The development
project known as ‘Skopje 2014’, is a multi-million Euro transformation of
Macedonia Square and its area either side of the river Vardar. Unveiled in February
2010, it leans heavily on a ‘classical antiquity’ style and comprises of
buildings, statues, an arch and obelisk, as well as a new footbridge. Given the
turbulent political context of relations with Greece, along with a volatile
ethnic situation domestically with the Albanians, my objective is to analyse
the varying factors that surround the present VMRO-DPMNE government’s attempts
to strengthen Macedonian national identity through Skopje’s urban landscape.
Laura Kolbe (‘Central and Eastern
European capital cities’, in
Planning Perspectives, 2007) conducted fascinating research into the
presentation of Eastern European cities to the West via websites, and how
capital cities in post-Socialism are seeking to portray themselves in a
‘European’ manner. I seek to
invert this thesis and argue that ‘Skopje 2014’ is a project led by the current
VMRO-DPMNE government’s nationalist discourse to ‘nationalise’ the city of
Skopje for its ethnic Macedonian, domestic audience. Two problems arise from
this and are intertwined. Firstly, the symbolism of the project affects relations
with Greece; therefore I will seek to address the conflicting claims to
Macedonian history and its impact on Macedonian national identity in view of
the contemporary relations between these two states. Secondly, the location of the
buildings and the perspective the individual takes alters depending on
ethnicity and location within the city. As such, I will address recent ethnic
Macedonian and Albanian tensions, which centre on the question of nationality,
and link these to how ‘Skopje 2014’ could further entrench negative perceptions
of the ‘Other’.
To deal with the first
problem, I will use Benedict Anderson’s thesis (Imagined Communities, 2007) where he proposed the ‘following
definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community – and imagined
as both inherently limited and sovereign.’ In this sense, an analysis of Macedonian
national identity needs to be understood in the context of the nation being a
creation, albeit in constant construction, whose limits and sovereignties
overlap on to other nations. And because, as Victor Roudometof (Collective Memory, National
Identity, and Ethnic Conflict, 2007) says, at ‘the heart of the
dispute lies the thesis that the Republic is the official homeland of the
Macedonian nation.’, one needs to trace the emergence of Macedonia as a
republic from the mid to late 19th century when national identities
in the region began forming and interacting.
The geographical
region known as Macedonia was mostly ruled over in its entirety, for over 400
years by the Ottoman Empire, up until the end of the Balkan Wars of 1912/13,
albeit with a short spell in an autonomous Bulgaria in the 1870s. During this
time, the communities that lived there identified more with their religious
confession or language. However after the Treaty of Berlin in 1878 interest in
the region grew, due to its strategic geographic position, from those national
groups with coterminous state boundaries surrounding it, along with the Great
Powers who dictated the terms of the Treaty. So, according to Jelavich and
Jelavich (The
Establishment of the Balkan National States, 1804-1920, 1977), Bulgaria,
Greece and Serbia for ‘the last two decades of the nineteenth century […]
entered into a regular battle for predominance. Their weapons were the
competing churches, educational establishments and national societies.’ The
resulting problem was a plethora of fluid national identities that included Bulgarian,
Greek, Serbian, Ottoman and a nucleus of Macedonian in an area of conflicting
claims over territory. After the two Balkan Wars in 1912/13, Macedonia as a
region became split amongst 3 states. It was not until 1945 that the current
territorial boundaries of the present day Republic of Macedonia came into being
as a republic within Yugoslavia.
Victor Roudometof’s
explanation of this period reads of ‘national narratives’ emerging prior to the
Balkan Wars; yet for him the failure of inter-war Greek and Serb cultural
homogenisation projects was the turning point for ‘Macedonian’ to be viewed as
a ‘national’ identity instead of a regional one. In his view, the post-1945
period was the starting point for the articulation of a Macedonian ‘national
narrative’, with the support of the institutions of the second Yugoslavia,
geared towards nation building. So after 1945, people grew up and lived in a
Macedonian national culture with a Macedonian national identity. In other
words, a Macedonian nation only began to emerge after a territorial state was created
to support the development of an exclusive ‘national narrative’. Ulf
Braunnbauer points to historians and historiography as aiding the construction
of this ‘national narrative’ because ‘Macedonian historiography had a
nationalist perspective from the very beginning.’ This is because
historiography was needed after 1945 to consolidate Macedonian national
identity to counter perceived Bulgarian territorial expansion.
