THREE PARTITIONS OF MACEDONIA

Before The collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the two Balkan Wars (1912-1913) changed the situation in the Balkans, but did not mean freedom for Macedonia and the Macedonians. With the 1913 Treaty of Bucharest, Macedonia was divided between Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria.
The Balkan Wars and the First World War marked a period of unseen terror, atrocities and brutal assimilation. The Macedonians were forcibly mobilized in foreign armies and were killed en masse on the fronts.
Following the war, the 1919 Treaty of Versailles only endorsed the previous division. This treaty had disastrous consequences for Macedonia. It shattered the geographic, ethnic and economic unity of the Macedonia people.
After As a result of the policy of interest spheres by the Great Powers, the Macedonian Question remained open. Vardar Macedonia (the territory of today's Republic of Macedonia) became part of the newly - established Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovens - later known as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia - which existed until 1941. The largest part of Macedonia, geographically known as Aegean Macedonia, covering an area of 34,356 square kilometres, was incorporated into Greece. Prior to the Balkan Wars, the Greeks constituted not more than 10% of the population living in the Aegean part of Macedonia. Macedonian was the prevailing language, and Greek was the language of a minority. The ethnic composition started changing in favour of the Greek element only after 1928 when Aegean Macedonia was systematically colonized by a population of various ethnic affiliations (Greeks, Turkish-speaking Karamanlis, Armenians, etc.). The territory of Pirin Macedonia, covering an area of 6,798 square kilometres and having a compact Macedonia population, was assigned to Bulgaria.
The position of the Macedonian people in the three dismembered parts in the period 1918-1941 was extremely difficult. The Yugoslav, Greek an Bulgarian governments created special propaganda machinery for national oppression and assimilation. They used various forms of economic pressure, political, military and police terror, unprecedented in modern European history. Brutal denationalization, replacement of Macedonian names and toponomy was carried out and the Macedonian language was suppressed. Yet, in spite of the colonization with a non-Macedonian population of above 750,000, between the two world wars the Macedonians still formed the majority of the population in all parts of Macedonia.

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