Macedonian nationalism

During the first half of the second millennium, the concept of Macedonia on the Balkans was associated by the Byzantines with their Macedonian province, centered around Adrianople in modern-day Turkey. After the conquest of the Balkans by the Ottomans in the late 14th and early 15th century, the Greek name Macedonia disappeared as a geographical designation for several centuries.^[5] The background of the modern designation Macedonian can be found in the 19th century,^[6] as well as the myth of "ancient Macedonian descent" among the Orthodox Slavs in the area, adopted mainly due to Greek cultural inputs. However, Greek education was not the only engine for such ideas. During the early modern era, some Dalmatian pan-Slavic ideologists like Mavro Orbini believed the ancient Macedonians were Slavs. Under these influences in the 19th century some intellectuals in the region developed the idea on direct link between the local Slavs, the early Slavs and the ancient Balkan populations.^[7]

The local Slavs self-identified as "Bulgarian" on account of their language and socioeconomic status, thus the word Bulgarian had the connotation of poor, Slav-speaking peasant.^[8][9] Also, the local Slavs considered themselves as "Rum", i.e. members of the community of Orthodox Christians. This community was a source of identity for all the ethnic groups inside it and most people identified mostly with it.

At that time, the Orthodox Christian community began to degrade with the continuous identification of the religious creed with ethnic identity,^[10] while Bulgarian national activists started a debate on the establishment of their separate Orthodox church. Until the middle of the 19th century, the Greeks also called the Slavs in Macedonia "Bulgarians", and regarded them predominantly as Orthodox brethren, but the rise of Bulgarian nationalism changed the Greek position.^[11] As a result, massive Greek religious and school propaganda occurred, and a process of Hellenization was implemented among the Slavic-speaking population of the area.^[12][13] The very name Macedonia, revived during the early 19th century after the foundation of the modern Greek state, with its Western Europe-derived obsession with Ancient Greece, was applied to the local Slavs,^[14] which led to some "Macedonization" among Slavic-speaking population of the area. The idea was to stimulate the development of close ties between them and the Greeks, linking both sides to the ancient Macedonians, as a counteract against the growing Bulgarian cultural influence and Bulgarian Exarchate propaganda in the region.^[15][16] In 1845, for instance, the Alexander romance was published in Slavic Macedonian dialect typed with Greek letters.^[17] At the same time the Russian ethnographer Victor Grigorovich described a recent change in the title of the Greek Patriarchist bishop of Bitola: from Exarch of all Bulgaria to Exarch of all Macedonia. He also noted the unusual popularity of Alexander the Great and that it appeared to be something that was recently instilled on the local Slavs.^[18] However, Macedonian intellectuals, such as the Konstantin Miladinov, continued to call their land Western Bulgaria and worried that use of the new Macedonian name would imply identification with the Greek nation.^{[19][20][21][22]}

As a consequence, since the 1850s some Slavic intellectuals from the area adopted the designation Macedonian as a regional label, and it began to gain popularity.^[7] In the 1860s, according to Petko Slaveykov, some young intellectuals from Macedonia were claiming that they are not Bulgarians, but they are rather Macedonians, descendants of the Ancient Macedonians. Another basis on which they distinguished themselves from Bulgarians was that Macedonians were pure Slavs while the Bulgarians were Tatars and so on.^[23] Furthermore, they believed that the Bulgarian Exarchate is as oppressive as the Greek Patriarchate in terms of local ecclesiastic and scholarly matters.^[24] In a letter written to the Bulgarian Exarch in February 1874, Slaveykov reports that discontent with the current situation "has given birth among local patriots to the disastrous idea of working independently on the advancement of their own local dialect and what’s more, of their own, separate Macedonian church leadership."^[25][7] Per Slaveykov, the main task of his newspaper "Makedoniya" during 1870s, was to educate such misguided Grecomans there, who he called Macedonists.^[26]

According to Kuzman Shapkarev, as a result of Macedonists' activity, the Slavs in Macedonia had started to use the ancient designation Macedonians alongside the traditional one Bulgarians by the 1870s.^[27] However, Shapkarev notes that the name "Macedonians" had been "imposed on them by outsiders" (i.e., the Greeks), and that the Slavs in Macedonia were using the designation "Bulgarians" as peculiarly theirs, while referring to other Bulgarians as Shopi.^[27] Similarly, they referred to their own Macedono-Bulgarian dialect as Bulgarian ("bugarski") in opposition to the other Bulgarian dialects, which they called "shopski".

During the 1880s, after recommendation by Stojan Novaković, the Serbian government also began to support those ideas to counteract the Bulgarian influence in Macedonia, claiming the Macedonian Slavs were in fact pure Slavs (i.e. Serbian Macedonians), while the Bulgarians, unlike them, were partially a mixture of Slavs and Bulgars (i.e. Tatars).^[28] In accordance with Novaković's agenda this Serbian "Macedonism" was transformed in the 1890s, in a process of the gradual Serbianisation of the Macedonian Slavs.^[29]

By the end of the 19th century, according to Vasil Kanchov, the local Bulgarians called themselves Macedonians, and the surrounding nations called them Macedonians.^[30] In the early 20th century, Pavel Shatev witnessed this process of slow differentiation, describing people who insisted on their Bulgarian nationality, but felt themselves Macedonians above all.^[31] However a similar paradox was observed at the eve of the 20th century and afterwards, when many Bulgarians from non-Macedonian descent, involved in the Macedonian affairs, espoused Macedonian identity.

