The nominally “Macedonian” nation of FYROM emerged as a byproduct of Yugoslavia’s dissolution in the 1990’s and suffered a major transformation of the internal relationships after the US-supported uprising of its Albanian population in 2001 which led to a de facto confederalization of the country. As of late 2008, it is led by the charismatic ex-boxer Nikola Gruevski surrounded by a clique of young politicians. Plagued by chronic unemployment standing at the rate of 35%, with economy characterized by collapsing light industry based on primitive technologies and decaying public infrastructure, the nationalistic government of VMRO-DPMNE failed to attract any substantial foreign investments. Most of its economic policies failed to raise the public standard based on average salary of barely 300 USD. At the same time analysts predict that the consequences of the Global financial crisis are yet to strike FYROM, raising the issue of further deterioration of the prospects for decent livelihood.

The main-although progressively marginalized ethnic group-in FYROM are the “Macedonians”, a nation postulated by the Communist internationale in 1934 and created by policies of Josip Broz, Communist’s Yugoslavia strongman after 1944. A basic historical review of their ethnicity reveals that prior to 1941, when the Bulgarian army, invading the remains of royalist Yugoslavia, was greeted euphorically by the local population, this population considered itself Bulgarian and led a combined struggle of civil disobedience and guerrilla warfare against Belgrade in order to achieve either annexation to Bulgaria or a transitional autonomous state with Bulgarian preeminence. Further exploration of the past reveals an ubiquitously attested in historical sources Bulgarian character, an impression complemented with the peculiar character of the local Slavic language which shares features with standard and dialectal forms of the Bulgarian language proper which set it quite radically apart from all Slavic languages. While this ethnic group to a various degrees assimilated in the last two centuries a certain number of Serbs and Vlach/Aromanians (the latter having historically a Greek consciousness), this is almost irrelevant to its ethnological and linguistic qualities which are almost identical as the Bulgarian vernacular.

The other large population in FYROM is the Albanian. Compromised from descendants of the Paleobalkan ethnic group of Dardanians which was to a certain extent influenced by Roman culture and Latin language and which took refuge in the mountains of present-day north Albania (”Ghegnia”) in late antiquity/early middle ages, the Albanians which converted to Islam under Ottoman rule spread to Kosovo and western FYROM in 17th and 18th centuries. Today, in FYROM, they number near 600. 000, with a compact presence in the towns of Tetovo, Gostivar and Debar and representing a significant population in Skoplje, Kumanovo, Kičevo and Struga. Cherishing an archaic formalized code of conduct based on family and clan loyalty, ethos of reciprocity and obligation, Albanians have been historically more successful than the Bulgarians/”Macedonians” in preservation of means of private entrepreneurship and achieving a more vertical socio-economic stratification coupled with elaborated social network designed to minimize contact with the “Macedonian” non-Muslim population.

Among both the “Macedonians” and the Albanians, collectivist, anti-individualist attitude is deep-seated. Within the daily affairs of both ethnic groups there is a strong reverence for authority and hierarchy. The notion of “state”, a concept held identical with the actual government, which has to be obeyed and respected and which represent the supreme reality in which any individuality is lost is particularity prominent among the “Macedonians” having its root in their quite recent and long-lasting premodern feudal historical phase. It is no wonder that having realized that after the 2001 conflict and the subsequent signing of the Ohrid Agreement they lost the privileged status and that both factually and symbolically they cannot cherish the FYROMian state as their own, the elite of the “Macedonians”, realizing that any confrontation with the Albanian factor would be too dangerous, designed a national idea with the purpose of keeping the wider “Macedonian” public mobilized against non-issues. This recent idea is composed of the recycled concept of “Macedonian autonomism”-Bulgarian idea that that any initiative of the Slavs of Geographic Macedonia has to be labeled “Macedonian” in order to gain sympathies by deciding external political factors and the concept of “Ancient Macedonism”, the idea that the Slavs of FYROM are direct descendants of Ancient Macedonians.

