Macedonian nationalism

Origins

In the 19th century, the region of Macedonia became the object of competition by rival nationalisms, initially Greek nationalists, Serbian nationalists and Bulgarian nationalists that each made claims about the Slavic-speaking population as being ethnically linked to their nation and thus asserted the right to seek their integration. The first assertions of Macedonian nationalism arose in the late 19th century. Early Macedonian nationalists were encouraged by several foreign governments that held interests in the region. The Serbian government that came to believe that any attempt to seek to forcibly assimilate Slavic Macedonians into Serbs to incorporate Macedonia would be unsuccessful given the strong Bulgarian influence in the region. Instead, the Serbian government believed that providing support to Macedonian nationalists would stimulate opposition to incorporation to Bulgaria and favourable attitudes to Serbia. Another country that encouraged Macedonian nationalism was Austria-Hungary that sought to deny both Serbia and Bulgaria the ability to annex Macedonia, and asserted a distinct ethnic character of Slavic Macedonians. In the 1890s, Russian supporters of a Slavic Macedonian ethnicity emerged, Russian-made ethnic maps began showing a Slavic Macedonian ethnicity, and Macedonian nationalists began to move to Russia to mobilize.

The origins of the definition of an ethnic Slav Macedonian identity arose from the writings of Georgi Pulevski in the 1870s and 1880s, who identified the existence of a distinct modern "Slavic Macedonian" language that he defined that was different from other languages in that it had linguistic elements of Serbian, Bulgarian, Church Slavonic, and Albanian languages. Pulevski analyzed the folk histories of the Slavic Macedonian people, in which he concluded that Slavic Macedonians were ethnically linked to the people of the ancient Kingdom of Macedonia of Philip and Alexander the Great based on the claim that the ancient Macedonians' language had Slavic components in it and thus that the ancient Macedonians were Slavic, and that modern-day Slavic Macedonians were descendants of them. However Slavic Macedonians' self-identification and nationalist loyalties remained ambiguous in the late 19th century. Pulevski for instance viewed Macedonians' identity as being a regional phenomenon (similar to Herzegovinians and Thracians). Once calling himself a "Serbian patriot", another time a "Bulgarian from the village of Galicnik", he also identified the Slavic Macedonian language as being related to the "Old Bulgarian language" as well as being a "Serbo-Albanian language". Pulevski's numerous identifications actually reveals the absence of a clear ethnic sense in a part of the local Slavic population.

The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) grew up as the major Macedonian separatist organization in the 1890s, seeking the autonomy of Macedonia from the Ottoman Empire. The IMRO initially opposed being dependent on any of the neighbouring states, especially Greece and Serbia, however its relationship with Bulgaria grew very strong, and it soon became dominated by figures who supported the annexation of Macedonia into Bulgaria, though a small fraction opposed this. As a rule, the IMRO members had Bulgarian national self-identification, but their autonomist ideas have stimulated the development of the Macedonian nationalism. The IMRO devised the slogan "Macedonia for Macedonians". It called for a supranational Macedonia, consisting from different nationalities, included in a future Balkan Federation. However the promotors of this slogan declared their conviction that the majority of the Macedonian Christian Slav population was Bulgarian.

In the late 19th and early 20th century the international community viewed the Macedonians predominantly as regional variety of Bulgarians. At the end of the First World War there were very few ethnographers, who agreed that a separate Macedonian nation existed. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Allies sanctioned Serbian control of Vardar Macedonia and accepted the belief that Macedonian Slavs were in fact Southern Serbs. This change in opinion can largely be attributed to the Serbian geographer Jovan Cvijić. Nevertheless, Macedonist ideas increased during the interbellum, in Yugoslav Vardar Macedonia and among the left diaspora in Bulgaria, and were supported by the Comintern. 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 a nationality separate from the Bulgarians. So the crucial point for the Macedonian ethnogenessis was the creation of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia after the World War II into the framework of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Late 19th and early 20th century

The development of the Macedonian ethnicity can be said to have begun in the late 19th and early 20th century. This is the time of the first expressions of ethnic nationalism by limited groups of intellectuals in Belgrade, Sofia, Thessaloniki and St. Petersburg. However, until the 20th century and beyond the majority of the Slavic-speaking population of the region was identified as Macedono-Bulgarian or simply as Bulgarian and after 1870 joined the Bulgarian Exarchate. Some authors consider that at that time, labels reflecting collective identity, such as "Bulgarian", changed into national labels from being broad terms that were without political significance.

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 for the regions of Macedonia and Odrin Thrace. But this manifestation of political separatism by the IMARO was a phenomenon without ethnic affiliation and the Bulgarian ethnic provenance of the revolutionaries can not be put under question.

