Macedonia's triumphal arch, a legacy of the Skopje 2014 project, as part of the 'colourful revolution'. PAimages/Jacopo Landi/NurPhoto. All rights reserved.“Western Balkans’ potential new
crisis in Europe – Macedonia,” “Macedonia on the
brink of war,” “Macedonian stability shaken – threat to the stability of
southeastern Europe”, a paraphrase of numerous titles that have appeared in
media outlets of international standing in the past year or so. Conversely, the
same fears and concerns could not be registered internally. Any local public would
treat any such statement as conspiracy theory or, more likely, through their
own conspiracy theory counter-thesis: “the political opponent is using it as a
threat to gain power at any cost,” or “the political opponent is using it as an
argument to stay in power.” In short, locally, in the period of the so-called
political crisis (2015-2016), a threat to the stability and the very existence
of the state has never been considered a serious possibility but rather the spin
of the political opponent and “the international powers backing them.”
Hallucinogenic reason dominates the local discourse in the small, claustrophobic,
xenophobic, parochially self-sufficient country: truth is never evident and the
evident never true, “there is always something behind” that everyone is capable
of guessing at according to his political preferences. One can only infer that
paranoia is unavoidable. And indeed it is. However, “the fact that you’re paranoid
does not exclude the possibility they are after you,” as Joseph Heller used to
say.
Macedonia has the following issues with its neighbors: a name of the
state contested by Greece, an Orthodox Church unrecognized by Serbia (and,
consequently, by the rest of the Orthodox world), an official language and indistinct
national identity – or rather “history” – unrecognized by Bulgaria. As the
bizarre and seemingly incongruent mass of Macedonia’s problems with its neighbours
surfaces in its totality, one is tempted to look for a single unifying trait in
that heterogeneous sum of problems. Most of them are linked to history and the
recognition of a distinct nation, whether through nation-state formation or
identity claim. But given that a national
identity or nationality normally derives from a nation-state and considering
the fact that statehood or the very existence of the state at issue is not
contested by any of its neighbors, the question remains – what in fact is being denied recognition in
Macedonia and its history?
The name of the state, according to Greece, is an expression of
“irredentist pretensions,” which refer to the possibility of a secession taking
place on its territory. The population that might secede is one that might
identify with the “Macedonian nation.” That population is called Slavophone in
Greece but their specific identification among the Slavic ethnicities and
nationalities is not identified. Or when it is, it is referred to as Bulgarian.
Bulgaria claims similarly that the national identity of those who identify as
ethnic Macedonians in the Republic of Macedonia and in Greek Macedonia is in
fact Bulgarian or at least Bulgarian in its origin. Recently, the statements of
the Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dačić seem to imply positions on the issue of identity or
at least on “the name issue” (of the state) that are not that different from
those expressed by the officials of the other two neighboring countries. There appears
to be an agreement among the neighbors that the “Macedonian nation” is a
“fabrication,” falsehood and an “artificial creation of Tito’s Yugoslavia.” Such
general agreement was demonstrated in the trilateral meeting of the heads of
the Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian states that took place on July 13, 2017 in
Thessaloniki at which they debated the issue of Macedonia (in the absence of
any representative of the Macedonian state). The recurrent arguments of the
agreement at issue revolve around the historical truth of “who or what the
Macedonians really are,” an almost century long debate about history, nation
building and, consequently, identity and what is a true identity. The “name dispute”
between Greece and Macedonia is about this complex mess called “identity.”
Less than a year ago, a US politician by the name of Dana Rohrbacher,
Chair of the House of the Foreign
Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats, in an
interview given for an Albanian TV station stated publicly that “Macedonia is
not a country.” In his statement he implied, like many before him, that it was
an “artificial creation” or, to quote him, “configuration that came out of the
dismantling of Yugoslavia” and that it should be divided between its Albanian
minority (which, evidently, has an identity) and Bulgaria or whoever the Slavic
majority (with no specific identity designation) prefers to be annexed to. The majority is therefore nameless – not
just the state itself – and, due to its absence of definition, the country itself
lacks a raison d’être. The State Department
refused to comment on Mr. Rohrbacher’s statement, restating its support for the
country and its Euro-Atlantic future.
Similarly, the criticism of “artificiality” has been a recurrent
argument in the objections of Greece to the country’s constitutional name. Bulgaria,
on the other hand, has insisted on the Bulgarian character of Macedonian
nationality and/or ethnicity prior to the foundation of the Socialist
Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, as well as that of the language. Then,
according to many if not virtually all of the contemporary Bulgarian political
authorities, public intellectuals and historians, the “artificial creation” was
installed.
