28. – The Ethnological Map by the Slavic beneficent Society of Petrograd (1890).

This Map of the "Slavic Peoples" edited by N. C. Zarjanko and published by V. V. Komaroff, is in reality the work of the Slavic beneficent Society of Petrograd. It was designed under the control of the professors of slavistics who were members of the society. The authors had at their disposal an uncommonly rich literature on the matter foreign as well as Russian, consisting of the researches made in European Turkey by well-known Russian explorers like Viktor Grigorowitsch, Hilferding, and others; they also had the use of the rich material found in the Russian Foreign Office, in the Russian Embassies at Constantinople and at Vienna, and at the Russian General Staff. This map contains important corrections of that published on p;agee 35-36 Russian map of 1867, chiefly relating to the expansion of the Bulgarians in south Thracia, Deli-Orman, and in the Dobrudja; it approaches the Russian map by A. F. Rittich "Map of the West- and Southern Slavs. Petrograd. Published by the cartographic Institute A. Ilin", as well as the "Map of Macedonia" by B. Teplow, who for a long time was an Ofiicial of the Russian Embassy at Constaninople.

The part relating to the Balkan peninsula is renderdd here in fac-simile, according to the first edition, colour and size being as in the original. It is published on account of its authenticity, accuracy, and impartiality, and becasue it has a history of its own which deserves to be told briefly:-

On the appearance of the map, G. Simitsch, at that time Servian Ambassador at Petrograd, received the order from Belgrade to proest against the designation of Macedonia as a Bulgarian country on the map. The protest was made before the Slavic beneficent Society and before the Russian government. In consequence of this double protest, the Slavic beneficent Society was forced to publish a second edition on which the Bulgarian colouring of Macedonia was removed. But – as usual on such occasions – the editor did not think of changing the statistical index of the Bulgarians in Macedonia (which for want of space is not reproduced here), and he forgot to indicate with a special colour the "Macedonic-Slavs".

In the saloons of the Slavic beneficent Society this od story provoked long disputes about Macedonia between the Servian and the Bulgarian representatives. A Russian journalist by the name of Peter Nebolssin, who had lived for a long time in Bulgaria and Servia as correspondent of the "Nowoje Wremia" and to whom both the peoples were well-known, put an end to this controversy: Nebolssin recommended a most original and very ingenious criterion to settle once for all the nationality of the "Macedonian-Slavs", viz. a commission of Slavs were to travel about in Macedonia to find out who of the Slavs are blasphemers and who are not. Since Servians are the only Slavs that utter imprecations against God, the commission should have to declare as Servians all those Macedonic-Slavs that blaspheme, and as Bulgarians all those that look upon blasphemy as a sin.

Everyone can imagine the knock-out effect of this psychological criterion when he bears in mind that in Macedonia nobody is blaspheming God.