The Black Sea Greeks Ii: The Modern Era
Occasionally you still come across elderly residents of Sozopol speaking Greek among themselves - a reminder that the Greek population of the coast remained an important feature of local life well into the last century. The Greeks of the coastal towns had maintained some degree of wealth and influence under Turkish rule, and thus seemed poised to take advantage of the upsurge in commerce that occurred in Ottoman lands in the wake of the Crimean War. However, the decline of Turkish power and the rise of modern national movements had a detrimental effect on the cosmopolitan culture of the Black Sea towns, whose ethnic groups squabbled among themselves rather than unite to challenge the moribund Ottoman Empire. The Greeks, inspired by the existence of an independent Greek state from 1830 on, came under the influence of the Megali Idhea (Great Idea) of liberating all the Hellenes within Turkish territory and forging a new Byzantine empire. The idea that the Black Sea towns formed an integral part of the Hellenic world was anathema to the Bulgarians . Increasingly numerous in the coastal towns due to migration from the countryside, they saw the Greeks - who controlled the Church, education, and most local trade - as agents of the ruling Ottoman elite. The Ottomans played one group off against the other, eventually acquiescing to Bulgarian demands for the establishment of a Bulgarian Orthodox Church independent of Greek control - a move that infuriated the Greeks. With the foundation of a Bulgarian state after 1878, mistrust between the two groups faded into the background, only to re-emerge in 1906 when the Greek patriarchate in Constantinople tried to appoint a new bishop of Varna without the prior agreement of the Bulgarian government. The new bishop, Neophytos, was prevented from disembarking at Varna's harbour by a hostile crowd, and a donkey in priest's robes was paraded through the streets. Things took an uglier turn in Pomorie, where the local Greeks were rumoured to be arming themselves to prevent a Bulgarian takeover of their churches. Greek-owned shops and houses were put to the torch, and many Hellenic families fled to Greece. After World War I both governments agreed to settle their differences with an exchange of populations. According to the Mollov-Kafandaris Agreement of 1924, Black Sea Greeks would quit the coastal towns to be replaced by ethnic Bulgarians from Aegean Macedonia and southern Thrace. Greeks in Sozopol, Pomorie, Nesebar and elsewhere had to choose between declaring themselves to be Bulgarians and adopting Slav names, or leaving. The poorer Greek families stayed behind because they lacked the resources to contemplate uprooting themselves and starting afresh, and their descendants were largely assimilated by the Bulgarian majority over the next seventy years. Despite the population exchange, the atmosphere of the coastal towns didn't change that much - most of the new arrivals tended to be vine-growers and fisherfolk, very much like those who moved out, and locals still joke that the incoming Bulgarians from southern Thrace usually spoke better Greek than the Hellenes they were replacing. The bitterness that used to characterize relations between Greeks and Bulgarians on the coast has these days largely disappeared, especially now that the straitjacket of Communist educational policy - which trumpeted Bulgarian achievements at the expense of everyone else's - has been cast aside. Many Bulgarian families on the coast can dredge up a Greek ancestor or two - nowadays the subject of fond reminiscences rather than ethnic angst
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