Ghosts of the Past Endanger Macedonia’s Future

The drive to forge a new identity, as heir to the world of Classical Antiquity, creates identity crisis at home and worsens tensions with neighbours.

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In the peak-time slot every Saturday evening on TV in Skopje, Atanas Pcelarski explains the meaning of words from the world of Classical Antiquity in modern Macedonian. “Macedonia is the source of the world. Languages, themes about God, religion, the legal system, they all stem from Macedonia,” he declares. The Macedonia of Classical Antiquity and the modern republic are one and the same.

Pcelarski is one of many who insist on a direct link between the world of Alexander the Great and the Macedonia of today. A growing obsession with the warrior is only part of a controversial debate about modern Macedonia’s ancient roots – and contemporary identity.

Since the nationalist VMRO-DMPNE party won the 2006 elections, Alexander’s name and image have become more visible. What began with the rebranding of the country’s main airport, has snowballed into a wider phenomenon.

The renaming of the airport as “Skopje Alexander the Great Airport” infuriated Greece, which insists that Alexander was a Hellene, and that both Macedonia’s name and the region’s Classical history are the exclusive cultural property of Greece.

The two neighbours have been locked in a dispute over Macedonia’s name ever since the former Yugoslav republic declared independence in 1991.

Although Macedonia rebuffed diplomatic suggestions to reverse the renaming of the airport, it refrained from further provocations until last year.

But since Greece blocked the issuing of an invitation for Macedonia to join NATO in Bucharest in April 2008, the VMRO-DPMNE-led government of Nikola Gruevski has launched a series of projects celebrating Alexander and other Classical heroes.

This process is not without critics in Macedonia. They say the attempt to construct a new identity for Macedonia on the basis of a presumed link to the world of Antiquity, known locally as ‘Antikvizacija’ (Antiquisation), is having devastating consequences.

One complaint is that the campaign is placing new strains on a fragile multi-ethnic society in which the dissatisfaction of the large ethnic Albanian minority is already growing.

Another fear is that the emphasis on Classical Antiquity is dividing ethnic Macedonians into two groups, separating those who back ‘Antiquisation’ from others who think of themselves as Slavs.

Divided Territory

For five centuries, Macedonia was part of the Ottoman Empire. After 1913, the territory was divided between three Balkan countries. Greece received around 34,200 km2 (around 52 per cent of the territory). Serbia obtained today’s Republic of Macedonia, comprising 25,333 km2. Bulgaria received the smallest portion, 6,449 km2.

For generations, especially while Macedonia was part of Yugoslavia, Macedonians held onto a Slavic
identity that was separate, but related to that of the Slavs of neighbouring Serbia and Bulgaria.

A final concern is that the populist campaign is alienating key foreign allies as well as Macedonia’s neighbours. Experts note that both Bulgaria and Greece could exercise their power as EU members to delay or veto Macedonia’s accession to the Union.  


Changing face of the public space

When Anastas Vangeli returned to Macedonia in mid-2009 after spending a year in Budapest studying nationalism, he was astonished by the change in the atmosphere.

“Society has turned in on itself,” he says. “It’s as if Macedonians are looking at the magic mirror in the children’s fable and asking: mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most Antique of us all?”

It is the not just the media that pushes the theme of Macedonia’s Classical identity. Monuments to Classical heroes are springing up in town after town.

The capital, Skopje, is to erect a 22-metre-tall monument to Alexander next year. His statue already crowns the centre of Prilep.

Against ‘Antiquisation,’ but for GovernmentA poll conducted by the International Republican Institute in June 2009, showed 59 per cent of Macedonians wanted Gruevski to focus on the economy, not Antiquity. But other polls show that Gruevski’s party, the VMRO-DPMNE, enjoys ratings three times higher than the main opposition Social Democrats.



Who came first?

At home, the issue of who “first” settled the Balkans has worsened the divide between Macedonians and the ethnic-Albanian minority, which comprises about one-quarter of the population.

Sam Vaknin, a former advisor to Prime Minister Gruevski, has described “Antiquisation” as a nation-building project that was essentially anti-Albanian, rather than anti-Greek or anti-Bulgarian.

“Antiquisation has a double goal, which is to marginalise the Albanians and create an identity that will not allow Albanians to become Macedonians,” he said in an interview in June.

Abdurahman Aliti, leader of the ethnic Albanian Party for Democratic Prosperity, PDP, agrees that the campaign is directed against them. “Antiquisation sends a message to Albanians that they are newcomers in this country and have nothing to do here,” he says.

For their part, most Albanians insist they “came first”. They believe modern Albanians descend from the Illyrian tribes that Ancient Roman historians wrote about in their books. Some claim Alexander was of Illyrian origin.

Albanians were outraged when the Macedonian Academy of Science in September published an encyclopaedia that referred to Albanians as “settlers” and “shiptari” – a term Albanians view as offensive. Albanians in both Macedonia and Kosovo staged protests against what they considered as slurs.

In Albania, the historian and politician Sabri Godo said that the encyclopaedia aimed “to destroy peaceful coexistence between Albanians and Macedonians.”

Long Lost Relatives
 In July 2008, Prince Ghazanfar Ali Khan and Princess Rani Atiqa of the Hunza people, from Pakistan’s Himalaya region, self-proclaimed descendants of Alexander the Great, visited Skopje and met top officials, including Prime Minister Gruevski and the Macedonian Orthodox Archbishop, who blessed them. The Muslim Hunzas had not heard of Macedonia until 12 years ago, when a Macedonian linguistics professor claimed the Hunza and Indo-European languages shared a common grammar. Athens also has close relations with Pakistan, this time with the Kalashi tribe, also from the Himalaya region. Greek emigrants in the US have asked the US to give special protection to the ‘Hellenic descendants of the armies of Alexander the Great’ in the Himalayas.










Read the article in Macedonian

This article was produced as part of the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence, an initiative of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and ERSTE Foundation, in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN.