Macedonian nationalism

The separate Macedonian nation gained recognition during World War II when the Socialist Republic of Macedonia was created as part of Yugoslavia.

[12][13] The very name Macedonia, revived during the early 19th century after the foundation of the modern Greek state, with its Western Europe-derived obsession with Ancient Greece, was applied to the local Slavs.

[14] The idea was to stimulate the development of close ties between them and the Greeks, linking both sides to the ancient Macedonians, as a counteract against the growing Bulgarian cultural influence into the region.

[22] According to Kuzman Shapkarev, as a result of Macedonists' activity, the Slavs in Macedonia had started to use the ancient designation Macedonians alongside the traditional one Bulgarians by the 1870s.

[30] In the early 20th century, Pavel Shatev witnessed this process of slow differentiation, describing people who insisted on their Bulgarian nationality, but felt themselves Macedonians above all.

The Serbian government came to believe that any attempt to forcibly assimilate Slavic Macedonians into Serbs in order to incorporate Macedonia would be unsuccessful, given the strong Bulgarian influence in the region.

During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Allies sanctioned Serbian control of Vardar Macedonia[44] and accepted the belief that Macedonian Slavs were in fact Southern Serbs.

[46] During the Second World War Macedonist ideas were further developed by the Yugoslav Communist Partisans, but some researchers doubt that even at that time the Slavs from Macedonia considered themselves to be ethnically separate from the Bulgarians.

[55] The name "Macedonia" was revived to mean a separate geographical region on the Balkans, this occurring in the early 19th century, after the foundation of the modern Greek state, with its Western Europe-derived obsession with the Ancient world.

[60] According to some modern authors as well as pro-Macedonian sources (e.g. Nick Anastasovski[70]), the designation 'Bulgarian' referred to all the Slavs living in Rumelia and meant nothing more than peasant.

Although he was appointed Bulgarian metropolitan bishop, in 1891 Theodosius of Skopje attempted to restore the Archbishopric of Ohrid as an autonomous Macedonian church, but his idea failed.

[76] On the eve of the 20th century the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (IMARO) tried to unite all unsatisfied elements in the Ottoman Europe and struggled for political autonomy in the regions of Macedonia and Adrianople Thrace.

To improve the situation in the area Tito ordered the establishment of the Communist Party of Macedonia in March 1943 and the second AVNOJ congress on 29 November 1943 did recognise the Macedonian nation as separate entity.

According to information announced by Paskal Mitrevski on the I plenum of NOF in August 1948, about 85% of the Macedonian-speaking population in Aegean Macedonia identified themselves as ethnic Macedonian.

[102] Meanwhile, the Yugoslav historiography borrowed certain parts of the histories of its neighboring states in order to construct the Macedonian identity, having reached not only the times of medieval Bulgaria, but even as far back as Alexander the Great.

[105] The leading research goal in the Republic of Macedonia during Yugoslav times was the establishment of some kind of Paionian identity and to separate it from the western "Illyrian" and the eastern "Thracian" entities.

The idea of Paionian identity was constructed to conceptualize that Vardar Macedonia was neither Illyrian nor Thracian, favouring a more complex division, contrary to scientific claims about strict Thraco-Illyrian Balkan separation in neighbouring Bulgaria and Albania.

[114] Antiquisation is the policy which the nationalistic[115][116][117][118][119][120][121] ruling party VMRO-DPMNE pursued after coming to power in 2006, as a way of putting pressure on Greece, as well as for the purposes of domestic identity-building.

[134] This ultra-nationalism accompanied by the emphasizing of North Macedonia's ancient roots has raised concerns internationally about growing a kind of authoritarianism by the governing party.

This has triggered strong protests from the Greek side,[138][139][140] which regards this as a sign that irredentism remains the dominant state ideology and everyday political practice in the neighboring country.

[46] Following the Second World War, Macedonism became the basis of Yugoslav Macedonia's state ideology, aimed at transforming the Slavic and, to a certain extent, non-Slavic parts of its population into ethnic Macedonians.

The term is occasionally used in an apologetic sense by some Macedonian authors,[158][159][160][161] but has also faced strong criticism from moderate political views in North Macedonia and international scholars.

[165] The term is first believed to have been used in a derogatory manner by Petko Slaveykov in 1871, when he dismissed Macedonian nationalists as "Macedonists",[166] who he regarded a misguided (sic): Grecomans.

[167] The roots of the concept were first developed in the second half of the 19th century, in the context of Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian initiatives to take control over the region of Macedonia, which was at that time ruled by the Ottoman Empire.

[168] Nevertheless, those accused of Slaveikov as Macedonists were representative of the movement aiming at the construction of the Bulgarian standard literary language primarily on the Macedonian dialects, such as Kuzman Shapkarev, Dimitar Makedonski and Veniamin Machukovski.

In 1888 the Macedono-Bulgarian ethnographer Kuzman Shapkarev noted that, as a result of this activity, a strange, ancient ethnonym "Makedonci" (Macedonians) was imposed 10–15 years prior by outside intellectuals, introduced with a "cunning aim" to replace the traditional "Bugari" (Bulgarians).

The root of such indigenous mixture of Illyrism and Pan-Slavism can be seen in "Concise history of the Slav Bulgarian People" (1792), written by Spyridon Gabrovski, whose original manuscript was found in 1868 by the Russian scientist Alexander Hilferding on his journey in Macedonia.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the continued Serbian propaganda efforts had managed to firmly entrench the concept of the Macedonian Slavs in European public opinion and the name was used almost as frequently as Bulgarians.

