Serbianisation
[3] Uglješa Mrnjavčević, a fourteenth-century Serbian despot who ruled much of Macedonia on behalf of Serb Emperor Stefan Uroš V attempted to Serbianise the monastic community of Mount Athos.
[4] The historical sources demonstrate that before the 19th century and the rise of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire the majority of the ordinary Orthodox Christians on the Balkans had only a vague idea of their ethnic identity.
[5] Some Serbian sources from the mid 19th century, correctly, continued to claim, the areas southeast of Niš, including Southern Pomoravlje and Macedonia, were mainly Bulgarian populated.
Serbia had successfully homogenized and modernized these new territories and in this way it assimilated the local Bulgarians of the Timok and Morava river valleys toward the end of the nineteenth century.
[26] Pre-Ottoman Serbian Empire and its institutions had no time to serbicize the Balkan Vlachs in medieval Serbia, since it soon fell under the Turkish dominance; that process was not finished until the 19th century.
During the 16–18th centuries the amalgamation of the process of sedentarization of the Orthodox Vlachs and their gradual fusion into the Serbian rural population reached a high level and was recognized by the Ottoman authorities.
Patriarchate of Peć and later Metropolitanate of Karlovci Serbianized parts of Balkan Orthodox people such as Bulgars, "Vlachs", Albanians, Romanians and a significant number of Catholic Croats.
[30][31] Following the First World War, the new Kingdom was reliant on patronage from the Serb monarchy that resulted in tendencies of centralisation and Serbianisation that other ethnic communities in the country opposed.
[35][36] We find here, as everywhere else, the ordinary measures of "Serbization" — the closing of schools, disarmament, invitations to schoolmasters to become Servian officials, nomination of "Serbomans", "Grecomans" and Vlachs [referring to Aromanians or Megleno-Romanians], as village headmen, orders to the clergy of obedience to the Servian Archbishop, acts of violence against influential individuals, prohibition of transit, multiplication of requisitions, forged signatures to declarations and patriotic telegrams, the organization of special bands, military executions in the villages and so forth.
[44] Following the First World War Serbian rule was reinstated over Vardar Macedonia, the local Bulgarian or Macedonian population was not recognised and an attempted Serbianisation occurred.
[48] Firstly, to legitimate its control, the state based its claims to Macedonia as an inheritance of the medieval monarch Stefan Dušan or as a promised land given by God to the Serb people.
This means that in the period between the two World wars the Kingdom succeeded through the agricultural and the administrative colonizations to create significant Serbian ethnic minority in Vardar Macedonia.
[56] As a counteraction to Serb efforts the paramilitary IMRO began sending armed bands into Yugoslav Macedonia to assassinate officials and stir up the spirit of the locals.
Following regular attacks by pro-Bulgarian IMRO komitadjis on Serbian colonists and gendarmes, the government appealed to Association against Bulgarian Bandits, responsible for the massacre of 53 inhabitants of the village of Garvan in 1923.
[57] Regions with pro-Bulgarian sentiments such as Tikveš and Bregalnica were violently Serbianised by Serb četniks that resulted in the population being gathered up for forced labour and local leaders killed.
[49] In the 1930s a more homogeneous generation was growing up in Vardar Macedonia, which resisted Serbianisation and increasingly identified itself as Macedonian, but which also made it clear that the Bulgarian idea was no more the only option for them.
[55] The state controlled the local tobacco monopoly and acquired a steady and sizable amount of revenue without investing much in return to raise the living standards of the inhabitants.
[60] A high rate of turnover existed among ministers and officials who mainly showed up prior to elections or to advance their own career and often staff in the local administration from other parts of the country were incompetent and corrupt.
[61] Locals were excluded from involvement in the sociopolitical system, suppression of elites occurred and state security forces instilled an environment of fear among inhabitants.
[55] During the interwar period the Croatian question dominated politics, Macedonia was sidelined and the view of the time was that discontent within the region could be contained through use of repressive measures.
[69][51] It was a settlement plan to encourage Serb and Montenegrin settlers from other parts of Yugoslavia to resettle in Kosovo through preferential treatment of financial and land incentives to strengthen the Slavic element.
[69][70] The process involved the construction of new settlements in Kosovo and due to serbianisation efforts some were named Lazarevo, Obilić, Miloševo after heroes from Serbian epic poetry.
[69] Other parts of the Serbianisation policy in Kosovo included establishing an effective government administration and refusing autonomous Albanian cultural development in the region.
[80] Yugoslav Communists recognized the existence of a separate Macedonian nation to quiet the fears of the Slavic population that a new Yugoslavia would continue to follow the policies of forced serbianization.
[103] Several months prior to May 1992 a division of armies and its assets was planned as authorities in Belgrade assessed its involvement in Bosnia would receive a hostile international reaction along with being accused of aggression.
[107] On 25–26 August 1993 at a gathering the Supreme Defense Council of retired generals, Milošević's full control over the Yugoslav army was complete as the few remaining traces of the JNA were done away with.
[123] It outlined government benefits for Serbs who desired to live in Kosovo with loans to build homes or purchase other dwellings and offered free plots of land.
[123] Serbianisation of the Kosovo economy also occurred with areas inhabited by Serbs receiving investment, new infrastructure and employment opportunities, while Albanians overall were either excluded or had limited economic participation.
In January 1999, the government authorities initiated a planned offensive against Kosovo Albanians that involved the violent liquidation of assets aimed at their displacement and Serbianisation of the region.
[136] According to the university professor Dimitar Mirchev in the relations between Belgrade and Skopje, there is an imbalance in the presence of Serbian culture in North Macedonia, but it would be an exaggeration to describe it as a Serbianisation.
