Front Matter - Part 04

in Macedonia, and “Macedonian governors” of the Republic of Macedonia. Note that “republic” of Macedonia was written in lowercase letters, unlike the pamphlet of 2008, in which “Republic” was written with capital letters - differentiating it from Bulgaria, without the “republic”. In both cases - it implied - an artificial creation and name. (Todorov, 2000).

The entire text in the doctrine was organized to make an impression on the scientific community to show that it was systematic and serious by giving definitions to all terms and categories, performing some kind of hierarchical construction: ethnicity - nationality -nation - nationalism – national ideal - national interests - practical politics. Very often these definitions did not match either the theoretical or the dictionary literature, some even sounded academic, tautological and even funny. The construction of the doctrine was quite simple: the Bulgarians as a nation and state are among the oldest people in Europe, and of course the Balkans, but by force of circumstances, today they are relegated to only one part of their territory, and that a significant amount of territory and population is found outside of their state. Those historical circumstances were – encroachment and attacks from the other neighbours, from the Byzantines and Turks to the Serbs, Greeks, to Stalin and the Comintern, etc., but, of course, there were some weaknesses and mistakes made by their leaderships – by kings Peter and Boris, by Ferdinand, by Prime Minister Stamboliski and by Dimitrov and others. Great damage was done to the Bulgarian cause by the Bogomils, by the Great Powers, by the Bulgarian Communists, and by all its neighbours alike.

Apparently, Bulgaria today is on the right track, as it has declared, and truly stands as a single nation of people, because that’s what it says in its Constitution, and some ethnic groups, or individual citizens can declare themselves differently, but still they are all members of the Bulgarian nation. The only requirement for that is -to be loyal and united like all other nations; like the French, the Americans, etc. But, of course, all throughout the entire text there are echoes of the tragic loss of Pomoravia, of Macedonia, of Thrace, of Moesia, and part of Dobruia, which conveys the optimism that these things can be fixed, especially Macedonia because the Macedonians have always been Bulgarian in the purest sense. The

criterion for declaring minorities as part of the Bulgarian nation, apparently does not apply to the status of Bulgarians in other countries. According to the doctrine, the Bulgarian character of Macedonia and the Macedonian people is indisputable. The Macedonian nation, according to the Bulgarian doctrine, is a quasi-nation created with the forced removal of territories and population from the Bulgarian nation skillfully manipulated by Serbs, communists and some autonomists, hungry for fame and power. Undoubtedly the Macedonian language is a dialect of the Bulgarian language. Macedonian history and culture are part of the Bulgarian history and culture. The only reason they are assumed to be different is because of Serb and other propaganda which, under certain circumstances, proved to be successful in Macedonia (again Stojan Novakovich). The Bulgarian thesis alleging the artificial character of the Macedonian nation is equivalent to the Greek and indirectly to the Serbian doctrines.

Interestingly, the Bulgarian doctrine openly favours fascism and king Boris’s role in World War II who ignored all reality, and like the Greek doctrine, skips whole chapters of history and facts such as the Second Balkan War, the First World War, the National Liberation War of Macedonia, the recognition of an independent Macedonian state by Bulgaria in 1992, or the recognition of the jurisdiction of the Serbian Orthodox Church over the Macedonian Orthodox Church. The entire text is intertwined in an emotional charge of regret for its illustrious past, accusing other countries and peoples for the Bulgarian national tragedies, with uncritical glorification of the Bulgarian “genetic capital” and bright future, if only Bulgarians wake up and unite around their national ideal. The last part of the doctrine, in which an attempt is made to derive some demographic, economic, social, scientific and cultural policies, is actually the weakest part and far below the official national programs for EU accession.

10. The Greek doctrine

We will be analyzing two documents, the first, placed here almost in its entirety, deals mainly with the “Macedonian Question. Overview of attempts to create an artificial nation” published in February 1993. This document was formulated by the well known Greek

academic and research institution associated with external-political authorities in that country. It was published just before Macedonia was admitted to the UN and was distributed at UN headquarters and to a significantly wider audience in an attempt to prevent Macedonia’s admission to the UN and to establish and explain its stand on Macedonia’s name in the resolution for its admission. In that, Greece partially succeeded. From that we can say that the document did its job in performing its daily political and pragmatic role. Sadly it also revealed that the Greek official position towards Macedonia and Greece’s other neighbours who have minorities living in Greece, has remained unchanged; constant and continuously intact. The views expressed in this document are the same views expressed more than a century and a half ago telling us that nothing has changed, no progress has been made and nothing has evolved in their essence. Indicative of the same stand, a short while later, Professor Evangelos Kofos, chief expert on the “Macedonian Question” in Athens, released a very similarly worded document in New York (Kofos, 1993).