Simultaneously, the proponents of the Greek Struggle for Macedonia, such as Germanos Karavangelis, openly popularized the Hellenic idea about a direct link between the local Slavs and the ancient Macedonians.

[181] However, after the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) Ottoman Macedonia was mostly divided between Greece and Serbia, which began a process of Hellenization and Serbianisation of the Slavic population and led in general to a cease in the use of this term in both countries.

Flag of North Macedonia
Ogledalo issued by Kiril Peychinovich and printed in 1816 in Budapest. It was inspired by a movement on Mount Athos that was fighting for a liturgical renewal within the Orthodox Church. According to the book's title page, it was written in the "most common Bulgarian language of Lower Moesia". Then geographic Macedonia was traditionally called by the local Slavic-speakers either 'Bulgaria' or 'Lower Moesia', but after the Greek War of Independence these names were gradually replaced by 'Macedonia'.
In 1844, this " Alexander Romance " was published in Belgrade, translated from Greek into Bulgarian by Hristo Popvasilev from Karlovo . This book, according to Blaze Ristovski , played an essential role in awakening Macedonianism, which in the middle of the 19th century was still in its infancy. [ 1 ]
The Macedonian Question an article from 1871 by Petko Slaveykov published in the newspaper Macedonia in Carigrad (now Istanbul ). In this article, Petko Slaveykov writes: "We have many times heard from the Macedonists that they are not Bulgarians, but they are rather Macedonians, descendants of the Ancient Macedonians, and we have always waited to hear some proofs of this, but we have never heard them. The Macedonists have never shown us the bases of their attitude."
Cover of the first volume of Veda Slovena . It contains "Bulgarian folk songs from ancient times, discovered in Thrace and Macedonia". In fact, it was a forgery printed in 1874 in Belgrade under the edition of the pan-Slavic activist Stjepan Verković . The aim of its author Ivan Gologanov , supported by his brother – Theodosius of Skopje , was to prove the ancient inhabitants of Thrace and Macedonia were not Hellenic but Slav-Bulgarian . [ 2 ]
Cover of the "General History of the Macedonian Slavs", completed in 1892 in Sofia by Georgi Pulevski . Its author who endorsed the concept of an ethnic Macedonian identity, claimed the ancient inhabitants of Macedonia were not Hellenic but Slav-Macedonian .
The Alexander Romance translated into Slav Macedonian by the Greek nationalist Athanasios Souliotis ( Megali Idea advocates) in 1907 and issued in Thessaloniki. [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] It was typed with Greek letters and implied to the local Slavs (which were regarded by Greek nationalists as Slavophone Greeks ) that they were heirs to the ancient Macedonians and, as such, a part of the Greek world which had forgotten its native language. In the late 19th and early 20th century, Greek nationalists began to classify the Greek Orthodox Patriarchist Slavic-speakers of Macedonia (which had already been labeled " Slavophone Greeks " at the time) as " Macedonians " in order to detach them from the Bulgarian National Movement and attach them to its Greek counterpart . [ 6 ]
The first page of Orohydrography of Macedonia by Vasil Kanchov – 1911. Here he concluded that the local Bulgarians and Kutsovlachs who lived in the area, already called themselves Macedonians, and the surrounding nations also called them so.
Statue of Georgi Pulevski , a major figure who endorsed the concept of an ethnic Macedonian identity, resulting in the foundation of Macedonian nationalism [ 37 ]
The front page of the book "Za makedonckite raboti, Sofia 1903" by Krste Petkov Misirkov.
Map of Macedonia on the basis of an earlier publication in the newspaper "Македонский Голосъ" by the Saint Petersburg Macedonian Colony , the map was part of the Memorandum of Independence of Macedonia in 1913
A World War I era ethnographic map of the Balkans by Serbian ethnologist Jovan Cvijić , depicting "Slavic Macedonians" in shades of green, distinct from Bulgarians and Serbs. The western parts of Bulgaria and northeastern Macedonia are shown as populated by Serbs. In this way he promoted the idea that Macedonians were in fact Southern Serbs. [ 82 ]
German ethnic map of Yugoslavia from 1940. Macedonians are depicted as a separate community, and described as claimed by Serbs and Bulgarians, but generally attributed to the last ones.
Flag of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia.
Macedonian flag from 1992 to 1995
Monument of Alexander The Great in Skopje . In reality the city was the capital of Dardania and never became a part of Ancient Macedonia . [ 107 ]
Damaged inscription on the Holy Sunday church ( Sveta Nedela ) in Bitola . It reads: This holy church was erected with the contribution of the Bulgarians in Bitola on October 13, 1863. The part of the inscription that reads " Bulgarians " has been erased. There are many other deliberately destroyed Bulgarian monuments in the Republic of North Macedonia. [ 143 ]
The Bitola inscription of 1016/1017. The medieval stone contains instances of the word Bulgarian . In 2006 the French consulate in Bitola sponsored and prepared a tourist catalogue and printed on its front cover the inscription. News about it had spread prior to the official presentation and was a cause for confusion among the officials of the municipality. The printing of the new catalogue was stopped because of its " Bulgarian " cover. [ 144 ]
Front cover of the original edition of Bulgarian Folk Songs collected by the Macedonia-born Miladinov Brothers . When the Macedonian State Archive displayed a photocopy of the book, the upper part of the page showing "Bulgarian" had been cut off. [ 145 ] There is a similar case with the national museum of the Republic of North Macedonia which, apparently, refuses to display original works by the two brothers, because of the Bulgarian labels on some of them. [ 146 ]