Vardar Macedonia became part of a new
Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later renamed
Yugoslavia).
These political Lego games led to enormous population shifts - the
politically correct term for refugees brutally deprived of their
land and livelihood. All of them were enshrined in solemn treaties.
The Treaty of Lausanne (1923) led to the expulsion of 375,000 Turks
from Aegean Macedonia. 640,000 Greek refugees from Turkey replaced
them. Each of the actual occupiers and each of the potential ones
opened its own schools to indoctrinate the future generations of the
populace. Conflicts erupted over ecclesiastical matters, the
construction of railways and railway stations. Guerilla fighters
soon realized that being pawns on this mad hatter's chessboard could
be a profitable vocation. The transformation from freedom fighters
to mercenaries with no agenda was swift. And pecuniary
considerations bred even more terror and terrorists where there were
none before.
In the meantime, Greece enacted a land reform legislation in "Aegean
Macedonia" - in effect, the confiscation of arable land by thousands
of Greek settlers, refugees from Turkey. Much of the land thus "re-
distributed" was owned by Turkish absentees, now refugees
themselves. But a lot of land was simply impounded from its
rightful, very much present and very Macedonian owners.
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