As it turned out, the document revealed that Kofos was relying strictly on selected sources and used “facts” or “semi-facts” that were completely in line with the old Greek national ideals and expansionist aspirations from the time when Greece was created, from 1822 to 1850. It is also interesting that the publishing of “Nachertanijata” by I. Garashanin in 1844, was timed to almost coincide with the publication of a similar book, the so-called “Blueprint”, namely, “History of the Greek nation” by Konstantinos Paparigopulos, a book specifically designed to bridge the historical and cultural identity and continuity of the Greek nation-state in the regions where the ancient Hellenic polis and Alexander the Greats’ empire existed, through the Byzantine Empire to modern Greece.

The book publishing coincided with the famous speech delivered by Ioannis Koletis, President of the Greek government, in January 1844, when, during the Greek Parliament’s first session, and after the adoption of the Greek Constitution, he revealed the well-known “Megali-idea” or Greek national and foreign policy program. In the same speech, Koletis, among other things, said: “The Kingdom of Greece is not Greece. It is only one part, the smallest and poorest part. This is not the only kingdom where Greeks live; Greeks also

live in Ioannina, in Thessaloniki, in Seres, in Edirne, in Constantinople, in Smyrna, in Trebizat, in Crete, in Samos and in each country that is associated with Greek history or with the Greek race... There are two main centres of Hellenism: Athens, the capital of the Greek kingdom and “The City” (Constantinople), the dream and hope of all Greeks…” (Quote taken from Just, 1989, also from Jovanovski, 2005, p. 31/2).

British sociologist S. Grozbi called the composition “retrospective nationalism”, meaning “old epochs” are interpreted in light of later or modern concepts and preoccupations, which, incidentally, is characteristic of all the documents we have in our collection. This is the composite by which Greek historians have emancipated themselves, at least some Greek historians. P. Kitromilides citing A. Smith, by his strong criticism of modernist Greek nationalist historiography and Greek nationalism, believes that from the Middle Ages until the early 19th century, Greeks were, along with them the newly established Serbian, Bulgarian and Romanian political communities, part of the comprehensive Byzantine Empire, after that of the Ottoman Empire, and always part of the Orthodox ecumenism. They had no particular national characteristics; they were encouraged by the political community (Kitromilides, 1998).

But, the “Macedonian Question”, like Greek operational politics, was kept hidden and far away from public awareness and knowledge. It should be noted that in the spring of 1992, just as Macedonia was leading its hottest battles for its international recognition, the then Prime Minister Mitsotakis, probably synchronized with Milosevic, organized a so-called “conference of heads of states and governments of the signatories of the 1913 Treaty of Bucharest”. The 1913 Treaty of Bucharest ended the Second Balkan War and divided Macedonia which then was annexed by its three neighbours (Greece 51%, Serbia 39% and Bulgaria 10%). The idea behind the conference was to establish that after the breakup of Yugoslavia, the one part, i.e. the Republic of Macedonia, had no sovereignty because of the Yugoslav collapse, and its population had no historical or national identity. And because of that it should be up to the signatories of the agreement (i.e. the 1913 Treaty of Bucharest signatories) to review its case and decide what to do. Namely, decide whether to divide its territory in

accordance with the same principles, or to authorize another state to annex it? The conference did not take place because it was canceled at the insistence of Italian Minister De Mikelis and the EU. But that did not stop Greece from preparing arguments for removing the Republic of Macedonia from the international arena. Those arguments are summarized in this document.

