which put an end to regional isolation, has gone as far as it could go and no further, not because there was an intentional effort towards fractionization, but because differentiation in the past did not allow for the creation of real conditions for still greater integration.

We have seen that the new Slavic languages had to overcome great obstacles and great resistance during their development. They were not greeted with immediate welcome, but accepted gradually, often after lengthy struggles against political and cultural challenges. All this is well known also in the history of the Macedonian literary language over the past hundred and fifty years. In order to not spend too much time here in giving a detailed discussion of the difficulties encountered by the individual Slavic languages during the course of their struggle for acceptance, and on the other hand in order to draw at least one parallel between their case and that of Macedonian, we will discuss the main phases in the creation of the literary language of another small Slavic nation, the Slovak nation.

After the short Great Moravian period (in the second half of the 9th century), a period of the activity of Cyril and Methodius and their disciples in the area of present-day Slovakia, the Slovaks remained for the rest of the Middle Ages without statehood or their own written language. They fell under the Hungarian rule, and were deprived of any possibility for creating their own literary tradition. The Slovaks used the Latin and the Hungarian languages, and from the 15th to the 19th century the Czech language, for writing purposes.

In the second half of the 18th century and even more in the 19th century a movement arose towards the creation of a Slovak literary language, which should replace the Czech language, despite the fact that the latter language was quite similar to the former and had been long used among the Slovaks. Specific historical conditions led to the formation of two nations, the Czech and the Slovak, and this reality was directly reflected in the linguistic situation.

The attempt of Anton Bernolak, at the end of the 18th century, to create a standard Slovak literary language based upon west Slovak dialects was premature and had no great effect. However the generaition of L'udovit Shtur, of the thirties and forties of the 19th century. succeeded in establishing a new literary language based on the central Slovak dialects

In the ranks of the Slovak intelligentsia of this period we do not find a unified opinion on the question of the literary language. Even the most prominent Slovak men of culture, Jan Kollar and Pavel Jozef Shafarik, as we mentioned already, were in favor of a common literary language for the Czechs and the Slovaks, in practice this being the Czech language with certain Slovak elements. Shtur himself and his followers wrote in the Czech language at first, until 1844, when they began a determined movement for the formation of a Slovak literary language. An important role in the process of formation of this language was played by the grammar of Martin Hattala (1850). But it is curious that even the author of this book was not sure of the necessity for linguistic division, and, as he tells us himself, "few reasons, and more political events" caused him to take up the support of the Slovak language. The historical process sought a different solution, and made use of the above-mentioned grammar, but its true tendencies were not yet clear, and people could contradict themselves. Defeat in the revolution of 1848 led to a decline in the movement towards an independent Slovak literary language. With the support of even Jan Kollar, who in 1849 became professor of Slavic history at the University of Vienna, governmental act proscribed the Czech language as a language of instruction in Slovak schools. It even seemed that the work of L'udovit Shtur would disappear without trace and that the Czech language would again become the literary language of the Slovaks.

But this was only a temporary lack of success. Further development of the Slovak nation in the 19th century led to an ever stronger movement towards a separate Slovak literary language, and this movement won out definitively. However, much time had yet to pass, even despite such a result of the historical process, before the Slovak language would be granted by Slavistics all the rights of an independent language. Even in 1886, almost half a century after Shtur's efforts, the eminent Croatian Slavicist Ivan Broz wrote the following statement about the Slavists view of the Slovak language: "All scholars are agreed in teaching us that Slovak is not a separate language, divided from Czech, but only a separate dialect of the single Czech language."

This statement sounds completely anachronous today. The Slovak language has been fully affirmed and Slavistics treats it as a separate language, as if there had never been any doubt of its status. However, even in the First Chechoslovak republic the official stand was that there was one Czechoslovak language in two variants, Czech and Slovak. This is a phase which has been passed in the process of affirmation of Slovak as a separate language of the Slovak nation.

The parallel which can be drawn between the development of the Slovak and that of the Macedonian language shows that the latter situation was not so much more complicated than the former. In the latter case the Slavic literary tradition was never interrupted. There was no such developed prestige language in Macedonia during the period of national uprising as was the Czech language in Slovakia. The contemporary literary languages of the neighboring Slavic nations, the Serbs and

Bulgarians, were themselves in process of formation during the 19th century and consequently did not themselves yet have very high prestige even among their own native speakers. of course, other historical circumstances hindered development, but we will not go into any more detail here, since our main purpose was not to show that obstacles are always placed in the path of development of a new literary language, but that these obstacles are removed as a result of efficacious cultural and political action on the part of the nation which speaks and writes this language.