The idea of “Macedonian autonomism” needs no further explanation of its perfidiousness and absurdity. Regardless of the trick character of the concept it still remains a doctrine of the Bulgarian nationalist originating from FYROM: The Bulgarians of Geographic Macedonia should claim that although their singular ethnic identity is the Bulgarian one they are, nevertheless, the exclusive Macedonians. As late as 1960’s this doctrine was restated by the leader of VMRO Ivan Mihailoff with the words “the name Macedonia should be preserved because it is a thorn in the eyes of Greeks and Serbs”.

The enormous success of the idea of “Ancient Macedonian continuity”, which originated among the most primitive sections of FYRO Macedonian emigration in 1970’s (in Sweden, Australia and Canada) needs careful analysis. Although the fallacy of the crude ethnogenetic theory which claims that the “Macedonians” of FYROM and elsewhere speak the tongue of Phillip II and Alexander the Great and that their customs, folklore and other aspects of the culture are either intact or evolved form of the civilization of Ancient Macedon is quite easy refutable, this is not the case in the current conditions under which the national discourse articulates itself in FYROM.

Briefly, Ancient Macedonians were a Greek entity with Greek ethnic name, using exclusively a Greek Doric dialect and later Koine Greek and practicing the same Olympian religion with the rest of the Greek. Ancient Macedonians participated at the Olympic Games, where only Greek were allowed to compete and had theaters on the soil of Macedon, an uniquely Greek concept. All names of Macedonians (with several exceptions) are Greek as confirmed by their Greek etymology. Conclusive to 2008, no scholar outside FYROM has even remotely claimed that the language and culture of Ancient Macedonians are an ancestral type of the present-day FYRO Macedonians, which are descendants of Slavs, an ethnic group originating from North-East Europe. Slavs settled the Balkans from 5th to 7th century and the FYRO Macedonian tribes were homogenized under the rule of the Turkic horsemen tribe of Bulgarians. These Slavs never called themselves “Macedonians”, while Byzantine, Bulgarian, Serbian, Ottoman sources as well as western travelers and others failed to furnish any reference to a “Macedonian” ethnic group prior to late 19th century.

The issue of the ethnic, cultural and linguistic nature of the Ancient Macedonians deserves a wider and detailed expose, referenced and structured according to the scientific method. However, in light of the present state of knowledge, based on the enormous archaeological wealth and a plethora of historic sources, modern historiography universally accepts the conclusion that Ancient Macedonians were Greeks. The key issue with regard to the “Macedonian” nationalism is how the opposite and improbable conclusion could became a “valid” and all-pervading form of public discourse and the root of national self-identification.

The problems arouse with the way in which the totalitarian VMRO-DPMNE government energized the masses among which the national confusion brought by media exposure of contradictory data grew. Firstly, it reactivated the conflict with Greece by multitude of irredentist moves. Secondly, within FYROM it carried massive policy of introduction of Ancient Macedonian symbols (names of institutions, statues) after the expected and natural Greek negative reaction. The population, feeling threatened, mistook the attitude of aggressive “Macedonization” sponsored by the government as “defiance” against a hostile state (the hostility of which was precisely provoked by FYROM’s initial provocations). Capitalizing on the fact that the vast majority of the general population does not have neither a capability nor a will for sustained scientific research regarding ethnology, history and linguistics, the government managed to capture attention of the whole body of citizens. One can presume that the sheer authority the organized government yields in a conformist society where libertarian principles of critical thinking and individual self-reliance regarding the process of opinion-forming are practically absent is sufficient to impose an entirely absurd idea of identity. In FYROM it is unchallenged by organized bodies from which a better knowledge of the true state of affairs might be expected, including universities, institutes, museums etc. With the sole exception of Internet, all electronic and printed media are participants in government’s monopoly over identity dogmas. Only few individual voices of distaste and revolt against the lies have insofar voiced their concerns (Denko Maleski, Petar Hr. Ilievski) but they got a hostile, unsympathetic public response.

