Antartiko

Antartiko (Greek: Ανταρτικό, Bulgarian/Macedonian Slavic: Желево, Želevo, Zhelevo, "Zelova") is a village in the Prespes Municipality in Macedonia. Nestled in the mountains to the west of Florina at an altitude of 1047 metres, the village has suffered from a long decline in population and influence.

The area had been settled for hundreds of years under the original Slavic name of Zhelevo and there are two old churches testifying to the villages' age. Following the Greek occupation of the area in 1913, Zhelevo was renamed to Antartiko in the 1920s as part of the government's policy of hellenization. On an Austro-Hungarian military survey map from 1900, the name of the village appears as Zelova, or alternatively Zelin. Antartiko had a population of approximately 2000 people in the early 20th century but starting in the 1920s, many of its residents began to emigrate elsewhere. The village population dropped from 1345 people in 1940 to 605 people in 1961, 196 people in 1981, and 133 people in 1991. The village had a local newspaper by 1933.

The church St. Nikolay was built in the early 18th century. The second church in the village, St. Atanas, was built under the initiative of the local benefactor and the activist of the Bulgarian Revival Movement Pavle Yankov in 1880s, but the Greek Bishop of Kastoria refused to sanctify it because of Slavic inscriptions. The inscriptions were not removed until 1908.

The first attempt to open a Bulgarian school was made by locals in 1883, but was unsuccessful because of the opposition of the Greek teacher.

The village was a base for the Greek andartes in the struggle with the detachments of IMORO in the beginning of 20th century. Local inhabitants took part in this struggle on both sides led by Pavlo Athanse for the Greek Andartes. The main part of the population of the village came under the supremacy of the Bulgarian Exarchate towards the end of the first decade of 20th century. According to officials of the Exarchate, in 1909 over 200 households were under the spiritual jurisdiction of the Exarchate and 50 under the Patriarchate of Constantinople). Until the summer of 1908 the Exarchate families were served by the Bulgarian priest from the neighboring village of Oshtima (present-day Trigono). Several weeks after the Young Turk Revolution the first Exarchate priest, local resident Ivan Trayanov, started his work in Zhelevo.

...
Wikipedia