title: Macedonia (region)

text: At the end of the 10th century, what is now the Republic of North Macedonia became the political and cultural heartland of the First Bulgarian Empire, after Byzantine emperors John I Tzimiskes conquered the eastern part of the Bulgarian state during the Rus'–Byzantine War of 970–971. The Bulgarian capital Preslav and the Bulgarian Tsar Boris II were captured, and with the deposition of the Bulgarian regalia in the Hagia Sophia, Bulgaria was officially annexed to Byzantium. A new capital was established at Ohrid, which also became the seat of the Bulgarian Patriarchate. A new dynasty, that of the Comitopuli under Tsar Samuil and his successors, continued resistance against the Byzantines for several more decades, before also succumbing in 1018. The western part of Bulgaria including Macedonia was incorporated into the Byzantine Empire as the province of Bulgaria (Theme of Bulgaria) and the Bulgarian Patriarchate was reduced in rank to an Archbishopric.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: Intermittent Bulgarian uprisings continued to occur, often with the support of the Serbian princedoms to the north. Any temporary independence that might have been gained was usually crushed swiftly by the Byzantines. It was also marked by periods of war between the Normans and Byzantium. The Normans launched offensives from their lands acquired in southern Italy, and temporarily gained rule over small areas in the northwestern coast.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: At the end of the 12th century, some northern parts of Macedonia were temporarily conquered by Stefan Nemanja of Serbia. In the 13th century, following the Fourth Crusade, Macedonia was disputed among Byzantine Greeks, Latin crusaders of the short-lived Kingdom of Thessalonica, and the revived Bulgarian state. Most of southern Macedonia was secured by the Despotate of Epirus and then by the Empire of Nicaea, while the north was ruled by Bulgaria. After 1261 however, all of Macedonia returned to Byzantine rule, where it largely remained until the Byzantine civil war of 1341–1347. Taking advantage of this conflict, the Serb ruler Stefan Dushan expanded his realm and founded the Serbian Empire, which included all of Macedonia, northern and central Greece – excluding Thessaloniki, Athens and the Peloponnese. Dushan's empire however broke up shortly after his death in 1355. After his death local rulers in the regions of Macedonia were despot Jovan Uglješa in eastern Macedonia, and kings Vukašin Mrnjavčević and his son Marko Mrnjavčević in western regions of Macedonia.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: Since the middle of the 14th century, the Ottoman threat was looming in the Balkans, as the Ottomans defeated the various Christian principalities, whether Serb, Bulgarian or Greek. After the Ottoman victory in the Battle of Maritsa in 1371, most of Macedonia accepted vassalage to the Ottomans and by the end of the 14th century the Ottoman Empire gradually annexed the region. The final Ottoman capture of Thessalonica (1430) was seen as the prelude to the fall of Constantinople itself. Macedonia remained a part of the Ottoman Empire for nearly 500 years, during which time it gained a substantial Turkish minority. Thessaloniki later become the home of a large Sephardi Jewish population following the expulsions of Jews after 1492 from Spain.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: Over the centuries Macedonia had become a multicultural region. The historical references mention Greeks, Bulgarians, Turks, Albanians, Gypsies, Jews, Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians. It is often claimed that macédoine, the fruit or vegetable salad, was named after the area's very mixed population, as it could be witnessed at the end of the 19th century. From the Middle Ages to the early 20th century the Slavic-speaking population in Macedonia was identified mostly as Bulgarian.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: During the period of Bulgarian National Revival many Bulgarians from these regions supported the struggle for creation of Bulgarian cultural educational and religious institutions, including Bulgarian Exarchate. Eventually, in the 20th century, 'Bulgarians' came to be understood as synonymous with 'Macedonian Slavs' and, eventually, 'ethnic Macedonians'. Krste Misirkov, a philologist and publicist, wrote his work "On the Macedonian Matters" (1903), for which he is heralded by Macedonians as one of the founders of the Macedonian nation.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: After the revival of Greek, Serbian, and Bulgarian statehood in the 19th century, the Ottoman lands in Europe that became identified as "Macedonia", were contested by all three governments, leading to the creation in the 1890s and 1900s of rival armed groups who divided their efforts between fighting the Turks and one another. The most important of these was the Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committee (BMARC, SMARO from 1902) (an alternative version says that it consisted of the Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (MRO, TMORO from 1902), under Gotse Delchev who in 1903 rebelled in the so-called Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising, fighting for an autonomous or independent Macedonian state (before 1902 only Bulgarians could join, but afterward, it invited "any Macedonian or Odrinian, irrespective of nationality, to join together"), and the Greek efforts from 1904 until 1908 (Greek Struggle for Macedonia). Diplomatic intervention by the European powers led to plans for an autonomous Macedonia under Ottoman rule.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: The restricted borders of the modern Greek state at its inception in 1830 disappointed the inhabitants of northern Greece (Epirus and Macedonia). Addressing these concerns in 1844, the Greek Prime Minister Kolettis addressed the constitutional assembly in Athens that "the Kingdom of Greece is not Greece; it is only a part, the smallest and poorest, of Greece. The Greek is not only he who inhabits the kingdom, but also he who lives in Ioannina, or Thessaloniki, or Serres, or Odrin" . He mentions cities and islands that were under Ottoman possession as composing the Great Idea (Greek: Μεγάλη Ιδέα, "Megáli Idéa") which meant the reconstruction of the classical Greek world or the revival of the Byzantine Empire. The important idea here is that for Greece, Macedonia was a region with large Greek populations expecting annexation to the new Greek state.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: The 1878 Congress of Berlin changed the Balkan map again. The treaty restored Macedonia and Thrace to the Ottoman Empire. Serbia, Romania and Montenegro were granted full independence, and some territorial expansion at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. Russia would maintain military advisors in Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia until May 1879. Austria-Hungary was permitted to occupy Bosnia, Herzegovina and the Sanjak of Novi Pazar. The Congress of Berlin also forced Bulgaria, newly given autonomy by the 1878 Treaty of San Stefano, to return over half of its newly gained territory to the Ottoman Empire. This included Macedonia, a large part of which was given to Bulgaria, due to Russian pressure and the presence of significant numbers of Bulgarians and adherents to the Bulgarian Exarchate. The territorial losses dissatisfied Bulgaria; this fuelled the ambitions of many Bulgarian politicians for the following seventy years, who wanted to review the treaty – by peaceful or military means and to reunite all lands which they claimed had a Bulgarian majority. Besides, Serbia was now interested in the Macedonian lands, until then only Greece was Bulgaria's main contender, which after the addition of Thessaly to Greece in (1881) was bordering Macedonia. Thus, the Berlin Congress renewed the struggle for Turkey in Europe, including the so-called Macedonia region, rather than setting up a permanent regime. In the following years, all of the neighboring states struggled over Turkey in Europe; they were only kept at bay by their own restraints, the Ottoman Army and the territorial ambitions of the Great Powers in the region.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: Serbian policy had a distinct anti-Bulgarian flavor, attempting to prevent the Bulgarian influencing the inhabitants of Macedonia. On the other hand, Bulgaria was using the power of its religious institutions (Bulgarian Exarchate established in 1870) to promote its language and make more people identify with Bulgaria. Greece, in addition, was in an advantageous position for protecting its interests through the influence of Patriarchate of Constantinople which traditionally sponsored Greek-language and Greek-culture schools also in villages with few Greeks. This put the Patriarchate in dispute with the Exarchate, which established schools with Bulgarian education. Indeed, belonging to one or another institution could define a person's national identity. Simply, if a person supported the Patriarchate they were regarded as Greek, whereas if they supported the Exarchate they were regarded as Bulgarian. Locally, however, villagers were not always able to express freely their association with one or the other institution as there were numerous armed groups trying to defend and/or expand the territory of each. Some were locally recruited and self-organized while others were sent and armed by the protecting states.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: The aim of the adversaries, however, was not primarily to extend their influence over Macedonia but merely to prevent Macedonia succumbing to the influence of the other. This often violent attempt to persuade the people that they belonged to one ethnic group or another pushed some people to reject both. The severe pressure on the peaceful peasants of Macedonia worked against the plans of the Serbians and Bulgarians to make them adopt their ethnic idea and eventually a social divide became apparent. The British Ambassador in Belgrade in 1927 said: "At present the unfortunate Macedonian peasant is between the hammer and the anvil. One day 'comitadjis' come to his house and demand under threat lodging, food and money and the next day the gendarm hales him off to prison for having given them; the Macedonian is really a peaceable, fairly industrious agriculturist and if the (Serbian) government give him adequate protection, education, freedom from malaria and decent communications, there seems no reason why he should not become just as Serbian in sentiment as he was Bulgarian 10 years ago". As a result of this game of tug-of-war, the development of a distinct Macedonian national identity was impeded and delayed. Moreover, when the imperialistic plans of the surrounding states made possible the division of Macedonia, some Macedonian intellectuals such as Misirkov mentioned the necessity of creating a Macedonian national identity which would distinguish the Macedonian Slavs from Bulgarians, Serbians or Greeks.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: Baptizing Macedonian Slavs as Serbian or Bulgarian aimed therefore to justify these countries' territorial claims over Macedonia. The Greek side, with the assistance of the Patriarchate that was responsible for the schools, could more easily maintain control, because they were spreading Greek identity. For the very same reason the Bulgarians, when preparing the Exarchate's government (1871) included Macedonians in the assembly as "brothers" to prevent any ethnic diversification. On the other hand, the Serbs, unable to establish Serbian-speaking schools, used propaganda. Their main concern was to prevent the Slavic-speaking Macedonians from acquiring Bulgarian identity through concentrating on the myth of the ancient origins of the Macedonians and simultaneously by the classification of Bulgarians as Tatars and not as Slavs, emphasizing their 'Macedonian' characteristics as an intermediate stage between Serbs and Bulgarians. To sum up the Serbian propaganda attempted to inspire the Macedonians with a separate ethnic identity to diminish the Bulgarian influence. This choice was the 'Macedonian ethnicity'. The Bulgarians never accepted an ethnic diversity from the Slav Macedonians, giving geographic meaning to the term. In 1893 they established the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (VMRO) aiming to confront the Serbian and Greek action in Macedonia. VMRO hoped to answer the Macedonian question through a revolutionary movement, and so they instigated the Ilinden Uprising (1903) to release some Ottoman territory. Bulgaria used this to internationalize the Macedonian question. Ilinden changed Greece's stance which decided to take Para-military action. In order to protect the Greek Macedonians and Greek interests, Greece sent officers to train guerrillas and organize militias (Macedonian Struggle), known as "makedonomahi" (Macedonian fighters), essentially to fight the Bulgarians. After that it was obvious that the Macedonian Question could be answered only with a war.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: The rise of the Albanian and the Turkish nationalism after 1908, however, prompted Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria to bury their differences with regard to Macedonia and to form a joint coalition against the Ottoman Empire in 1912. Disregarding public opinion in Bulgaria, which was in support of the establishment of an autonomous Macedonian province under a Christian governor, the Bulgarian government entered a pre-war treaty with Serbia which divided the region into two parts. The part of Macedonia west and north of the line of partition was contested by both Serbia and Bulgaria and was subject to the arbitration of the Russian Tsar after the war. Serbia formally renounced any claims to the part of Macedonia south and east of the line, which was declared to be within the Bulgarian sphere of interest. The pre-treaty between Greece and Bulgaria, however, did not include any agreement on the division of the conquered territories – evidently both countries hoped to occupy as much territory as possible having their sights primarily set on Thessaloniki.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: In the First Balkan War, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro occupied almost all Ottoman-held territories in Europe. Bulgaria bore the brunt of the war fighting on the Thracian front against the main Ottoman forces. Both her war expenditures and casualties in the First Balkan War were higher than those of Serbia, Greece and Montenegro combined. Macedonia itself was occupied by Greek, Serbian and Bulgarian forces. The Ottoman Empire in the Treaty of London in May 1913 assigned the whole of Macedonia to the Balkan League, without, specifying the division of the region, to promote problems between the allies. Dissatisfied with the creation of an autonomous Albanian state, which denied her access to the Adriatic, Serbia asked for the suspension of the pre-war division treaty and demanded from Bulgaria greater territorial concessions in Macedonia. Later in May the same year, Greece and Serbia signed a secret treaty in Thessaloniki stipulating the division of Macedonia according to the existing lines of control. Both Serbia and Greece, as well as Bulgaria, started to prepare for a final war of partition.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: In June 1913, Bulgarian Tsar Ferdinand, without consulting the government, and without any declaration of war, ordered Bulgarian troops to attack the Greek and Serbian troops in Macedonia, initiating the Second Balkan War. The Bulgarian army was in full retreat in all fronts. The Serbian army chose to stop its operations when achieved all its territorial goals and only then the Bulgarian army took a breath. During the last two days the Bulgarians managed to achieve a defensive victory against the advancing Greek army in the Kresna Gorge. However at the same time the Romanian army crossed the undefended northern border and easily advanced towards Sofia. Romania interfered in the war, in order to satisfy its territorial claims against Bulgaria. The Ottoman Empire also interfered, easily reassuming control of Eastern Thrace with Edirne. The Second Balkan War, also known as Inter-Ally War, left Bulgaria only with the Struma valley and a small part of Thrace with minor ports at the Aegean sea. Vardar Macedonia was incorporated into Serbia and thereafter referred to as South Serbia. Southern (Aegean) Macedonia was incorporated into Greece and thereafter was referred to as northern Greece. The region suffered heavily during the Second Balkan War. During its advance at the end of June, the Greek army set fire to the Bulgarian quarter of the town of Kilkis and over 160 villages around Kilkis and Serres driving some 50,000 refugees into Bulgaria proper. The Bulgarian army retaliated by burning the Greek quarter of Serres and by arming Muslims from the region of Drama which led to a massacre of Greek civilians.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: In September 1915, the Greek government authorized the landing of the troops in Thessaloniki. In 1916 the pro-German King of Greece agreed with the Germans to allow military forces of the Central Powers to enter Greek Macedonia to attack Bulgarian forces in Thessaloniki. As a result, Bulgarian troops occupied the eastern part of Greek Macedonia, including the port of Kavala. The region was, however, restored to Greece following the victory of the Allies in 1918. After the destruction of the Greek Army in Asia Minor in 1922 Greece and Turkey exchanged most of Macedonia's Turkish minority and the Greek inhabitants of Thrace and Anatolia, as a result of which Aegean Macedonia experienced a large addition to its population and became overwhelmingly Greek in ethnic composition. Serbian-ruled Macedonia was incorporated into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) in 1918. Yugoslav Macedonia was subsequently subjected to an intense process of "Serbianization" during the 1920s and 1930s.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: During World War II the boundaries of the region shifted yet again. When the German forces occupied the area, most of Yugoslav Macedonia and part of Aegean Macedonia were transferred for administration to Bulgaria. During the Bulgarian administration of Eastern Greek Macedonia, some 100,000 Bulgarian refugees from the region were resettled there and perhaps as many Greeks were deported or fled to other parts of Greece. Western Aegean Macedonia was occupied by Italy, with the western parts of Yugoslav Macedonia being annexed to Italian-occupied Albania. The remainder of Greek Macedonia (including all of the coast) was occupied by Nazi Germany. One of the worst episodes of the Holocaust happened here when 60,000 Jews from Thessaloniki were deported to extermination camps in occupied Poland. Only a few thousand survived.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: Macedonia was liberated in 1944, when the Red Army's advance in the Balkan Peninsula forced the German forces to retreat. The pre-war borders were restored under U.S. and British pressure because the Bulgarian government was insisting to keep its military units on Greek soil. The Bulgarian Macedonia returned fairly rapidly to normality, but the Bulgarian patriots in Yugoslav Macedonia underwent a process of ethnic cleansing by the Belgrade authorities, and Greek Macedonia was ravaged by the Greek Civil War, which broke out in December 1944 and did not end until October 1949.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: After this civil war, a large number of former ELAS fighters who took refuge in communist Bulgaria and Yugoslavia and described themselves as "ethnic Macedonians" were prohibited from reestablishing to their former estates by the Greek authorities. Most of them were accused in Greece for crimes committed during the period of the German occupation.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: The imminent collapse of the Ottoman Empire was welcomed by the Balkan states, as it promised to restore their European territory. The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 proved a nationalistic movement thwarting the peoples' expectations of the empire's modernization and hastened the end of the Ottoman occupation of the Balkans. To this end, an alliance was struck among the Balkan states in Spring 1913. The First Balkan War, which lasted six weeks, commenced in August 1912, when Montenegro declared war on the Ottoman Empire, whose forces ultimately engaged four different wars in Thrace, Macedonia, Northern and Southern Albania and Kosovo. The Macedonian campaign was fought in atrocious conditions. The retreat of the Ottoman army from Macedonia succeeded the desperate effort of the Greek and Bulgarian forces to reach the city of Thessalonica, the "single prize of the first Balkan War" for whose status no prior agreements were done. In this case possession would be equal to acquisition. The Greek forces entered the city first liberating officially, a progress only positive for them. Glenny says: "for the Greeks it was a good war".