10. Even when a new literary language is acknowledged there is still much to be done in order that its speakers might be granted the historical right to linguistic independence. The first reason for this is the political interest of powers which can not easily reconcile themselves with the independent development of the given nation. This political interest may raise its entire scholarly apparatus in defense of its positions, but it is clear that such action has little basis in scholarly interest.

Actually the acknowledgment of full linguistic independence is only one aspect of a broader question of the acknowledgment of the historical rights of a new nation. This question was important in the past as well, and is all the more so today, when entire continents are shaken by the process of affirmation of new nations. We meet with it, of course, in the differentiation of the Slavic nations. The problem is that there are nations whose historical rights are not disputed and on the other hand nations whose rights are disputed.

The former have behind them a long continuity of undisturbed statehood or have revivified traditions of statehood of the Middle Ages. They bear national names which have in the past been affirmed to a greater or lesser extent through state-forming activity. One would say that this is the ideal model for a nation, according to which it is defined most fully. However, as can be seen from the development of the modern world, the number of nations which do not fit this model is becoming increasingly greater, so that they are in the majority. It is evident that the number of glorious national names in the past is far smaller than the actual number of divisions. Today, when those nations which until recently did not even have their own literary tradition and whose history consists only of oral tradition, are becoming ever greater factors in history, the question of historical rights must be viewed in a different light than was done earlier. This question does not concern only small nations, existing somewhere at the margin of European history, but appears on a world scale as a question of complete affirmation of young national units.

The problem can be solved only if these nations are accorded all historical rights. A national group which has shown sufficient strength to form a modern nation, can not be deprived of its history, or, by a generosity necessary to no-one, have its history limited to the past twenty, fifty or one hundred years, only because this national group can not supply as proof of its past material labeled with a national name.

Perhaps, for example, it is difficult for some people to speak of the history of the Macedonian nation, when it is known that the use of the term Macedonian itself, in its present meaning, does not predate the 19th century. But in speaking of the history of the Macedonian nation we do not intend to prove that this name was used as a national label in who knows how distant a past. What we wish to show is that on this territory, inhabited by one ethnic group, regardless of which names were used at various periods by this group, there was carried out over the course of centuries a creative activity extending over the most varied areas of life, and that this activity, by no means accidentally, led to the formation of a separate national unit. We are speaking in this sense of the history of the Macedonian nation, fully conscious of the conditionality of the term when this is projected into the past. But such conditionality is present when we project into the past not only national names whose validity is under dispute, but, to a great extent, also names affirmed over a long period of historical continuity. Namely, it can be proved quite easily that even these names can not quite adequately cover all periods in the history of these nations, or frequently even their present area. They are a type of abbreviation which for the historian should not lose the property of conditionality which they contain to a greater or lesser extent. On the other hand, historical science can not deny to one nation that which it grants to others as something self-evident. Very instructive as an example of this are the cases, discussed earlier, of the choice of names for national languages.

An obvious historical fact can not be negated by clever arguments. Therefore those forces which oppose the process of national emancipation of a people, as soon as they are certain that they have no chance to stop this process, will retreat to a new line of battle. They will deny to this nation its past, claim for themselves the right to this past, and they breathe more freely afterwards, because past reality is not so self-evident. Such discussions may pose as scholarly. They hope that the historical rights will come to light again one day. We have here almost the behavior of a landowner who has been affected by agrarian reforms, and who, although the land has been given to people who worked it for generations and have turned over every clod of it in their hands, still retains his ownership papers in the hope that at a suitable moment he will be able to prove that the right to the land is his, not theirs.

What is usually done in such cases, with the support of scholarly argumentation, is the following. The appearance of a new national unit with a new literary language is acknowledged with heavy heart as an already accomplished fact, but the nation and its language are denied all rights to a separate history. This is considered a case of the secession from a national unit and the interpreter of its history is the "mother" nation, and not that part which "seceded" from the whole. We can follow the application of such a tactic in several cases during the development of the modern Slavic nations, as in the case of Slovak, as well as in the Macedonian situation, where the viewpoint towards Macedonian national and linguistic development has already been expressed quite a few times by the Bulgarian sociopolitical and scholarly public.