During the interwar period, in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia ruled Vardar Macedonia, in the context of the Serbianization policy of the local Slavs, the name Macedonia was scorned, and the name South Serbia was imposed, while some also used simply South or Povardarie (after the Vardar river) as neutral names.^[32][33] This was done intentionally to subvert any Macedonian national identity and to foster a common Yugoslav one.^[34] Ultimately, the designation Macedonian changed its status in 1944, and went from being predominantly a regional, ethnographic denomination, to a national one.^[35] However, when the anthropologist Keith Brown visited the Republic of Macedonia at the eve of the 21st century, he discovered that the local Aromanians, who also call themselves Macedonians, still label the ethnic Macedonians, and their eastern neighbors as "Bulgarians".^[36][37]

The first assertions of Macedonian nationalism arose in the second half of the 19th century.^[7] The origins of the definition of an ethnic Slav Macedonian identity arose from the writings of Gjorgjija Pulevski in the 1870s and 1880s, who identified the existence of a distinct "Slavic Macedonian" language and expressed the idea that the Macedonians were a distinct people. Pulevski analyzed the folk histories of the Slavic Macedonian people, in which he concluded that Slavic Macedonians were ethnically linked to the people of the ancient Kingdom of Macedonia of Philip II and Alexander the Great, based on the claim that ancient Macedonians were Slavic, and modern-day Slavic Macedonians were their descendants. The Macedonian myth of Alexander the Great appeared in two documents related to the Kresna Uprising in 1878, whose authenticity is disputed by Bulgarian historians. In one of them the revolutionaries, including Pulevski himself, saw themselves as heirs of the army of Alexander of Macedon and were prepared to shed their blood as he once did.^[31][39] However, Slavic Macedonians' self-identification and nationalist loyalties remained ambiguous in the late 19th century. It is not wondering that, drawing on the same arguments, some earlier Bulgarian "revivalists" claimed that the Ancient Macedonians were Bulgarian.^[40]

Early Macedonian nationalists were encouraged by several foreign governments that held interests in the region. The Serbian government came to believe that any attempt to forcibly assimilate Slavic Macedonians into Serbs in order to incorporate Macedonia would be unsuccessful, given the strong Bulgarian influence in the region. Instead, the Serbian government believed that providing support to Macedonian nationalists would stimulate opposition to incorporation into Bulgaria and favourable attitudes to Serbia. Another country that encouraged Macedonian nationalism was Austria-Hungary that sought to deny both Serbia and Bulgaria the ability to annex Macedonia, and asserted a distinct ethnic character of Slavic Macedonians. In the 1890s, Russian supporters of a Slavic Macedonian ethnicity emerged, Russian-made ethnic maps began showing a Slavic Macedonian ethnicity, and Macedonian nationalists began to move to Russia to mobilize.^[31]

The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) grew up as the major Macedonian separatist organization in the 1890s, seeking the autonomy of Macedonia from the Ottoman Empire.^[41] It devised the slogan "Macedonia for the Macedonians" and called for a supranational Macedonia, consisting of different nationalities and eventually included in a future Balkan Federation. The IMRO initially opposed being dependent on any of the neighbouring states, and especially tried to hold back the influence of Greece and Serbia in the area. However, its relationship with Bulgaria was more ambiguous, but there was a fraction which firmly opposed any annexation from Bulgaria.^[41] Despite that the autonomism and separatism of IMRO members were supranational, they undoubtedly stimulated the development of Macedonian nationalism, particularly from the leftist activists.^[31][24]

In the late 19th and early 20th century the international community viewed the Macedonian Slavs predominantly as a regional variety of the Bulgarians. At the end of the First World War there were very few ethnographers who agreed that a separate Macedonian nation existed. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Allies sanctioned Serbian control of Vardar Macedonia^[42] and accepted the belief that Macedonian Slavs were in fact Southern Serbs. This change in opinion can largely be attributed to the Serbian geographer Jovan Cvijić.^[43] Nevertheless, Macedonian national ideas increased during the interbellum in Yugoslav Vardar Macedonia and among the left diaspora in Bulgaria, and were supported by the Comintern.^[44] During the Second World War Macedonian national ideas were further developed by the Macedonian Partisans, but even at that time it is questionable to which extent Macedonian Slavs had any nationality.^{[45][46][34][47][48][49]} The turning point for the Macedonian ethnogenesis was the creation of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia as part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia following World War II.^[49][50]

