Historiography in North Macedonia



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, it has preserved nearly the same agenda as Marxist historiography from the times of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. 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. 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.

According to Austrian historian Ulf Brunnbauer, 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". Troebst wrote in 1983 that historical research in SR Macedonia was primarily about direct political action. 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. Because of the complexity of the case, Macedonian historiography could be described as a state "ideology". 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.

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. 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. 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. Croatian historian Tvrtko Jakovina cites the appropriation of Alexander the Great by Macedonian historiography as an example of an "obvious lie".

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. This controversial view is ahistorical, as it projects modern ethnic distinctions onto the past. 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. 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. The Skopje 2014 project, for example, promoted the idea of continuity of the Macedonian nation from antiquity until modern times. 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.

History
In 1892, Georgi Pulevski, one of the first Macedonian national activists, completed a "General History of the Macedonian Slavs", although his knowledge of history may have been somewhat limited. However, the contemporary Macedonian historical narrative is rooted in communist groups active during the Interwar period, especially in the 1930s, when the Comintern issued a special resolution in their support. According to activists from those groups, the Macedonian nation was forged through a differentiation from the earlier Bulgarian nation. In that framework, the Macedonian awakening in the 19th century took place as part of the Bulgarian National Revival, but managed to evolve separately from it in the early 20th century. One of them — Vasil Ivanovski, declared for the first time that many Bulgarian historical figures were, in fact, ethnic Macedonians. It was only after the Second World War, however, that those writings were widely appreciated, as prior to the establishment of Communist Yugoslavia, the existence of a separate Macedonian nation was still not widely recognized.

The glorification of the Yugoslav partisan movement became one of the main components of post-war Yugoslav political propaganda. As a result, the leader of the new Socialist Republic of Macedonia – Lazar Koliševski, initially proclaimed that the Republic's history had begun with the communist struggle during the Second World War, whereas early 20th century events such as the Ilinden Uprising, or organizations such as the IMRO, were mere Bulgarian conspiracies. At the same time, the first rector of the University of Skopje - Kiril Miljovski - admitted that early Macedonian revivalists and revolutionaries identified as Bulgarians. With explicit state support from the Yugoslav government, historical studies emphasizing the distinctness of Macedonian nationhood were expanded. New Macedonian historiography held, as a central principle, that Macedonian history was separate from Bulgarian history. Its primary goal was to foster an independent Macedonian national consciousness, with an "anti-Bulgarian" or "de-Bulgarizing" trend, and to sever any ties with Bulgaria. This distinct Slavic consciousness would inspire identification with Yugoslavia. The first national scientific institution in this field – the Institute for National History of the PR Macedonia - was established in 1948. The historiographic narrative in the first two decades afterwards was expanded to the early 19th century, which was believed at the time to mark the beginning of the history of the Macedonian people. However, some people from the region who were included in the new narrative had also played a significant role in the Bulgarian National Revival. This apparent problem was solved by the Communist system using censorship, control of historical information, and manipulation. Numerous prominent activists with pro-Bulgarian sentiment from the 19th and the early 20th centuries were described as (ethnic) Macedonians. Despite the fact that in many documents of that period, the local Slavic population was not referred to as "Macedonian", but rather as "Bulgarian", Macedonian historians argued that it was Macedonian anyway. They also claimed that the term "Bulgarian" did not refer to any specific ethnicity at the time, but was rather used as a synonym for "Slavic", "Christian" or "peasant". Bulgarian historians view this as part of a systematic trend of denigrating and reviling the ethnonym "Bulgarian".

Since the late 1960s, efforts have been made to expand the narrative into the Middle Ages. In 1969, the first academic "History of the Macedonian Nation" was published, where many historical figures from the region who had lived in the previous millennium, such as Samuel of Bulgaria, were described as people with a "Macedonian (Slavic) identity". When historians from Skopje University published in 1985 their collection of documents on the struggle of the Macedonian people, they included into the excerpts of medieval chronicles a footnote for every use of the term Bulgarian. This is seen as historical revisionism by Bulgarian historians, who continue to dispute the Macedonian interpretation of events up until the present day.

During the aforementioned period, Macedonian and Yugoslav scholars typically referred to the ancient local tribes of the Central Balkan region as Daco-Moesian. Initially, Daco-Moesian tribes were identified via linguistic research. Later, Yugoslav archaeologists and historians came to an agreement that Daco-Moesians would have been located in the area of modern-day Serbia and North Macedonia. The most popular Daco-Moesian tribes described in Yugoslav literature were the Triballians, the Dardanians and the Paeonians. The leading research goal in SR Macedonia during Yugoslav times was the establishment of some kind of Paionian identity, and to separate it from the western "Illyrian" and the eastern "Thracian" entities. The idea of a Paionian identity was intended to demonstrate that Vardar Macedonia was neither Illyrian nor Thracian, favouring a more complex division. That view was contrary to scientific claims about strict Thraco-Illyrian Balkan separation from neighbouring Bulgaria and Albania. Yugoslav Macedonian historians also argued that any plausible link between Slav Macedonians and their ancient namesakes was, at best, accidental.