While the prospect of organized challenge of the pro-governmental stances regarding the identity issues is something expected given the conventional political dynamics within pluralist societies, this is not quite a case. Nikola Gruevski achieved dominance of his party by calling premature elections in 2008 at the time of peak in the approval rating of his first mandate caused by populist measures. That gave him an unprecedented might against which FYROM has no institutionalized mechanisms of control. Furthermore, in a state of affairs whereby the larger part of the Slavs have abandoned their Bulgarian and Serbian culture in belief that they represent a separate ancient ethnicity in a category of its own, creators of the policy of the opposition (led by the leftist SDSM party) must carefully measure their words of opposition to the lavish Pseudomacedonian rhetorics, since they may be branded as “traitors” given the appropriate circumstances. Consequently, in such occasion they would find themselves ostracized from the ongoing debate.

This leads to the conclusion that the solution to the Pseudomacedonian hysteria which totally dominates public life in FYROM is not only confined to the change in the internal situation which may come as a result of economic collapse or a full-scale civil war, but also from strong pressure from outside which would enable FYROM to conform itself to reality and to rational way of conducting cultural policy. The reign of VMRO-DPMNE, characterized by collectivist, group-centered policies, extensive role of the police in society, new legislature sponsoring religious education, subsidizing biological procreation with wealth redistribution, enforcing ethics of service to the “common good”, emphasizing the feral, folklorist and medieval aspects of local national culture in opposition to modern as well as apolitical high culture, is the greatest political catastrophe FYROM faces in early 21st century. A hope remains that the Slavs of FYROM will reject the artificial and overbearing attempts to instill a connection with chronologically and ethnically distant Greek kingdom as well as to make history the most important aspect of their everyday lives. Only through enduring action from within and from abroad the local state-worshiping, centrally-planned tribal way of life may be liquidated and replaced with a political system based on freedom, a change which will forever put the era of Pseudomacedonism behind, as a doomed ideology based on lies.

The Macedonian Issue is one of most significant and yet least understood cultural conflicts in modern Europe. It involves concepts which differentiate it from being a classic geopolitical crisis, many of which are easily, if not completely, explained by their economical aspects coupled with the archaic, recurring themes of expansion as augmentation of the assertive side’s space and resources. The Macedonian Issue of modern type demands other approaches towards rational its understanding. In brief, the conflict emerged from the dissolution of Yugoslavia in early 1990’s when the young Balkan nation which gained recognition in the United Nations as Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia challenged the integrity of neighboring Greece. This is a continuous pattern of behavior practiced not via direct, military confrontation or hostile action in terms of economic and other forms of pressure but through attempts at creating fake historical narratives as a reason d’ etre of the entire social life within FYROM. This mentality is also evident in a more pronounced manner within the Slavic part of its diaspora (it should be noted that while “Slavic” correctly designates the ancestry and the language of FYROMian, all affinity towards Slav ethnic heritage as well as self-recognition as a part of the Slavic group of peoples are almost completely extinguished).

The basic concepts of the Pseudomacedonian irredentism may be reduced to following political and cultural policies:

1. The “Macedonian” people have unbroken cultural lineage with Ancient Macedonians, a Paleobalkan group whose Hellenic ethnocultural quality is zealously denied, which came into worldwide prominence in the era of Phillip II and Alexander III with creation of the first truly global empire. This idea had no precedent in the cultural and education policy of Yugoslav federation from 1944 to 1991 which favored  Slavic ethnogenetic narrative, although within the a historiographic context based on communist ideology, 19th and 20th century military and economic history was favored. In today’s FYROM, the hardline advocates of this idea surpassed the “fusionist” theory according to which Slavs “took the torch” by obtaining the ethnic name and folklorist traits from the Ancient Macedonians. Indeed, one has to wonder, if Slavs truly amalgamated with the Macedonian population (which was, 900 years after Alexander, completely homogenized regarding the language, identity and way of life under high Byzantine culture of Greek type). Any erudite observer of this ethnogenetic theory is left to wonder: “if such ethnic fusion occurred, how came that neither Bizantine contemporaries registered the process, nor the presence of a new, “Macedonian” ethnic group, north of one of greatest political, economic and cultural centers of the Empire, Thessaloníki”?

