I am not a politician, so for me the only real basis for union can be TRUTH, not things equally acceptable for both parties. I do not want to NEGOTIATE union.

PERSONAL self-determination is about listening (or not listening) to "Spice Girls", or "All saints".

ETHNICAL self-determination implies at least listening to your grand-father. If he fought with the Turks in the Ilinden Uprising, then he risked his life for the future of his grand-sons and his people and he would be grievously disappointed knowing his grand-son's claims to descend from another people.

You should know that once you let a theory replace the ethnical self-determination of your grand-father, some day your own grand-sons could call themselves "pravi srbi", or whatever else some new Kolishevski, Stalin or Disraeli may invent.

You know why ?

Because, ethnically speaking, if your grand-father and grand-mother did not exist, such a fact as your existence would not follow. It is just that simple. It is neither history, nor romantics - if you do not follow your grand-parents' ethnical identity, your own does not exist, or is inadequate and therefore irrelevant. If you insist and break this continuity, other theories would arise and after breaking tradition, you will no more be sure of whatever, even about your sons, for the greatest pleasure of Serbian chauvinists.

Moreover, without this continuity, you risk to become yourself inadequate, as one of your compatriots, who recently tried to persuade Prof. Marina Smoljaninova, that Bratja Miladinovi's "Bwlgarski Narodni Pesni" contained only Macedonian songs, but the publisher forced them to include some Bulgarian songs, in order to justify that name. Which they 'accepted', for the publisher's sake :-/ (as you probably know, Prof. Smoljaninova is the author of the article on Bulgarian litterature in the Renaissance and the beginning of the XX-th century in the "Istorija literatur zapadnyh i juzhnyh slavjan, Moskva 1997).

By now, you should have an idea of how discontinuity works - the sons of the inventors of Macedonist theories did not include a litterature pertaining to the new 'nation' before the middle of the XX-th century, thus disproving their old 'father of the nation' Stalin's theories.

You should also know that beyond tradition there is nothing.

To be more exact - there IS something. Gypsies are among the most famous peoples without history. That is why they consider stealing (children, history etc.) as proper for their tribes. Gypsies identified themselves as "Egyptians" in Greece, as "Roma, Romaioi" in the lands of Byzantium, as "Bohemians" in Central Europe, as "Bulgarians" in Tatarstan etc.

They are EXPERTS in using their right of self-determination as the most prosperous group in the history of a given place. I can still remember one of my friends saying: "Please, brother, make your income one dollar higher than in our country, and we'll be happy to call ourselves proud Bulgarians!" When I told him about the Gypsies, he got red, lowered his head and said nothing.

It is often painful for a Bulgarian to talk about the self-determination of his brothers in Macedonia.