title: Macedonia (region)

text: The first Balkan War managed to liberate Balkans from Turks and settled the major issues except Macedonia. In the spring 1913 the Serbs and Greeks begun the 'Serbianization' and the 'Hellenization' of the parts in Macedonia they already controlled, while Bulgarians faced some difficulties against the Jews and the Turkish populations. Moreover, the possession of Thessalonica was a living dream for the Bulgarians that were preparing for a new war. For this, the Bulgarian troops had a secret order in June 1913 to launch surprise attacks on the Serbs. Greece and Serbia signed a previous bilateral defensive agreement (May 1913). Consequently, Bulgaria decided to attack Greece and Serbia. After some initial gains the Bulgarians were forced to retreat back to Bulgaria proper and lose nearly all of the land they had conquered during the first war.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: The Treaty of Bucharest (August 1913) took off most of the Bulgarian conquests of the previous years. A large part of Macedonia became southern Serbia, including the territory of what today is the Republic of North Macedonia, and southern Macedonia became northern Greece. Greece almost doubled its territory and population size and its northern frontiers remain today, more or less the same since the Balkan Wars. However, when Serbia acquired 'Vardarska Banovina' (the present-day Republic of North Macedonia), it launched having expansionist views aiming to descend to the Aegean, with Thessalonica as the highest ambition. However, Greece after the population exchange with Bulgaria, soon after its victory in the Balkan wars, managed to give national homogeneity in the Aegean and any remaining Slavic-speakers were absorbed.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: Many volunteers from Macedonia joined Bulgarian army and participated in the battles against Bulgarian enemies in these wars—on the strength of the Macedonian-Adrianopolitan Volunteer Corps and other units.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: After World War I Macedonian Campaign the status quo of Macedonia remained the same. The establishment of the 'Kingdom of Serbians, Croats and Slovenes' in 1918, which in 1929 was renamed 'Yugoslavia' (South Slavia) predicted no special regime for Skopje neither recognized any Macedonian national identity. In fact, the claims to Macedonian identity remained silent at a propaganda level because, eventually, North Macedonia had been a Serbian conquest.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: The situation in Serbian Macedonia changed after the Communist Revolution in Russia (1918–1919). According to Sfetas, Comintern was handling Macedonia as a matter of tactics, depending on the political circumstances. In the early 1920s it supported the position for a single and independent Macedonia in a Balkan Soviet Democracy. Actually, the Soviets desired a common front of the Bulgarian communist agriculturists and the Bulgarian-Macedonian societies to destabilize the Balkan Peninsula. The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), under the protection of Comintern, promoted the idea of an independent Macedonia in a Federation of Balkan states, unifying all Macedonians. However, the possible participation of Bulgaria in a new war, on the Axis side, ended the Soviet support some years later.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: Bulgaria joined the Axis powers in 1941, when German troops prepared to invade Greece from Romania reached the Bulgarian borders and demanded permission to pass through Bulgarian territory. Threatened by direct military confrontation, Tsar Boris III had no choice but to join the Tripartite pact, which officially happened on 1 March 1941. There was little popular opposition, since the Soviet Union was in a non-aggression pact with Germany.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: On 6 April 1941, despite having officially joined the Axis Powers, the Bulgarian government maintained a course of military passivity during the initial stages of the invasion of Yugoslavia and the Battle of Greece. As German, Italian, and Hungarian troops crushed Yugoslavia and Greece, the Bulgarians remained on the sidelines. The Yugoslav government surrendered on 17 April. The Greek government was to hold out until 30 April. On 20 April, the period of Bulgarian passivity ended. The Bulgarian Army entered the Aegean region. The goal was to gain an Aegean Sea outlet in Thrace and Eastern Macedonia and much of eastern Serbia. The so-called Vardar Banovina was divided between Bulgaria and Italians which occupied West Macedonia. The Bulgarian occupation of Macedonia was technically viewed as interim administration in anticipation of a conclusive internationally recognized settlement of the legal status of the so-called "New Lands" after the end of the Second World War. Bulgarian administration greatly contributed to economic rebirth of the region – the poorest one in the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia – through introducing measures such as allotment of arable lands to local landless peasantry and by establishing plenty of new elementary and secondary schools. Local population with Bulgarian ethnic origins was given full Bulgarian citizenship. In general, Bulgarians themselves regarded the incorporation of former Yugoslav Vardar Banovina as a way to achieve national unity. Two new oblasts (provinces) were formed and most public vacancies were filled up with representatives of the local population.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: During the German occupation of Greece (1941–1944) the Greek Communist Party-KKE was the main resistance factor with its military branch EAM-ELAS (National Liberation Front). Although many members of EAM were Slavic-speaking, they had either Bulgarian, Greek or distinct Macedonian conscience. To take advantage of the situation KKE established SNOF with the cooperation of the Yugoslav leader Tito, who was ambitious enough to make plans for Greek Macedonia. For this he established the Anti-Fascistic Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM) giving an actual liberating character to the whole region of Macedonia. Besides, KKE was very positive to the option of a greater Macedonia, including the Greek region, since it realized that a victory in the Greek Civil War was utopic. Later EAM and SNOF disagreed in issues of policy and they finally crashed and the latter was expelled from Greece (1944).