How come that such “Macedonian” ethnic groups failed to instill itself in the memory of peoples from surrounding ethnic groups prior to the XXth century? All this given the fact that the areal of Slavic people of FYROM until quite recently in terms of Balkan history overlapped with all of its neighbors which had no reasons not to include “Macedonians” into the corpus of their documents and literary works if there was such population with which they would obviously have interaced.

The silence of history regarding the existence of a “Macedonian” group of Slavic-speakers in their alleged formative years speaks volumes. Consequently, the narrative in which leaps are made from ancient history of the neighboring Greek region to 19th century speculations of the first Protomacedonists is a prevailing form of contribution to the identity discourse.

2. The second point, with quite recent origin, on which the Pseudomacedonian historiography is based, is that the migration of Slavs, an event from 6th and 7th century CE attested by history and archeology as well as th evident linguistic Slavization of the geographical names throughout most of the Balkan peninsula, never took place. Instead, Pseudomacedonian historians claim that “Slavic migration” was actually a fabrication from Communist Moscow and Belgrade designed to keep the least developed Yugoslav republic in a political status quo. The persistent urban myth that the Yugoslav regime “forbade” archaeological and historiographic research of Ancient Macedonia is easily refuted by simple bibliographic research.

The inability by Pseudomacedonian thinkers to explain the existence of other Slavic nations which use languages that have a great degree of mutual intelligibility with standard FYROMian forced them to invent bizarre theses: one of them holds a position that Slavs are descendants of deserters from the Macedonian army in Alexander’s time, another theory states that a wholesale conversion of Slavs to “Macedonian” language as a result of Cyrilo-Methodian and other missions took place, then there is a theory postulating genesis of Slavic-speaking areas in situ  and so on. Once a result of  spare-time activity by extremist elements of the diaspora, its status changed with the proclamation during the recent ordination of FYROM’s top prize for scholarship, the “23. October” awards, that today’s language of Slavs in that state has Ancient Macedonian language as its ancestral form. Such stance became official with this act and will determine the future allocation of human and material resources in the relevant scholarly disciplines. Undoubtedly, such regressive, anti-scientific attitude will lead to further deterioration of the already minuscule credibility of entire culture-contemplating intelligentsia in FYROM.

What would be in another context just an exercise in quasimythological ramblings by small and marginal group of sensationalist authors, a genre belonging to the counter-cultural movements which are to a certain degree found everywhere, since 1992 became a dogmatic credo, criticism of which is halted by the oppressive social conditions prevalent in VMRO-DPMNE’s FYROM. Needless to say these theories were never considered as a welcome alternative to the current state of knowledge in relevant peer-reviewed journals outside FYROM, let alone taken as plausible. The decisive action undertaken by the ruling political party regarding the propagation and subsidizing the process of building identity framework via manipulation of history, public education and creation of symbols caused understandable reactions in Greece. These are in turn locally articulated in the progovernmental media as displays of Greek extremism against which only a rightist, “defiant” political option can provide consolidation.

What has been until quite recently only a relatively lucrative niche business, by a small number of amateur authors without any relevant education, slowly rises as a trend designated to impose itself as a pattern of self-legitimation. The Cominterne-created ethnocentric, national-communistic model could have been liquidated in the first years of independence of FYROM and replaced with restitution of the traditional and well-attested Bulgarian, as well as Serbian identities. Instead, it became a developed, robust system of popular self-identification. Being upgraded from the methodologically flawed explanation of cultural development by Titoist theoreticians, the ideology of Pseudomacedonism  became a secular religion based on blind faith. Its defeat will not depend just on diplomatic pressures from abroad but on energetic confrontation from inside based on might of the facts and  plausible opinions formed in accordance with them.