Balkan Wars and First World War

During the Balkan Wars and the First World War the area was exchanged several times between Bulgaria and Serbia. The IMARO supported the Bulgarian army and authorities when they took temporarily control over Vardar Macedonia. On the other hand, Serbian authorities put pressure on local people to declare themselves Serbs; disbanded local governments, established by IMARO in Ohrid, Veles and other cities; persecuted Bulgarian priests and teachers, forcing them to flee and replacing them by Serbians. Serbian troops performed a policy of disarming the local militia, accompanied by beatings and threats. In this period the political autonomism was abandoned as tactics and annexationist positions were supported, aiming eventual incorporation of the area to Bulgaria.

Interwar period and WWII

During the interwar period in Vardar Macedonia, then annexed by Serbia, part of the young locals repressed by the Serbs, tried to find a separate way of ethnic development. In 1934 the Comintern issued a resolution about the recognition of separate Macedonian ethnicity. However, the existence of considerable Macedonian national consciousness prior to the 1940s is disputed. This confusion is illustrated by Robert Newman in 1935, who recounts discovering in a village in Vardar Macedonia as part of Kingdom of Yugoslavia two brothers, one who considered himself a Serb, and the other considered himself a Bulgarian. In another village he met a man who had been, "a Macedonian peasant all his life", but who had varyingly been called a Turk, a Serb and a Bulgarian. During the WWII the area was annexed by Bulgaria and anti-Serbian and pro-Bulgarian feelings among the local population prevailed. Because of that Vardar Macedonia was the only region where Yugoslav communist leader Josip Broz Tito had not developed a strong Partisan movement in 1941. But the Bulgarians soon fell into the old Balkan trap of centralization. The new provinces were quickly staffed with officials from Bulgaria proper who behaved with typical official arrogance to the local inhabitants. The communists' power started growing only in 1943 with the capitulation of Italy and the Soviet victories over the Nazi Germany. 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. As result the resistance movement grew up. However, by the end of the war, the Bulgarophile sentiments were still distinguishable and the Macedonian national consciousness hardly existed beyond a general conviction gained from bitter experience, that rule from Sofia was as unpalatable as that from Belgrade".

Post World War II

After 1944 the People's Republic of Bulgaria and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia began a policy of making Macedonia into the connecting link for the establishment of new Balkan Federative Republic and stimulating here a development of distinct Slav Macedonian consciousness. The region received the status of a constituent republic within Yugoslavia and in 1945 a separate Macedonian language was codified. The population was promulgated ethnic Macedonian, a nationality different from both Serbs and Bulgarians. With the proclamation of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia as part of the Yugoslav federation, the new authorities also started measures that would overcome the pro-Bulgarian feeling among parts of its population. On the other hand, the Yugoslav authorities forcibly suppressed the ideologists of an independent Macedonian country. The Greek communists as well as its fraternal parties in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, had already been influenced by the Comintern and it was the only political party in Greece to recognize Macedonian national identity. However the situation deteriorated after the Greek Communists lost the Greek Civil War. Thousands of Aegean Macedonians were expelled and fled to the newly established Socialist Republic of Macedonia, while thousands more children took refuge in other Eastern Bloc countries.

Post-Informbiro period and Bulgarophobia

At the end of the 1950s the Bulgarian Communist Party repealed its previous decision and adopted a position denying the existence of a Macedonian ethnicity. As result, in Macedonia the Bulgarophobia increased almost to the level of State ideology. This put the end of the idea of the Balkan Communist Federation about unification of all of Macedonia under Communist rule. During the post-Informbiro period, separate Macedonian Orthodox Church was established, splitting off from the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1967. The encouragement and evolution of Macedonian culture has had a far greater and more permanent impact on Macedonian nationalism than has any other aspect of Yugoslav policy. While development of national music, films and the graphic arts has been encouraged in Macedonia, the greatest cultural effect has come from the codification of the Macedonian language and literature, the new Macedonian national interpretation of history and the establishment of a Macedonian Orthodox Church. Meanwhile, the Yugoslav historiography had borrowed parts from the histories of its neighboring states to construct the Macedonian identity, having reached not only the times of medieval Bulgaria, but even Alexander the Great. In 1969, the first History of the Macedonian nation was published. Most Macedonians' attitude to Communist Yugoslavia, where they were recognised as a distinct nation for the first time, became positive. The Macedonian Communist elites were traditionally more pro-Serb and pro-Yugoslav than those in the rest of the Yugoslav Republics.