With the conquest of the Balkans by the Ottomans in the late 14th century, the name of Macedonia disappeared for several centuries and was rarely displayed on geographic maps.^[51] The central and northern areas of modern Macedonia were often called "Bulgaria" or "Lower Moesia" during Ottoman rule. The name "Macedonia" was rediscovered during the Renaissance by western researchers, who introduced ancient Greek geographical names in their work, although used in a rather loose manner^[52] and gained popularity parallel to the ascendance of rival nationalism.^[53] As per Raymond Detrez "Indeed, until the 1860s, as there are no documents or inscriptions mentioning the Macedonians as a separate ethnic group, all Slavs in Macedonia used to call themselves "Bulgarians".^[54] Some authors consider that after the rise of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire, labels reflecting collective identity, such as "Bulgarian", changed into national labels from being broad terms that were without political significance.^[55] Before that, the designation 'Bulgarian' referred to all the Slavs living in Rumelia and meant nothing more than a Slav-speaking peasant.^[49][56] In the 1870s, the region of Macedonia became the object of competition by rival nationalisms, initially Greek nationalists, Serbian nationalists and Bulgarian nationalists that each made claims about the Slavic-speaking population as being ethnically linked to their nation and asserted the right to seek their integration.^[57] Rival nationalisms used religious and educational institutions to tie the population to their respective national cause by means of intense propaganda campaigns, so that the territorial claims over Macedonia can be validated.^[58][49] Nationalist propaganda put a difficult choice before the Macedonian Slav peasant to be a Rum millet or Bulgarian millet, this choice was interpreted as choice of nationality a way of thinking that was foreign to most peasants.^[8] The Bulgarian Exarchate launched an educational campaign, which managed to implant in Macedonian Slavs a Bulgarian national ideology.^[59] The name "Macedonia" was revived to mean a separate geographical region on the Balkans, this occurring in the early 19th century, after the foundation of the modern Greek state, with its Western Europe-derived obsession with the Ancient world.^[14] However, as a result of the massive Greek religious and school propaganda, a kind of Macedonization occurred among the Greek and non-Greek speaking population of the area. The name Macedonian Slavs was also introduced by the Greek clergy and teachers among the local Slavs with an aim to stimulate the development of close ties between them and the Greeks, linking both sides to the ancient Macedonians, as a counteract against the growing Bulgarian influence and propaganda there.^[15]

The first attempts for creation of the Macedonian ethnicity^[60] can be said to have begun in the second half of the 19th and early 20th century.^[61][7][62] This was the time of the first expressions of Macedonian nationalism by limited groups of intellectuals in Belgrade, Sofia, Thessaloniki and St. Petersburg.^[49] However, up until the 20th century and beyond, the majority of the Slavic-speaking population of the region was identified as Macedono-Bulgarian or simply as Bulgarians^{[63][64][65][66][67]} and after 1870 joined the Bulgarian Exarchate.^[68] Per John Van Antwerp Fine, from the 9th century until the late 19th century, the outside observers and those Slavic Macedonians who had clear ethnic consciousness, believed they were Bulgarians.^[69] However, national consciousness existed among small number of educated people, often called intelligentsia, on the other hand the peasantry was not involved in national debates, they were meaningless to their concern.^[70] Thus, as seen by observers, the affiliation of Macedonian Slavs to different national camps was not indeed belonging to an ethnic group, but rather political and flexible option.^[59] Furthermore, any expression of national identity among the majority of Macedonian Slavs was purely superficial and was imposed by the nationalist educational and religious propaganda or by terrorism from guerrilla bands.^[49] Also, more astute foreign observers who visited Macedonia at the time concluded that Macedonian Slavs linguistically were not Bulgarians nor Serbs.^[71] Considering all of the previous circumstances, it is possible to argue that the Macedonian Slavs formed a separate nationality.^[14]

Although he was appointed Bulgarian metropolitan bishop, in 1891 Theodosius of Skopje attempted to restore the Archbishopric of Ohrid as an autonomous Macedonian church, but his idea failed.^[76][77][78] In this period, he thought that there was an ethnic difference between Macedonians and their Orthodox Christian neighbors.^[79]

On the eve of the 20th century the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (IMARO) tried to unite all unsatisfied elements in the Ottoman Europe and struggled for political autonomy in the regions of Macedonia and Adrianople Thrace.^[80] But this manifestation of political separatism by the IMARO was a phenomenon without ethnic affiliation and the Bulgarian ethnic provenance of the revolutionaries can not be put under question.^[81] However, Boris Sarafov in 1902 had a statement in which he claimed "We the Macedonians are neither Serbs nor Bulgarians, but simply Macedonians... Macedonia exists only for the Macedonians."^[82]

The first major manifestation of ethnic Macedonian nationalism was the book On Macedonian Matters, published in Sofia in 1903 by Krste Misirkov. In the book Misirkov advocated for affirmation of the Macedonians as a separate people.^[83] Misirkov considered that the term "Macedonian" should be used to define the whole Slavic population of Macedonia, obliterating the existing division between Greeks, Bulgarians and Serbians. The adoption of a separate "Macedonian language" was also advocated and he outlined an overview of the Macedonian grammar and expressed the ultimate goal of codifying the language and using it as the language of instruction in the education system. The book was written in the dialect of central Macedonia (Veles-Prilep-Bitola-Ohrid) which was proposed by Misirkov as the basis for the future language, and, as Misirkov says, a dialect which is most different from all other neighboring languages (Bulgarian and Serbian).

Another significant activist for the ethnic Macedonian national revival was Dimitrija Čupovski, who was one of the founders and the president of the Macedonian Literary Society established in 1902 in Saint Petersburg. One of the members was also Krste Misirkov. In 1905 the Society published Vardar, the first scholarly, scientific and literary journal in the central dialects of Macedonia, which later would contribute in the standardization of Macedonian language.^[84] During the 1913–14 period, Čupovski published the newspaper Makedonski Golos' (Македонскi Голосъ) (meaning Macedonian voice) in which he and fellow members of the Petersburg Macedonian Colony propagandized the existence of a separate Macedonian people different from Greeks, Bulgarians and Serbs, and sought to popularize the idea for an independent Macedonian state. Some of its articles were written by Krste Misirkov.^[85]