Vasko Gligorijević

Skoplje, FYROM

Serbs in FYROM are an extension from the central parts of Serbian ethnicity, related to archaic groups in Kosovo and Metohija as well to a larger degree, with the basin of river Morava. That Serbs are found among early medieval Slav settlers of the Vardar/Axios region is confirmed by sources which identify the city of Gordoservon in Asia Minor as founded by introduction of Serb captives from the aforementioned area. The exact nature and scope of this early Serbian settlement in FYROM is not known, but it can be safely assumed that it was minuscule and  any demographic and ethnolinguistic influence was probably lost in the Byzanto-Bulgarian struggles of the next few centuries.

Serbians established their massive presence in Povardarje (today’s FYROM) and parts of Macedonia (Northern Greece) after King Milutin’s conquest of Polog, Skoplje and Ovče Polje area in northernmost Povardarje in 1282. The catastrophic defeat of Bulgarians at the Battle of Velbužd (Ćustendil) in 1330 inflicted by the Serbian army removed the final challenge to Serbian authority in Povardarje. Conclusive with the act of coronation of Stephan Dušan in his capital Skoplje, Serbian population was implanted in both Pologs, in enclaves around Debar, in the wider regions of Skoplje and Ovče Polje and in small extent in Greek cities of Kastoria and Serres, which together with the southern area of FYROM compromised the part of Dušan’s Empire whose Greek character was observed as the cultural policy of the Nemanjić court.

The period of the Serbian rule in Povardarje was characterized by strong cultural initiative in the domain of ecclesiastic art, primarily architecture. Several hundreds of Christian temples build or substantially reconstructed in the relatively brief Serbian period of Povardarje testify to the intensity and maturity of Serbian culture of the era. “Dušan’s Law”, a legal codex and a de facto constitution of the late medieval Serbian state proclaimed in Skoplje as well as the great number of manuscripts and epigraphic monuments produced in that era do not mention “Macedonians”, in contrast with other ethnic groups such as Greeks, Albanians, Vlachs, Bulgarians and Saxons.

The abrupt end of Serbian domination of Povardarje came with the invasion of Ottoman Turks, a militant Asiatic tribe which confronted the Serb defenders at Marica (Černomen) in 1371 in a battle described by the contemporaries as clash of Serbs and Greeks against the Turks.

Devoid of freedom and without centralist institutions, with the exception of the inclusion of northern FYROM under jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Peć in 17th and 18th century, Serbs as well as other local Christians were forced to the status of “dhimi”, marginalized and enslaved population that theoretically enjoyed scriptural protection granted by Muslim overlords.

It would appear that there are the central trend in the history of FYROM was its De-Serbization in cultural and demographic sense and the reemergence of the Bulgarian rural population. While this process was not either linear nor it is complete, in the light of total absence of works about the history, language and culture by science of FYROM organized along lines of Pseudomacedonian supremacy, few aspects of Serbian presence in early and middle Ottoman period deserve mention.

Western and local Catholic sources generally acknowledge that Skoplje (today’s Skopje, the capital of FYROM) as well as Kratovo, a town located east from Skoplje, have a Serbian character. This was reported by Jakov Sorranzo in 1575, Martin Crusius and Aleksandar Komulović in 1584, Nicolo Longi in 1622, Bishop Peter of Sophia in 1665, Urban Cerri in 1680. Bishop Peter Bogdani in 1685, Bishop of Cotor Marin Drago in 1690 are more specific, mentioning Skoplje’s Serbian and Greek population. These ethnic groups are mentioned also by Bishop Matija Masarek in 1770 and 1790.
Orthodox clerics Bratan Ivanov, Dimitrije Petrov and Mihailo of Kratovo were registered in historical sources as Serbs upon their arrival in Russia, during the middle phase of Ottoman rule.

Furthemore, one of the most common male names among the Slavs of Povardarje registered by Turkish demographic records is “Srbin” (a Serb) which was popular even at the beginning of the 20th century. Undoubtedly, it was given as a way to express nostalgia for the Nemanjići period, the last Slavic epoch of freedom.