In its brief introduction, the motives of the publication and the Greek policy concerning the Macedonian question were revealed through four points: The first point called for the acceptance of a new Slavic nation existing in Macedonia; this implied that “Skopje” stole part of the Greek cultural heritage. Here Greece attempted to legitimize the idea that Greek cultural heritage was stolen from the Greek people who had become the main instrument for cultural and territorial expansion at the expense of Greece; The second point made allegations that “Skopje” was promoting the idea of only a fraction of the total Macedonian territory was freed. In other words Greece was alleging that the Republic of Macedonia was indirectly “reaching out” for the sovereignty of Greece, meaning the Republic of Macedonia had territorial ambitions towards the part of Macedonia annexed by Greece in 1913; The third point claimed that the Republic of Macedonia was encroaching on Greece’s sovereignty by using the name Macedonia and Macedonian place names; and the fourth point alleged that by using the name Macedonia, “Skopje” was in fact expressing cultural claims on Greece’s geography as a whole in order to give itself a national identity.

There were, however, more motives: to prevent threats to the peace and security in the Balkans that would arise from the recognition of the Republic of Macedonia; to respect international law, according to which “Skopje” has not achieved sovereignty of its territory. And finally the most important point, which otherwise fully coincides with the position of the SANU Memorandum position, the Macedonian nation was invented by Tito and the Comintern, to strip Serbian power in the Yugoslav Federation.

After that, sources that claimed that a Greek historical identity existed in all of Macedonia’s territory whose inhabitants were “authentic Greeks like their brethren in the south” were extensively

cited. The same document also alleges that up until 1914, there was reportedly no memory of a “Macedonia in a national sense”. The Ilinden Uprising in the Greek town Krushevo was, according to this document, incited by the Bulgarians against the Turks, but with complicity to exterminate the Greek population. Created by Tito in 1945, the People’s Republic of Macedonia included Skopje and Tetovo which have never been part of Macedonia. The Republic of Macedonia, according to the same document, holds the territory on which, in addition to the Greek population living there also live Serbs, Vlachs, Turkish speaking Muslims, Bulgarians and what have you - under the Slavic Yugoslav hat endeavouring to get to the Aegean Sea.

In the second part of the document, paradoxically, the Greek premise regarding Macedonia starts from a certain truth: namely, that in the 19th century, when the Balkan peoples constituted their own nation-states, their national ideologies coincided with the zones that had mixed populations and precisely because of that point each nation came up with its own national claims.

In accordance with that, Macedonia was one of those regions in which interweaving national ideologies and pretensions were particularly strongly expressed. Quite correctly it is argued that the population in that region fell under four antagonistic ideologies, aspirations and propaganda, Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian and Albanian, each trying to assert its own identity. Otherwise, apparently according to this Greek document, historically and geographically the Macedonian people were Greeks, and Macedonia was perfectly homogeneous and part of the Greek state.

That, in turn, was possible because the population itself was ethno-amorphic, in spite of its Greek background, it remained backwater rural. Especially pronounced was the Greek-Bulgarian antagonism during which Bulgaria had greater successes because it used the linguistic affinity of the population in its communication and the impact of its newly founded Bulgarian Exarchate Church.

Amazingly, some of these opinions are true even though they are handed down from Greek sources and sound self-critical and “anti-Bulgarian”. Some opinions, unfortunately, like the one of Ilinden

and the slogan “Macedonia for the Macedonians”, the document treats only as a maneuver of a few people, leaders of the Bulgarian National Movement – working for the autonomy of that zone, but without insisting on changes in the Bulgarian historic identity of that region. This, in summary conclusion, means that the determination of the nature of the ethno-population primarily depended upon the success of propaganda, during which time the Greeks were not so successful. The Serbs, who were less successful than the Bulgarians, came to another tactic (thinking of S. Novakovich); to recognize some kind of autonomous population identity that would attract people to the Serbian side rather than repel and frustrate them. This thesis is completely identical to the assessment made by S. Novakovich in the Bulgarian documents.

This point brings us to the main structure of the denial. Apparently, during the Second World War, the Bulgarian army was hailed with enthusiasm by the population when it crossed into Macedonia. But the Yugoslav Partisans (read as Tito and the Comintern, not Serbian partisans), took reprisals against the Bulgarian occupation authorities, which in turn caused mass discontent with the Bulgarians, and in the end it allowed Tito to promise the population that it would live better and would be equal to the other populations in Yugoslavia if it fought against the Bulgarians. Tito, according to the document, did this in order to attract the population to his side and to create the Republic of Macedonia in 1945.