During the Balkan Wars and the First World War the area was exchanged several times between Bulgaria and Serbia. The IMARO supported the Bulgarian army and authorities when they took temporary control over Vardar Macedonia. During this period, the political autonomism was abandoned as tactics, and annexation by Bulgaria was supported. On the other hand, Serbian authorities put pressure on local people to declare themselves Serbs: they disbanded local governments, established by IMARO in Ohrid, Veles and other cities and persecuted Bulgarian Excharchist priests and teachers, forcing them to flee and replacing them with Serbians.^[86] Serbian troops enforced a policy of disarming the local militia, accompanied by beatings and threats.^[87] The wars arguably even reinforced the rival Macedonian and Bulgarian narratives of national consciousness in the region, the first one consequently being adopted in the interwar period by the left-wing of IMARO.^[88]

Despite the repressive Serbianisation policy during the interwar period in Vardar Macedonia, the Macedonian national consciousness was growing.^[90] Also, some of the leftist activists of Macedonian Federative Organization, IMRO (United) and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia expressed Macedonian national ideas. In 1934 the Comintern in accordance with IMRO (United) issued a resolution about the recognition of a separate Macedonian ethnicity.^[91] However, the existence of considerable Macedonian national consciousness prior to the 1940s is disputed, most of the people were unable to precisely identify what they were.^{[90][92][93][94]} This confusion is illustrated by Robert Newman in 1935, who recounts discovering in a village in Vardar Macedonia two brothers, one who considered himself a Serb, and the other a Bulgarian. In another village he met a man who had been "a Macedonian peasant all his life" but who had been at various times called a Turk, a Serb and a Bulgarian.^[95]

During the Second World War the area was annexed by Bulgaria and pro-Bulgarian feelings among the local population prevailed as a result of the previous oppressive Serbian rule.^[96][97] Thus, Vardar Macedonia remained the only region where Yugoslav communist leader Josip Broz Tito had not developed a strong partisan movement in 1941, because the population feared reestablishment of the suffering Serbian rule. In order to enforce the Bulgarisation campaign over the Slavs, the new provinces were quickly staffed with officials from Bulgaria proper who behaved with typical official arrogance to the local inhabitants.^[90][98] The wartime national chauvinism and suffering backlash generated sizable support for the Macedonian Partisans.^[99] Their power started to grow after Tito ordered the establishment of the Communist Party of Macedonia in March 1943 and the second AVNOJ congress on 29 November 1943 did recognise the Macedonian nation as separate entity. The Communist Party of Macedonia stressed that the struggle is not for the restoration of the old Yugoslavia, but above all for the liberation and unification of Macedonia and a new federal union of Yugoslav peoples with an extension of its prewar territory. Thus attracting more and more young Macedonians to the armed resistance.^[100] The communists' power started further to grow with the capitulation of Italy and the Soviet victories over Nazi Germany in 1943. The Greek communists, similar to their fraternal parties in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, had already been influenced by the Comintern and were the only political party in Greece to recognize Macedonian national identity.^[101] During this time, the ethnic Macedonians in Greece were permitted to publish newspapers in Macedonian and run schools.^[5] The Slavomacedonian National Liberation Front (SNOF) was formed in October 1943. After the end of the Greek Resistance against the Axis occupation, the SNOF was dissolved in 1944 on the orders of the KKE Central Committee and through British intervention. Headed by Vangel Ajanovski - Oche, some SNOF commanders, dissatisfied with the KKE decision, crossed into Vardar Macedonia and participated in the National Liberation Struggle of Macedonia.^[6] The resistance movement grew and in August 1944 the Macedonian Partisans set up the Anti-fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia. They proclaimed a Macedonian nation-state of the ethnic Macedonians and the Macedonian as official language. After the German troops left the area in November, the new Macedonian government started the codification of the Macedonian language.^[102][100] The state was later incorporated in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. However, some observers argued that by the end of the war, the Bulgarophile sentiments were still distinguishable, other observers in the 1950's wrote that Macedonian national consciousness is of recent growth and it derived from the general conviction gained from bitter experience, that rule from Sofia was as unacceptable as that from Belgrade.^[103]

After 1944 the People's Republic of Bulgaria and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia began a policy of making Macedonia into the connecting link for the establishment of a future Balkan Federative Republic and of supporting a distinct Slav Macedonian consciousness.^[104] The region received the status of a constituent republic within Yugoslavia and in 1945 a separate Macedonian language was codified. The population was proclaimed to be ethnic Macedonian, a nationality different from both Serbs and Bulgarians, in thay way the Bulgarian irredentism towards Yugoslav Macedonia was subverted, as well the claims that Macedonians are Bulgarians were denied, the same applying to the Serbian claims that Macedonians were Serbs, and their Greater Serbia idea that had dominated interwar Yugoslavia.^[90] With the proclamation of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia as part of the Yugoslav federation, the new authorities also enforced measures that would overcome the pro-Bulgarian feeling among parts of its population.^[105] On the other hand, the Yugoslav authorities forcibly suppressed the ideologists of an independent Macedonian country.

In the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) held territory, newspapers and books were published by the new organization formed by Macedonians called National Liberation Front (NOF), public speeches made and the schools opened, helping the consolidation of Macedonian conscience and identity among the population. According to information announced by Paskal Mitrevski on the I plenum of NOF in August 1948, about 85% of the Macedonian-speaking population in Aegean Macedonia identified themselves as ethnic Macedonian. The language that was taught in the schools was the official language of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia. About 20,000 young ethnic Macedonians learned to read and write using that language, and learned their own history.

