Museum Frenzy Grips Macedonia

Some delicate things take time and a lot of care to make. I see yet another noble idea going down the drain thanks to our compulsive urge to rush things in Macedonia.

A new museum complex, called “Macedonian Struggle”, is being built in Skopje to honour the fighters for Macedonian independence and those who fell in the service of that ideal.

However, as the building nears completion and the wax figures of distinguished Macedonians to be put inside are almost ready, a certain mystery is enveloping that part of the project that deals with the more delicate areas of Macedonia’s past.
 
Many fear that the two exhibits in the museum, the “Museum of VMRO” (named after the 19th century rebel movement in the Ottoman Empire) and the “Victims of Communism”, will portray a one-sided, ideologically charged view of national history, designed to suit the tastes of the centre-right ruling VMRO DPMNE party.
 
Turning to the use of the prefix VMRO, the ruling party cannot avoid accusations that it is, in effect, constructing its own museum, using state money to do so and without inviting the public to join the debate.
 
Of course, things are not that simple. VMRO DPMNE is just one of many rightwing parties that took this acronym in the 1990s to symbolize their general standpoint and, by the way, garner a few votes.
 
The historic VMRO, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, was marred with controversy right from the start. Ever since it was formed in the late 19th century and during its activities in the early 20th century, its members had very different opinions on Macedonia’s future.
 
Uniting many Macedonian patriots, the organization was also famous for the many high profile members who believed Macedonians were, in fact, Bulgarians and that Macedonia should be part of that country.
 
Like its historical predecessor, VMRO DPMNE also suffered greatly from being labeled a pro-Bulgarian front. During the Nineties, the then ruling Social Democrats, now in opposition, used this claim to scare people. The controversy peaked after the party’s former leader and Macedonia’s former prime minister, Ljubco Georgievski, took Bulgarian citizenship after losing the 2002 elections.
 
Under its present head, Macedonia’s current Prime Minister, Nikola Gruevski, VMRO DPMNE has increased its popularity. Public attention became diverted towards the need for economic recovery and Gruevski was elected to address this issue in 2006.
 
However, the party never abandoned its cult of several controversial historic VMRO figures like Todor Alexandrov or Vanco Mihailov.

Todor Alexandrov was an advocate for autonomous Macedonia, but insisted on the Bulgarian ethnic character of the Macedonians.

Scholars also agree that Mihailov on his part also defended the same standpoints.

Their wax figures are among some 120 that have been chosen to stand inside the new museum, though party and state officials have not yet clarified how they will be portrayed.
 
This air of secrecy has raised suspicions that an attempt will be made to reintroduce these figures as Macedonian heroes, and so commit a coup against the current historical tendency to place these people in a negative context.

From the little we do know so far, Macedonia’s first president, Metodija Andonov-Cento, is going to be portrayed wearing prison robes. Cento, at first a prominent member of the Macedonian liberation movement during the Second World War, was later incarcerated by the Communists for his strong support for Macedonian independence.

At the same time, the Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito will apparently be portrayed as giving orders to the then head of the Macedonian communists, Lazar Kolisevski to execute Macedonian nationalists.
 
I presume the idea is to show that Cento and others were victims of the ruthless communist regime that VMRO DPMNE officials love to mention when speaking about the Social Democrats, whose party is the successor to the former communist party.
 
I for one think Cento deserves to be shown in a more dignified pose, and I suspect there will be many objections to the museum’s content once it is revealed. I believe a carefully conducted lustration process would do Cento and others more justice than a morbid wax figure.

However, what is most objectionable is that all of this has been done in secret until the very end when the figures are almost done.
 
Is the building of the complex itself problematic? No. Some people who unjustly suffered under the old system deserve to be honoured, and however controversial it might be, the history of VMRO is deeply linked to the Macedonian struggle for independence.
 
Is the party in power going to stay out and enable impartial and objective historic views to be represented in the museum – views that do not provoke even more internal divisions and controversies? Judging by its previous projects, I doubt that will be the case.
 
We still remember what happened to the state funded Macedonian Encyclopedia, in which the views of VMRO DPMNE officials miraculously coincided with those of the “scientists” in the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences who compiled the book.
 
We recall what is still happening with the government idea to use state funds to erect a church on an important square in the capital – a plan that still provokes ethnic and religious intolerance.
 
Then there is the controversial giant monument of Alexander the Great that is to be erected in Skopje city centre, and the giant archeological museum that suddenly popped out from nowhere.
 
After some 60 years of frustration over the way in which history, and pretty much everything else, has been written by people with a different ideological matrix, I see this as yet another foolish attempt at  “freshmen’s revenge” on the part of the current leadership.