title: Macedonia (region)

text: The end of the War did not bring peace to Greece and a strenuous civil war between the Government forces and EAM broke out with about 50,000 casualties for both sides. The defeat of the Communists in 1949 forced their Slav-speaking members to either leave Greece or fully adopt Greek language and surnames. The Slav minorities were discriminated against, and not even recognised as a minority. Since 1923 the only internationally recognized minority in Greece are the Muslims in Western Thrace.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: Yugoslav Macedonia was the only region where Yugoslav communist leader Josip Broz Tito had not developed a Partisan movement because of the Bulgarian occupation of a large part of that area. To improve the situation, in 1943 the Communist Party of 'Macedonia' was established in Tetovo with the prospect that it would support the resistance against the Axis. In the meantime, the Bulgarians' violent repression led to loss of moral support from the civilian population. By the end of the war "a Macedonian national consciousness hardly existed beyond a general conviction, gained from bitter experience, that rule from Sofia was as unpalatable as that from Belgrade. But if there were no Macedonian nation there was a Communist Party of Macedonia, around which the People's Republic of Macedonia was built".


title: Macedonia (region)

text: Tito thus separated Yugoslav Macedonia from Serbia after the war. It became a republic of the new federal Yugoslavia (as the Socialist Republic of Macedonia) in 1946, with its capital at Skopje. Tito also promoted the concept of a separate Macedonian nation, as a means of severing the ties of the Slav population of Yugoslav Macedonia with Bulgaria. Although the dialects spoken in Macedonia were overwhelmingly considered of being part of the Bulgarian dialectic continuum and exhibited all the essential grammatical traits of the overall Bulgarian language, a separate entity termed Macedonian language was deliberately promoted by intentionally Serbianizing the spelling and the lexis in order to alienate local vernacular from Bulgarian, the differences were deliberately emphasized and the region's historical figures were promoted as being uniquely Macedonian (rather than Serbian or Bulgarian). A separate Macedonian Orthodox Church was established, splitting off from the Serbian Orthodox Church, but it has not been recognized by any other Orthodox Church, including the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The Communist Party sought to deter pro-Bulgarian sentiment, which was punished severely; convictions were still being handed down as late as 1991.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: Tito had a number of reasons for doing this. First, as an ethnic Croat, he wanted to reduce Serbia's dominance in Yugoslavia; establishing a territory formerly considered Serbian as an equal to Serbia within Yugoslavia achieved this effect. Secondly, he wanted to sever the ties of the Macedonian Slav population with Bulgaria because recognition of that population as Bulgarian would have undermined the unity of the Yugoslav federation. Third of all, Tito sought to justify future Yugoslav claims towards the rest of Macedonia (Pirin and Aegean), in the name of the "liberation" of the region. The potential "Macedonian" state would remain as a constituent republic within Yugoslavia, and so Yugoslavia would manage to get access to the Aegean Sea.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: Tito's designs on Macedonia were asserted as early as August 1944, when in a proclamation he claimed that his goal was to reunify "all parts of Macedonia, divided in 1912 and 1913 by Balkan imperialists". To this end, he opened negotiations with communist Bulgaria for a new federal state, which would also probably have included Albania, and supported the Greek Communists in the Greek Civil War. The idea of reunification of all of Macedonia under Communist rule was abandoned as late as 1949 when the Greek Communists lost and Tito fell out with the Soviet Union and pro-Soviet Bulgaria.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: Across the border in Greece, Slavophones were seen as a potentially disloyal "fifth column" within the Greek state by both the US and Greece, and their existence as a minority was officially denied. Greeks were resettled in the region many of whom emigrated (especially to Australia) along with many Greek-speaking natives, because of the hard economic conditions after the Second World War and the Greek Civil War. Although there was some liberalization between 1959 and 1967, the Greek military dictatorship re-imposed harsh restrictions. The situation gradually eased after Greece's return to democracy, although even as recently as the 1990s Greece has been criticised by international human rights activists for "harassing" Macedonian Slav political activists, who, nonetheless, are free to maintain their own political party (Rainbow). Elsewhere in Greek Macedonia, economic development after the war was brisk and the area rapidly became the most prosperous part of the region. The coast was heavily developed for tourism, particularly on the Halkidiki peninsula.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: Under Georgi Dimitrov, Soviet loyalist and head of the Comintern, Bulgaria initially accepted the existence of a distinctive Macedonian identity. It had been agreed that Pirin Macedonia would join Yugoslav Macedonia and for this reason the population was forced to declare itself "Macedonian" in the 1946 census. This caused resentment and many people were imprisoned or interned in rural areas outside Pirin Macedonia. After Tito's split from the Soviet bloc this position was abandoned and the existence of a Macedonian ethnicity or language was denied.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: Attempts of Macedonian historians after the 1940s to claim a number of prominent figures of the 19th century Bulgarian cultural revival and armed resistance movement as Macedonians has caused ever since a bitter resentment in Sofia. Bulgaria has repeatedly accused the Republic of North Macedonia of appropriating Bulgarian national heroes and symbols and of editing works of literature and historical documents so as to prove the existence of a Macedonian Slav consciousness before the 1940s. The publication in the Republic of North Macedonia of the folk song collections 'Bulgarian Folk Songs' by the Miladinov Brothers and 'Songs of the Macedonian Bulgarians' by Serbian archaeologist Verković under the "politically correct" titles 'Collection' and 'Macedonian Folk Songs' are some of the examples quoted by the Bulgarians. A common practice in Skopje-driven publishing activity was to substitute any single mention of the word "Bulgarian" in old texts with "Macedonian". The issue has soured the relations of Bulgaria with former Yugoslavia and later with the Republic of North Macedonia for decades.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: Kiro Gligorov, the president of Yugoslav Macedonia, sought to keep his republic outside the fray of the Yugoslav wars in the early 1990s. Yugoslav Macedonia's very existence had depended on the active support of the Yugoslav state and Communist Party. As both began to collapse, the Macedonian authorities allowed and encouraged a stronger assertion of Macedonian national identity than before. This included toleration of demands from Macedonian nationalists for the reunification of Macedonia. The Albanians in the Republic of Macedonia were unhappy about an erosion of their national rights in the face of a more assertive Macedonian nationalism. Some nationalist Serbs called for the republic's re-incorporation into Serbia, although in practice this was never a likely prospect, given Serbia's preoccupation with the wars in Bosnia and Croatia and the relatively small number of Serbs in the Republic of Macedonia compared to Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: As communism fell throughout Eastern Europe in the late 20th century, Yugoslav Macedonia followed its other federation partners and declared its independence from Yugoslavia in late 1991. In 1991, the (then Socialist) Republic of Macedonia held a referendum on independence which produced an overwhelming majority in favour of independence. The referendum was boycotted by the ethnic Albanians, although they did create ethnic political parties and actively contributed in the Macedonian government, parliament etc. The republic seceded peacefully from the Yugoslav federation, declaring its independence as the Socialist Republic of Macedonia. Bulgaria was consequently the first country to officially recognize the Republic of Macedonia's independence – as early as February 1992, followed by other countries as well. The new Macedonian constitution took effect 20 November 1991 and called for a system of government based on a parliamentary democracy. Kiro Gligorov became the first President of the new independent state, succeeded by Boris Trajkovski. In early January 2001 armed conflict took place between the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army (UÇK) militant group and the Republic of Macedonia's security forces. The conflict partially ended with the signing of the Ohrid Framework Agreement by the government of the Republic of Macedonia and Albanian representatives on 13 August 2001, which provided for greater rights for Macedonian Albanian population. In January 2002, the Macedonian conflict ended when the amnesty was announced to Albanian irregulars and rebels. Occasional unrest continued throughout 2002.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: Slavs first arrived in the region late 6th and early 7th centuries AD when Slavic-speaking populations overturned Macedonia's ethnic composition. As a result, the appropriation by the "Republic of Macedonia" of what Greece held as its "Greek symbols", raised concerns in Greece as well as fuelling nationalist anger. This anger was reinforced by the legacy of the Civil War and the view in some quarters, that members of Greece's Slavic-speaking minority were pro-Yugoslavian and presented a danger to its borders. The status of the Republic of Macedonia became a heated political issue in Greece where demonstrations took place in Athens while one million Macedonian Greeks took to the streets in Thessaloniki in 1992, under the slogan: "Macedonia is Greek", referring to the name and ancient history of the region, not posing a territorial claim against their northern neighbor. Initially, the Greek government objected formally to any use of the name Macedonia (including any derivative names) and also to the use of symbols such as the Vergina Sun. On the other hand, also in 1992, demonstrations by more than 100,000 ethnic Macedonians took place in Skopje, the capital of the Republic of Macedonia.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: The controversy was not just nationalist, but it also played out in Greece's internal politics. The two leading Greek political parties, the ruling conservative New Democracy under Constantine Mitsotakis and the socialist PASOK under Andreas Papandreou, sought to outbid each other in whipping up nationalist sentiment and the long-term (rather than immediate) threat posed by the apparent irredentist policies of Skopje. To complicate matters further, New Democracy itself was divided; the then prime minister, Mitsotakis, favored a compromise solution on the Macedonian question, while his foreign minister Adonis Samaras took a hard-line approach. The two eventually fell out and Samaras was sacked, with Mitsotakis reserving the foreign ministry for himself. He failed to reach an agreement on the Macedonian issue despite United Nations mediation; he fell from power in October 1993, largely as a result of Samaras causing the government's majority of one to fall in September 1993.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: When Andreas Papandreou took power following the October 1993 elections, he established a "hard line" position on the issue. The United Nations recommended recognition of the "Republic of Macedonia" under the temporary name of the "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia", which would be used internationally while the country continued to use "Republic of Macedonia" as its constitutional name. The United States and European Union (therefore, including Greece) agreed to this proposal and duly recognised the Republic of Macedonia. This was followed by new, though smaller demonstrations in Greek cities against what was termed a "betrayal" by Greece's allies. Papandreou supported and encouraged the demonstrations, boosting his own popularity by taking the "hard line" against Macedonia. In February 1994, he imposed a total trade embargo on the country, with the exception of food, medicines and humanitarian aid. The effect on Macedonia's economy was limited, mainly because the real damage to its economy had been caused by the collapse of Yugoslavia and the loss of central European markets due to the war. Also, many Greeks broke the trade embargo by entering through Bulgaria. However, the embargo had bad impact on Macedonia's economy as the country was cut off from the port of Thessaloniki and became landlocked because of the UN embargo on Yugoslavia to the north, and the Greek embargo to the south. Later, the signing of the Interim accord between Greece and Macedonia marked the increased cooperation between the two neighboring states. The blockade had a political cost for Greece, as there was little understanding or sympathy for the country's position, and exasperation over what was seen as Greek obstructionism from some of its European Union partners. Athens was criticized in some quarters for contributing to the rising tension in the Balkans, even though the wars in the former Yugoslavia were widely seen as having been triggered by the premature recognition of its successor republics, a move to which Greece had objected from the beginning. It later emerged that Greece had only agreed to the dissolution of Yugoslavia in return for EU solidarity on the Macedonian issue. In 1994, the European Commission took Greece to the European Court of Justice in an effort to overturn the embargo, but while the court provisionally ruled in Greece's favor, the embargo was lifted by Athens the following year before a final verdict was reached. This was for the "Republic of Macedonia" and Greece to enter into an "interim agreement" in which Macedonia agreed to remove any implied territorial claims to the greater Macedonia region from its constitution and to drop the Vergina Sun from its flag. In return, Greece lifted the blockade.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: Before 2019, most countries recognized North Macedonia under its former constitutional name, the Republic of Macedonia, notably the United States, the People's Republic of China and Russia, and also its neighbours Bulgaria, Serbia, ("See:" List of countries' positions in the Macedonia naming dispute) although as the country was referred in the UN only under the provisional reference the "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia", the constitutional name was generally used only in bilateral relations and in relations where a state not recognising the former constitutional name was not a party.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: Discussions continued over the Greek objection regarding the country's name, with the Greek government linking progress on the issue to the Republic of Macedonia's accession to the European Union and NATO (for more on this, see Accession of Macedonia to the European Union).