Ethnic Macedonians fought in the Greek Civil War and made a significant contribution to the initial victories of the DSE.^[7][106] Their significance rose as the conflict progressed due to their increased numbers within the DSE. However, when the Tito–Stalin split arose, Yugoslavia (and the Socialist Republic of Macedonia) closed its border to the DSE, as both the NOF and the DSE supported the Soviet line.^[8] At the beginning of the war Markos Vafiadis had an efficient guerilla strategy, and controlled territories from Florina to Attica, and for a short period there were DSE-controlled territories in the Peloponnese.

The situation deteriorated after they lost the Greek Civil War. Thousands of Aegean Macedonians were expelled and fled to the newly established Socialist Republic of Macedonia, while thousands of more children took refuge in other Eastern Bloc countries.

At the end of the 1950s the Bulgarian Communist Party repealed its previous decision and adopted a position denying the existence of a Macedonian ethnicity. As a result, the Bulgarophobia in Macedonia increased almost to the level of State ideology.^[107] This put an end to the idea of a Balkan Communist Federation. During the post-Informbiro period, a separate Macedonian Orthodox Church was established, splitting off from the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1967. The encouragement and evolution of the culture of the Republic of Macedonia has had a far greater and more permanent impact on Macedonian nationalism than has any other aspect of Yugoslav policy. While the development of national music, films and graphic arts had been encouraged in the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, the greatest cultural effect came from the codification of the Macedonian language and literature, the new Macedonian national interpretation of history and the establishment of a Macedonian Orthodox Church.^[108] Most Macedonians' attitude to Communist Yugoslavia, where they were recognized as a distinct nation for the first time, became positive.^[109]

After the Second World War, Macedonian and Serbian scholars usually defined the ancient local tribes in the area of the Central Balkans as Daco-Moesian. Previously these entities were traditionally regarded in Yugoslavia as Illyrian, in accordance with the romantic early-20th-century interests in the Illyrian movement. At first, the Daco-Moesian tribes were separated through linguistic research. Later, Yugoslav archaeologists and historians came to an agreement that Daco-Moesians should be located in the areas 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.^[110] The leading research goal in the Republic of 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 Paionian identity was constructed to conceptualize that Vardar Macedonia was neither Illyrian nor Thracian, favouring a more complex division, contrary to scientific claims about strict Thraco-Illyrian Balkan separation in neighbouring Bulgaria and Albania. Mainstream Yugoslav Macedonian historiography was cautious and argued that the link between the Slav Macedonians and their ancient namesakes was, at best, accidental.^[111]

On 8 September 1991, the Socialist Republic of Macedonia held a referendum that established its independence from Yugoslavia. With the fall of Communism, the breakup of Yugoslavia and the consequent lack of a Great power in the region, the Republic of Macedonia came into permanent conflicts with its neighbors. As seen by them the Yugoslav historiography borrowed certain parts of the histories of its neighboring states in order to construct the Macedonian identity, having reached not only the times of medieval Bulgaria, but even as far back as Alexander the Great. The Republic of Macedonia became hard pressed from all sides, Bulgaria contested its national identity and language, Greece contested its name and symbols, and Serbia its religious identity. On the other hand, the ethnic Albanians in the country insisted on being recognised as a nation, equal to the ethnic Macedonians. As a response, a more assertive and uncompromising form of Macedonian nationalism emerged.^{[112][113][114]} At that time the concept of ancient Paionian identity was changed to a kind of mixed Paionian-Macedonian identity which was later transformed to a separate ancient Macedonian identity, establishing a direct link to the modern ethnic Macedonians.^[115] After the Greek veto on the 21st NATO Summit in 2008, the nationalistic^{[116][117][118][119][120][121][122]} ruling party VMRO-DPMNE pursued the so-called "Antiquisation" policy, as a way of putting pressure on Greece, as well as for the purposes of domestic identity-building.^{[123][124][125][126][127]} Its supporters claim that the ethnic Macedonians are not descendants of the Slavs only, but of the ancient Macedonians too, who, according to them, were not Greeks.^[128] Antiquisation is also spreading due to a very intensive lobbying of the Macedonian diaspora, particularly those originating from Aegean Macedonia, in the US, Canada, Germany and Australia.^[129][126] Some members of the Macedonian diaspora even believe, without basis, that certain modern historians, namely Ernst Badian, Peter Green, and Eugene Borza, possess a pro-Macedonian bias in the Macedonian-Greek conflict, although per Borza they do share certain similarities in their views.^[130]

