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Salonica Terminus: Travels into the Balkan Nightmare, by Fred A. Reed
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A vivid, contemporary travelogue by Fred A. Reed. From Bosnian actuality to Macedonian potentiality, Reed’s travels in this region lead him to encounter a landscape inscribed with a shocking testimony: ethno-racialist aspirations remain the only coin in which peoples feel they can express their belonging, their social solidarity – the only credible alternative to the blight of free market globalism.
- Sales Rank: #3092288 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-09-07
- Released on: 2015-09-07
- Format: Kindle eBook
From the Back Cover
From Bosnian actuality to the emerging Macedonian potentiality as the next Balkan flashpoint, Reed's recent travels in this region encounter a landscape inscribed with a shocking testimony: ethno-racialist aspirations remain the only coin in which peoples feel they can express their belonging, their social solidarity; the only credible alternative to the blight of free market globalism.
About the Author
Fred A. Reed
International journalist and award-winning literary translator Fred A. Reed is also a respected specialist on politics and religion in the Middle East. After several years as a librarian and trade union activist at the Montreal Gazette, Reed began reporting from Islamic Iran in 1984, visiting the Islamic Republic 30 times since then. He has also reported extensively on Middle Eastern affairs for La Presse, CBC Radio-Canada and Le Devoir. Reed is a three-time winner of the Governor General’s Award for translation.
Most helpful customer reviews
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
"Beware of Greeks bearing nation states"?!
By George Baloglou
The name of the book is largely inspired by the spring 1943 departure of Thessaloniki's Sephardic Jews to their deaths in German concentration camps; and it is from Thessaloniki that the author departs for a train journey into the past and present of a part of the Balkans where Jews and many others coexisted under the Ottomans for several centuries. As Greek language (if not culture) did have considerable influence over the Christian peoples of that region during the Ottoman period, it is natural for the author to take a closer look at the contact of Greek institutions and governments towards them and the Ottomans during and after the period in question.
It is fair to say that Hellenism -- whatever that means! -- has been dominated by the Romans, the Jews (by way of Christianity) and the Turks. The first two conquerors were at least partially overpowered from within (by way of the Eastern Eastern Empire (Byzantium) and the Greek language), but the third one stood its ground: an exception that, quite naturally, most individuals or institutions "closely associated" with Hellenism would rather forget about. Mr. Reed has trouble understanding or even forgiving this "forgetfulness". Inquisitive and poetic traveler as he happens to be, he surprises the reader from time to time with such fascinating incidents as Greece's failure to "remember" that a 19th century Egyptian king was born an Albanian Muslim in the Greek town of Kavala.
Much less innocently, Mr. Reed likens the capture -- nowadays political correctness hardly allows one to say "liberation" -- of Thessaloniki by the Greek army in 1912 to the seize of Sarajevo 80 years later: both events reflect on a lack of "cosmopolitanism", he argues in passing. With the ghastly events of Bosnia very fresh in their minds -- the book was published in 1996 -- contemporary readers are likely to lose any sympathy for Greek gains against the Turkish oppressor, be it in 1912 or 90 years earlier: the very war of independence and the existence of the modern Greek state may now be viewed, under very contemporary lenses, as unfortunate deviations from the Ottoman "cosmopolitanism"! (More to the point, Thessaloniki fell to the Greeks quickly and relatively peacefully, and its two largest ethnic groups, Jews and Turks, vanished only decades later due to much bigger events associated with the two world wars.)
This fundamental mistrust toward the Greek nation sets the tone for the rest of the book. We are led to believe, or at least suspect, that the Balkan Christians' interest in educating themselves or their offspring in Greek had more to do with the cunningness of the Greek Patriarchate than with the self-evident importance of Greek as the language of the Bible, culture and Balkan commerce. (And yet eight decades after the Bulgarian monk Paisi called for Bulgarian learning and awakening in 1760, Constantin Miladinov was translating Plutarch into *modern* Greek ... before Russian instigation turned him into a Bulgarian patriot (later to be claimed by the "Macedonians"), that is.) And the conflict between Greece and FYROM is viewed as having its roots at the oppression of a very distinct (?) ethnic group ("Macedonians") by an intolerant nation state (Greece) throughout the 20th century, rather than at the collision between two well defined (by church and school), equally intolerant, nationalisms (Greek and Bulgarian). And so on.
On the positive side, the book makes for a very interesting reading and exploration of Balkan history and folklore. For example, we hear an Albanian poet stating that "(most) Albanians became Moslems in order to protect their language and resist the Turks" and an ethnic Greek in Albania complaining about the Greeks' lack of interest in their own classic works (and language). The situation in Kosovo (before NATO's intervention) is examined quite thoroughly and vividly, even though the author has barely bothered to interview members of the Serbian minority. His discussion of FYROM varies from the situation in Albanian-dominated Tetovo to an otherwise open-minded local woman's claim that the world's strongest dog is Macedonian, not Serbian.