title: Macedonia (region)

text: Macedonia, Croatia and Albania were qualified to join NATO and an invitation for those three countries was planned to be issued on the NATO summit in Bucharest (Romania), in April 2008. Before the beginning of the summit, the American president Bush said that NATO would make a historic decision on the admission of three Balkan nations: Croatia, Albania and Macedonia; and that the United States strongly supported inviting these nations to join NATO. However, during the summit NATO leaders decided not to extend a membership invitation to Macedonia because Greece vetoed the move after the dispute over the name issue. The Macedonian representative and negotiator with Greece in the name issue complained that the Republic of Macedonia was punished not because it had failed to fulfill NATO accession criteria, but because it had been trying to defend its national identity. The NATO leaders agreed to extend a membership invitation for Macedonia as soon as the name issue with Greece is resolved.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: In November 2008, Republic of Macedonia filed a lawsuit against Greece before the International Court of Justice in The Hague accusing Athens that it violated the Interim Accord by blocking its NATO membership. In 1995, the two countries signed an agreement by which Macedonia agreed to use the provisional reference in international organizations, while Greece pledged not to block Macedonia's integration into the European Union and NATO.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: In March 2009, the European Parliament expressed support for the Republic of Macedonia's EU candidacy and asked the EU to grant the country a date for the start of accession talks by the end of 2009, regretting that the country is waiting three years after the country was granted a candidate status, which makes a demoralizing effect on Macedonia and brings risks of destabilizing the whole region. The parliament also recommended a speedy lifting of the visa regime for the country's citizens.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: The number of ethnic Macedonians in Bulgaria is controversial as several Bulgarian censuses showed conflicting numbers of ethnic Macedonians living in that country. As the Bulgarian authorities did not publish the results of the 1946 census regarding the number of ethnic Macedonians in Bulgaria, Yugoslav sources claimed that some 252,000 people declared themselves as Macedonians in that census. Bulgarian embassy in London in 1991 stated that some 169,000 people were recorded as Macedonians on the same census. The census in 1956 registered 187,789 ethnic Macedonians in Bulgaria. During this period the Macedonian Language was to be the official language of Pirin Macedonia. In 1992 the number of the ethnic Macedonians was 10,803 and in 2001 only 5,071 citizens declared as ethnic Macedonians. Bulgarian governments and public opinion throughout the period continued their policy of non-recognition of Macedonians as a distinct ethnic group. The recent Bulgarian view on the issue is that the Bulgarian policy after the Second World War regarding the Macedonians in Bulgaria was conducted despite the unwillingness of the local population to cooperate, in the conditions of the pressure and reprisals by the Bulgarian communists authorities against the Bulgarians in Pirin Macedonia. After 1958 when the pressure from Moscow decreased, Sofia turned back to the view that the separate Macedonian language did not exist and that the Macedonians in Blagoevgrad province (Pirin Macedonia) were actually Bulgarians.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: There are several ethnic Macedonian organizations in Bulgaria: "Traditional Macedonian Organization Ilinden", later renamed the "IMRO independent – Ilinden", registered in 1992 at the Sofia City Court. Later, in 1998, the organization was registered as a public NGO. The "United Macedonian Organization (UMO) – Ilinden" is another organization. In 1990, the Blagoevgrad District Court refused to register this organization as some parts of the organization statute were not in accordance with the Bulgarian Constitution. In October 1994 this association split up on three different factions. Later two wings were unified under the "UMO Ilinden – PIRIN" organization. In 1998 the European Commission of Human Rights gave admissibility to two out of five complaints of Macedonians from Pirin Macedonia. After the Bulgarian Electoral Committee endorsed in 2001 the registration of a wing of UMO Ilinden, which had dropped separatist demands from its Charter, the mother organization became largely inactive. In 2007, the Sofia City Court refused registration of UMO Ilinden Pirin organization, despite an October 2005 ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that a previous ban of the party violated rights to freedom of association and assembly. In November the European Parliament Rapporteur on Bulgaria and the Enlargement Commissioner of the European Commission urged the government to register the organization.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: There were repeated complaints of official harassment of ethnic Macedonian activists in the 1990s. Attempts of ethnic Macedonian organization UMO Ilinden to commemorate the grave of revolutionary Yane Sandanski throughout the 1990s were usually hampered by the Bulgarian police. Several incidents of mobbing of UMO Ilinden members by Bulgarian Macedonian organization IMRO activists were also reported.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: There is a newspaper published by the Macedonian organizations in Bulgaria, "Narodna Volja" ("People's Will"), which is printed in 2,500 copies.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: Some cases of harassment of organisations of the Bulgarians in Republic of Macedonia and activists have been reported. In 2000 several teenagers threw smoke bombs at the conference of Bulgarian organisation Radko in Skopje, causing panic and confusion among the delegates. The Macedonian Constitutional Court annulled the status and program of the organisation (hence terminating its existence), as those documents question the constitutional establishment of Macedonia and creating national and religious hatred and intolerance. Since then, apparently there are very little or not reported public activities of that organization.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: In 2001 Radko issued in Skopje the original version of the folk song collection "Bulgarian Folk Songs" by the Miladinov Brothers (issued under an edited name in the Republic of Macedonia and viewed as a collection of Slav Macedonian lyrics). The book triggered a wave of other publications, among which the memoirs of the Greek bishop of Kastoria, in which he talked about the Greek-Bulgarian church struggle at the beginning of the 20th century, as well the Report of the Carnegie Commission on the causes and conduct of the Balkan Wars from 1913. Neither of these addressed the ethnic Macedonian population of Macedonia as Macedonians but as Bulgarians. Being the first publications to question the official Macedonian position of the existence of a distinct Macedonian identity going back to the time of Alexander the Great (Macedonism), the books triggered a reaction of shock and disbelief in Macedonian public opinion. The scandal after the publication of "Bulgarian Folk Songs" resulted in the sacking of the Macedonian Minister of Culture, Dimitar Dimitrov.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: As of 2000, Bulgaria started to grant Bulgarian citizenship to members of the Bulgarian minorities in a number of countries, including the Republic of Macedonia. The vast majority of the applications have been from Macedonian citizens. As of May 2004, some 14,000 Macedonians had applied for a Bulgarian citizenship on the grounds of Bulgarian origin and 4,000 of them had already received their Bulgarian passports. According to the official Bulgarian sources, in the period between 2000 and 2006 some 30,000 Macedonian citizens applied for Bulgarian citizenship, attracted by the Bulgaria's recent positive development and the opportunity to get European Union passports after Bulgaria joined EU on the beginning of 2007. In 2006 the former Macedonian Premier and chief of IMRO-DPMNE Ljubčo Georgievski became a Bulgarian citizen. As of 2020, some 77,000 ethnic Macedonians have applied for Bulgarian citizenship.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: The rules governing good neighbourly relations agreed between Bulgaria and the Republic of Macedonia were set in the reaffirmed by a joint memorandum signed on 22 January 2008 in Sofia. There are regular contacts between the Macedonian and Bulgarian officials, confirming the relatively good relationships between the two neighboring countries.