Post-independence period and Antiquisation

On September 8, 1991, the Socialist Republic of Macedonia held a referendum that established its independence from Yugoslavia, under the name of the Republic of Macedonia. With the fall of Communism, the breakup of Yugoslavia and the consequent lack of a Great power in the region, the Republic of Macedonia came into permanent conflicts with its neighbors. Bulgaria contested its national identity and language, Greece contested its name and symbols, and Serbia its religious identity. On the other hand, the ethnic Albanians in the country insisted on being recognised as a 'nation’, equal to the ethnic Macedonians. As a response a more assertive and uncompromising strand of Macedonian nationalism emerged. This is the so-called "ancient Macedonism", or "Antiquisation" ("Antikvizatzija", "антиквизација"), whose supporters are claiming that the ethnic Macedonians are not related to the Slavs, but are direct descendants of the ancient Macedonians, who, according to them, were not Greeks. Antiquisation is the policy which the nationalistic ruling party VMRO-DPMNE has pursued since the coming to power in 2006, as a way of putting pressure on Greece as well as for the purposes of domestic identity-building. Antiquisation is also spreading due to a very intensive lobbying of the Macedonian Diaspora from the USA, Canada, Germany and Australia. As part of this policy, statues of Alexander the Great and Philip II of Macedon have been built in several cities across the country. In 2011, a massive, 22m tall statue of Alexander the Great (called "Warrior on a horse" because of the dispute with Greece) was inaugurated in Macedonia Square in Skopje, as part of the Skopje 2014 remodelling of the city. An even larger statue of Philip II is under construction at the other end of the square. Statues of Alexander also adorn the town squares of Prilep and Štip, while a statue to Philip II of Macedon was recently built in Bitola. A triumphal arch named Porta Macedonia constructed in the same square, featuring images of historical figures including Alexander the Great, causing the Greek Foreign Ministry to lodge an official complaint to authorities in the Republic of Macedonia. Additionally, many pieces of public infrastructure, such as airports, highways, and stadiums have been named after them. Skopje's airport was renamed "Alexander the Great Airport" and features antique objects moved from Skopje's archeological museum. One of Skopje's main squares has been renamed Pella Square (after Pella, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Macedon), while the main highway to Greece has been renamed to "Alexander of Macedon" and Skopje's largest stadium has been renamed "Philip II Arena". These actions are seen as deliberate provocations in neighboring Greece, exacerbating the dispute and further stalling Macedonia's EU and NATO applications. In 2008 a visit by Hunza Prince was organized in Republic of Macedonia. This Pakistani people were proclaimed as direct descendants of the Alexandrian army and as people who are the most closely related to the Ethnic Macedonians. The Hunza delegation was welcomed at the Skopje Airport by the country's prime minister Nikola Gruevski, the head of the Macedonian Orthodox Church Archbishop Stephen and the then-mayor of Skopje Trifun Kostovski.

Such antiquization is facing criticism by academics as it demonstrates feebleness of archaeology and of other historical disciplines in public discourse, as well as a danger of marginalization. The policy has also attracted criticism domestically, by ethnic Macedonians within the country, who see it as dangerously dividing the country between those who identify with classical antiquity and those who identify with the country's Slavic culture. Ethnic Albanians in the Republic of Macedonia see it as an attempt to marginalize them and exclude them from the national narrative. The policy, which also claims as ethnic Macedonians figures considered national heroes in Bulgaria, such as Dame Gruev and Gotse Delchev, has also drawn criticism from Bulgaria. Foreign diplomats have warned that the policy has reduced international sympathy for the Republic of Macedonia in the naming dispute with Greece.

The background of this “antiquization” can be found in the 19th century and the myth of ancient descent among Orthodox Slavic-speakers in Macedonia. It was adopted partially due to Greek cultural inputs. This idea was also been included in the national mythology during the post-WWII Yugoslavia. An additional factor for its preservation has been the influence of the Macedonian Diaspora. Contemporary antiquization, has been revived as an efficient tool for political mobilization and has been reinforced by the VMRO-DPMNE. For example, in 2009 the Macedonian Radio-Television, aired a video named "Macedonian prayer" in which the Christian God was presented calling the people of the Republic of Macedonia "the oldest nation on Earth" and "progenitors of the white race", who are described as "Macedonoids", in opposition to Negroids and Mongoloids. This ultra-nationalism accompanied by the emphasizing of Macedonia’s ancient roots has raised a concerns internationally about growing a kind of authoritarianism by the governing party. There have also been attempts to scientific claims to ancient nationhood, but they had a negative impact on the international position of the country. On the other hand, there is still strong Yugonostalgia among the ethnic Macedonian population, that has swept also over other ex-Yugoslav states.

Macedonism

Macedonism, sometimes referred also as Macedonianism (Macedonian and Serbian: Македонизам, Makedonizam; Bulgarian: Македонизъм, Makedonizam and Greek: Μακεδονισμός, Makedonismós) is a political and historical term used in a polemic sense to refer to a set of ideas perceived as characteristic of aggressive Macedonian nationalism. Before the Balkan Wars Macedonist ideas were shared by a limited circle of intellectuals. They grew in significance during the interbellum, both in Vardar Macedonia and among the left-leaning diaspora in Bulgaria, and were endorsed by the Comintern. During the Second World War, these ideas were supported by the Communist Partisans, who founded Yugoslav Macedonian Republic in 1944. Following the WWII Macedonism became the basis of the Yugoslav Macedonia's state ideology, aimed at transforming the Slavic and, to a certain extent, non-Slavic parts of its population into ethnic Macedonians. This state policy is still current in today's Republic of Macedonia, where it was developed in a several directions. One of them maintains the connection of the today ethnic Macedonians with the Ancient Macedon, rather than with the South Slavs, while another have sought to incorporate into the national pantheon the right-wing Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) activists, previously dismissed as Bulgarophiles.

The term is occasionally used in an apologetic sense by some Macedonian authors, but has also faced strong criticism from moderate political views in the Republic of Macedonia and international scholars.

Macedonism as ethno-political conception

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. It was originally used in a contemptuous manner to refer to Slav Macedonians, who believed they constituted a distinct ethnic group, separate from their neighbours. The first to use the term "Macedonist" was the Bulgarian author Petko Slaveykov, who coined the term in his article "The Macedonian Question", published in the newspaper Makedoniya in 1871. However, he pointed that he had heard for the first time of such ideas as early as 10 years prior, i.e., around 1860. Slaveykov sharply criticised those Macedonians espousing such views, as they had never shown a substantial basis for their attitudes, calling them "Macedonists". Nevertheless, those accused of Slaveikov as Macedonists, turned out to be really 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. Another early recorded use of the term "Macedonism" is found in a report by the Serbian politician Stojan Novaković from 1887. He proposed to employ the macedonistic ideology as a means to counteract the Bulgarian influence in Macedonia, thereby promoting Serbian interests in the region. Novaković's diplomatic activity in Istanbul and St. Petersburg played significant role for the realization of his ideas, especially through the “Association of Serbo-Macedonians” formed by him in Istanbul and through his support for the Macedonian Scientific and Literary Society in St. Petersburg. The geopolitics of the Serbs evidently played the crucial role in the ethnogenosis by promoting a separate Macedonian consciousness at the expense of the Bulgarians (it is worth mentioning that 19th century Serbian propaganda mostly adhered to direct Serbianization, including post-WW I policy of Belgrade in Vardar Macedonia). In 1888 the Macedono-Bulgarian ethnographer Kuzman Shapkarev noted as result from this activity that a strange, ancient ethnonym: "Macedonci" (Macedonians) was imposed 10–15 years ago by some weird intellectuals, introduced probably with a "cunning aim" to replace the traditional one: "Bugari" (Bulgarians).

In 1892, Georgi Pulevski completed the first ”Slavic-Macedonian General History", whose manuscript is over 1,700 pages. According to the book the ancient Macedonians were Slavic people and the Macedonian Slavs were native to the Balkans, in contrast of the Bulgarians and the Serbs, who came there centuries later. 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. Gabrovski tried to establish a link between the Bulgaro-Macedonians from one side, and the Illyrians and the ancient Macedonians from another, who he regarded also Slavs. The main agenda from this story on the mythical Bulgaro-Illyro-Macedonians was to assert that the Macedonian and Bulgarian Slavs were among the indigenous inhabitants of the Balkans.

Next proponents of the ideas were two other Serbian scholars, the geographer Jovan Cvijić and the linguist Aleksandar Belić. They claimed the Slavs of Macedonia were "Macedonian Slavs", an amorphous Slavic mass that was neither Bulgarian, nor Serbian. This view was also shared by some Western intellectuals, notably Oswald Spengler. Cvijić further argued that the traditional ethnonym Bugari (Bulgarians) used by the Slavic population of Macedonia to refer to themselves actually meant only rayah, and in no case affiliations to the Bulgarian ethnicity. In his ethnographic studies of the Balkan Slavs, Cvijic devised a "Central Type" (Slav Macedonians and Torlaks), dissimilar at the same time to the "Dinaric Type" (the principal "Serb" ethnographic variant) and the "East Balkan Type" (representing the Bulgarians, but excluding even Western Bulgaria). The true Bulgarians belonged only to the "East Balkan Type" and were a mixture of Slavs, "Turanian" groups (Bulgars, Cumans, and Turks) and Vlachs, and as such, were different from the other South Slavs in their ethnic composition. More important, their national character was decidedly un-Slavic. Bulgarians were industrious and coarse. They were a people without imagination and therefore necessarily without art and culture. This caricature of Bulgarians permitted their clear differentiation from the "Central Type," within which Cvijic included Macedonian Slavs, western Bulgarians (Shopi), and Torlaks, a type that was eminently Slavic (i.e. old-Serbian) and therefore non-Bulgarian. Nowadays, this outdated Serbian views have been propagandized by some contemporary Macedonian scholars and politicians, as bad remake of this racial pseudo-science.

