Author: Dr. George Nakratzas

Publisher: BATAVIA PRESS, THESSALONIKI

ISBN: 960-85800-4-8 (in English)

Size: 17cm x 24cm (6.7" x 9.4"), 320 pages

To order your copy please contact Dr. Nakratzas at email: g.nakratzas@wxs.nl

Also:

Batavia Publications, 1997
P.O. Box 50573
54013 Thessaloniki
Greece
tel. ++30 31 239560
fax. ++31 7868 17300

The sole purpose of the first edition of this book was to give young Greeks another version of the origins of the modern Greek people, a rather different version, that runs counter to what has been taught in Greek schools for decades.

As the overtones of the modern Greek nationalist mythology gradually came into focus, culminating in such nationalist clichés as the assertion that 'the Greek nation has no kin', that the 'Skopjans' are 'Gypsies', or that the (Former Yugoslav) Republic of Macedonia is an 'ethnic hotchpotch', I was taken aback, and eventually got down to writing this, the third edition.

My hopes of doing what I could to set up an opposing force to this rampant nationalism have not been entirely in vain, considering that something like 3,000 copies have been sold all over the country. For a book of this nature, this is quite an achievement.

Viewed in the light of the general situation in Europe, Greece's present foreign policy has shown that the country's modern ideological armour is still very much the product of a nationalist upbringing, the roots of which go back to somewhere around the beginning of the nineteenth century. But the nation will never find its way in the European Union carrying this sort of ideological baggage.

One of the cornerstones of this ideology is the unrealistic theory that the modem Greeks, expressing as they do the enduring nature of the Greek language, are the biological descendants of the ancient Greeks. It was concocted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to serve as an ideological arsenal in the efforts to create a modern Greek nation in view of the impending collapse of the feudal, theocratic Ottoman Empire. The philosophical challenge to theocracy as a social model of governance first emerged, together with the concept of human rights, in north-western Europe in the sixteenth century, the century of philosophical humanism that produced Erasmus, Shakespeare, and other great thinkers. In Greece, 400 years after the theocratic beliefs of the Middle Ages were first challenged (in 1967, to be precise), there was still talk of 'the Greece of Greek Christians'; and even today we hear a great deal about 'Greek Orthodox culture' -- a culture that has never in fact existed as such, being known rather as 'Orthodox Eastern Roman culture'.

This country's cultural backwardness has been starkly underlined by the efforts of modern Greek society to use the institution of the European City of Culture (Thessaloniki in 1997) to vaunt the mediaeval ideal of the Orthodox Eastern Roman culture of Mount Athos, not only as a historical and cultural facet of the multiethnic Byzantine Empire, but also as a 'Greek' national and religious heritage. These efforts may even have been subsidised by the European Union, at a time when sixty per cent of the population of the Netherlands, one of the most religious countries in Europe, have officially rejected any form of religious doctrine.

A large segment of modern Greek society, which has never really embarked upon the process of ideological modernisation, oscillates desperately between modernism and Greek Orthodox fundamentalism, displaying an inherent inability to make any sort of ideological distinction between the terms 'race', nationality', and 'cultural or ethnic identity'. Apart from the fact that even well-respected journalists are engaged in daily attempts to convince the younger generation that we are directly descended from 'our ancient forebears', views that go against the theory of 'one race, one religion, one nation' are regarded as nationally reprehensible. It is on this theory that most Greeks base their belief that there are no minorities in our country, apart from the 'Greek Moslems' of Western Thrace. Greek citizens who have publicly proclaimed that they do not feel like Greeks but like ethnic Macedonians or ethnic Turks have been pursued and convicted by Greek justice, which just goes to show that modem Greek society not only fails to show the necessary respect for what is different, but cannot even tolerate it. And, being in the grip of a virulent Hellenocentric egomania, this same society, while denying Greek citizens the right to any ethnic identity other than Greek, constantly exhorts Greeks living in other countries to preserve their Greek ethnic identity.

Personally, I couldn't care less what race the citizens of modern Greece belong to; the only purpose of this book is to show, and substantiate with written documentation, how rotten and historically untenable obsessive nationalism is, in the hope of infusing as many young people as possible with respect for the right to self-determination of every Greek citizen and every ethnic group that calls itself a minority, as long as the country's laws and territorial integrity are respected.