title: Macedonia (region)

text: Bulgaria has proposed to sign a treaty (based on that 1999 Joint Declaration) guaranteeing the good neighbourly relations between the two countries, to enable Bulgarian support for the accession of the Republic of Macedonia to the European Union.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: Dracula is a 1931 American pre-Code supernatural horror film directed and co-produced by Tod Browning from a screenplay written by Garrett Fort and starring Bela Lugosi in the titular role. It is based on the 1924 stage play "Dracula" by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, which in turn is adapted from the 1897 novel "Dracula" by Bram Stoker. Lugosi portrays Count Dracula, a vampire who emigrates from Transylvania to England and preys upon the blood of living victims, including a young man's fiancée.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: Produced and distributed by Universal Pictures, "Dracula" is the first sound film adaptation of the Stoker novel. Several actors were considered to portray the title character, but Lugosi, who had previously played the role on Broadway, eventually got the part. The film was partially shot on sets at Universal Studios Lot in California, which were reused at night for the filming of "Dracula", a concurrently produced Spanish-language version of the story also by Universal.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: "Dracula" was a commercial and critical success upon release, and led to several sequels and spin-offs. It has had a notable influence on popular culture, and Lugosi's portrayal of Dracula established the character as a cultural icon, as well as the archetypal vampire in later works of fiction. In 2000, the film was selected by the United States Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: Renfield is a solicitor traveling to Count Dracula's castle in Transylvania on a business matter. The local village people fear that vampires inhabit the castle and warn Renfield not to go there. Renfield refuses to stay at the village inn and asks his carriage driver to take him to the Borgo Pass. He is driven to the castle by Dracula's coach, with Dracula disguised as the driver. En route, Renfield sticks his head out the window to ask the driver to slow down but sees the driver has disappeared; a bat leads the horses.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: Renfield enters the castle and is welcomed by the charming but eccentric Count, who, unbeknownst to Renfield, is a vampire. They discuss Dracula's intention to lease Carfax Abbey in England, where he intends to travel the next day. Dracula hypnotizes Renfield into opening a window. Renfield faints as a bat appears, and Dracula's three wives close in on him. Dracula waves them away, then attacks Renfield himself.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: Aboard the schooner "Vesta", Renfield has become a raving lunatic slave to Dracula, who hides in a coffin and feeds on the ship's crew. When the ship reaches England, Renfield is discovered to be the only living person. He is sent to Dr. Seward's sanatorium adjoining Carfax Abbey. Elsewhere, at a London theatre, Dracula meets Seward. Seward introduces his daughter Mina, her fiancé John Harker, and a family friend, Lucy Weston. Lucy is fascinated by Dracula. That night, Dracula enters her room and feasts on her blood while she sleeps. She dies the next day after a string of blood transfusions.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: Renfield is obsessed with eating flies and spiders. Polymath doctor Professor Van Helsing analyzes his blood and discovers his obsession. He starts talking about vampires, and that afternoon, Renfield begs Seward to send him away, claiming his nightly cries may disturb Mina's dreams. When Dracula calls Renfield through the medium of a wolf howling, Renfield is disturbed by Van Helsing showing him wolfsbane, which Van Helsing says is used for protection from vampires.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: Dracula visits Mina, asleep in her bedroom, and bites her. The next evening, he enters for a visit, and Van Helsing and Harker notice that he does not have a mirror reflection. When Van Helsing reveals this to Dracula, he smashes the mirror and leaves. Van Helsing deduces that Dracula is the vampire behind the recent tragedies.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: Mina leaves her room and runs to Dracula in the garden, where he attacks her. The maid finds her. Newspapers report that a woman in white is luring children from the park and biting them. Mina recognizes the lady as Lucy, risen as a vampire. Harker wants to take Mina to London for safety but is convinced to leave her with Van Helsing. Van Helsing orders Nurse Briggs to take care of Mina when she sleeps and not to remove the wreath of wolfsbane from her neck.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: Renfield escapes from his cell and listens to the men discussing vampires. Before he is taken back to his cell, Renfield relates to them how Dracula convinced Renfield to allow him to enter the sanatorium by promising him thousands of rats full of blood and life. Dracula enters the Seward parlor and talks with Van Helsing. He states that Mina now belongs to him and warns Van Helsing to return to his home country. Van Helsing swears to excavate Carfax Abbey and destroy Dracula. Dracula attempts to hypnotize Van Helsing, but the latter's resolve proves stronger. As Dracula lunges at Van Helsing, he draws a crucifix from his coat, forcing Dracula to retreat.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: Harker visits Mina on a terrace, and she speaks of how much she loves "nights and fogs". A bat flies above them and squeaks to Mina. She then attacks Harker, but Van Helsing and Seward save him. Mina confesses what Dracula has done to her and tells Harker their love is finished.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: Dracula hypnotizes Briggs into removing the wolfsbane from Mina's neck and opening the windows. Van Helsing and Harker see Renfield heading for Carfax Abbey. Arriving there, they see Dracula with Mina. When Harker shouts to Mina, Dracula thinks Renfield has betrayed him by leading them there and kills him. Dracula is hunted by Van Helsing and Harker, who know that Dracula is forced to sleep in his coffin during daylight, and the sun is rising. Van Helsing prepares a wooden stake while Harker searches for Mina. Van Helsing impales Dracula through the heart, killing him, and Mina returns to normal.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: The following individuals appear in uncredited roles: director and co-producer Tod Browning as the off-screen voice of the harbormaster; Carla Laemmle, a cousin of producer Carl Laemmle Jr., who appears at the start of the film as a woman in the coach carrying Renfield; and Geraldine Dvorak, Cornelia Thaw, and Dorothy Tree as Dracula's brides.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: Bram Stoker's novel had already been filmed without permission as "Nosferatu" in 1922 by German Expressionist filmmaker F. W. Murnau. Stoker's widow sued for plagiarism and copyright infringement, and the courts decided in her favor, essentially ordering that all prints of "Nosferatu" be destroyed. Enthusiastic young Hollywood producer Carl Laemmle, Jr. also saw the box office potential in Stoker's gothic chiller, and he legally acquired the novel's film rights. Initially, he wanted "Dracula" to be a spectacle on a scale with the lavish silent films "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1923) and "The Phantom of the Opera" (1925).