Post-independence


The situation did not change significantly after the Republic of Macedonia achieved independence in the late 20th century. Historiography remained consistent with that from the Yugoslav period, because almost all ideas of historical revisionist nature originated during the communist era. The reluctance towards a thorough reexamination of Yugoslav communist historiography was fueled by the fact that the very notions of Macedonian nationhood, statehood and language were a product of Yugoslav communist policies. To the mainstream political establishment, an attitude against Communist Yugoslavia was tantamount to anti-Macedonism.

Macedonian historiography has become important since the early 21st century in the face of an unsure reevaluation of the Yugoslav past, and an uneasy articulation of a new anticommunist narrative. It has sought a new horizon behind the mythological symbolism of ancient Macedon. For that purpose, the borders of the ancient state have been extended to the north, beyond its actual historical extent. According to this new narrative, most of the cultural achievements of the Ancient Macedonians were actually (ethnic) Macedonian and therefore, Hellenism's true name ought to be Macedonism. This new historical trend, called antiquization, has made the Macedonian nation a thousand years older. In this view, Ancient Macedonians were not Ancient Greek people, and a separate existence of Ancient Macedonians in the Early Middle Ages is maintained, 800 years after the fall of their kingdom, as well as their admixture in the Byzantine Empire with early Slavic settlers arriving in the late 6th century.

In 2009, the first Macedonian Encyclopedia was published by the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts. The publication caused international and domestic protests because of its content, and its authors have been subject to intense criticism. Even some Macedonian academics criticised the book as hastily prepared and politically motivated. Soon thereafter, the controversial encyclopedia was withdrawn from bookstores. In 2008, Macedonian Canadian historian Andrew Rossos published the first professional English language overview of the history of Macedonia. However, Stefan Troebst had suggested that his narrative was influenced by the dominant views in the Republic of Macedonia, thus reflecting the latest developments in official Macedonian historiography.



Recently, there has been interest on the Macedonian side in engaging in a debate about the national historical narrative with Bulgaria and Greece. With respect to the Macedonian narrative, both Greek and Bulgarian historiographers have questioned Macedonian historiography's factual basis. Per Michael R. Palairet, in the three-way dispute about Macedonia, the Bulgarian view is closer to objective historical reality than either the Greek or Macedonian view, but the Macedonian historiographical version departs from common sense and the historical record much more than either the Greek or the Bulgarian ones.

The governments of Bulgaria and Macedonia signed a friendship treaty to bolster the complicated relations between the two Balkan states in August 2017. As a provision of the treaty, a joint commission on historical and educational issues was formed in 2018. This intergovernmental commission is a forum where controversial historical issues are to be raised and discussed, to resolve problematic readings of history. In an interview given in 2019, the Macedonian co-president of the joint historical commission - prof. Dragi Gjorgiev - indicated that it was necessary to acknowledge there had been forgeries made on the Macedonian side. An example provided was the replacement of "Bulgarian" with "Macedonian" in certain historical artifacts, seen in Macedonian textbooks. According to Gjorgiev, historiography in North Macedonia had been a function of the process of nation-building for many years.

In early October 2019, Bulgaria set a lot of tough terms for North Macedonia's EU progress. The Bulgarian government accepted an ultimate "Framework Position", warning that Bulgaria would not let the EU integration of North Macedonia be accompanied by European legitimization of an anti-Bulgarian ideology. In the list, there were more than 20 demands and a timetable to fulfill them, during the process of North Macedonia's accession negotiations. It stated that the rewriting of the history of part of the Bulgarian people after 1944 was one of the pillars of the bulgarophobic agenda of then-Yugoslav communism. The "Framework Position" was approved by a parliamentary vote on 10 October. As a result, in an interview with Bulgarian media in November 2020, Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev conceded that, among other things, Bulgaria was not a fascist occupier during WWII, and had in fact joined Macedonian Partisans in battles to repel Germans from the area in 1944. This sparked criticism and accusations by Macedonian public figures, politicians and historians of historical revisionism. The leader of VMRO-DPMNE, Hristijan Mickoski stated that he was concerned that the negotiation process with Bulgaria could threaten Macedonian national identity. Protests broke out demanding Zaev's resignation. According to former Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubčo Georgievski, those reactions were the result of ignorance, hypocrisy or politicking.

On November 17, 2020, Bulgaria blocked the official start of North Macedonia's EU accession negotiations. One of the main reasons provided was an "ongoing nation-building process" based on historical negationism of Bulgarian identity, culture and legacy in the broader region of Macedonia. The acknowledgement of Bulgarian influence on Macedonian history is highly problematic, because it clashes with the post-WWII Yugoslav Macedonian nation-building narrative, based on an anti-Bulgarian stance. In August 2022, the joint historical commission reached an agreement and recommended the joint commemoration of historical figures like Cyril and Methodius, Clement of Ohrid, Saint Naum and Tsar Samuel.