It is remarkable that the most influential discourses of the previous
century have not had much influence over the political discussion around
identities taking place in the Balkans and how its arguments serve the
foundation of official state policies. For example, on the official website of
the Greek Foreign Ministry, we read that FYROM’s use of the “name Macedonia”
represents a threat to Greek history and cultural heritage. Isn’t it bizarre
that the existence of a state in the 21st century could endanger a
history more than 25 centuries old, and that this might be a “political issue
leading to irredentism” ?
Going back to the objection of “artificiality”: it looks as if both the
objectors (Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs) and those who defend themselves (Macedonians)
are unaware that nations, like all other forms of collective belonging,
organized sociality and identity, are in fact “constructs.” There is nothing
“natural” about them. This argument is not necessarily poststructuralist or
constructivist. In fact, practically all authoritative methods in contemporary
political science suppose that these phenomena are subject to historical
change, transformation and are de facto
“creations.” So, they all have a production and expiry date. However, if one takes the historical and
identitary tensions between Greece and Macedonia, one notices that both sides
act as if history was static and that an unchanged identity essence remains
fixed since time perennial, that there is a definition in the last instance of
who they as nationalities “essentially, since always and forever” are. To the
Greeks, Macedonians are (an undefined group of) Slavs who are stealing Greek
history. The Macedonian nationalists, on the other hand, see themselves as the
same people as the ancient Macedonians intact and unchanged since the times of
Alexander the Great with some influence from the Slavic migrations which gave them
their language and the Cyrillic alphabet. Indeed, in the Balkans, history is
politics and politics is history.
Leaving this atavistic logic behind, let us go back to the time of the
“artificial creation” of the Macedonian nation – in 1945, Yugoslavia. I have to
agree this must have been the time of the creation of the nation, the time when
part of the geographic region of Macedonia acquired the status of a
nation-state. That was 72 years ago. Before that there was a revolutionary
movement that appeared toward the end of the nineteenth century campaigning and
fighting by means of terrorism for the foundation of a Macedonian state. That
movement was led by an organization called Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization
and, according to it, the “nature” of the Slavic majority of the nation to be was
Bulgarian. It seems that the official historiography and politics of Bulgaria
is right when arguing that Macedonia must admit an important part of its
national history is in fact Bulgarian or at least indistinguishable from that
of Bulgaria.
Therefore, the Agreement on Good Neighborly Relations between Macedonia
and Bulgaria signed on August 2, 2017 is, I argue, good news: it relieves Macedonia from its static
position of being always and since time perennial purely Macedonian,
untinged by the presence of any other ethnicity, history or ambiguity of any
sorts. On the other hand, if the view of identity as static and fixed through
eternity remains the underpinning logic on the Bulgarian side, they will fail
to recognize the fact that even if the Macedonian nation is “only” 72 years old
and communist in its origin, it is in place now. It is a reality and a distinct
ethnic and also national identity in its own right. The Macedonians, those
identifying with the part of their history we share with Bulgaria and those who
are Slavophone, in short, those who identify as Macedonians ethnically, inhabit
a certain national identity into which they have been born. In other words, the
“Titoist artificial construction” has been in place for more than seven decades
and many have no other option but, by being born into it, to identify with it.
The fact that Macedonia has signed an agreement with Bulgaria which
admits shared history and in particular that relates to nation-building
attempts since the nineteenth century, while yet insisting on its distinctness,
indicates a presumption about its identity that is dynamic, that, for the first
time, does not assume a fixed and frozen essence of the “Macedonian self.” This
is the revolutionary new possibility this agreement provides, not only for the
improvement of relations between Macedonia and Bulgaria, but as an impetus in
the right direction for the development of good neighborly relations with
Greece and Serbia as well. Perhaps the model installed by Bulgaria and
Macedonia can indeed serve as a foundation for resolving the decades long
dispute between Macedonia and Greece.
If we depart from the thesis that the problem is in fact more
historical, more identity-based than merely “technical” (a geographical
distinction between a region and a state), perhaps a solution to the
historical-cultural tensions similar to that reached with Bulgaria will resolve
the matter? Perhaps an identity-related distinction rather than a geographical
one could resolve the dispute more swiftly and on a permanent basis?
Is it possible that Slavic-Macedonians or Slavo-Macedonians will be a
name that will assuage Greek fears and yet do justice to the historical
accuracy related to Macedonian national identity (including the part to which
Bulgaria has its claims too)? In order for such discussions to begin, it is
necessary that the Macedonians accept that indeed there is no frozen essence of
identity and that the only constant is dynamism and transformation. Therefore,
a contemporary rather than ancient specification of the identifier (“Macedonian”)
will serve its future and that of its neighbours better, and hopefully lead to
the resolution of the name dispute with Greece.