As part of this policy, statues of Alexander the Great and Philip II of Macedon have been built in several cities across the country.^[123] In 2011, a massive, 22-meter-tall statue of Alexander the Great (called "Warrior on a horse" because of the dispute with Greece^[131][132]) was inaugurated in Macedonia Square in Skopje, as part of the Skopje 2014 remodelling of the city.^[123] An even larger statue of Philip II is also constructed at the other end of the square. A triumphal arch named Porta Macedonia, constructed in the same square, featuring images of historical figures including Alexander the Great, caused the Greek Foreign Ministry to lodge an official complaint to authorities in the Republic of Macedonia.^[133] Statues of Alexander are also on display in the town squares of Prilep and Štip, while a statue to Philip II of Macedon was recently built in Bitola.^[123] Additionally, many pieces of public infrastructure, such as airports, highways, and stadiums have been named after ancient historical figures or entities. Skopje's airport was renamed "Alexander the Great Airport" and features antique objects moved from Skopje's archeological museum. One of Skopje's main squares has been renamed Pella Square (after Pella, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Macedon), while the main highway to Greece has been renamed to "Alexander of Macedon" and Skopje's largest stadium has been renamed "Philip II Arena".^[123] These actions are seen as deliberate provocations in neighboring Greece, exacerbating the dispute and further stalling Macedonia's EU and NATO applications.^[134] In 2008 a visit by Hunza Prince was organized in the Republic of Macedonia. The Hunza people of Northern Pakistan trace their descent to the army of Alexander the Great.^[135] The Hunza delegation led by Mir Ghazanfar Ali Khan was welcomed at the Skopje Airport by the country's prime minister Nikola Gruevski, the head of the Macedonian Orthodox Church Archbishop Stephen and the mayor of Skopje, Trifun Kostovski.

Such antiquization is facing criticism by academics as it demonstrates feebleness of archaeology and of other historical disciplines in public discourse, as well as a danger of marginalization.^[126] The policy has also attracted criticism domestically, by ethnic Macedonians within the country, who see it as dangerously dividing the country between those who identify with classical antiquity and those who identify with the country's Slavic culture.^[123][136] Ethnic Albanians in North Macedonia see it as an attempt to marginalize them and exclude them from the national narrative.^[123] The policy, which also claims as ethnic Macedonians figures considered national heroes in Bulgaria, such as Dame Gruev and Gotse Delchev, has also drawn criticism from Bulgaria.^[123] Foreign diplomats had warned that the policy reduced international sympathy for the Republic of Macedonia in the then-naming dispute with Greece.^[123]

The background of this antiquization can be found in the 19th century and the myth of ancient descent among Orthodox Slavic-speakers in Macedonia. It was adopted partially due to Greek cultural inputs. This idea was also included in the national mythology during the post-WWII Yugoslavia. An additional factor for its preservation has been the influence of the Macedonian Diaspora. Contemporary antiquization has been revived as an efficient tool for political mobilization and has been reinforced by the VMRO-DPMNE.^[137] This ultra-nationalism accompanied by the emphasizing of North Macedonia's ancient roots has raised concerns internationally about growing a kind of authoritarianism by the governing party.^[138] There have also been attempts at scientific claims about ancient nationhood, but they have had a negative impact on the international position of the country.^[137] On the other hand, there is still strong Yugonostalgia among the ethnic Macedonian population, that has swept also over other ex-Yugoslav states.

On 27 April 2017, when about 200 Macedonian nationalists (some of whom were members and sympathizers of VMRO-DPMNE) stormed the Macedonian Parliament in reaction to the election of Talat Xhaferi, an ethnic Albanian and a former NLA commander, as Speaker of the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia.^[139][140] It was the biggest attack in history on a Macedonian institution.

Macedonian nationalism also has support among high-ranking diplomats of North Macedonia who are serving abroad, and this continues to affect the relations with neighbors, especially Greece. In August 2017, the Consul of the Republic of Macedonia to Canada attended a nationalist Macedonian event in Toronto and delivered a speech against the backdrop of an irredentist map of Greater Macedonia. This has triggered strong protests from the Greek side,^{[141][142][143]} which regards this as a sign that irredentism remains the dominant state ideology and everyday political practice in the neighboring country.^[144] Following strong diplomatic protests, however, the Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Macedonia condemned the incident and recalled its diplomat back to Skopje for consultations.^[145]

Macedonism (Macedonian and Serbian: Македонизам, Makedonizam; Bulgarian: Македонизъм, Makedonizam and Greek: Μακεδονισμός, Makedonismós), is a political and historical term used predominantly by Bulgarians and Greeks in a polemic sense to refer to the Macedonian national identity and a set of ideas perceived as characteristic of aggressive Macedonian nationalism.^{[150][151][152][153][154][155]}

The term is used in Bulgaria in an insulting and derogatory manner, to discredit the existence of Macedonian national identity. In 1992 the president of Bulgaria Zhelyu Zhelev declared that only the "political" formation Republic of Macedonia is recognized and that Bulgaria would never affirm the existence of a Macedonian nation and language. Consequently, Bulgaria continued to repeat the views established during the communist regime of Todor Zhivkov previously. According to which the Macedonian nation was "artificially created" on the basis of the Bulgarian ethnic majority in the former SR Macedonia, and the Macedonian language is "artificial" as well, it is in fact a Bulgarian dialect, modified through a politically motivated Serbification. For Bulgarian historians, Macedonism is widely seen as a Greater Serbian aspiration, aiming to split the Bulgarian people on anti-Bulgarian grounds. If someone identifies as Macedonian, this is because a Serbian chauvinist strategy has manipulated them in the past. Thus the Macedonian nation is explicitly rejected as a denationalizing product of Serbian propaganda. Another view added is that the Macedonian nation was a communist plot, particularly of Josip Broz Tito and the Yugoslav Communists.^[156] This view that the Macedonian identity was the product of "Titoist brainwashing" is also supported by Greek scholars, and some Serbian scholars as well. Most prominent in these views are the Macedonian Scientific Institute and the VMRO-BND. Less academic and more provocative publications are issued intended for a wider national audience, rather than for scholarly work, such as "The Ten Lies of Macedonism" by Bozhidar Dimitrov.^[157] The term Macedonism is first believed to have been used in a derogatory manner by Petko Slaveykov in 1871, when he dismissed Macedonian nationalists as "Macedonists",^[158] who he regarded a misguided (sic): Grecomans.^[26]