According to such a conception, an independent linguistic development, the result of particular political circumstances, is acknowledged only for the most recent times, considered by some to include no more than the period after the Second World War. It seems however that Bulgarian linguistics can not outgrow its old habits of treating Macedonian as a vernacular language, since we find even in recent dialect dictionaries and studies a wealth of material from the Macedonian dialects. In addition there is no concern for the fact that this is no longer the custom in mutual relations between the Slavic nations, although it is always possible to postulate with greater or lesser right communities of this sort. There is a similar reaction against the idea that the Macedonian nation might have the right to a separate treatment of its history. If one conceives reality in this manner, it would seem that the only right remaining to the Macedonian people is the use of a separate literary language, which is viewed as being without a popular basis, as something which appeared independently of one. We have cases of overcompensation, in that material from a language is treated as if there did not exist a national unit which speaks this language and as if this nation had little right to seek different treatment. This is the case not only within the field of linguistics, but also in other historical disciplines.

No-one complains when, for instance, the Slovaks include in their literary history Jan Kollar and Pavel Jozef Shafarik, although they supported the Czechoslovak cause and were not in favor of the creation of a separate Slovak language. So how can those men to whom the entire Slavic world owes its due be excluded from the history of the nation which bore them? It seems however, that this is still being denied in the case of the Miladinov brothers and other 19th century Macedonians, and their opinions are viewed from an angle which would seem to argue against an independent Macedonian development. When we consider the too cases above it is at least comforting to know that such errors may sometimes cease to be perpetrated.

A conception such as the one discussed above can not withstand scholarly criticism. It is a priori opposed to the completely logical statement that a historical phenomenon must have its own history. Both a nation and a language have the right to their history. Only such a principle is healthy and is sufficiently broad so as to include in such a history not only that which is specific to the given nation but also that which it has in common with other nations, even to the point of considering whether there was such a community and of what size. This principle prevents oversimplifications of history and the projection into the historical perspective of completely obvious prejudices, created under the influence of a national romantic spirit.

Of course we must speak here of communities because the South Slavic nations were always closely bound to each other and at various periods belonged to the same state units. But this certainly does not mean that we agree with exalted statements such as the following: "We may say that the Ohrid cultural and literary tradition pulses as one of the most lively arteries in the organism of the Bulgarian nation, in its historical fate..." "In the lands in which it is most developed it supports the Bulgarian consciousness not only under the conditions of the worst Turkish enslavement but in recent times also under the conditions of foreign attempts at the transformation of the local population." When the situation is presented in such an elevated manner we must devote even greater effort to an attempt to explain the facts as they really are, i.e. how was it possible to "transform" the "local population" into a separate nation.

It is not difficult, as we have said, to find other relevant examples of such controversy in the development of the modern Slavic nations. With the course of time everything has been solved in favor of those nations which had been denied their historical rights. We have spent more time on the Macedonian example because it allows us to contribute to a question which is not only Macedonian but has worldwide implications. Acting in such a manner, we were able to show that a young nation feels a painful pressure when it is denied its historical rights and that such a feeling is also a very important factor in buildup of tension between nations of the world. This is often not understood even against the background of a progressive movement. Since the interests of the nations cross in many ways, the full affirmation of a small nation in this respect is not an easy process and is attained gradually, not with petty bargaining with those who pretend to hold the key to their past but with constructive and culturally creative activity in all fields. Macedonian national affirmation is proceeding along the latter path. It is not the aimless groping of a nation which was late to develop, but rather part of a world process of elimination of tyranny in the field of the historical rights of a nation. No-one chooses into which nation he will be born. Everyone is part of a historical context. Progressive people, those who wish to put consciousness into the historical process, seek to affirm certain principles which operate outside of strict national boundaries and which contribute to the freer development of man. Every nation has the right to object to ambushes in its past, even if that past consists only of the rewards and glory earned by those simple people who have plowed and planted the soil throughout the world.

This text was taken from Blazhe Koneski's The Macedonian Language In the Development Of the Slavic Literary Languages, Kultura, Skopje 1968, for fair use only.

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