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: Universal Pictures paid $40,000 for all rights to the novel and the stage plays, so they would have the exclusive rights to the Dracula character. Universal also brought Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Louis Bromfield to pen the script to fit this grand scale vision. Bromfield tried to reconcile novel and the stage play and in his draft suggested that Dracula should be two people—ghoulish old man at the beginning of the film, who by traveling to London and feeding on blood gets rejuvenated into drawing-room Dracula of the theatre. Jonathan Harker was supposed to travel to Transylvania in the opening scenes of the film. As in the stage play, Dracula was supposed to kiss Mina passionately on the lips. Those things never made it into movie, either because they were considered too expensive, were replaced by rewritten scenes, or were deemed too risky. Bromfield was soon replaced with Garrett Fort.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: Fort turned to the stage play. Already a huge hit on Broadway, the Deane/Balderston "Dracula" play would end up becoming the blueprint as the production gained momentum. The screenwriters also carefully studied the silent, unauthorized version, F. W. Murnau's "Nosferatu", for inspiration. Lifted directly from a nearly identical scene in "Nosferatu" that does not appear in Stoker's novel, was the early scene at the Count's castle when Renfield accidentally pricks his finger on a paper clip and it starts to bleed. Dracula creeps toward him with glee, only to be repelled when the crucifix falls in front of the bleeding finger.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: The film was originally intended for Lon Chaney, who would play both the Count and the Professor—a stunt he had performed in several silent films. On his sudden death, casting the title role proved problematic. Initially, Laemmle was not at all interested in Lugosi, in spite of good reviews for his stage portrayal. Laemmle instead considered other actors, including Paul Muni, Chester Morris, Ian Keith, John Wray, Joseph Schildkraut, Arthur Edmund Carewe, William Courtenay, John Carradine, and Conrad Veidt. Lew Ayres was eventually hired to play Dracula, only to be recast with Robert Ames after being cast in a different role in a different Universal Pictures film. Ames was recast with David Manners, who would instead come to play John Harker. Lugosi had played the role on Broadway, and to his good fortune, happened to be in Los Angeles with a touring company of the play when the film was being cast. Against the tide of studio opinion, Lugosi lobbied hard and ultimately won the executives over, thanks in part to him accepting a paltry $500 per week salary for seven weeks of work, amounting to $3,500.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: On September 29, 1930, Dracula began shooting at Universal City on a $355,050 budget on a 36-day schedule. Tod Browning shot scenes of Dracula’s Castle and Borgo Pass all the first week of production. According to numerous accounts, the production is alleged to have been a mostly disorganized affair, with the usually meticulous Tod Browning leaving cinematographer Karl Freund to take over during much of the shoot, making Freund something of an uncredited director on the film.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: Manners recalled about the filming: "I can still see Lugosi, parading up and down the stage, posing in front of a full-length mirror, throwing his cape over his shoulder and shouting, 'I am Dracula!' He was mysterious and never really said anything to the other members of the cast except good morning when he arrived and good night when he left. He was polite, but always distant". Lugosi struck Manners as a vain, eccentric performer: "I never thought he was acting, but being the odd man he was". Edward Van Sloan, who played Van Helsing on Broadway stage opposite Lugosi, reprised his role on screen. The actor wondered why the film version reduced the large mirror used in the play to the small cigarette box with a mirrored lid. Despite Van Helsing becoming one of his most famous screen roles Van Sloan didn't think much about the film - in a letter to his nephew he once wrote: "That reminds me of your failure to see the Dracula film on TV. How lucky you were... What must it be like today...! Overplayed — over-written — altogether lousy". Bernard Jukes, who played the role of Renfield in the play on Broadway and during the 1928 tour, wanted that part in the film, but it went to Dwight Frye instead.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: Tod Browning remembered actress Helen Chandler from the 1928 Broadway play "The Silent House" and based on that maiden performance chose her for Mina, the heroine, who becomes mistress to Bela Lugosi’s Count Dracula. Her salary was $750 per week, making her the highest paid member of the cast. At the time of the filming she already battled severe alcoholism. She was known to laugh at the Lugosi's mirror ritual at the shooting at times. Like some of her co-stars, despite this role becoming her most famous one, she didn't care much about it: "It would be an awful fate, for instance, to go around being a pale little girl in a trance with her arms outstretched as in "Dracula", all the rest of my screen career!"


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: The peasants at the beginning are praying in Hungarian, and the signs in the village are also in Hungarian. This was because when Bram Stoker wrote the original novel, the Borgo Pass in Transylvania was then part of the Kingdom of Hungary and within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. By the time the film was made, Transylvania had been part of the Kingdom of Romania since the end of World War I in 1918.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: The scenes of crew members on the ship struggling in the violent storm were lifted from a Universal silent film, "The Storm Breaker" (1925). Photographed at silent film projection speed, this accounts for the jerky, sped-up appearance of the footage when projected at 24 frames per second sound film speed and cobbled together with new footage of Dracula and Renfield. Jack Foley himself was the foley artist who produced the sound effects. The picture was completed for a total cost of $341,191.20, which was under the original estimate of $355,050.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: Before the film was even released, Lugosi worried that it would cause him to be type cast. He reportedly rejected an offer to reprise his role as Dracula in another stage tour of the play, stating: "No! Not at any price. When I'm through with this picture I hope to never hear of Dracula again. I cannot stand it...I do not intend that it shall possess me".


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: The film's histrionics from the stage play are also reflected in its special effects, which are limited to fog, lighting, and large flexible bats. Dracula's transition from bat to person is always done off-camera. The film also employs extended periods of silence and character close-ups for dramatic effect, and employs two expository intertitles and a closeup of a newspaper article to advance the story, a seeming holdover from silent films; a point made by online film critic James Berardinelli is that the actors' performance style seems to belong to the silent era. Director Tod Browning had a reputation as a silent film director, having made them since 1915, including ten horror blockbusters with Lon Chaney including "The Unknown" (1927), but he never felt completely at ease with sound films. He only directed six more films over an eight-year period, the best known being the notorious "Freaks", a horror film with Olga Baclanova and a cast of actual carnival freaks that was pulled from distribution immediately but is a cult favorite today. Browning directed his last film in 1939.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: Owing to the costs of adding an original musical score to a film's soundtrack, no score had ever been composed specifically for the film. The music heard during the opening credits, an excerpt from Act II of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake", was re-used in 1932 for another Universal horror film, "The Mummy". During the theatre scene where Dracula meets Dr. Seward, Harker, Mina, and Lucy, the end of the overture to Wagner's "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg" can also be heard as well as the dark opening of Schubert's "Unfinished Symphony" in B minor.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: In 1998, composer Philip Glass was commissioned to compose a musical score for the film. The score was performed by the Kronos Quartet under the direction of Michael Reisman, Glass's usual conductor.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: Of the project, Glass said: "The film is considered a classic. I felt the score needed to evoke the feeling of the world of the 19th century — for that reason I decided a string quartet would be the most evocative and effective. I wanted to stay away from the obvious effects associated with horror films. With [the Kronos Quartet] we were able to add depth to the emotional layers of the film".


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: The film, with this new score, was released by Universal Studios in 1999 in the VHS format. Universal's DVD releases allow the viewer to choose between the unscored soundtrack or the Glass score. The soundtrack, "Dracula", was released by Nonesuch Records in 1999. Glass and the Kronos Quartet performed live during showings of the film in 1999, 2000 and 2017.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: "Dracula" was a big gamble for a major Hollywood studio to undertake. In spite of the literary credentials of the source material, it was uncertain if an American audience was prepared for a serious full length supernatural chiller. Though American audiences had been exposed to other chillers before, such as "The Cat and the Canary" (1927), this was a horror story with no comic relief or trick ending that downplayed the supernatural. Despite this, "Dracula" proved to be a box office success.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: When the film finally premiered at the Roxy Theatre in New York City on February 12, 1931 (released two days later throughout the U.S.), newspapers reported that members of the audiences fainted in shock at the horror on screen. This publicity, shrewdly orchestrated by the film studio, helped ensure people came to see the film, if for no other reason than curiosity. Within 48 hours of its opening at New York's Roxy Theatre, it had sold 50,000 tickets, building a momentum that culminated in a $700,000 profit, the largest of Universal's 1931 releases.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: The film was generally well received by critics upon its release. Mordaunt Hall of "The New York Times" called it "the best of the many mystery films", characterizing Browning's direction as "imaginative" and Helen Chandler's performance as "excellent". "Variety" praised the film for its "remarkably effective background of creepy atmosphere" and wrote: "It is difficult to think of anybody who could quite match the performance in the vampire part of Bela Lugosi, even to the faint flavor of foreign speech that fits so neatly". "Film Daily" declared the film "a fine melodrama" and remarked that Lugosi had created "one of the most unique and powerful roles of the screen". "Time" called it "an exciting melodrama, not as good as it ought to be but a cut above the ordinary trapdoor-and-winding-sheet type of mystery film". John Mosher of "The New Yorker" wrote a negative review, remarking that "there is no real illusion in the picture" and "this whole vampire business falls pretty flat". The "Chicago Tribune" did not think the film was as scary as the stage version, calling its framework "too obvious" and "its attempts to frighten too evident", but still concluded that it was "quite a satisfactory thriller".


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: The film was originally released with a running time of 85 minutes; when it was reissued in 1936, the Production Code was enforced. For that reissue, two scenes are known to have been censored:


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: In the early days of sound films, it was common for Hollywood studios to produce "Foreign Language Versions" of their films using the same sets, costumes and so on. While Browning filmed during the day, at night George Melford was using the sets to make the Spanish-language version "Drácula", starring Carlos Villarías as Conde Drácula. Long thought lost, a print of "Drácula" was discovered in the 1970s, of which large sections had rotted away. In the early 1990s, a good copy was found in Cuba. The film was preserved in the US National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: A third, silent, version of the film was also released. In 1931, some theaters had not yet been wired for sound, and during this transition period many studios released alternative silent versions with intertitles.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: In 1999, film critic Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film four out of four stars, praising Lugosi's performance and Freund's cinematography. He noted the film's lasting influence, and included it in his list of "Great Movies". Angie Errigo of "Empire" gave the film four out of five stars, commending Lugosi's performance as "the [Dracula] against which all others are measured", and writing that the film "is stagey and creaky, but it also has wonderful, unforgettable moments". John Oliver of the British Film Institute credited the film with establishing the "popular on-screen image of the vampire" and wrote that "the cinematic horror genre was born with the release of "Dracula"". He concluded that although he feels the film becomes almost "overly stage bound in its middle section, the virtues of its star performance and general visual style outweigh any such deficits".


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 94% based on 48 reviews, with an average rating of 7.86/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Bela Lugosi's timeless portrayal of Dracula in this creepy and atmospheric 1931 film has set the standard for major vampiric roles since".


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: After the commercial and critical success of "Dracula", Universal released "Frankenstein" (1931) later that same year. Universal in particular would become the forefront of early horror cinema, with a canon of films including "The Mummy" (1932), "The Invisible Man" (1933), "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935), and "The Wolf Man" (1941).


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: Five years after the original release, Universal released "Dracula's Daughter" (1936), a direct sequel that starts immediately after the end of the first film. A second sequel, "Son of Dracula" (1943), starring Lon Chaney Jr., followed another seven years later. The Count returned to life in three more Universal films of the mid-1940s: "House of Frankenstein" (1944); "House of Dracula" (1945); and the comedy "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (1948).