The term is occasionally used in an apologetic sense by some Macedonian authors,^{[159][160][161][162]} but has also faced strong criticism from moderate political views in North Macedonia and international scholars.^[163][164]

Before the Balkan Wars Macedonist ideas were shared by a limited circle of intellectuals. They grew in significance during the interbellum, both in Vardar Macedonia and among the left-leaning diaspora in Bulgaria, and were endorsed by the Comintern. During the Second World War, these ideas were supported by the Communist Partisans, who founded the Yugoslav Macedonian Republic in 1944.^[44] Following the Second World War, Macedonism became the basis of Yugoslav Macedonia's state ideology, aimed at transforming the Slavic and, to a certain extent, non-Slavic parts of its population into ethnic Macedonians.^[165] This state policy is still current in today's Republic of North Macedonia,^[166] where it was developed in several directions. One of them maintains the connection of the modern ethnic Macedonians with the ancient Macedonians, rather than with the South Slavs, while others have sought to incorporate into the national pantheon the right-wing Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) activists, previously dismissed as Bulgarophiles.

The roots of the concept were first developed in the second half of the 19th century, in the context of Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian initiatives to take control over the region of Macedonia, which was at that time ruled by the Ottoman Empire. It was originally used in a contemptuous manner to refer to Slav Macedonians, who believed they constituted a distinct ethnic group, separate from their neighbours. The first to use the term "Macedonist" was the Bulgarian author Petko Slaveykov, who coined the term in his article "The Macedonian Question", published in the newspaper Makedoniya in 1871. However, he pointed out that he had heard for the first time of such ideas as early as 10 years prior, i.e. around 1860. Slaveykov sharply criticised those Macedonians espousing such views, as they had never shown a substantial basis for their attitudes, calling them "Macedonists".^[167] Nevertheless, those accused of Slaveikov as Macedonists were representative of the movement aiming at the construction of the Bulgarian standard literary language primarily on the Macedonian dialects, such as Kuzman Shapkarev, Dimitar Makedonski and Veniamin Machukovski.^[168] Another early recorded use of the term "Macedonism" is found in a report by the Serbian politician Stojan Novaković from 1887. He proposed to employ the Macedonistic ideology as a means to counteract the Bulgarian influence in Macedonia, thereby promoting Serbian interests in the region.^[169] Novaković's diplomatic activity in Istanbul and St. Petersburg played a significant role in the realization of his ideas, especially through the "Association of Serbo-Macedonians" formed by him in Istanbul and through his support for the Macedonian Scientific and Literary Society in St. Petersburg.^[170] The geopolitics of the Serbs evidently played a crucial role in the ethnogenesis by promoting a separate Macedonian consciousness at the expense of the Bulgarians (it is worth mentioning that 19th century Serbian propaganda mostly adhered to direct Serbianization, including post-WWI policy of Belgrade in Vardar Macedonia). In 1888 the Macedono-Bulgarian ethnographer Kuzman Shapkarev noted that, as a result of this activity, a strange, ancient ethnonym "Makedonci" (Macedonians) was imposed 10–15 years prior by outside intellectuals, introduced with a "cunning aim" to replace the traditional "Bugari" (Bulgarians).^[27]

One of the founding figures of Macedonism, Georgi Pulevski for instance viewed Macedonians' identity as being a regional phenomenon (similar to Herzegovinians and Thracians). Once calling himself a "Serbian patriot", another time a "Bulgarian from the village of Galicnik",^[171] he also identified the Slavic Macedonian language as being related to the "Old Bulgarian language" as well as being a "Serbo-Albanian language".^[31] Pulevski's numerous identifications reveal the absence of a clear ethnic sense in a part of the local Slavic population. In 1892, Pulevski completed the first "Slavic-Macedonian General History", with a manuscript of over 1,700 pages.^[172] According to the book, the ancient Macedonians were Slavic people and the Macedonian Slavs were native to the Balkans, in contrast of the Bulgarians and the Serbs, who came there centuries later. The root of such indigenous mixture of Illyrism and Pan-Slavism can be seen in "Concise history of the Slav Bulgarian People" (1792), written by Spyridon Gabrovski, whose original manuscript was found in 1868 by the Russian scientist Alexander Hilferding on his journey in Macedonia.^[173] Gabrovski tried to establish a link between the Bulgaro-Macedonians on the one hand, and the Illyrians and ancient Macedonians on the other, whom he also regarded as Slavs. The main agenda of this story about the mythical Bulgaro-Illyro-Macedonians was to assert that the Macedonian and Bulgarian Slavs were among the indigenous inhabitants of the Balkans.^[174]