The beginning of the last phase of De-Serbization of Povardarje started with the partial forced assimilation out of the circumstances created by the Serbian uprisings in 1804 and 1815 on the territory of today’s Serbia, when a number of Serbs took the Bulgarian ethnic name out of conformism. This phenomena was accelerated with the dying of Serbian schools in northern FYROM by the middle of the 19th century and their replacement by the school system of the Bulgarian Exarchate founded in 1871. The emancipation of the surrounding Bulgarian population, primarily as a reaction against perceived eminent status of the Greek clergy and the emerging class of Greek bourgeoisie in southern towns of FYROM further created preconditions for assimilation of the Serb population already weakened and  marginalized from participation in the wider emergence of nationalist sentiments. It is only after beginning of propagandist activity sponsored by official Belgrade in the late 19th century and the appearance of Serbian paramilitary, the Četniks, after 1904 that the described process of ethnic melting was halted and partially reversed. It should be emphasized that the competition of nationalities in the Povardarje region in the closing years of 19th and the first years of 20th century caused more often than not a confusion with regard of self-determination of local individuals.

Finally, the ideology of “Macedonism”appeared as an embrionic form and precursor to creation of the nominally “Macedonian” nation in Tito’s Yugoslavia after 1944, although in the preceding decades it was nothing more than intellectual concept nurtured among few people, in opposition of the all-pervasive Bulgarian national feeling south of Skoplje and north and eastern of Pelagonia registered by great number of foreign visitors and recognized by scholars as such. The Serb presence in FYROM in the closing decades of Turkish rule in Europe was nevertheless registered by travelers such as J. Muller, C. Robert, E. Spencer, I. S. Jastrebov, K. Ostreich and others.

Among ethnographic customs the archaic and exclusively Serbian custom of “Krsna Slava”, festivity in honor of a Patron Saint, observed even today in spite of decades of Communist oppression of spirituality in general and the Christians in particular, serves as a certain marker of Serbian ancestry of a great number of  “Macedonians” of South Slavic type, chiefly in northern and western Povardarje regions.

The legacy of decades of Marxist-Titoist concept of social organization in the Ex-Yugoslav republic and the post-1992 process of symbolic De-Slavization of  the “Macedonian” identity in FYROM proved as an obstacle to consolidation of the Serbian identity at local level. The name “Macedonia” for a region belonging to the ancient regions of Paeonia and Dardania substituted the geographic name (southern) Serbia from the north of the country. Scholarship about the Serbian language, folklore and ethnology became non-existent due to the acquired reorientation of the public discourse towards building a fictional “Macedonian” identity rooted in classical antiquity. The presence of ethnic Serbs in FYROM, which numbers over 180. 000 people, mostly undeclared as such due to social pressure, was acknowledged by the constitution of the young Balkan nation only in 2002.

Pressure towards Serbs in FYROM continues as an unofficial policy and as folkoristic phenomena according to which they are mixture of “colonists” from Serbia and other areas of former Yugoslavia on one hand and “srbomani”, I. e. “Macedonians” or Bulgarians – depending on the perspective – which converted into Serbianism and are, by implication, traitors from the “Macedonian” collective guided by opportunism. Such stigmatization is part of a broader policy of homogenization of the entities characterized by Orthodox Christian affinity, including Greeks, Greek-Vlachs and conscious Bulgarians, under the banner of Pseudomacedonian ideology.

It remains to be seen are Serbs in FYROM going to prevail the local atmosphere of quiet dehumanization and “Macedonisation” in light of the phlegmatic attitude of Serbia with regard to cultural sponsorship of Serbian communities abroad. Modest successes regarding ethnic preservation and creation of ethnic metaphysical values after the change of the FYROMian constitution are encouraging signs, but complete revitalization of the local Serbian national culture can be achieved only in opposition to “Macedonizing” trends and creation of political appeal  against national defeatism and fatalism.

Vasko Gligorijević

Skoplje, FYROM