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: Universal would only cast Lugosi as Dracula in one more film, the aforesaid Abbott and Costello vehicle, giving the role to John Carradine for the mid-1940s "monster rally" films, although Carradine admittedly more closely resembled Stoker's physical description from the book. Many of the familiar images of Dracula are from stills of the older Lugosi made during the filming of the 1948 comedy, so there remain two confusingly distinct incarnations of Lugosi as Dracula, seventeen years apart in age.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: As Lugosi played a vampire in three other movies during his career ("Mark of the Vampire" (1935), "The Return of the Vampire" (1943), and "Mother Riley Meets the Vampire" (1952)), this contributed to the public misconception that he portrayed Dracula on film many times, although the other vampire roles had him playing Dracula in all but name.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: Since its release, "Dracula" has become widely regarded as a classic of the era and of its genre. In 2000, it was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It was also ranked 79th on Bravo's countdown of "The 100 Scariest Movie Moments".


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: To many film lovers and critics alike, Lugosi's portrayal is widely regarded as the definitive Dracula. Lugosi had a powerful presence and authority on-screen. The slow, deliberate pacing of his performance ("I bid you… welcome!" and "I never drink… wine!") gave his Dracula the air of a walking, talking corpse, which terrified the movie audiences at the time, compelling with no dialogue, and the many close-ups of Lugosi's face in icy silence jumped off the screen. With this mesmerizing performance, Dracula became Bela Lugosi's signature role, his Dracula a cultural icon, and he himself a legend in the classic Universal Horror film series.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: However, Dracula would ultimately become a role which would prove to be both a blessing and a curse. Despite his earlier stage successes in a variety of roles, from the moment Lugosi donned the cape on screen, it would forever see him typecast as the Count.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: Browning would go on to direct Lugosi once more in another vampire thriller, "Mark of the Vampire", a 1935 remake of Browning's lost silent film "London After Midnight" (1927) starring Lon Chaney.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: The actors who followed in Lugosi's shoes in playing Dracula, and who achieved significant fame in that role, had different attitudes to Lugosi's portrayal.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: Christopher Lee, who played Dracula in a series of Hammer movies, said: "Anyhow, about the Lugosi Dracula. I was so disappointed. I absolutely had been wanting to see it for a long, long time. There are aspects of it, for instance, that I considered ridiculous. Dracula is played too nice at the beginning. Practically no menace in the character .. There is no shock or fright in it. Lugosi’s hands too ... He held them out stiffly... making him look like a puppet. His smile was not always sinister, either". While thinking that Lugosi was in his younger days a wonderful looking man, who had tremendous presence and personality, Lee also thought that Lugosi "was not the right man to play Dracula from the point of view of nationality. Because Transylvania is in Romania and he was a Hungarian from the town of Lugos, hence his name". At the time that Bram Stoker wrote the novel, however, Transylvania was part of the Kingdom of Hungary and Vlad Dracul, the original historical inspiration for the novel, was Transylvanian.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: Gary Oldman, who played Dracula in Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation, considered Lugosi to be his favourite Dracula and said about his performance: "He was really on to something: the way he moved, the way he sounded". Oldman based his Dracula voice on Lugosi's voice.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: The film's poster campaign was overseen by Universal advertising art director Karoly Grosz, who also illustrated the "insert" poster himself. Original posters from the 1931 release are scarce and highly valuable to collectors. In 2009, actor Nicolas Cage auctioned off his collection of vintage film posters, which included an original "StyleF" one sheet that sold for $310,700; as of March 2012, it stood as the sixth-highest price for a film poster. In summer 2017, Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett loaned his rare "StyleC" poster to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts for an exhibition on horror film posters. In December that same year, an extremely rare "StyleA" poster—one of only two known copies—sold at auction for $525,000, setting a new world record for the most expensive film poster.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: After the film's original theatrical run, several theatrical reissues were promoted with new poster designs.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: This film, and the 1920s stage play by Deane and Balderston, contributed much of Dracula's popular iconography, much of which vastly differs from Stoker's novel. In the novel and in the German silent film "Nosferatu" (1922), Dracula's appearance is repulsive; Lugosi portrays the Count as a handsome, charming nobleman. The Deane-Balderston play and this film also introduced the now iconic images of Dracula entering his victims' bedrooms through French doors/windows, wrapping his satin-lined cape around victims, and more emphasis on Dracula transforming into a bat. In the Stoker novel, he variously transformed into a bat or a wolf, a mist or "elemental dust".


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: The now classic Dracula line, "I never drink ... wine", is original to this film. It did not appear in Stoker's novel or the original production of the play. When the play was revived on Broadway in 1977 starring Frank Langella, the line was added to the script.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: In the 1990s, MCA/Universal Home Video released "Dracula" on VHS as part of the "Universal Monsters Classic Collection", a series of releases of Universal Classic Monsters films. The film was also released on LaserDisc.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: In 1999, Universal released "Dracula" on VHS and DVD as part of the "Classic Monster Collection". In 2004, Universal released "Dracula: The Legacy Collection" on DVD as part of the "Universal Legacy Collection". This two-disc release includes both "Dracula" and the Spanish-language "Drácula", as well as "Dracula's Daughter", "Son of Dracula", and "House of Dracula".


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: In 2012, "Dracula" and "Drácula" were released on Blu-ray as part of the "Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection" box set, which also includes a total of nine films from the Universal Classic Monsters series. In September 2013, "Dracula" received a standalone Blu-ray release that also includes "Drácula". That same year, "Dracula" was included as part of the six-film Blu-ray set "Universal Classic Monsters Collection", which also includes "Frankenstein", "The Mummy", "The Invisible Man", "Bride of Frankenstein", and "The Wolf Man". The following year, Universal released "Dracula: Complete Legacy Collection" on DVD. This set contains seven films: "Dracula", "Drácula", "Dracula's Daughter", "Son of Dracula", "House of Frankenstein", "House of Dracula", and "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein". In 2015, the six-film "Universal Classic Monsters Collection" was released on DVD. In 2016, "Dracula" received a Walmart-exclusive Blu-ray release featuring a glow-in-the-dark cover. In September 2017, the film received a Best Buy-exclusive steelbook Blu-ray release with cover artwork by Alex Ross. That same year, the seven-film "Complete Legacy Collection" was released on Blu-ray.


title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)

text: In August 2018, "Dracula", "Drácula", "Dracula's Daughter", "Son of Dracula", "House of Frankenstein", "House of Dracula", and "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" were included in the "Universal Classic Monsters: Complete 30-Film Collection" Blu-ray box set. This box set also received a DVD release. Later in October, "Dracula" and "Drácula" were included as part of a limited edition Best Buy-exclusive Blu-ray set titled "Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection", which features artwork by Alex Ross. Universal Pictures Home Entertainment released "Dracula" on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray on October 5, 2021.


title: Hera Pheri (2000 film)

text: Hera Pheri () is a 2000 Indian Hindi-language comedy film directed by Priyadarshan and written by Neeraj Vora, starring Akshay Kumar, Sunil Shetty, Paresh Rawal, Tabu, Om Puri and Gulshan Grover. The movie is a remake of 1989 Malayalam film "Ramji Rao Speaking". It is the first instalment of the "Hera Pheri" franchise. The plot revolves around Two tenants, Raju and Shyam and a landlord Baburao, in desperate need of money, chance upon a ransom call via a cross connection. They hatch a plan to claim the ransom for themselves.


title: Hera Pheri (2000 film)

text: The film released on 31 March 2000. It was opened with mixed reviews, some of whom applauded the performances of Kumar and Rawal particularly. Although film became moderate success grossing ₹17.8cr at the box office against the budget of ₹7.5cr. It spawned a sequel, "Phir Hera Pheri", released in 2006.


title: Hera Pheri (2000 film)

text: Over the years, the film went on to become a cult classic. and is regarded as one of the best Hindi comedy films ever made. The film is noted for its authenticity and depiction of economic problem of lower middle class families in India, situational comedy, dialogues, performances of the lead trio Kumar, Rawal and Shetty. It was voted as the best Bollywood comedy film of all time in an online poll conducted by "The Indian Express".


title: Hera Pheri (2000 film)

text: The film begins with Ghanshyam alias Shyam, a guy from Gurgaon searching for a job at a bank. He was unable to get the job despite his late father who worked there. One day, he accidentally bumps into a guy named Raju. Shyam mistakes Raju for a pickpocket and begins to chase him. However, he discovers the truth and the opposite occurs when Raju chases Shyam after mistaking him to be a pickpocket. Raju has his troubles, dealing with his daydreams and the unfriendly people he is working for. He is unable to keep a job and thus faces many problems.


title: Hera Pheri (2000 film)

text: Shyam then approaches a garage owned by a man named Baburao Ganpatrao Apte (fondly called as Babu Bhaiya) and manages to get a room on rent by compromising on the amount for Babu Bhaiya's alcohol. Unbeknownst to him, Raju is staying in the same house on rent, which he hasn't paid for the last two years. The trio falls into hilarious situations that usually involve Raju instigating Shyam and purposefully trying to create a ruckus that Babu Bhaiya, has to resolve. During one such fight, a girl named Anuradha Shivshankar Panikar arrives and tries to persuade Shyam to sign the Non-Objection Certificate, so that she could have the job at the bank. When Shyam refuses, Raju hatches a plot to make him sign the papers. Shyam eventually finds out that Raju deceitfully made him sign the papers and that is when the rivalry between the two commences. An old friend of Shyam, Khadak Singh, comes to his place asking to return his money which Shyam took from Khadak Singh as a loan. Khadak Singh asks Shyam to pay the loan back as soon as possible or else his sister's marriage would be cancelled.


title: Hera Pheri (2000 film)

text: Shyam finds out that Raju has been deceiving his mother by posing as an engineer. Anuradha prepares a job resignation meanwhile and gives it to Shyam, who in return tears it up because of her mentally ill mother and the poor conditions of her home. Later, he confronts Raju who reveals that he wants to see his mother happy.