According to the Greek document, language, history, culture, education, etc., were fabricated later, largely with thefts from neighbouring languages, cultures and histories. Tito’s idea was “imperial”: first to create a Balkan Federation under his control with help from Dimitrov and Bulgaria, then merge Pirin Macedonia with the Republic of Macedonia for which he had already obtained concessions, and finally for Stalin to create a south- Slavic federation which would annex part of Greece and the Aegean coast. Fortunately for all the neighbours, and especially for Greece, Stalin did not agree with Tito’s policy and first rejected the idea of a Balkan federation, and then dispensed with Tito. It is interesting that the text does not mention even a word about the Greek Civil War and the period after the war.

The “Theoretical alchemy of Skopje”, according to the Greek authors of the document, has no national identity or cultural, linguistic or historical grounds, with perhaps a small part of the population in the central part of the territory of “Skopje”, which earlier had a certain Slavo-phone linguistic distinctiveness and sense. The last part again, because of the effect on the reader, cites sources to prove the Greek character of the territory was undeniable.

11. The Serbian doctrine

Of the many documents analyzed and presented here, three speak to the Serbian national doctrine. The first document, arranged chronologically, was the SANU Memorandum which appeared in the fall of 1986, a period when Yugoslav society was in a severe crisis, both economic and political. This document was published in various forms, techniques and lengths in order to create immediate and strong reaction among the political leadership of the country and in most republics, including Serbia. Seeming as if it had been planned that way, there was an absence of serious public and scientific debate. Up until 1991 most of its authors were “black listed” by the authorities as they dedicated their full effort working on the political scene first in former Yugoslavia and later in Serbia and FRY. The second document (fragmented) was an extensive paper (a book with over 1000 pages) compiled by Voislav Shesheli and published in Belgrade in 2002 under the title “Ideology of Serbian nationalism. Scientific and published works of Professor Lazo M. Kostich”. The fragments in this document reveal substance of extreme Serbian national ideology and doctrine, based on the works of Serbian quisling and emigrant Lazo Kostich, who Shesheli used to explicate his own views. The accused Sheshili of war crimes by The Hague was a long time head of the Serbian Chetnik movement and the Serbian Radical Party, part of the government and parliament of Serbia, especially during the first period of the Yugoslav crisis. He took an active and even an operational (with paramilitary units) role in the violence in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in Kosovo. Shesheli’s SRP Party programs are no longer available, they were simply withdrawn, but his alleged scientific effort about Lazo Kostich is in widespread public use in Serbia.

The third document contains the fragmented works of Dr. Momchilo Subotich under the title “Serbian state programs in the Serbian political parties to the Dayton Agreement”, published in 2006, not as nationalistic or doctrinal, but as a scientific text, which only analyzes the content of party programs.

The Memorandum was believed to be the ideological introduction to the breakup of the Yugoslav federation which directly affected events in Serbia that led to Milosevic coming to power. It was also believed to have outlined contours and subsequent Serbian Socialist Party policies and extreme political formations in Serbia and of Serbs in other republics. The memorandum itself was not aggressive, but raised the question of Yugoslavia’s survival with Serbia in it, and called for a debate on the 1974 Constitution that defined a “very loose state union”, which underwent a major economic and political crisis. At the end, as a pretext to the need for such a debate, the document stated that for the other republics “other alternatives had to be considered, and not only about Yugoslavia, indicative of the positions of recent Slovenian public figures and former Macedonian politicians. Such deliberations are surely a danger to Yugoslavia which will push it to unravel even disintegrate...”

And as such, Serbia could not calmly wait for its future to unfold in such an uncertainty so it had to determine its national interests, and come out of the debate with its own initiatives as had the others... Serbia, said the document, insisted on federal regulation and advocated for AVNOJ principles, but everything was not dependent on Serbia; the others too could have other alternatives... And thus in that lay the political definition of the problem of disintegration: first, on the basis of understanding the Memorandum, Serbia, more precisely its leadership, assumed the role of defender of federalism, socialism, democracy, the sovereignty of the country – as was its place to do. Second, Serbia ultimately overpowered the others, so that the others would not have the opportunity to debate alternatives during the famous events in 1991. It is certain that the Memorandum was not the first and only such text that contributed to the breakup of Yugoslavia, but it immediately sparked tensions and quick responses from the others with similar texts and began to create “the well-known division” between politicians, the media, science and the

public; between “federalists and separatists”, “pro-Yugoslavs and anti-Yugoslavs”, “centralists and decentralists”, “AVNOJ-ists and reformers”, etc.