Back to Thessaloniki, the author takes a thorough and balanced look at the development of the "Mother of Israel"'s Jewish community between their expulsion from Spain and their extermination by the Nazis. He even delves, assisted by Greek writer Tolis Kazantzis, into the "communist" politics of the 14th century movement of the Zealots: not a bad idea, given that their contemporary and sympathizer, Nikolaos Kavasilas, the man who wrote that "God's love for people depleted Him", is still popular among Thessalonican intellectuals! (Neither Kavasilas nor Metropolitan Eustathios' legendary 12th century work "Commentary to Homer" are mentioned as strong links between Thessaloniki's past and present; at least colorful writer Ilias Petropoulos has been interviewed, although we never hear why exactly he left Thessaloniki for Paris with "no intention of ever returning".)
Having grown up in an ethnically pure Thessaloniki, I would like to assure Mr. Reed and his readers that my hometown was a vibrant city, despite its lost cosmopolitanism; and it is becoming even more interesting now that immigrants from Eastern Europe and elsewhere are taking the place of its lost or assimilated minorities (and majorities). Building a Greek Thessaloniki (and state) under very difficult circumstances was certainly not a perfectly smooth process, and our Balkan neighbors may well have some fairly justified complains against us: while I do not feel that we should be apologetic or rueful about the past (and our inevitable manipulation of it), as Mr. Reed seems to suggest, I would recommend that we Greeks, and other interested parties as well, read his book as a good guide on such neighborly bitterness.
8 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
GOOD INTENTIONS, BUT...
By Stergios G. Kaprinis
Mr. Fred A. Reed wrote a compelling and extremely readable book about the murky puzzles of the Balkans. His intentions were very noble indeed, but it takes much more to understand the fine details of the notion of nationality in an area where the formation of national states first happened only 80 years ago and wasn't consolidated until the 1950s only to start being challenged again in the 1990s. Similar to many of his fellow authors, he falls victim of the Slavic propaganda concerning Macedonia. To a person who doesn't have any picture of the overall situation concerning ethnicities in the geographical area of Macedonia, the emotional descriptions of endured hardships given by Slavic-speaking persons from Greek Macedonia appear heart-breaking and unsurprisingly end up demonizing Greece. In a region where different ethnicities lived side by side there are many parallel names for the villages and towns. Mr. Reed is impressed by a man with Slavic identity who "launched into a catalogue of place-names whose Slavonic resonance he immediately recognized: Golishani, Negush, ...". I don't know about Golishani, but Negush is the Slavic name for Naousa, a town who has never seen any sizeable Slavic minority. In Greek, New York is called "Nea Yorki" and although it is true that there are around 200,000 Greek-American in Queens, this hardly designs New York as a Greek city! I was very upset from the fact that Mr. Reed used the Slavic name along the Greek one when talking about the Greek towns of Florina and Edessa. His pro-Slavic propaganda friends probably never told him that in the late 19th century, Ohrid/ Ahrida (now in the FYROM), the town described as a Mother for the Bulgarian (later changed to "Macedonian") nation was 32% ethnically Greek, according to the German scholar Hermann Wendel. Bitola/ Monastiri, Krushevo/ Krousovo, Strumica/ Stromnitsa, Veles/ Velessa, Gevgelija/ Gevgeli, were town in what is now the FYROM with an ethnic Greek majority or sizeable minority. So, although it is true that Aridea/ Meglena is ethnically Slavic, one has to see the greater view of the problem. Mr. Reed outspokenly adopts the Slavic propaganda and claims that as many as 270.000 people in Greece have a Slavic identity. In the last elections, in June 1999, the Slavic nationalists participated with a political formation of their own and only got a meager 1,800 votes out of more than 7.5 million voters. Greece may have many flaws, but its democratic institutions are impeccable. There are so many things I'd like to comment on Mr. Reed's book, but there is not enough space. I'd like to comment on his note that only 10% of the inhabitants of pre-1912 Macedonia were Greeks and give you the pre-1912 Turkish statistics stating that Macedonia as a whole was 55% Greek. And we all know that the Turks hardly were sympathizers of the Greek national cause! I'd like to write about the Greek atrocities who were only committed during war and only as retaliation to the devastation suffered by Greeks in what is now Bulgaria and FYROM. I'd like to write about the reason why we, as Greeks, do not want to cede the name "Macedonia" to the Slavs. I'd like to transfer to you the rage I feel whenever my 3,000 year old local and national identity are being challenged by a people who first appeared in the Southern Balkans 1,300 years ago. I'd like to transfer the frustration I feel when my history is being raped by a Slavic people who come and tell me that Alexander the Great, a figure sung in ancient and medieval Greek folk tunes and recognized all the way to India as being the quintessence of Greekness, was in fact of another nationality. As I think of my cousins who are second generation Greeks of the USA and have a principally American national identity, I'd like to explain why the Vlachs are Greeks and how the only legitimate absolute definition of nationality is a person's self- identification, not language, not religion, not genes. Mr. Reed's would get a 3 or 4 star rating for its readibility, but I only give it 1 star as it sheds very little light on the complexities of the Balkan reality and despite his good intentions, does very little to reveal the truth.
