Historiography in North Macedonia

The Warrior on a Horse monument dedicated to Alexander the Great in Skopje. The area of modern Skopje was never part of Ancient Macedonia.[1]
Front cover of the Bulgarian Folk Songs collected by the Miladinov Brothers and published in 1861. In the early 2000s the Macedonian State Archive displayed a photocopy of the book, but with the upper part showing the word "Bulgarian" being cut off.[2][3][4]

Historiography in North Macedonia is the methodology of historical studies developed and employed by Macedonian historians. It traces its origins to 1945, when SR Macedonia became part of Yugoslavia. According to German historian Stefan Troebst [de], it has preserved nearly the same agenda as Marxist historiography from the times of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.[5] The generation of Macedonian historians closely associated with the Yugoslav period, who were instrumental in establishing national historical narratives, still exerts an influence on modern-day institutions. In the field of historiography, communism and Macedonian nationalism are closely related.[6] After the Fall of communism, Macedonian historiography did not significantly revise its communist past, because of the key role played by communist policies in establishing a distinct Macedonian nation.[7]

According to Austrian historian Ulf Brunnbauer [de], modern Macedonian historiography is highly politicized, because the Macedonian nation-building process is still ongoing. Diverging approaches are discouraged, and people who express alternative views risk economic limitations, academic career obstacles and stigmatization as "national traitors".[8] Troebst wrote in 1983 that historical research in SR Macedonia was primarily about direct political action.[9] He would go on to characterize this reciprocal dependence of historiography and politics as being more pronounced than what had been observed in Eastern and Southeast Europe.[10] Because of the complexity of the case, Macedonian historiography could be described as a state "ideology".[11] Moreover, in North Macedonia, archaeology has often been placed at the service of the state, and used to legitimize nationalist claims to history, culture, and territory.[12]

Although references to ethnic Macedonians do not appear in primary sources before 1870, the first generation of Macedonian historians after WWII traced Macedonian ethnogenesis to the beginning of the 19th century.[13][14] However, after the Tito-Stalin split, an important break occurred and the nation's origins were traced further back in time, to the medieval empire of Samuel of Bulgaria, which was appropriated as Macedonian rather than Bulgarian.[13][14] After the Republic of Macedonia's independence from Yugoslavia and after the beginning of the Macedonia name dispute with Greece, Macedonian historiography carried the nation's origins back even earlier, to antiquity and to the ancient kingdom of Macedon with a particular emphasis on Alexander the Great.[15][14] Croatian historian Tvrtko Jakovina cites the appropriation of Alexander the Great by Macedonian historiography as an example of an "obvious lie".[16]

Some domestic and foreign scholars have criticized this agenda of negationist historiography, whose apparent goal is to affirm the continuous existence of a separate Macedonian nation throughout history.[17] This controversial view is ahistorical, as it projects modern ethnic distinctions onto the past.[18] Such a reading of history contributes to the distortion of Macedonian national identity, and does harm to the academic integrity of history as a discipline.[19] Via the medium of education, unsubstantiated historical claims have been transmitted to generations of students in the country, to conceal that many prominent Macedonians had viewed themselves as Bulgarians.[20] The Skopje 2014 project, for example, promoted the idea of continuity of the Macedonian nation from antiquity until modern times.[21] The debates in North Macedonia concerning its relationships with Bulgaria and Greece have had significant impact on historiographic narrative in the country, introducing a new revisionist interpretation of the past.[22]

