The Idea that in the year 1991, a Slavic population living to the North of Greece would go against the mainstream and Identify themselves with the ancient-Kingdom of Macedon was never a consideration nor a possibility in the minds of the Greeks and some International strategists...on the grounds the racial difference between Greeks and Slavs would simply reject the Idea and not allow it to take root, but how wrong was that! With hindsight, the signals were there, and they should have been picked-up. In-fact, the vital signs were apparent as far back as in 1944 and 1945 respectively
when the Croatian Marshal Tito, the Communist dictator of Yugoslavia decided in 1944 to create a Macedonian-language
and then complimented that decision with the creation of a brand-new Socialist Republic of Macedonia just one year later in 1945.

What were the Greeks doing...Sleeping ???

No, the Greeks were Not Sleeping, they were fighting a bitter and fierce Ideological Civil War between Royalists and Communists. The Communists lost and fled Greece knowing full-well they would have faced charges of Treason and other crimes against the state. The Kingdom of Hellas lost more of it's population fighting the Communists than WWII fighting the Germans Italians and Bulgarians.

Greek Communists were willing to sell their Hellenic birthright to Slavs. Greek, Serb and Bulgarian Communists fought together to see the creation a Communist Macedonian state which if materialized, would have reduced Hellenic borders at Thessaly...enabling Bulgaria to take Eastern-Thrace and Slavdom to stake a claim to the Aegean Sea.

The Greeks fought bravely during WWII which reduced the country to poverty...Greeks fought more bravely immediately after WWII [1945-1949] during the Greek Civil War which devasted Greece more, utterly and completely.

Ask a Greek today, whether he trusts Slavs or Communists ???

The answer is predictable, right!

FYRoM's ex-Yugoslavs are the progeny of those Greek and Slavic Communists who fought together in an attempt to take Macedonia away from Hellas. That Greek Communist componant sold their Hellenic birthright to Slavdom...they were willing to see their own country of birth shrink in size, to expand Slavdom with a more enlarged Bulgaria buffered from Greece by a Communist Macedonia.

I say again: Ask a Greek today, whether he trusts Slavs or Communists?