Interestingly, the first part of this document, which accounted for roughly two-thirds of the text and which analyzed the crisis in Yugoslavia’s economy and society, managed to provide a true diagnosis of the situation in the political, economic, cultural, moral and scientific scenes. The last decade (1975-1985) was a time of severe consequences in terms of economic failures, development of policy, embryonic failures in economic reform, etc. A “contracting economy” was introduced by legal means through the Law of associated labour from 1976. During that decade the gross national product in Yugoslavia grew at an annual rate of barely 0.6 to 0.8%, unemployment was rising at 100% compared to the previous decade. The productivity and competitiveness of firms also declined by 15%, and the standard of living quickly declined. The country was incurring large credits.

The so-called “market, self-governing socialism” did not provide a good standard of living. It did however introduce stagflation and inflation, a deficit of basic goods and fuel, while increasing regional disparities. These social processes and their consequences, were described in detail by the document which, surprisingly, provided a diagnosis which generally differed from those provided by the economists from other republics (compared for example to that of Mencinger in 1989). There were indications of constant tension between politics and the economy and the fact that the political elite, regardless of system and performance plans, conducted effective control over the economy and the market, and pointed out the discrepancy of “consensual economy” and politically mediated “free exchange of labour” (1976) with “long-term programs for economic stabilization” (1982), which required a pure market economy, monetarism, defined ownership and market role and freedom for the firms. At the end we came to the so-called collision with “The critical analysis of the functioning of the political system” (1985), which, again, is a purely ideological document that advocates for more discipline and individual and collective agreements. The memo argued that because of these relations and reform delays,

damage was done to all the republics and all the economies, a price they are all now paying.

But here is where the obsolete-scientific and arbitrary analysis begins. Namely, claims are made that in all these movements and developments, the Serbian economy had suffered the most. As proof of this, relatively small-investment in the Serbian economy are given which show lower “output” per unit of invested capital, and depressed prices of energy, raw materials and agricultural products, and the “off shoring” of military and heavy industry outside Serbia. Mentioned in the document is also what is referred to as the “flood of capital” in the developed regions of the Serbian economy.

In fact, at that time all republics showed similar analyzes; i.e. lag in their economies or at least being “amortized” faster than other developing economies, and of course blame for all that was placed on the other republics in the Federation or on federal politics. Horvath, Matsuura, Bate, Mencinger and others, however, proved that this was a systemic contrast and preponderance of the administrative and ideological sector over the economy, differences in productivity, investment management and organization, and the disparities that the market itself was creating and receiving were characteristic of the political tensions and rising nationalism, not that it is nationalist or has a conscious relationship with the Serbian economy and society. (Katz, 1985, Horvath, 1985).

The Memorandum, at this point, in the second part of the document offers a completely different argumentative structure, in terms and from the aspect of the Serbian people, not the Serbian state or between inter-republic relations. Deconstruction, it says, began between the two world wars, when a strong Comintern created a strategy to break up the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and as a result, through the CPY, it propagated the idea that the Serbian people in Yugoslavia were an “oppressive” nation, and that the other nations were “oppressed” nations. The assessment was that the political hegemony of the Serbian bourgeoisie was followed by economic dominance in the kingdom and that the CPY had accepted the Comintern evaluation and tried to weaken this alleged Serbian position. This, according to the document, created a lasting bond between the Slovenian and Croatian communists (i.e. Tito and

Kardelj) which gave rise to a national - Croatian and Slovenian CP before the war, and as such decisions and constitutional reforms made after the war, took power away from Serbia. The Serbian people have reportedly been repeatedly accused of being “oppressive”, “centralized”, “authoritative”, and exposed to a “sense of historical guilt”. Hence, Serbian communists were always put on the defensive and had to keep silent unless they wanted to be accused of “hegemony”, of “unitary-ism”, or of “centralism”. Hence, the Serbian disadvantaged economic position continued to be depressed putting Serbian politics and the Serbian economy into an inferior position in the Federation. The document also criticizes the Yugoslav ruling ideology, not because of its Marxist vision of the nation and international relations, but for its deviation from it. However, when it is expected to offer Marxist views, it remains critical of the policy of interethnic relations. It fails to bind itself to the Marxist or any other more modern conception of these relations.

