1. THE ORIGINS OF THE MOSCHOPOLITAN UTOPIA.  AN ENLIGHTENMENT-ROMANTIC PROJECT
2. A PERFECT CITY FOR NATIONAL INTERESTS
3. IMAGINING MOSCHOPOLIS

2. A PERFECT CITY FOR NATIONAL INTERESTS

"Every human being needs to raise his thoughts and his national aspirations toward an ideal. If we were not interested in the Macedonian agitation, our compatriots would pay their attention on the national status of Romanians from Transylvania. But our relationship with the Habsburg Empire would be too troubled because of this affair, something we must completely avoid. Thus, it is necessary at this moment to pay our compatriots' attention to the Macedonian question."⁵⁸

Twelve years after Kogălniceanu's intervention, in the external political orientation of Romanian government⁵⁹ towards the Vlach population was perceived as a hostile attitude toward Greece, which counter-attacked powerfully. Two Aromanian parties fought each other, the Romanian nationalists and the Graecophiles and the gradually accumulated tensions outbroke in violent confrontations in 1891 and 1905 between those two groups.⁶⁰
In the second half of the nineteenth century and in the first four decades of the twentieth century, historical writings on Aromanians might be classified into three groups: the first group is those texts which make a positive image of them, often they were written as a part of national propaganda, the second group are collections of historical sources, and the third group is formed by negative texts written by other national propagandas, especially the Greek one. As a general overview, the historical works might be characterized as non-theoretical, written within national paradigm, and haunted by a complex of inferiority and self-victimisation. The references to Moschopolis are sporadic, referring primarily to its tragedy, which was similar to a "national trauma". Along with the Macedo-Romanian Committee, some publications were founded to spread the Aromanian national idea and most of them wrote lamentations for Moschopolis' end.⁶¹ In the cultural and political edifice of Greater Romania these features were strongly stressed by the influence of political ideologies, namely by the right-wing ideological model promoted by the Iron Guard. Many intellectuals were engaged in nationalist projects, even they were not very active from a political point of view, but some of them wrote exaltedly pieces of Aromanian history and were influenced by the political edifice of Greater Romania.⁶²
The decisive step in the intellectual transformation of Moschopolis from a real city into a utopian place was made by the Aromanian literature. The utopian emergence of Moschopolis must be viewed related to the birth of the Aromanian literature, mainly by those publications where many young Aromanians educated in Romanian schools from the Balkans started to write articles, poems, and stories in Aromanian. Bucolic and lyrical themes are predominant, linked to the traditional handicrafts; they reflects feelings like love, nostalgia, superstitions, but also dauntless deeds, humorous situations, social kinships, mentalities, emotions, ordinary and daily aspects of life, and so on. The most difficult obstacle for this literature to express as such was the language itself, more precisely the intellectual usage of the language. This was both typical for the Romanian language and the Aromanian one. An example is Sergiu Hagiadi, who translated Roja's first book, moans about his disagreements with the other literate people concerning the Romanian orthography and his linguistic urge for Romanian philologists was to adopt quickly the French orthography to make Romanian more comprehensible.⁶³ This reality was still present four years after the establishing of the Latin alphabet and all efforts, which were guided to standardize the Aromanian language. Be that as it may, the Aromanian literature continued to possess a very rural character concerning its themes for artistic and intellectual mode of expression. The efforts made by the Romanian established schools for Aromanians in some places of Macedonia and the work of propaganda through nationalist press resulted in a process of de-nationalising Aromanians, in a sense of depriving Aromanian speakers of their local features, and re-nationalising them with Romanian and national ideology. Nowadays, the literary works in Aromanian are the results of this type of educational system, where the most important role was played by the Romanian high school from Bitola. The Aromanian literature has not reached yet a strong stage of elevation in order to become an idiom for larger usage, to express different tendencies, and to offer various models of creation. Within such a unique way of narrating the past, the only discourse which has been developed on Moschopolis was the nationalist one, and, as Sorin Antohi codified the utopian tendency of narrating the perfection, Aromanian elites wrote in Aromanian having an exalted feeling of finding of a "magnetic beauty and without any imperfection of a brilliant city" which "evokes a dreamlike image."⁶⁴
A virtual author of the history of the Aromanian historiography would barely observe important changes between the manner of the nineteenth century of narrating the past and one hundred years later (1850-1950). In the first half of the twentieth century, Moschopolis and the history of Aromanians⁶⁵ have constantly remained the same. The writers who wrote particularly on Moschopolis were Nicolae Batzaria, Kira Iorgoveanu and Nida Boga; the latter's work being a one hundred-fifty sonnets epic poem, which gave birth to the Moschopolitan utopia. The period after the Second World War represents actually the intellectual reconstruction of Moschopolis, its utopian meaning. As I added heretofore, the Aromanian literature has developed as following traditional paradigms and it has constantly retained an isolated and militant character, haunted by traditional and nationalist marks. Shy attempts to change the manner in writing literature were made after the 1960s, especially in the field of poetry. But nobody has effectively tried to revisit either scientifically or literally the utopian facet of Moschopolis. 