7 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
the real history of the area
By A Customer
BOOK REVIEW SALONICA TERMINUS Travels into the Balkan Nightmare Talonbooks, Burnaby, British Columbia, 1996 BY: FRED REED There have been a number of books written over the past few years by North American and European scholars and journalists on the subject of Salonica and the Balkans. These books, replete with scholarly research, first hand interviews and expert analysis, have elucidated the political and historical reality of the Balkan nations. What these authors have also accomplished is to shed a light onto the real history of the area, placing into perspective the "history made to order" by regimes to serve their nationalistic sentiments. Such history, or rather propaganda, as most of us that have received our primary and secondary education in one of these countries may recall, tend to "colour" history to fit the given nationalistic circumstances. Fred Reed, a Canadian journalist and an ardent international political analyst, has lived in Greece for many years and has traveled in the Balkan landscape (Albania, Kosova, Macedonia and Bulgaria), discovering, chronicling and analyzing the pathos of nationalism in this "powder keg" of historical antithesis. Uninhibited by the "baggage" of being labeled as an ally or agent of another Balkan country, he has produced facts, figures and his own well researched and thought out analysis that attempts to portray the true history of the region, free of the nationalist undertones and propaganda-laden pseudo-rhetoric so prevalent in recognized and established states, and also in those nationalistic entities "In-waiting", hopping to be recognized some day by the U.S. and Europe. Reed's journey starts and ends in Salonica, the city that has stood through the centuries as the most coveted prize in the Balkans for successive empires since its establishment in the Hellenistic era. Macedonian, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman Empires regarded Salonica as their important city, lending to it strategic and economic importance in the Balkan peninsula as a crossroads between east and west. Salonica was known as the "Jerusalem of the north" during the 16th to the late 19th centuries, when the Iberian Jews, expelled by Ferdinand and Issabella of Spain in 1492, were welcomed by the Ottoman rulers because of their skills, knowledge in trade, medicine and diplomacy. Many of them settled in Salonica and together with Jews who had settled there since antiquity, turned the city into a vibrant economic and cultural centre. After 500 years of growth and prosperity, the Salonican Jews were once again forcefully removed to Hitler's "Final Solution" in 1943, their final voyage starting at the now eerie and abandoned Salonica (railway) terminus. Salonica was an important port city, serving as the merchant centre for the European trade to the east and has continued to maintain the interest of not only the European powers, but also the interest of the land-locked Slavs, the Bulgars and the Russians. Throughout its history, Salonica has been home to people of various ethnicities, nationalities and cultures - Greeks, Jews, Turks, Armenians, Vlachs, Albanians, Rumanians, Bulgarians and Slavs. It was in Salonica that Kemal Ataturk (a Jewish convert to Islam and the first leader of the secular Turkish state) and the "Young Turks" started the revolution that ended the rule of the Ottoman Empire in 1913. Salonica only became part of Greece in 1923, under the auspices of Prime Minister Venizelos, by who's providence the Greek army, during the First Balkan War, marched into the city in 1913 and occupied it only hours before the Bulgarians arrived. In its new incarnation, Salonica and the Macedonian hinterland became the new home of the over one million Greeks expelled from Asia Minor and the Black Sea area, in the 1920's, as a result of the defeat of the Greek army marching into the Turkish hinterland to create a "Greater Greece" out of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, at the inducement of the British. While the newly-established "Greater Greece" with the expanded borders created thanks to the European powers under the treaties of Lausanne and Nieige in 1923, "exchanged" (or rather, uprooted and expelled by force) the mostly Slavic and Turkish-speaking Muslim people (many of them Greeks who had converted to Islam or spoke a Slavic language) that lived in Macedonia, to make room for the "Greek" newcomers who themselves were uprooted and expelled from their homelands of 3 000 years in Asia Minor and the Black Sea. Although this would materialize the political dream of the "Megali Idea", the nationalistic state of Greece, it also cultivated and further aggravated the deep-rooted "Macedonian" issue. The ethnic, cultural and religious lines and divisions run deep in the Balkans. Enmity, segregation, national cleansing are given factors in this equation. Minorities are not recognized, but forced to assimilate if they want to survive. Those who refuse are ostracized, ignored, marginalized. Nationalistic sentiments run supreme. The strong rule, the weak wait their turn in history. BY: ARISTOTLE CHRISTOU, MPA Mr. Christou is a senior bureaucrat and holds Degrees in Planning, Public Administration and Public Policy.
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