The memorandum has highlighted three main points where the Serbian position is allegedly inferior: 1.) even with systemic measures and a conscious economic policy its economy lags and is depleted; 2) With the 1974 Constitution and with the federal authority organs, Serbia is in an unequal position in relation to the other republics because it has two provinces whose jurisdiction it cannot penetrate, but they participate in Serbia’s management and even play a part in the Federation, and in parallel with Serbia are equal to it in Federation policies. Besides that, they have the right to veto over the Assembly of the Republics and the provinces are equally represented. Therefore the Federation no longer makes any sense because it is not decentralized but acts like it is… in essence it has disintegrated. 3) This deals with the position of the Serbian people in the other republics. The Serbian people in the other republics including Kosovo, which is within Serbia, are treated like minorities where their rights in their own language, education, culture, etc., are being revoked and decreased especially in Kosovo, where for decades genocide has been carried out against the Serbian people. The memorandum also details cases of maltreatment of Serbs in Croatia and Kosovo.

Besides all that, the Memorandum focused on many more causes for discontent: the treatment, for example, of Serbian history which, in

some places, was officially misconstrued (perhaps because of how the Macedonian people were mistreated during the Balkan Wars and the fact that Macedonia was divided by force in three parts and one part was occupied by Serbia), or the treatment of Serbian literature in school programs being called Montenegrin, or Bosnian, or Voivodian. Or for example the so-called “common core” subjects in schools that were taught with quality works of Serbian authors yet were mechanically labeled “low quality” by other literatures. The Memorandum text is full of emotionally charged examples strictly selected to make the most impact and create the most amount of difficulties. The text, it seems was almost designed to put blame on the others, on the other peoples, or more precisely on high political officials and to indirectly accuse them of committing some kind of conspiracy against Serbia and against the Serbian people; to blame politicians for their self interests and privileges which were obviously not firmly rooted on the side of national interests. Of course, the paper also called for immediately drawing up a national program and fighting for its implementation.

But for which system solutions did the Memorandum call for in those days? Undoubtedly it called for a framework of democratic socialism, civil and human rights of the Western type, for modernity and for civilized values, for the rearrangement of relations in the Federation in order to stop the erosion and disintegration.

Specifically, in relation to possible changes to the Constitution, the Memorandum advocated four main points: a) sovereignty of the people and free will as the sole source of political legitimacy (meaning not the elite, bureaucracy, high officials, party, and others, but national and independent civil elections, majority, minority, public scrutiny etc.); b) self-determination of the nation, conceived in a multi-national community as a principle of a single state and state policy, coupled with the principle of political and cultural autonomy of nations and national minorities, but not the sovereignty of the parts (republics) that revoked the rights of others (e.g. the Serbs); c) human rights, in the widest range, whereby not emphasized, but coupled with the assessment of equitable representation of all parts of the Federation, resulting in commitment to the principle of “one vote – same privilege”, i.e. majority representation from that republic in the Federal

representation; d) rationality: no conditions for a rational policy. The country would be composed of eight separate and poorly connected parts, no single policy would exist, and if it existed on paper, it could not be realized in practice...

All rhetorical and internal sense of the Memorandum, regardless of the principally correct diagnosis of the ills of the federal and political-economic system and self-administered performance, the proposals are remodeled to rearrange relations in the Federation in terms of accepting the national interests of the Serbian people, their special position whatever it may be, their increase of power in the federal decision making process (by majority vote), favourable position in the economy (through increased participation in the joint accumulation) and cultural autonomy for the Serbian nationalities and minorities. In other words, the Federation would not be preserved. From that aspect, this document should be looked at in light of its churning literature, journalism and pure politics of the most tragic kind: military conflict. According to S. Antonich, this was made evident in the Academy circles which revolved around Milosevic, about which he wrote in his remarkable sociological study called a “Trapped country. Serbia during Slobodan Milosevic’s rule”. (Antonich, 2002 ch. 2). Slavko Milosavlevski, “in his conversations with Dobritsa Cosich” refuted all the principal arguments in the Memorandum, particularly those which referenced to Macedonia. (Milosavlevski, 1997).

