Antiquization

[6] The expression “antiquization” originates from the history of arts and describes "the Renaissance practice of giving a city the appearance of ancient Rome or Athens through the introduction of structures organized in the classical mode".

[8] The narrative promoted by VMRO-DPMNE goes back to the ancient Kingdom of Macedon, continues with personalities from early Christianity, distinguished historical figures who were born in or ruled in or around Skopje and also embraces a group of freedom fighters who struggled for Macedonian independence.

[12] What the general consensus does agree on is that Philip II was the one who united most of the Greek states, and his son Alexander the Great conquered much of the known world, all the way to India.

[24][25][26] The figures displayed in the project range from Alexander the Great, Justinian I (Emperor of the Roman Byzantine Empire), and Christian missionaries of the 1st millennium to revolutionary characters of the late 19th and early 20th century.

According to Valentina Bozinovska, chair woman of the state commission for relations with religious communities, "[...] the Skopje 2014 project is a statement of all that we have had from the ancient period until today.

The study revealed that people of the Burusho tribe maintain the legend of being descendants of soldiers of the army of Alexander the Great, and therefore regard North Macedonia as their homeland.

As a consequence, in 2008 a delegation of the Hunza royal family visited the Republic of Macedonia and was “welcomed home” by the Prime Minister, the Archbishop of the Macedonian Orthodox Church, the Mayor of Skopje and a flag-waving crowd.

[31] Some see the background of antiquization in the nineteenth and early twentieth century and the “myth of ancient descent among Orthodox Slavic speakers in Macedonia, adopted partially due to Greek cultural inputs”.

[34] In 1875 Georgi Pulevski published a "Dictionary of three languages" where he mentions that the homeland of the Macedonian nation is Macedonia and that land is most famous for the rule of the great king Alexander.

[35] In the last quarter of the nineteenth century in the geographic region called Macedonia, which constituted the last part of the Ottoman Empire on the Balkan Peninsula that still had not gained independence, a serious struggle emerged about the national affiliation of the Christian Slavs.

However, the claims of the already independent states Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia overlapped considerably, since they all could refer to Macedonia having been part of their correspondent empire during the Middle Ages.

[39] Some members of the Macedonian diaspora even believe, without basis, that certain modern historians, namely Ernst Badian, Peter Green, and Eugene Borza, possess a pro-Macedonian bias in the Macedonian-Greek conflict.

[40] When the Republic of Macedonia declared its independence in 1991 and hence re-opened the national question, it faced criticism and denial from various sides and in various ways, which might have served as a source of inspiration for nationalistic discourses and later antiquization.

In the end, the name issue and next to it the symbolic dispute about the ancient Macedonian heritage became the last obstacle on Macedonia's unsuccessful way to negotiations for full EU membership.

This is applicable to the VMRO-DPMNE, the leading party of the government, which seeks to represent issues of the ethnic Macedonian majority of the country, but as Ulf Brunnbauer points out, the coalition partner DUI, rejects these policies.

[54] The term “antiquization”, which reveals a willing recollection and re-interpretation of an alleged ancient past, is thus dismissed by government proponents as an “invented neologism in a broad anti-Macedonian conspiracy”[5] that tries to undermine Macedonia's true historical grandeur.

The endeavor is nothing less than drawing an uninterrupted line from the ancient Kingdom of Macedon to the present, in order to emphasize the great achievements of the Macedonian nation, its heritage and its peculiarity.

[59] In the Macedonian case, the government attempts to legitimize its right to the name and the remaining symbolical capital of Macedonia by means of the supposed straight link with the Ancient Kingdom.

Maja Muhić and Aleksandar Takovski regard this claim as ironic, since they almost cannot find any correlation between the represented figures that are used to demonstrate the continuity of Macedonian national identity.

[62] A challenge for the continuity narrative and a reason for the conflicting national historical claims of the different states in the Balkans is the dynamic and changeful past of this region.

[66] Others point out that the glory of a national hero like Alexander the Great helps to overcome what has been called the ‘moral crisis of post-communism’: the situation of a country that still has to handle the burden of a complex and tiresome post-communist transition, smoldering ethnicized tensions, a weak economy and low living standards.

The government's rhetoric of the glorious Macedonian past offers distinction from their neighbors, a legitimation for the national struggle and thus serves as an inspiration for political movements.

In the same way, the monuments and buildings that constitute a part of Skopje 2014 are believed to help to improve Macedonia's image for international visitors and to attract tourists on a long-term basis.

[59] The urban planning project Skopje 2014 plays an outstanding and exceptionally visible role in Macedonia's identitarian politics and virtually can be seen as an illustration of the whole process of antiquization.

[59] At first sight it seems ironic that social scientists assert that the identitarian policies of VMRO-DPMNE and its manifestation in Skopje 2014 present disrupted narratives, since the way the past is remembered simply ignores and in its consequence deletes important parts of the history of the region.

[26] In Muhić and Takovskis’ view, Skopje 2014 “aims at creating a Macedonian, Orthodox Christian national identity amidst competing neighbouring agendas and the multicultural setting of the country.

It does so by tearing apart, fragmenting and creating discontinuous segments of the organic tissue of the history of this region and country for the benefit of a few and the loss of the vast majority of Macedonian citizens”.

[25][26][75] Some critics describe that the multicultural approach that was elaborated in the Ohrid Framework Agreement (OFA) in 2001 and improved the conditions of the Albanian population, is now rejected due to antiquization and Skopje 2014.

[80] Externally, the enterprise of revising North Macedonia's official history and work on the national self-image of ethnic Macedonians has negatively influenced the dynamics of the name dispute with Greece and, hence, deteriorated the international position of the country.

VMRO-DPMNE wins elections on a regular basis, which, according to Brunnbauer do not entirely meet European standards of fairness, but still represent a realistic picture of the political preferences in the country.