Other proponents of the Macedonist ideas in the early 20th century were two Serbian scholars, the geographer Jovan Cvijić^[175] and the linguist Aleksandar Belić.^[176] They claimed the Slavs of Macedonia were "Macedonian Slavs", an amorphous Slavic mass that was neither Bulgarian, nor Serbian. Cvijić further argued that the traditional ethnonym Bugari (Bulgarians) used by the Slavic population of Macedonia to refer to themselves actually meant only rayah, and in no case affiliations to the Bulgarian ethnicity. In his ethnographic studies of the Balkan Slavs, Cvijic devised a "Central Type" (Slav Macedonians and Torlaks), dissimilar at the same time to the "Dinaric Type" (the principal "Serb" ethnographic variant) and the "East Balkan Type" (representing the Bulgarians, but excluding even Western Bulgaria). The true Bulgarians belonged only to the "East Balkan Type" and were a mixture of Slavs, "Turanian" groups (Bulgars, Cumans, and Turks) and Vlachs, and as such, were different from the other South Slavs in their ethnic composition. More importantly, their national character was decidedly un-Slavic. Bulgarians were industrious and coarse. They were a people without imagination and therefore necessarily without art and culture. This caricature of the Bulgarians permitted their clear differentiation from the "Central Type," within which Cvijic included Macedonian Slavs, western Bulgarians (Shopi), and Torlaks, a type that was eminently Slavic (i.e. old-Serbian) and therefore non-Bulgarian. Nowadays, these outdated Serbian views have been propagandized by some contemporary Macedonian scholars and politicians.^[177][178]

Some panslavic ideologists in Russia, former supporter of Greater Bulgaria, also adopted these ideas as opposing Bulgaria's Russophobic policy at the beginning of the 20th century, as for example Alexandr Rittikh^[179] and Aleksandr Amfiteatrov. At the beginning of the 20th century, the continued Serbian propaganda efforts had managed to firmly entrench the concept of the Macedonian Slavs in European public opinion and the name was used almost as frequently as Bulgarians. Simultaneously, the proponents of the Greek Struggle for Macedonia, such as Germanos Karavangelis, openly popularized the Hellenic idea about a direct link between the local Slavs and the ancient Macedonians.^[180] Nevertheless, in 1914 the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs report states that the Serbs and Greeks classified the Slavs of Macedonia as a distinct ethnic group "Macedonians Slavs" for political purposes and to conceal the existence of Bulgarians in the area.^[181] However, after the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) Ottoman Macedonia was mostly divided between Greece and Serbia, which began a process of Hellenization and Serbianisation of the Slavic population and led in general to a cease in the use of this term in both countries.^{[citation needed]}

On the other hand, Serbian and Bulgarian left-wing intellectuals envisioned in the early 20th century some sort of "Balkan confederation" including Macedonia, should the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman Empire dissolve. This view was accepted from the Socialist International. In 1910, the First Balkan Socialist Conference was held in Belgrade, then within the Kingdom of Serbia.^[182] The main platform at the first conference was the call for a solution to the Macedonian Question. The creation of a Balkan Socialist Federation was proposed, in which Macedonia would be a constituent state. In 1915, after the Balkan Wars had concluded, the Balkan Socialist Conference in Bucharest agreed to create a Balkan Socialist Federation, and that divided from the "imperialists" Macedonia would be united into its framework. This ideology later found fruition with the support of the Soviet Union as a project of the Yugoslav communist federation. Various declarations were made during the 1920s and 1930s seeing the official adoption of Macedonism by the Comintern. In turn declarations were made by the Greek, Yugoslav and Bulgarian communist parties, as they agreed on its adoption as their official policy for the region. Also, the demise of the IMRO and its ideology for much of the interwar period led a part of the young local intellectuals in Vardar Macedonia, regarded at that time as Serbs, to find a solution in the ideology of Macedonism.^{[citation needed]} This issue was supported during the Second World War by the Communist Resistance and in 1944 the wartime Communist leader Josip Broz Tito proclaimed the People's Republic of Macedonia as part of the Yugoslav Federation, thus partially fulfilling the Comintern's pre-war policy. He was supported by the Bulgarian leader from Macedonian descent and former General Secretary of the Comintern Georgi Dimitrov, in anticipation of an ultimately failed incorporation of the Bulgarian part of Macedonia (Pirin Macedonia) into the People's Republic of Macedonia, and of Bulgaria itself into Communist Yugoslavia.^{[citation needed]}

The first Macedonian nationalists appeared in the late 19th and early 20th century outside Macedonia. At different points in their lives, most of them expressed conflicting statements about the ethnicity of the Slavs living in Macedonia, including their own nationality. They formed their pro-Macedonian conceptions after contacts with some panslavic circles in Serbia and Russia.^{[citation needed]} The lack of diverse ethnic motivations seems to be confirmed by the fact that in their works they often used the designations Bulgaro-Macedonians, Macedonian Bulgarians and Macedonian Slavs in order to name their compatriots. Representatives of this circle were Georgi Pulevski, Theodosius of Skopje, Krste Misirkov, Stefan Dedov, Atanas Razdolov, Dimitrija Chupovski and others. Nearly all of them died in Bulgaria. Most of the next wave Macedonists were left-wing politicians, who changed their ethnic affiliations from Bulgarian to Macedonian during the 1930s, after the recognition of the Macedonian ethnicity by the Comintern, as for example Dimitar Vlahov, Pavel Shatev, Panko Brashnarov, Venko Markovski, Georgi Pirinski, Sr. and others. Such Macedonian activists, who came from the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (United) and the Bulgarian Communist Party never managed to get rid of their pro-Bulgarian bias.^[183]

• Macedonia (terminology)
• United Macedonia
• World Macedonian Congress
• Macedonian Question
• History of the Macedonians (ethnic group)
• Demographic history of Macedonia
• Rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire
• Albanian nationalism in North Macedonia