title: Hera Pheri (2000 film)

text: Their life takes an unexpected turn when they get a call from Kabira which is a wrong number meant for the owner of Star Fisheries, Devi Prasad. The wrong number is because of the misprint in the phone directory, which renders Star Fisheries' number as Star Garage's and vice versa. Kabira, a terrorist and kidnapper, thinking that it is Devi Prasad, tells him that his granddaughter Rinku is kidnapped and asks for a ransom. Eavesdropping on the entire conversation going between Kabira and Shyam, Raju decides to play a game.


title: Hera Pheri (2000 film)

text: The game involves Shyam calling Devi Prasad posing as the kidnapper and asking for double the ransom amount, which will solve their monetary problems. Shyam and Babu Bhaiya initially repel the idea, but they finally give in when Raju convinces them that even though it's wrong, this is a golden chance to earn money and also to save a life. They call the real Deviprasad and ask for double ransom. On their first attempt they wear helmets as a disguise but their attempt gets foiled by the police led by Prakash (called secretly by Devi Prasad's servant). Kabira later informs them that the ransom has been doubled. They call Deviprasad again and ask for a foolproof double ransom.


title: Hera Pheri (2000 film)

text: On their second attempt, they wear Zorro costumes to hide their identities. However, they reveal themselves to Devi Prasad to win his confidence and try to save Rinku from the kidnappers. But she recognizes Shyam as an imposter and Kabira gets alerted. A huge fight involving the police, Kabira's gang members, and Khadak Singh & his men, infuriated by the delay in returning the money, takes place. Rinku is saved by the trio and returned to Devi Prasad. Babu Bhaiya and Shyam go home happily intending to find Raju with the money, but they find him missing. Assuming that he has cheated them, they call the police to confess the crime. But Raju returns and reveals that he had gone only to return the money of the creditors. The police arrive and, seeing the money, arrest the trio.


title: Hera Pheri (2000 film)

text: In the end, Devi Prasad comes to the trio's rescue and convinces the police that it was all a misunderstanding and saves the three and they go home, richer than ever. The film ends with the trio getting a prank call from Rinku.


title: Hera Pheri (2000 film)

text: "Hera Pheri" was the first time that Priyadarshan worked with Akshay Kumar and Sunil Shetty. He had worked with Paresh Rawal in "Doli Saja Ke Rakhna". It also marked the beginning of a long association between Priyadarshan and the three actors.


title: Hera Pheri (2000 film)

text: Following "Hera Pheri", Priyadarshan has made sure that either Kumar, Shetty, Rawal, or a combination of the three actors would star in his films. The only exceptions are "Dhol", "Billu", "Tezz" and "Rangrezz".


title: Hera Pheri (2000 film)

text: The film did not open well upon release, but picked up later and became a box office success, grossing Rs. 24,25,00,000 in India. Much of the acclaim went to Akshay Kumar and Paresh Rawal for their comic timing and acting, Film is considered Kumar's foray into comedy genre and critics calling Rawal as "Baburao" is best performances ever. Aparajita Saha of Rediff stated "the movie belongs entirely to Paresh Rawal. Whatever laughter the film solicits is solely due to him. He has impeccable timing and a natural flair for comedy. Sunil Shetty's role and his performance is also too good." Alok Kumar of Planet Bollywood praised the movie saying "Priyadarshan's Hera Pheri is a delight to watch for its performances, some songs, and an interesting story line".


title: Hera Pheri (2000 film)

text: It has achieved a cult status among Indian audiences and is regarded as one of the best Hindi comedy films ever made. The dialogues of the film became widely famous through out the years and are used popularly in Indian memes.


title: Hera Pheri (2000 film)

text: "Phir Hera Pheri", the sequel of this film, was released on 9 June 2006. Alongside the main trio, Bipasha Basu, Rimi Sen and Johny Lever joined the cast. The sequel was a box-office blockbuster.


title: Casserole

text: A casserole (French: diminutive of , from Provençal 'pan') is a normally large deep pan or bowl used for cooking a variety of dishes in the oven; it is also a category of foods cooked in such a vessel. To distinguish the two uses, the pan can be called a "casserole dish" or "casserole pan", whereas the food is simply "a casserole". Often the same pan is used for both cooking and serving.


title: Casserole

text: Baked dishes have existed for thousands of years. Early casserole recipes consisted of rice that was pounded, pressed, and filled with a savoury mixture of meats such as chicken or sweetbread. Some time around the 1870s this sense of casserole seems to have taken its current sense. Cooking in earthenware containers has always been common in most cultures, but the idea of casserole cooking as a one-dish meal became popular in the United States in the twentieth century, especially in the 1950s when new forms of lightweight metal and glass cookware appeared on the market. By the 1970s casseroles took on a less-than-sophisticated image.


title: Casserole

text: In the United States, a casserole or hot dish is typically a baked food with three main components: pieces of meat (such as chicken or ground meat) or fish (such as tuna) or other protein (such as beans or tofu), various chopped or canned vegetables (such as green beans or peas), and a starchy binder (such as flour, potato or pasta); sometimes, there is also a crunchy or cheesy topping. Liquids are released from the meat and vegetables during cooking, and further liquid in the form of stock, wine, beer, gin, cider, vegetable juice, or even water may be added when the dish is assembled. Casseroles are usually cooked slowly in the oven, often uncovered. They may be served as a main course or side dish, and, conveniently, may be served in the vessel in which they were cooked.


title: Casserole

text: Many baked dishes served in the baking dish can be classed as casseroles. Examples include Lancashire hotpot (English), cassoulet (French), moussaka (Greek), and timballo (Italian).


title: Casserole

text: In English-speaking Commonwealth countries like the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, the term "casserole" is most commonly used to refer to a dish of meat or chicken with vegetables and a gravy-style sauce; dishes containing a large proportion of starchy ingredients, e.g. pasta or potatoes, or those cooked in creamy sauces are not generally referred to as casseroles, and might be called ‘bakes’ or ‘gratins’. In the UK, the terms casserole and stew tend to be used interchangeably, although some distinguish them by saying stews are cooked on a stovetop while casseroles are cooked in an oven.


title: Venison

text: Venison originally meant the meat of a game animal but now refers primarily to the meat of antlered ungulates such as elk or deer (or antelope in South Africa). Venison can be used to refer to any part of the animal, so long as it is edible, including the internal organs. Venison, much like beef or pork, is categorized into specific cuts, including roast, sirloin, and ribs.


title: Venison

text: The word derives from the Latin "venari", meaning "to hunt or pursue". This term entered the English language through Norman French "venaison" in the 11th century, following the Norman conquest of England and the establishment of Royal Forests.


title: Venison

text: "Venison" originally described meat of any game animal killed by hunting and was applied to any animal from the families "Cervidae" (true deer), "Leporidae" (rabbits and hares), "Suidae" (wild boar) and certain species of the genus "Capra" (goats and ibex).


title: Venison

text: In southern Africa, the word "venison" refers to the meat of antelope, a "Bovidae" taxon, as there are no native "Cervidae" in sub-Saharan Africa.


title: Venison

text: Venison may be eaten as steaks, tenderloin, roasts, sausages, jerky, and minced meat. It has a flavor reminiscent of beef. Cuts of venison tend to have a finer texture and be leaner than comparable cuts of beef. However, like beef, leaner cuts can be tougher as well. Venison burgers are typically so lean as to require the addition of fat in the form of bacon, beef, olive oil, or cheese to achieve parity with hamburger cooking time, texture, and taste. Organ meats (offal) of deer can also be eaten. Traditionally, they are called "hombres" (originally the Middle English "hombres"). This is supposedly the origin of the phrase "humble pie", meaning a pie made from the organs of the deer.


title: Venison

text: Venison is considered to be a relatively healthy meat for human consumption. Since deer are inherently wild animals living on grass and wild plants, their meat can be consumed as part of a naturally healthy diet. Venison is higher in moisture and protein, and the protein is more diverse in amino acids and lower in calories, cholesterol, and fat than most cuts of grain-fed beef, pork, or lamb.


title: Venison

text: Since it is unknown whether chronic wasting disease (CWD), a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy among deer (similar to mad cow disease, scientifically known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy), can pass from deer to humans through the consumption of venison, there have been some fears of dangerous contamination of the food supply from wild deer carrying CWD. The disease has been found among farmed deer in the US and western Canada, but New Zealand has not identified the disease among its herd.


title: Venison

text: Deer farmers have had tests developed especially for the particular species they raise to obtain better results than those used on cattle. Hunters are advised not to shoot a deer that appears sick or is acting strangely, and they are also advised to take general precautions in examining the meat from deer they have killed.


title: Venison

text: Deer is a kosher animal according to Jewish religious law and a halal animal according to Muslim religious law. Deer hunting is prohibited by Orthodox Judaism, as deer must be slaughtered, deveined, and salted according to the principles of kashrut. Venison is occasionally found at upscale kosher restaurants, but it is generally not sold at kosher grocery stores. Deer hunting is allowed in Islam, provided that a Muslim deer hunter says the name of Allah when shooting the deer. However, young deer who cannot run away are considered haram according to Sharia Law .


title: Venison

text: Venison (as well as other game meats, mainly wild boar) is a part of traditional cuisine and is commonly eaten, not considered a specialty. Dishes such as deer goulash are often on restaurant menus. A variety of venison (roe, red and fallow deer, mouflon) and other game meat is widely available in butcher shops in fresh state, distributed by wholesalers, as well as in big retail chains such as Tesco, at prices similar to beef or pork, around 200 CZK or 8 EUR per kilogram. Despite the popularity and low prices, in recent years the production of venison has surpassed demand, and is therefore often used in production of animal food.


title: Venison

text: In England, hunting rights were restricted in an effort to preserve property rights. As a result, the possession and sale of venison was tightly regulated under English law, although it is readily available commercially.


title: Venison

text: New Zealand has large populations of wild and farmed deer, making venison a relatively common meat. It is widely available in supermarkets.


title: Venison

text: Kosher venison is available in the United Kingdom. Unavailable for over a century, beginning in 2019 the venison was imported from an unnamed European country and sold by a kosher meat company.