Some panslavic ideologist in Russia, former supporter of Greater Bulgaria, also adopted these ideas as opposing Bulgaria's Russophobic policy at the beginning of the 20th century, as for example Alexandr Rittikh and Aleksandr Amfiteatrov. 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 as Germanos Karavangelis openly popularized the Hellenic idea about a direct link between the local Slavs and the ancient Macedonians. Nevertheless, in 1914 the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs report states that the Serbs and Greeks classified the Slavs of Macedonia as a distinct ethnic group "Macedonians Slavs" for political purposes and to conceal the existence of Bulgarians in the area. However, after the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) Ottoman Macedonia was mostly divided between Greece and Serbia, which had as result processes of Hellenisation, respectively Serbianisation of the Slavic population and led in general to a ceasing the use of this term in both countries.

On the other hand, Serbian and Bulgarian left-wing intellectuals envisioned in the early 20th century some sort of "Balkan confederation" including Macedonia, should the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman Empire dissolve. This view was accepted from the Socialist International. In 1910, the First Balkan Socialist Conference was held in Belgrade, then within the Kingdom of Serbia. The main platforms at the first conference was the call for a solution to the Macedonian Question. It was offered to create a Balkan Socialist Federation and Macedonia would be a single state in it. After the Balkan Wars in 1915, it was confirmed on the Balkan Socialist Conference in Bucharest to create a Balkan Socialist Federation, and that divided from the imperialists Macedonia would be united into its framework. This ideology later found fruition with the support of the Soviet Union as an advent of Yugoslav communist federation. Various declarations were made during the 1920s and 1930s seeing the official adoption of Macedonism by the Comintern. In turn declarations were made by the Greek, Yugoslav and Bulgarian communist parties, as they agreed on its adoption as their official policy for the region. Also the demise of the IMRO and its ideology for much of the interwar period, led in Vardar Macedonia for part of the young local intellectuals, regarded at that time as Serbs, to find a solution in the ideology of Macedonism. This issue was supported during the WWII by the Communist Resistance and in 1944 the wartime Communist leader Josip Broz Tito, proclaimed the People's Republic of Macedonia as part of the Yugoslav Federation, thus partially fulfilling the Comintern’s pre-war policy. He was supported by the Bulgarian leader from Macedonian descent and former General Secretary of the Comintern, Georgi Dimitrov in anticipation of a failed incorporation of the Bulgarian Macedonia into the People's Republic of Macedonia, and of Bulgaria itself into Communist Yugoslavia.

Early adherents

The first Macedonian nationalists appeared in the late 19th and early 20th century outside Macedonia. At different points in their lives, most of them expressed conflicting statements about the ethnicity of the Slavs living in Macedonia, including their own nationality. They formed their pro-Macedonian conceptions after contacts with some panslavic circles in Serbia and Russia. The lack of diverse ethnic motivations seems to be confirmed by the fact that, in their works they often used the designations Bulgaro-Macedonians, Macedonian Bulgarians and Macedonian Slavs in order to name their compatriots. Representatives of this circle were Georgi Pulevski, Theodosius of Skopje, Krste Misirkov, Stefan Dedov, Atanas Razdolov, Dimitrija Chupovski and others. Nearly all of them died in Bulgaria. Most of the next wave Macedonists were left-wing politicians, who changed their ethnic affiliations from Bulgarian to Macedonian during the 1930s, after the recognition of the Macedonian ethnicity by the Comintern, as for example Dimitar Vlahov, Pavel Shatev, Panko Brashnarov, Venko Markovski, Georgi Pirinski, Sr. and others. Such Macedonian activists, who came from the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (United) and the Bulgarian Communist Party never managed to get rid of their pro-Bulgarian bias.

Contemporary ideas

Among the views and opinions that are often perceived as representative of Macedonian nationalism and criticised as parts of "Macedonism" by those who use the term are the following:

Other, related areas of Macedonian–Bulgarian national polemics relate to: