The Macedonian Question ? 
However, if in countries on other continents the dispute focused principally on the definition of national identity and on the appropriation of the name Macedonia, in the Balkans the problem is not confined to its cultural dimensions. International observers will be familiar with the tense relations which, for long periods of time, have been the rule between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria over the Macedqnian question. The cultural side of the problem, with Skopje casting doubt on the Bulgarian historical presence in the broader area of Macedonia, has certainly been a standing cause for the stirring up of passions. But behind that lurks a mutual suspicion between Yugoslavs and Bulgarians over the other side's claims on their Macedonian territories. The Yugoslavs claim that the Bulgarians by refusing to admit the existence of a 'Macedonian' nation - and consequently of a 'Macedonian' minority on their soil - are persisting in the belief that the Slavs of Macedonia are Bulgarians. And since they are Bulgarians -runs the Yugoslavian theory- the territory of Macedonia, and the Socialist Republic in particular, ought one day to be incorporated into the Bulgarian homeland.
This suspicion relies on the fact that, in the past, as soon as a change came about in international conditions the Bulgarians hastened to take advantage of it. On the first occasion, they occupied Yugoslavian Macedonia as allies of the Germans and attempted to annex it. On the second occasion, after the Stalin-Tito split, Dimitrov first acknowledged the existence of a 'Macedonian' nation (in 1944-48) and then Bulgaria performed a volte-face and rebaptised the 'Macedonians' as Bulgarians while at the same time encouraging subversive elements inside the Socialist Republic of Macedonia itself in the hope of opening up a way for the region to be annexed. Despite Sofia's protestations of peaceful intentions with regard to the inviolability of frontiers and specific proposals for the signing of a proclamation which would confirm the current territorial status as final, Belgrade has refused to accept assurances and continues to be suspicious, as a result of Bulgaria's almost blind commitment to the policy of the Soviet Union. This policy has in the past undergone considerable shifts vis-a-vis Yugoslavia, and the leaders in Sofia have always hastened to align themselves with it, whatever their own judgement may have been.
The Bulgarian side, too, has had reservations about how far Belgrade's intentions are peaceful. Behind the demands for recognition of the 'Macedonian' minority, the Bulgarians discern an attempt to keep alive the grounds for territorial claims on Bulgarian Macedonia as soon as the conditions are ripe. The Bulgarians will not forget easily that at a time when Bulgaria, as a former ally of Hitler's Germany, was being dragged before the Paris Peace Conference (1946) and its international position was hardly enviable, Tito, with Stalin's aid, pressed Dimitrov to recognise the Bulgarians of Macedonia as 'Macedonians' - every last one of them - and, moreover, to consent to the annexation of Bulgarian Macedonia as part of a united Macedonia within the framework of the Yugoslavian Federation. If that plan was not carried out at the time, it was because of the crisis which broke out in Soviet-Yugoslav relations. Nor will the Bulgarians agree to the 'Macedonisation' of a large part of Bulgarian history and of their cultural heritage. However, in order to bring about some measure of improvement in the gloomy atmosphere hanging over their bilateral relations with Yugoslavia as a result of the Macedonian issue, the Bulgarians have made some interesting alternative proposals. They have stated that although they regard the Slav population of Macedonia as being of Bulgarian descent, they nonetheless accept that the political and social conditions - in Yugoslavian Macedonia have, since 1944, been entirely different and have allowed the formation of a new national identity.
These conditions, though - which of course existed nowhere else than in the Socialist Republic of Macedonia - have not and could not have affected the populations of neighbouring countries. The Bulgarians have gone as far as to propose a compromise formula over the sensitive point of the cultural heritage: they would be prepared to accept that certain events and personalities in the broader area of Macedonia (for example, the Iliden rising) form part of the joint cultural heritage of the Bulgarians and the 'Macedonians'. This was indeed a shrewd manoeuvre, but it did not meet with Yugoslavian approval, perhaps because Belgrade and Skopje were afraid that even the slightest concession to weaken their monopoly on history would bring the edifice they had so painstakingly built with stolen materials tumbling down. Bulgarian policy over Macedonia has however had positive results in another direction. 'Me categorical statements made since 1964 by Bulgarian leaders to the effect that their country has no territorial or minority claims on Greece have allowed the development of relations of actual good neighbourliness and cooperation between the two countries.
Moreover the negative aspects of the history of those relations have now passed from the domain of politics into the province of scholarly rewiew. For the first time -and for nearly a quarter of a century- relations between Greeks and Bulgarians are not only trouble-free but could be described as positive. That is undoubtedly a lesson in how even in the Balkans the most painful memories can be overcome when there is the will, the perspicacity and the political realism.