Review from Nova Zora (No 5, April 1999)

"The writer, Dr George Nakratzas, has produced an exhaustive study of the settlement, movement, and composition of populations in Macedonia and Thrace in the last decades of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth century, based on a wide spectrum of Greek and foreign literature… A perusal of the book reveals that his aim is to show that in these areas of Greece -- as in the nearby areas in the neighbouring countries, and, indeed, all over the Balkans -- the racial make-up of the people living there is varied and ultimately indefinable… So we may say of this book that, however hard anyone may try to strip it of its merits (and read it with ill intent), there is one dimension which no reader can ignore or overlook, and that is its educational aspect. As a responsible citizen, Nakratzas is seeking to convince his fellow citizens that the racism and nationalism that sometimes carry them away are underpinned (in whatever overt or covert form) by racial theory, which in turn is shored up by major interests, immense stupidity, and terrible psychological complexes. He also wants them to see that only a broad education and an ever vigilant conscience that is not easily entrapped will protect them from people trying to secure their commitment to suspect ideas which, whether small or great, are always atrocious in their devastating consequences."

[Note: In an effort to assist the the Macedonians of Greece with their human rights struggle Dr. Nakratzas is generously donating the profits from the sale of this publication to the RAINBOW party .]

Ellinikos Vorras (Thessaloniki, 16 October 1988)
Nakratzas also publishes a multitude of historical facts of which both the general public and the average student of history were hitherto ignorant. ... And the question is: do sorcerors' apprentices just get their fingers burnt, or do they light fires?

Ihneftis (Athens, September 1989)
Another recent contribution is a book by George Nakratzas, who, although a doctor of medicine, nonetheless tackles this difficult subject. The lengthy title of his book (The Close Ethnological Kinship between the Modem Greeks, Bulgarians, and Turks) gives an indication of its subject matter. … One wonders whether he means racial intermingling (mixing of blood, to put it more simply) or mutual cultural influences, interrelations, and osmosis? If the former (and the numerous historical sources he quotes prove that it did happen to a considerable extent), then …

Author's note: Despite his lack of charity, Mr. Gousgounis is quite right to take me to task for using the term 'ethnological.' The sole purpose of my book is indeed to examine the racial kinship between the Balkan peoples. The mistake was due to my efforts in 1988 to retaliate to the nationalistic insults that were being bandied about at the time with regard to the inhabitants of the Republic of Macedonia ('Skopjan Gypsies,' ethnic hotchpotch,' and similar gems).

Avgi (Athens, 6 June 1993)
Its abundance of systematically quoted sources makes Nakratzas's two-volume work essential reading for any dispassionate reader who would like to know the true history of this region, undistorted by nationalist myths.

Neo Vima (Naoussa, 16 January 1997)
We've said it before (of another book) and we'll say it again: whether or not one agrees with Nakratzas's views, one has to concede that both his book and his opinions are thoroughly substantiated. Some people may disagree with what he says, or even be infuriated by it. I think this book will make them think again.

Pavlos Zermias (Greece's Image Abroad, I. Sideris Publications, Athens)
George Nakratzas has written two very noteworthy books in a bid to take a stand against nationalism and make a contribution to 'the further development of the ideology of Panbalkan co-operation.' Regardless of whether, or how far, what he has to say on various specific subjects holds water, he has shown courage and an independent mind at a time of murderous racial frenzy in the Balkans.

Nea Anatoli (Athens, 26 April 1998)
Nakratzas's study, with its copious historical data, makes an important contribution to the struggle against nationalism, because its main aim is to demolish one of the fundamental tenets of Greek chauvinism: namely that the modem Greek nation is directly, racially descended from ancient Greece. He marshalls some telling evidence to topple the ideological foundation of chauvinism, the Great Idea, which bears more responsibility than anything else for the tribulations suffered by this people and this land.

Anihnefsis (Thessaloniki, March-April 1998)
If [Nakratzas] intended not to write history, but simply something better than a history book, he's succeeded. …I could never agree with the bigoted, and therefore stupid, opinion that this book is insignificant. I should say rather that it will be significant for future historians, with regard not so much to the period to which it refers, but rather to the period out of which it emerged, i.e., the Greece of the Balkans in the 'nineties.

Hronos (Komotini, 30 January 1998)
[Nakratzas] wants to inspire as many young people as possible with respect for the right to self-determination, provided that the laws and the territorial integrity of the country are respected. He considers it quite unrealistic to suppose that the modern Greeks, despite the enduring continuity of the Greek language, are directly descended from the ancient Greeks. This is Nakratzas's general position, and he calls a number of very important issues into question, inviting all thinking individuals to join the debate. Three thousand copies of the book have been printed.