Settlement of Serbs in Vardar Macedonia During the Interwar Period

Authors:

Pages: 400-419
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54664/TRJX4863

Abstract:

The paper tracks the attempts of Belgrade officials to organize Serb settlements in the district of Vardar Macedonia during the interwar period. This process was an essential part of the agrarian reform in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, better known as Yugoslavia. The reform involved colonization carried out by World War I Serbian volunteers, as well as the poor, landless rural population. The settlement, especially for the Macedonian region incorporated in Serbia after the First Balkan War, marked the start of the attempts for assimilation of native Bulgarians and the act of debulgarization. The aim of the present work is to demonstrate the failure of this policy, which collapsed because of the lack of moral, material, financial, and economic motives and due to the resistance from the native inhabitants. The paper is based on original archive sources, which have become available to the Bulgarian reader for the first time. As regards to the period, this is the time when the Serbians get the opportunity to realize their policy of Serbization of the region in which they have had old historic interests.

Keywords:

settlers, land, Macedonia, colonization, property, Serbs

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