However, the substance of the Serbian national doctrine is crystal clear as it is laid out by Shesheli’s efforts in terms of Lazo Kostich’s works. Although at the time of the book’s release in 2002, circumstances in the Balkans and in the former Yugoslavia, since 1992, had completely changed but the substance of the book, nevertheless, remained the same. In this write-up we will deal mostly with the fragments that are of concern to Macedonia and to the Macedonian people and will dispense with the rest in spite of arguments and politics being the same. Viewed from the outside, the book says, the Serbian people are seen as a matured, cultured, triumphant and civilized people in the Balkans and in Europe. They have been credited for their participation and for all their great victories and setbacks in European history – from the St. Sava and King Dushan in the Kosovo battle, uprisings, Balkan and World

Wars… In all this, the Serbian people were seen as heroes, conquerors and holders of spirituality and culture, progress and prosperity in the Balkans. And in all that time, say from the Mesozoic period, they were also victims; deprived, disadvantaged, misunderstood and oppressed. The book deals mostly with relations between Serbians and Albanians and particularly between Serbians and Croatians, who were supposedly their worst enemies, executioners, thieves of their language, culture, religion, etc. For example, numerous documents cite the genocidal acts of the Ustash Croats in the Second World War, the war of 1992-1995, etc. Extensive but highly selective sources are also cited that talk about Serbian supremacy and superiority, originality and authenticity, about Serbian history and culture in the Balkans and in Europe, as well as the inferiority of the others.

Selectivity of sources, biased and one-sided interpretations, a-priori-ism and reductionism are the basic features of Shesheli’s methodology.

Both Shesheli and Kostich are not so exclusive to deny the Macedonian people their rights as an ethnic group, living in a specific territory and community, especially given the realities of the Second World War and the political engineering of the communists, and Tito and Tempo in particular.

They have been successful because, always, the indigenous population in Macedonia had some linguistic and historical specificities and traditions. Basically, says Shesheli, Macedonians cannot say that they are Serbians in the true sense of the word, but they are closely related, like twin brothers. Other Macedonians in Pirin and Aegean Macedonia have already been assimilated. Macedonians objectively survived only in the part of Macedonia that was liberated by the Serbian army, though Macedonia was always considered an integral part of Serb-ism. This was somewhat contradicted by the author who further down the document stated that during the Balkan Wars 50,000 Macedonian fighters participated on the Serbian side. Kostich even cited dozens of historical documents to prove the Serbian character of Macedonia; the existence of Old Serbia and South Serbia as the cradle of Serb-ism and named a host of senior Serbian politicians, artists, scientists

who came from Macedonia to a number of international peace conferences when Macedonia was given to Serbia along ethnic principles.

Tsvinich and a number of old authors have been cited making claims that the population in Macedonia is a floating and amorphous mass which, when necessary, leans towards the Serbians, towards the Bulgarians or again - the Vlach population – towards the Greeks. Between the two World Wars, the Macedonian population had the opportunity to become Serbian, in other words for Macedonians to become Serbians, citizens of a higher order, nationally to rise up to become Serbians, which is, otherwise, a Bulgarian theoretical paradigm for assimilation. But since by virtue of military and other circumstances (communist engineering) it did not happen, and for as long as federal Yugoslavia survives, Macedonia ought to be recognized as a federal unit; if it does not survive, Serbia should annex it and give it wider autonomy. On what grounds would it be merged? It is clear that both Kostich and Shesheli played the international legal heritage card of the Kingdom of Serbia, by which in Bucharest in 1913 this part of Macedonia was annexed. And the legal successor of that kingdom was the then Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the successor of that was the then Democratic Federal Yugoslavia, FNRY, Yugoslavia, FRY and at the end, Serbia again. This idea was identical to the one discussed by Mitsotakis and Milosevic in 1992.

