XII. The Statistical Battle for the Population of Greek Macedonia by Iakovos D. Michailidis Most of the reports on Greece published by international organisations in the early 1990s spoke of the existence of 200,000 “Macedonians” in the northern part of the country. This “reasonable number”, in the words of the Greek section of the Minority Rights Group, heightened the confusion regarding the Macedonian Question and fuelled insecurity in Greece’s northern provinces.1 This in itself would be of minor importance if the authors of these reports had not insisted on citing statistics from the turn of the century to prove their points: mustering historical ethnological arguments inevitably strengthened the force of their own case and excited the interest of the historians. Tak- ing these reports as its starting-point, this present study will attempt an historical retrospective of the historiography of the early years of the century and a scientific tour d’horizon of the statistics – Greek, Slav and Western European – of that period, and thus endeavour to assess the accuracy of the arguments drawn from them. For Greece, the first three decades of the 20th century were a long period of tur- moil and change. Greek Macedonia at the end of the 1920s presented a totally different picture to that of the immediate post-Liberation period, just after the Balkan Wars. This was due on the one hand to the profound economic and social changes that followed its incorporation into Greece and on the other to the continual and extensive population shifts that marked that period. As has been noted, no fewer than 17 major population movements took place in Macedonia between 1913 and 1925.2 Of these, the most sig- nificant were the Greek-Bulgarian and the Greek-Turkish exchanges of population under the terms, respectively, of the 1919 Treaty of Neuilly and the 1923 Lausanne Convention. The outcome was a Macedonia whose ethnological composition had been radically transformed. In 1930 there were five principal language groups living in Greek Macedonia: Greek-speakers, Slavic-speakers, Turkish-speakers, Jews and Armenians. This study will not be looking at all of them, but will be confined exclusively to the issue of the Slavic-speaking populations. More specifically, the fundamental question it will try to answer is this: What was the numerical size of the Slavic-speaking population of Greek Macedonia following the exchange of populations, that is, at the end of the 1920s? This specific question becomes even more challenging in the light of the fact that, on the one hand, Greek and Slavic historians give significantly different answers to it, and, on the other, that this issue was the focus of particularly vexed ethnic confrontations and irre- dentist claims. At this juncture there are three points that must be made: first of all, the statistics of a century ago were not based on uniform and objective criteria and, as a result, their reliability cannot be checked; secondly, these statistics are more a reflection of how their compilers saw the subjects surveyed and less of how those subjects saw them- selves3; and, thirdly, the use of the term “statistics” refers to population data derived from information gathered by local government employees or ecclesiastical officials: it does not indicate an official census, that is, a systematic enumeration of the permanent population, but rather an assessment of that population’s numerical dimensions. The Greek Consul at Monastir spoke of these particularities, and of the difficulties of statis- tical analysis, in a dispatch to the Greek Foreign Minister at the turn of the century:4 “Comprehending the great utility of statistical information for the whole of Macedonia as long as it is accurate, I have for many years now of my own 270 THE STATISTICAL BATTLE FOR THE POPULATION OF GREEK MACEDONIA initiative devoted myself, insofar as my other work permits, to gathering sta- tistical material for the Vilayet of Bitola. Unfortunately, I have not been able to complete this important work, on account of the great and at times insuperable difficulties that arise in the accomplishment of the task. The of- ficial Turkish information published in the Year Books (Salnâme) is confused and far from complete and the names are often distorted. The di- ocesan records are meagre and unreliable, because the information is collected unwillingly and only concerns the Orthodox Christians within the diocese and even then with no sort of order or any distinction of administra- tive divisions. Those Greeks and teachers in remote districts who could be used to gather information are reluctant to undertake such a commission for fear lest in their inquiry they be misunderstood by the Turkish authorities or traduced to them; and when they do, they rarely complete the work exactly as instructed and in accordance with the examples furnished, so that, need- ing new clarifications, the task of compiling statistics is everywhere difficult, while in Turkey for the reasons set out it is extremely difficult and requires much time and persistence. The statistics from the churches and other sources being inaccurate and cursory are of no value whatsoever and may lead those who rely on them to faulty conclusions”. As far as Greek historiography is concerned, the predominant view of the size of the Slavic-speaking population was expressed by Alexandros Pallis, member of the Greek- Bulgarian Mixed Commission during the critical decade of the 1920s. Pallis claimed that, at the beginning of 1925, while the reciprocal Greek-Bulgarian emigration was still under way, there were about 77,000 “Bulgarisants” (as he called them) in Macedonia, representing approximately 5.3% of the region’s total population. He arrived at this fig- ure by subtracting from the 104,000 pro-Bulgarians of 1920 the 27,000 Bulgarians who had emigrated to Bulgaria under the terms of the Treaty of Neuilly by the end of 1924. The number of Greeks in Macedonia, meanwhile, soared during this period to 1,277,000, or 88.3% of the region’s total population.5 In a later study, compiled in 1929, by which time the exchange of populations was complete and the ethnological composi- tion of Macedonia had crystallised, Pallis put the number of “Bulgarians” in Macedonia at 82,000.6 The official Greek census of 1928, which probably relied on Pallis’ work, reported a figure of 81,984, of whom 80,789 lived in Macedonia and spoke “Slav- Macedonian”, but did not state the criteria on which this conclusion was based. Accord- ing to the 1928 census, the “speakers of Slav-Macedonian” lived in the following regions:7 IAKOVOS D. MICHAILIDIS 271 Region Number Drama 4,114 Thessaloniki 1,427 Imathia 1,374 Kilkis 265 Langada 308 Paeonia 3,974 Pieria 20 Kavala 23 Kozani 3,310 Pella 19,570 Serres 7,715 Florina 28,886 Kastoria 9,680 Chalkidike 5 Mount Athos 118 Total 80,789 Pallis’ figure of 104,000 “Bulgarisants” in Greek Macedonia at the beginning of the 1920s was based on statistics published in 1904 by the official Greek government mouthpiece, Bulletin d’ Orient8. The statistics published in the Bulletin d’ Orient re- ported the ethnological composition of the vilayets of Thessaloniki and Monastir at the turn of the century to be:9 Vilayet Greeks Bulgarians Thessaloniki 372,831 189,447 Monastir 279,964 142,715 Total 652,795 332,162 The Bulletin d’ Orient statistics were used fifteen years later by Vladimir Colocotronis, who, in his classic study La Macedoine et l' Hellenisme. Etude historique et eth- nologique10, attempted to adjust them to the geographical boundaries of Greek Macedonia. His conclusion was that on the eve of the Balkan Wars there were 488,484 “Patriarchist Greeks” and 115,909 “Exarchist Slavs” – or “Bulgarians”, as he called them – living in Greek Macedonia. Colocotronis gives the following statistical break- down:11 Greeks Bulgarians Vilayet of Thessaloniki Sanjak of Thessaloniki Kaza of Thessaloniki 50,682 4,239 Kaza of Kassandra 40,746 0 Kaza of Mount Athos 3,761 210 Kaza of Langada 20,484 2,240 Kaza of Kilkis 625 17,436 Kaza of Katerini 18,429 0 Kaza of Veroia 26,971 0 Kaza of Edessa 16,859 5,149 Kaza of Yannitsa 18,583 1,763 Kaza of Gevgelija* 664 3,187 Kaza of Doirani* 518 1,307 272 THE STATISTICAL BATTLE FOR THE POPULATION OF GREEK MACEDONIA Greeks Bulgarians Sanjak of Serres Kaza of Serres 48,905 10,290 Kaza of Zichna 23,155 3,700 Kaza of Siderokastro 6,740 15,778 Kaza of Nevrokopi 2,530 11,611 Sanjak of Drama Kaza of Kavala 9,500 0 Kaza of Eleutheroupolis 10,175 0 Kaza of Chryssoupolis 460 0 Kaza of Drama 9,900 2,980 Thasos 13,050 0 Vilayet of Monastir Sanjak of Monastir Kaza of Florina* 17,455 16,137 Kaza of Monastir 7,535 2,374 Sanjak of Servia Kaza of Kozani 16,120 0 Kaza of Servia 14,690 0 Kaza of Grevena 25,530 0 Kaza of Anaselitsa 23,653 0 Kaza of Ptolemaida 6,770 1,460 Sanjak of Korytsa Kaza of Kastoria 45,733 15,934 Kaza of Korytsa* 8,261 114 Total 488,484 115,909 [The asterisk (*) indicates a kaza of which only part was in Greek Macedonia. More spe- cifically, the compilers counted 23 villages in the kaza of Gevgelija, 8 villages in the kaza of Doirani, the city of Siderokastro (Demir Hisar) and 37 villages in that kaza, 14 villages in the kaza of Nevrokopi, the city of Florina and 54 villages in that kaza, 24 villages in the kaza of Monastir and 21 villages in the kaza of Korytsa].