The Macedonian Question ? 
The solution which Tito arrived at for the Macedonian problem of Yugoslavia -even before the war was really over- was one quite accommodating. By acknowledging the Slav inhabitants of Yugoslavian 'Macedonian' as "Macedonians", he eliminated (or hoped to eliminate) the links between that population and Bulgaria. On the other hand, this gave him the initiative in imposing a unilateral Yugoslav solution to the Macedonian problem by incorporating the other two geographical regions into the Socialist republic of Macedonia. Of course, the break with Stalin in 1948 and the end of the Civil War in Greece in 1949 upset these plans, as we have seen already. However, since it had proved impossible to settle the whole Macedonian question unilaterally, it was essential that it be consolidated at least within Yugoslav Macedonia. This was a far from easy task. A whole people, who for decades had been identified with or orientated towards the Bulgarian national ideas, and a smaller section which had had a similar orientation towards Serbia, would have to sever these bonds and adopt an entirely novel national ideology, the 'Macedonian' ideology. That undertaking was Yugoslavia's domestic 'Macedonian problem' in the post-war decades.
The problem amounted to nothing more or less than the construction of an artificial nationality, the 'Macedonian' nationality. The task was difficult not only because the Bulgarian consciousness was relatively highly-developed in a considerable portion of the population of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia but also because the new nationality did not have the features which are essential for its establishment as such. It followed that these components had to be discovered or invented.
First of all, the nationality was given a state identity. The 'Macedonians' acquired a government for the first time -even if only on a local scale- with a Prime Minister and a Cabinet. Senior cadres from Yugoslavian Macedonia flanked the federal authorities in Belgrade. Of course, all the important decisions were taken in the capital, but the disputes between the nationalities led the republican governments to gradually take on more and more initiative, until they reached the point at which, today, they have ministers (Secretaries) for foreign affairs. At the same time, with its party representatives on the Central Committee, Skopje began to influence the party and government hierarchy in favour of its views.
The second feature of the nationality was its language. It was generally accepted that the language spoken by the Slavs of Macedonia is a dialect of Bulgarian. In order to sever the substantive linguistic bond between the Macedonian Slaves and the Bulgarians, a separate 'Macedonian' written language had to be invented. This was done by exploiting local peculiarities and by borrowing from Serbian and other Slav languages. However, despite the painstaking efforts of thirty years, the new language remains for the open-minded observer or scholar nothing more than an offshoot of Bulgarian: not, of course, that this prevents Skopje from proclaiming near and far that there is a 'Macedonian' language.
Throughout the troubled history of the Balkans, religion has usually been a fundamental element in determining, to some extent at least, the national identity of the peoples of any particular area. For that reason the leaders in Skopje, though atheists themselves, made considerable efforts to create an Autocephalous Church of Macedonia, which was eventually established in 1967 over the objections of the Serbian Partiarchate, and the refusal of all the Orthodox Partiarchates and Churches to recognize the uncanonical diktat.
In this way the language and the church, two features which connected the Slavs of Macedonia with the Bulgarians and the Serbs, respectively, were radically altered. All that was left was to sever the links which connected the past of the Macedonian Slavs with Bulgaria and Greece. Here it was necessary to reinterpret the history of the Balkans, since the most ancient times. In this way it would be possible to explain into existence the myth of a 'Macedonian nation'.
The efforts made by the revisionist historians of Skopje had two basic goals: a) to eliminate from Macedonia any historical or cultural traces of other peoples (Greeks, Bulgarians and Serbs) by labelling them all as simply 'Macedonian', and b) to establish the 'Macedonian nation' as a historical dogma, dating it not from 1944 when the Socialist Republic of Macedonia was formed, but from 13 centuries before -in other words, from the time when the first Slav tribes settled in Macedonia, in the 7th century AD.
In dealing with antiquity, these historians put forward the viewpoint that the Ancient Macedonians, like their neighbours the Illyrians and the Thracians, were not Greeks. They claim that only the ruling classes had been helienised, while the mass of the people remained Macedonian, i.e. non-Greek. Thus when the Slav tribes arrived in Macedonia in the 6th-7th centuries A.D., they mingled with indigenous 'non-Greek' Macedonians. This admixture produced the Slavo-Macedonians, a new compound of a fundamentally Slavic nature which could, nonetheless, claim to be the indirect heirs to the heritage of Ancient Macedonia. Later, they say, the 'Macedonian' nation sprang from these Slavo- Macedonians.
However simplistic this theory may seem, it is nonetheless employed systematically in order to attribute a 'Macedonian' national identity to the historical heritage of all the national groups which, down the centuries, have lived and left important traces in Macedonia. It is, however, only to be expected that this process of adulteration of the historical physiognomy of Macedonia and the peoples who lived there should have provoked violent reaction on the part of Greeks, Bulgarians and even Serbs.
The Bulgarians and the Serbs react because the historiographers of Skopje have no inhibition about appropriating the entire historical presence and heritage of other -related- Slav peoples. With the Greeks, matters are more difficult, since the Greek identity is clearly different to that of the Slavs. In order to overcome this difficulty, the Skopje historians hit upon the idea of appropriating and monopolising the name 'Macedonia' and its derivatives. This name is in fact of ancient Greek origin, since it referred to the ancient Greek nation of Philip and Alexander.
In medieval and modern times, the word 'Macedonian' lost its ethnic connotation, but continued to be used in a geographical sense to refer to any inhabitant of the geographical area of Macedonia in general. Thus in the era of Ottoman rule and after liberation, in all three parts of Macedonia, the inhabitants referred to themselves, in their own languages, using the same geographical name. The Greeks of Macedonia called themselves Makedones as the Greeks of Epirus called themselves Epirotes or those of Crete Krites), while the Slav groups -Serbs, Bulgars, etc.- used the term Makedonci and the Vlachs Macedoneni. However, when in 1944 the new regime in Yugoslavia decided to use the geographical term as an ethnic one, baptising the Slavs of Macedonia "Macedonians", it was done in the deliberate desire to create confusion. The theorists of Skopje claimed that since there was a state -the Socialist Republic of Macedonia- and a race with the Macedonian name, then everything Macedonian -history, culture, monuments, historical personalities- which had come to being or been active in Macedonia-was auwmatically part of the historical heritage of the newly-formed 'Macedonian' nation. By playing with the two meanings of the name, the geographical one and the ethnic one, they created such confusion that unsuspecting foreigners were unable to distinguish between the two and unthinkingly came to assume that everything Macedonian must belong to the Slavs of Yugoslavian Macedonia.
A few examples should suffice to make clear the extent of this campaign of counterfeiting. A few years ago, the authorities in Skopje organised a touring exhibition of superb Byzantine icons from Macedonia. Many of these were well- known as Greek Byzantine works, not only because of their Greek inscriptions but also because of the Greek names of the artists. The exhibition toured numerous capitals under the title "Medieval Macedonian Icons". It does not take much imagination to conceive what impression this must have created in the minds of the crowds of visitors as to the identity of these Byzantine treasures. The ironic comments of the very few experts who realised the trick which was being played did not appear to worry unduly the organisers of the exhibition.
Similar examples can be found in modern political history. The Greek War of Independence of 1821, for instance, is transformed into a war of 'Macedonian' independence when the reference is to the struggles and sacrifices of the inhabitants of Macedonia.
In the Second World War it is said that "the first victory over the forces of Fascism was won by Macedonians": the argument here is that the heroic victories won by the Greek Army over the Italians in 1940 on the northern front where the Florina division was active must be attributed to 'Macedonian' arms. And as for the Greek Civil War, when the battles in Macedonia are being described it ceases to be a 'civil' war between greeks but is transformed into a struggle of 'Macedonian' guerrillas fighting for 'their' liberation and national rehabilitation.
There are countless similar examples. However simplistic these historiacal myths may be, the Yugoslav officials responsible for them appear to be satisfied. The constant repetition over a period of more than 40 years of the same counterfeit historical theories, together with a complete state mechanism which is adapted to the cause of consolidating the mutation experiment of transforming the population of Yugoslavian Macedonia into 'Macedonians', appears to them to have brought about positive results. The beliefs which the younger generations in the Socialist Republic of Macedonia hold about the history of Macedonia are those which they have been taught in their schools, not those accepted by scholars throughout the world. With all the zeal of recent converts to nationalism, the young 'Macedonians' are proud of their counterfeit past and they occasionally reast with blind fanaticism when anyone dares to question the ordinances of their national existence. Those who resist this brain-washing are dubbed 'anti-Macedonians', 'Grekomans", "Bulgarophiles" or even -believe it or not- "forgers of history".
Apart trom its own separate state entity, its own language, its Church and its history, the newly-formed 'Macedonian' nation was also endowed with its own 'Great Idea': the dream of a Greater Macedonia consisting of the three zones united within the framework of the Yugoslavian Federation. This vision ceased after 1948 to be presented in the form of a political programme, but it is maintained indirectly by literature, school text-books and historical treatises. It is even echoed in the statements made by the allegedly responsible officials in Skopje to the effect that "in the same way as there are many different roads to socialism, so there are many paths which could lead to a solution of the Macedonian question".
However since political promotion of the vision is inapplicable under existing circumstances and perhaps even dangerous for the Yugoslavian Federation itself, a policy has been adopted of pressing for recognition of 'Macedonian' minorities in Yugoslavia's neighbours, Bulgaria, Greece and Albania. This line has become a constitutionally protected doctrine of Yugoslav policy. It was implemented as soon as the policy of annexation was abandoned. Of course, the political and ethnic conditions which have come into being in the neighbouring states since the Second World War make Yugoslavian reasoning groundless, but the persistence in putting forward the minority claim cannot be unrelated to the attempt to keep the dream of the 'Macedonian' Great Idea alive.
The truth of the matter is that the Yugoslavian Government - particularly when Tito was still at the helm- did not allow the vision to develop into something capable of poisoning relations with Greece. In recent years, however, certain malfunctions in domestic economic and political life in Yugoslavia and the confrontations between the various nationalities which live there have provoked the revival of an intense nationalism whose future possible dimensions must give onlookers pause for thought. The existence in the S.R. of Macedonia of nearly 400,000 Albanians -20% of the total population- is certainly a major headache.