The third Serbian documents, the one about the Serbian state in the programs of the Serbian political parties to Dayton, describes the national and statehood conception of the political forces in Serbia. But here we will only mention those of Milosevic’s Serbian Socialist Party (SPS) and Shesheli’s Serbian Radical Party (SRP). The first is directly affected by the SANU Memorandum, adopted in 1990 and revised two years later, after Yugoslavia had disintegrated and during the heat of conflict in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The program here called for Serbia to be a unitary state with retention of autonomous provinces only as self-governing territories without state responsibilities, and the Federation Assembly elected in principle one vote -the same privilege; corrective, but without great power; a would-be-assembly of elected federal units selected on a parity basis, obliged only to Serbia to

maintain cultural and other relations with its minorities in the other republics.

In 1992, after Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina separated from Yugoslavia, the SPS program was significantly changed. Regarding the separation, the program, just like Milosevic in The Hague Conference on Yugoslavia, used the term “secession”, to mean illegal breakaway from the Federation, etc. It also used the term “self-determination of peoples”. But because the minorities in Vojvodina and Kosovo were not classified as peoples but as minorities of other peoples, they had no right to self-determination. And because the Serbian minority in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia, had a status of peoples because they were living together as a nation in the same family, they were recognized as people and as having the right to self-determination including secession. Based on this program, the Serbian Republics “Republic of Srpska Krajina” in Croatia and “Republic of Srpska” in Bosnia and Herzegovina were immediately established and preparations were made to create other entities. Thus, the SPS program became the ideological introduction to the Yugoslavian inferno that sparked the tragic conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and later in Kosovo.

The SRP program was more extreme. It foresaw Serbian sovereignty in all the countries outside the current Serbian state. It foresaw a united Serbia, abolition of the autonomists in Serbia, non-recognition of the republics that “broke away”, including Macedonia, and eventually - their merger in Western Serbia. Looking down the long road, it foresaw recognition of the autonomy of Macedonia within the new Serbian state.

In the past, hundreds of thousands of people were turned into victims with such “genocidal” programs. It is interesting to know how such programs can be implemented in practice and also how many hundreds of thousands of people believe in them.

12. Analysis and diagnosis

In our analysis of the ethno-political platforms of our neighbours, we have noted a number of attributes in the sociological

terminology, i.e. qualitative indicators that make them similar, and at times obviously the same. In reality, it is possible that someone may use these attributes and indicators as arguments to negatively represent or create a negative image of the Balkans, which we already have discussed in the first part of this document. In the least, one can use these arguments as a by-product and deviation to arrive at a process of transition, in a systemic and even national emancipation in the Balkan countries, but also in the entire Southeast and Central Europe. In fact, relapses and deviations in the same sense undergo historically and systemically more considerably here than in established countries in the West.

Analysis of texts or documents, of course, can be performed with quantitative methods, very common in contemporary sociology and general science, such as semantic or socio-linguistic quantitative analysis. We can demonstrate, for example, the degree of weight of these articles by looking at ethnicities, history, politics, geophysics, geopolitics, theories and pragmatics. We could demonstrate the degree of optimism or pessimism, determination or reluctance, aggression or peace, studiousness or superficiality etc. that filters through these documents. For our purpose however, we will perform a general summary which will reveal some common or specific attributes in the documents. We chose to do this because all these documents did not come from the same period, or from the same source, and especially since they did not come from a similar social and political context.

First, what catches our eye is the fact that all these documents were generated by various academies of science, or at least by the higher scientific institutions which are linked to high government, church, military and other authorities of the state apparatus. This means that the documents, their creators, financiers, publishers, etc., were not the fruit of pure “intervala ethno-lucida” of some academic circles in those countries, but of social and mental contexts of high ethno-politicization in those countries. Behind them, we have to point out, hid the particular interests of the ethno-elites; but not so much for the struggle for human, civil and ethnic rights and freedom as one might think. In Macedonia for example, in 2002 there was an attempt by the Academy of Sciences to engage in preparing documents and political propositions on the basis of ethnicity (for

those who don’t know we are referring to the famous scandal that proposed the so-called “exchange of territories” with Albania), to divide Macedonia over a frivolous argument; “if two people who are married don’t agree they should divorce”. It is true that throughout history some “immortal” academics are shown to be “mortal” and even “ethno-mortal”. In the Balkans all this seems more pronounced.