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49 In spite of the Romantic project of national emancipation, Aromanians were actively engaged in Greek organisations, which fought for the independence of Greece. Narrating the upheaval from 1821 (Romanian historiography names it "the national revolution"), Arginteanu classifies it as a "Greek revolution", neglecting completely the role of Tudor Vladimirescu, the Romanian leader of the upheaval ("a Wallachian peasant then beginning his own peasant revolt against the nobles" as it was considered in Stanford J. Shaw & Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Arginteanu also considers that the conspiracy organised by the Greek secret society Philiki Hetairia ("Society of Friends") was conceived as such by an important number of Aromanians, who became active members of this association. Arginteanu overstates considering that Rigas, the author of the Greek revolutionary anthem was Aromanian. See Arginteanu, op. cit., pp. 245-247.
50 These educational actions were encouraged by the suitable climate of the issued decree by the Habsburg Emperor Francis I, in 1811, which gave Romanians the possibility of constituting schools in Romanian.
51 The same situation took place in the Greek national canon, which deprived Moschopolis of all its Aromanian tenants claiming that Muslims attacked and destroyed a Greek city.
52 In the 1840s, the Romanian historians and participants at the 1848 revolution Mihail Kogălniceanu, Nicolae Bălcescu, Timotei Cipariu, Eftimie Murgu commented on Vlach's status within the Balkan countries and the Vlach question became one of the directions of the Romanian foreign policy.
53 Dimitrie Bolintineanu, Călătorii (Travels) (Bucureşti: Ed. Minerva, 1987), pp. 217-267.
54 The Romantic program of Romanian national awakening stipulates that moving toward increasing the national consciousness was meant to be a set of radical claims, which consisted of making educational system accordingly. The main task of the newly established educational system was mainly the revival of national historical myths and the codifying the Romanian language. See Mirela-Luminiţa Murgescu, Între "bunul creştin" şi "bravul român". Rolul şcolii primare în constituirea identităţii naţionale româneşti (1831-1878) (Betwenn "the good Christian" and "the brave Romanian". The Role of the Primary School in the Formation of the Romanian National Identity, 1831-1878) (Iaşi: Ed. A'92, 1999), 262 p.
55 To put the relationship between utopia and violence in the terms of Karl Popper, a question to which the most difficult answer to give is "how can a decision be reached?" Popper's answer is mainly related to two possible ways: either by argument or by violence. As he declared himself an enemy to any form of violence, Popper thinks that these two notions are intermingled and although propaganda uses arguments too, there is a difference between the argument, which counts for a decision, and the argument, which ends up in violence. The difference "lies rather in an attitude of give and take, in a readiness not only to convince the other man but also possibility to be convinced by him." This urges one to reflect on this relation between utopia and violence, and the attitude of "give and take" belongs to the urban and cosmopolitan settlement. See Karl R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations. The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 356.
56 Paul Cornea, Originile romantismului românesc (The Origins of the Romanian Romanticism) (Bucureşti: Ed. Minerva, 1972), p. 469.
57 Macedonia and the whole part nowadays known as Northern Greece was a territory with important number of Aromanian inhabitants. The actual Voskopoje built on the old area of Moschopolis is located close to the Albanian-Macedonian border. Today, Aromanians but more by Albanians dwell in that area.
58 Peyfuss, op. cit., p. 49.
59 Internationally recognized as an independent state after the treaty of Berlin (1878), Romania intensified its foreign policy over the Balkans lands dwelled by Aromanians, at that time some of those territories being under the Greek administration. This generated political and diplomatic tensions, which culminated in mutual recall for diplomatic missions from one another.
60 To these tensions were added those generated by Romanian activists in the Balkans who were paid to constitute Romanian schools in Macedonia. The Ottoman police expelled some of those Romanian activists, considered spies, after complaints of the Greek Patriarchate in 1878. Supplementary tensions were raised in 1892, when the Graecophile Aromanians disapproved of the appointment of an Aromanian bishop, nominated by the Ottomans. The bilateral relationships between Romania and Greece remained very troubled and confused until around 1910.
61 The review "Lumina" ("The Light") of the Romanian high school from Bitola (Macedonia) published the main texts on national mourning of Moschopolis.
62 The presence of Aromanians in the structures of the Iron Guard was very active. Constantin Papanace, one of them, was a leader of the Iron Guard in his western exile and he wrote some pieces on both Romanian and Aromanian histories.
63 Gheorghe Constantin Roja, Cercetări despre românii de dincolo de Dunăre (Craiova, 1867), p. X.
64 Antohi, op. cit., p. 39.
65 In order to summarize one hundred-fifty year of Aromanian historical studies, still the cliché constitutes an important and widespread belief of many Aromanians on their national past, with special applications to the Moschopolitan utopia. I take as an example the case of Matilda Caragiu-Marioţeanu, a Romanian scholar having Aromanian origins. Her study, "Un dodecalog al aromânilor sau 12 adevăruri incontestabile, istorice şi actuale asupra aromânilor şi asupra limbii lor" (A Dodecalogue of Aromanians or 12 Incontestable Truths, Historical and Actual on Aromanians and on their Language), was included in Djuvara, ed., op. cit., pp. 168-183. Briefly, she strongly believes that her article has to be a set of national commands, "a dodecalogue for any Aromanian", and this is as paradigmatic as for all myths and commonplaces of any national insight on the past. The author witnesses for a "scientific creed" linked to her ethno-psychological existence as "an Aromanian being" and she codifies "twelve eternal truths" concerning the Aromanians past, in fact a collection of national stereotypes, most of them related to language as the essential element of Aromanian ethnic ontology. Matilda Caragiu-Marioţeanu considers the Aromanian nation as an ethnic individuality within the larger notion of "Romanianness". On the contrary, Max Demeter Peyfuss denies the usage of "Romanian" as a general term for all Balkan varieties of Romanic language. For him "there are Vlachs who do not show any form of Romanic self and they must not be treated like a sort of Romanian." See Max Demeter Peyfuss, "Romanitatea balcanică: perspective de cercetare," (The Balkan Romanity: Perspectives of Research) Luceafărul ("The Morning Star") 5/105 (1992), pp. 8-9.