  1. ^ Elisabeth Kontogiorgi, Population Exchange in Greek Macedonia: The Rural Settlement of Refugees 1922-1930, Oxford Historical Monographs, Clarendon Press, 2006, ISBN 0-19-151555-8, p. 12.
  2. ^ "ms0601". www.soros.org.mk. Archived from the original on 5 April 2012. Retrieved 18 March 2008.
  3. ^ "The dispute about their origins had reached the phase in which the Bulgarian scholars accused their Macedonian colleagues of forging the archival editions of the work of the Miladinovis by deliberately deleting the word “Bulgarian” from the front covers and their refusal to display them in museums. On the other hand, Macedonians insist that the word “Bulgarian” was inserted on the facsimiles of the first editions of the Miladinovs’ works by the Bulgarian nationalists and that the copies displayed in the Macedonian museums are original. (...) However, it appears that the Bulgarian argument has much stronger support in international academic circles." For more see: Dragana Lazarević, The Politics of Heritage in the West Balkans: The Evolution of Nation-building and the Invention of National Narratives as a Consequence of Political Changes, Cardiff University, 2015, pp. 323–324.
  4. ^ However, the polemics about the instigation of the Miladinov brothers’ miscellany have continued in the 20th century, since the 1983 Macedonian edition as the Collection of the Miladinov Brothers, reprinted in Skopje, removed every single “Bulgarian” reference therefrom. A republishing of the original in the year 2000 tried to restrain the passions but only triggered a vigorous protest by the Macedonian historians. Eventually, the Macedonian State Archive, financed by the Soros Foundation, displayed a copy thereof, having previously meticulously cut off the adjective “Bulgarian,” so the cover page simple read Folk Songs. For more see: Živić, T., Vranješ, A. (2017). Josip Juraj Strossmayer: A Statesman of Culture. Култура/Culture, 6 (14), pp. 136-144; ISSN 1857-7725.
  5. ^ Stefan Troebst, Historical Politics and Historical 'Masterpieces' in Macedonia before and after 1991, New Balkan Politics, 2003.
  6. ^ Roumen Daskalov, Diana Mishkova as ed., Entangled Histories of the Balkans - Volume Two: Transfers of Political Ideologies and Institutions, BRILL, 2013, ISBN 90-04-26191-5, p. 499.
  7. ^ Brunnbauer, Ulf. (2005). Pro-Serbians vs. Pro-Bulgarians: Revisionism in Post-Socialist Macedonian Historiography. History Compass. 3. 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2005.00130.x.
  8. ^ Ulf Brunnbauer, "Serving the Nation: Historiography in the Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) after Socialism", Historien, Vol. 4 (2003-4), pp. 174-175.
  9. ^ Morten Dehli Andreassen, June 2011; "If you don't vote VMRO you're not Macedonian". A study of Macedonian identity and national discourse in Skopje. Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of Master of Arts Degree. Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen, p. 81.
  10. ^ "At any rate, the beginning of the active national-historical direction with the historical "masterpieces", which was for the first time possible in 1944, developed in Macedonia much harder than was the case with the creation of the neighbouring nations of the Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians and others in the 19th century. These neighbours almost completely "plundered" the historical events and characters from the land, and there was only debris left for the belated nation. A consequence of this was that first that parts of the "plundered history" were returned, and a second was that an attempt was made to make the debris become a fundamental part of an autochthonous history. This resulted in a long phase of experimenting and revising, during which the influence of non-scientific instances increased. This specific link of politics with historiography in the Socialist Republic of Macedonia... was that this was a case of mutual dependence, i.e. influence between politics and historical science, where historians do not simply have the role of registrars obedient to orders. For their significant political influence, they had to pay the price for the rigidity of the science... There is no similar case of mutual dependence of historiography and politics on such a level in Eastern or Southeast Europe." For more see: Stefan Trobest, "Historical Politics and Histrocial 'Masterpieces' in Macedonia before and after 1991", New Balkan Politics, 6 (2003).
  11. ^ This analyses tries to map out a methodological pluralism and define the complex notion of the politicization of history, at least in its philosophical, political, and epistemological multidisciplinarity. This approach relativizes the traditional and evaluates the politicization of history as an exclusively negative social, cultural, and political phenomenon. Because of its complexity and what is colloquially understood by the term “politicization,” it could be more precise to use the more general notion of “ideology.” Further this analysis seeks to chronicle the development of the Macedonian collective political and cultural identity, which is currently disputed. This brief review focuses only on the modern and contemporary period of the emergence of the Macedonian nation, that is from 1941 to 2018, key years in which latent tendencies to finalize these historical processes in the form of a differentiated political identity—a modern Macedonian state—are most explicitly manifested. For more see: Skalovski, D. (2021). The Politicization of History in North Macedonia (1941–2018). In: Ognjenovic, G., Jozelic, J. (eds) Nationalism and the Politicization of History in the Former Yugoslavia. Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-65832-8_11
  12. ^ Danforth, Loring M. (1995). The Macedonian conflict : ethnic nationalism in a transnational world. Princeton, N.J. p. 169. ISBN 978-0-691-22171-7. OCLC 1206364430.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  13. ^ a b Yosmaoğlu, İpek (2013). Blood Ties: Religion, Violence and the Politics of Nationhood in Ottoman Macedonia, 1878–1908. Cornell University Press. p. 24. ISBN 978-0-8014-6979-4.
  14. ^ a b c Ulf Brunnbauer, “Historiography, Myths and Nation in the Republic of Macedonia,” in (Re)Writing History. Historiography in Southeast Europe after Socialism, ed. Ulf Brunnbauer (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2004), 165–200
  15. ^ Yosmaoğlu, İpek (2013). Blood Ties: Religion, Violence and the Politics of Nationhood in Ottoman Macedonia, 1878–1908. Cornell University Press. p. 24. ISBN 978-0-8014-6979-4.
  16. ^ Jakovina, Tvrtko (2021). "Being in Love with Traitors: Views on Collaboration during World War II in Several Balkan Countries after the End of the Cold War". In Bitunjac, Martina; Schoeps, Julius H. (eds.). Complicated Complicity: European Collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. p. 296. ISBN 978-3-11-067118-6.
  17. ^ Sinisa Jakov Marusic, New Statue Awakens Past Quarrels in Macedonia. BalkanInsight, 13 July 2012, cited in War in the Balkans: Conflict and Diplomacy before World War I by James Pettifer, I.B.Tauris, 2015, ISBN 0-85773-968-9.
  18. ^ Kyril Drezov, Macedonian identity: an overview of the major claims in The New Macedonian Question with J. Pettifer as ed., Springer, 1999, ISBN 0-230-53579-8, p. 55.
  19. ^ Irena Stefoska, Nation, Education and Historiographic Narratives: the Case of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia (1944-1990); Introduction In discussions of identities (ethnic, national, religious, gender, etc.), Fragments of the History of Macedonian Nationalism: An Introduction to the Research Problem, pp. 34-35.
  20. ^ The past was systematically falsified to conceal the fact that many prominent 'Macedonians' had supposed themselves to be Bulgarian, and generations of students were taught the "pseudo-history" of the 'Macedonian nation." For more see: Michael L. Benson, Yugoslavia: A Concise History, Edition 2, Springer, 2003, ISBN 1-4039-9720-9, p. 89.
  21. ^ Klaus Roth, Asker Kartarı as authors and ed., Cultures of Crisis in Southeast Europe, Volume 2, LIT Verlag Münster, 2017, ISBN 3-643-90791-5, p. 169.
  22. ^ Todorov P. Macedonian Historiography: The Question of Identity and Politics. Contemporary European History. 2023:1-7. doi:10.1017/S0960777323000528