The Eternal Problem of Macedonia

Abstract

over a quarter of this century, as well as a few decades before the end of the last century, a little bit of useless economic territory, Macedonia, has been the core of most of the problems of the Balkans and of Europe's power politics. New variations of the old problem have cropped up again in 1945, 1946, and 1947. While formerly the problem of Macedonia was only a European problem, today it is a world-wide problem which is of supreme importance to the United States, whose former ideological Maginot Line lay along the coast of Great Britain and Western Europe. In fact, in the spring of 1947, a peace settlement with the prime mover of World War II suddenly was shifted into the background, while trouble in Britain and danger in Greece overshadowed the Moscow Conference and confronted the United States Government with a crisis that Washington officials called exceedingly grave; President Truman, by cancelling a longplanned trip to the Caribbean, and by delivering a formal address to Congress on the subject, emphasized official attitude. Underlying this crisis was the ever-returning problem of Macedonia, within the framework of the decision of London to cut down British aid to Greece to a size that hard-pressed Britain of 1947 can support. United States was invited to move in. Further, in the background, was the drive for control of the Dardanelles and the Eastern Mediterranean and the drive of the pro-Soviet regimes around Greece against the proAmerican-British regime in Athens. Communist bands in Macedonia were creeping across the frontiers from Albania, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria, and aggravated an uprising that for years to come will threaten to produce an armed if unofficial showdown between the British and Americans on the one hand, and the Russians on the other. The talking stage took place at the turn of 1947, when a commission appointed by the Security Council of the United Nations investigated the cause of the border battles. A prelim-