Alternative views
After the fall of Communism, historical revisionists in the Republic of Macedonia questioned the narrative established in Communist Yugoslavia. Some of them include Zoran Todorovski, Stojan Kiselinovski, Violeta Ačkoska and Stojan Risteski, who have been ideologically aligned with VMRO-DPMNE. After 1945 the Yugoslav authorities rehabilitated only certain IMRO revolutionaries, who were not associated with the idea of union of Macedonia with Bulgaria, while other IMRO figures remained neglected because of their strong pro-Bulgarian stands. Todorovski has tried to rehabilitate figures regarded as controversial pro-Bulgarians in the historiography such as Todor Aleksandrov and Ivan Mihailov. He has also argued that all Macedonian revolutionaries from the early 20th century and beyond identified themselves as Bulgarians. On the other hand, Todor Čepreganov insisted that almost all Macedonian revolutionaries sometimes took pro-Bulgarian stands or identified themselves as Bulgarians. Based on his opinions, Bulgarian sources maintain that similar views were also espoused by Ivan Katardžiev. Kiselinovski on the other hand has re-evaluated the standardization of the Macedonian language and the role that Blaže Koneski played in it. Ačkoska and Risteski have written about the repressions against the opponents of the communist regime.

People such as Ivan Mikulčić, Krste Crvenkovski and Slavko Milosavlevski tried to openly oppose the popular historical myths in the Republic of Macedonia. Mikulčić, for example, proved through archaeological evidence that there weren't any ancient Macedonians when the Early Slavs arrived in Macedonia. He also found several Bulgar settlements on the territory of the modern republic and argued the Slavs in Macedonia adopted the ethnonym Bulgarians in the 9th century. Milosavlevski and Crvenkovski challenged the myth of the significance of the communist partisan resistance movement against the Bulgarian Army during WW2. Such studies became the only exception to the new Macedonian historiography, with most historians staying loyal to the political elite, writing publications appropriating the Hellenistic part of the Macedonian past, the medieval Bulgarian Empire and the Bulgarian national revival from the Ottoman period. According to Macedonian professor of pathology and then-MP Vesna Janevska, the conflict during WWII was a fratricidal or civil war. Per Macedonian philosopher Katerina Kolozova, the term Bulgarian fascist occupiers is dubious, because significant part of them were practically local collaborators of the Bulgarian authorities. According to her, the connection of modern Macedonian identity with the Yugoslav partisans' activity has been so deeply rooted in the society, that any historical revision of that issue is unimaginable.

Thе policy of claiming ethnic Macedonian past during Ancient, Medieval and Ottoman times is facing criticism by other leading intellectuals, academics and politicians in the country itself, such as Denko Maleski, Miroslav Grčev, Ljubčo Georgievski and others. It demonstrates feebleness of archaeology and historiography, as well as some kind of ethnic marginalization. These intellectuals from the Macedonian elite admit that the distinct Macedonian nation is a recent phenomenon that developed in the years around the Second World War. Such views are spread among well educated citizens that search for the scientific resolution of the nation-building process. Despite significant parts of the leading establishment strongly opposing the articulation of such views, some prominent members of the elite disclose their rational views. At the end of 2015, the film director Darko Mitrevski, published a nine-part article in the newspaper "Nova Makedonija" entitled "Our big forgery", espousing sharp criticism of Macedonian historical narrative. According to him, if Macedonians do not accept their real history, they will be a nation with historical complexes. They will remain at loggerheads with their neighbors if they continue to build out a fictional history of styrofoam. According to him, such a nation does not need a history, but psychiatry.

Foreign historiographic studies
The mainstream European historiography maintains that the idea of a separate Macedonian nation was developed mainly during the Second World War and was adopted en masse immediately after it. Per Carsten Wieland, Stefan Troebst sees the Macedonian nation building as an ideal example of Gellner's theory of nationalism. Since the creation of the Yugoslav Macedonia it was realized immediately. Whether in Antiquity the Ancient Macedonians were originally a Greek tribe or not is ultimately a redundant question according to professor of anthropology Loring Danforth. John Van Antwerp Fine states that throughout the Middle Ages and Ottoman era modern Bulgarians and Macedonians comprised a single people. Per Bernard Lory the ethnic divergence between Bulgarians and Macedonians occurred mainly in the first half of the 20th century. Alexander Maxwell maintains that scarcely by the middle of that century, Macedonians began to see Macedonian and Bulgarian loyalties as mutually exclusive. According to historian Eugene N. Borza, the Macedonians, who are a recently emergent people and have had no history, are in search of their past. This search is an attempt to help legitimize their unsure present, surviving in the disorder of Balkan politics. Anthropologist Ivaylo Dichev claims that the Macedonian historiography has the impossible task of filling in the huge gaps between the ancient kingdom of Macedon that collapsed in the 2nd century BC, the 10th-11th century state of the Cometopuli, and Yugoslav Macedonia, established in the middle of the 20th century. Despite the myths of national purity and continuity that came to dominate the official Macedonian historiography, something not unusual for the Balkan region, Ipek Yosmaoglu affirms there is not much to be gained from a search for a Macedonian national lineage, because the Macedonian nationhood was shaped mainly in the decades following World War II. There is a thesis supported by the social psychologist Georgi Stankov that today the historiography of North Macedonia is based on the postmodernist approach, which erases the distinctions between "fact" and "value" and "reality" and "perception."