This constructivist
observation of the development of Macedonian national identity leads to the current
dispute between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia over the claim that the
Republic is the home of the Macedonian nation. Evidently, ownership of Macedonian
history is essential for one side to claim the nation (and thus identity) as
their own, and this has been argued on both sides through claims to historical continuity.
Loring Danforth (The Macedonian Conflict,
1995) believes ‘The view of history on which the argument for the Greekness of
Macedonia is ultimately based is quintessential nationalist history that
reifies both the Greek nation and Greek culture and seeks to demonstrate the
unbroken continuity of the “Greek” race and “Hellenism” from the dawn of
history to the present.’ Therefore Greece rejects the dual notion of a Macedonian
nation within a Republic of Macedonia because they claim ownership of
Macedonian history through continuity. Some Macedonians do try and counter this
with their own version of continuity to antiquity, but most focus on the
classic cultural reawakening of ‘Macedonian’ in the 19th century
that underpins modern Macedonian nationalist thought. Ulf Braunnbauer ((Re)Writing History, 2004) sees this as a
continuation of the ‘national history’ paradigm, in to the post-Socialist era. This
is due to the lack of funds which deprive researchers access to external ideas,
a government that still monopolises research; and researchers who feel obliged
to focus on a specific era (19th and 20th centuries) for
fear of becoming unemployed for speaking out against their elders. Therefore
Macedonians are still only able to focus on researching their ‘own’ national
history so that they can continue to legitimize their national identity by
adding to the Macedonian ‘national narrative’. So what we have are two states
who have different claims to some elements of the same history, whilst
simultaneously trying to deny the other’s claim.
So how does the ‘Skopje
2014’ contribute to this reification of nationalist history? If the Macedonian ‘national
narrative’ is an ongoing phenomenon even in post-Socialism, then ‘Skopje 2014’
attempts to further consolidate national identity symbolically in the city.
‘Conceptualised as an attempt to reshape the capital’s outlook by adorning the
city centre with numerous monuments […] the project has been criticized as yet
another dimension of the overall endeavour to redefine the public space, to
bring about historical revisionism and to effect the invention of traditions.’
This is how Ljubica Spaskovska (In Search
of a Demos, 2010) observes the project. Even before this project was
announced other symbolic gestures were made in and around Skopje to complement
the renewed attempt to solidify Macedonian national identity through a
nationalist discourse of history: the renaming of the city airport to Alexander
the Great, the naming of the city stadium after Philip II, the construction of
a Christian Cross to commemorate 2000 years of Christianity, the use of the
Vergina Sun symbol on the Republic’s flag, and so on. One could even question
the intent of building the Mother Teresa memorial house as an attempt to claim
her for Macedonia, even though she was born into the Ottoman Empire. Therefore
the additions to the urban landscape continue in this reification process: The
Alexander the Great statue in Macedonia Square, statues of leaders of the
Ilinden Uprising of 1903 and religious figures, buildings in ‘classical
antiquity’ style including a museum and so on.
But one can’t place
this in the urban landscape alone in space and time. Cities are constructs too,
and are representative of the varying political, economic and cultural
discourses that the city has gone through. Just as one can’t create a
homogenous community motionless in time, a city is a collage of all that came
before leading to the present. Nuala Johnson, in her study on ‘monuments,
geography, and nationalism’ (‘Set in
Stone’, in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 1995), states
that ‘geographers are just beginning to examine the relationships between
memorialisation of the past and the spatialisation of public memory.’ These
processes are being carried out with ‘Skopje 2014’. But problem the nationalist
discourse has is that other histories are present that it has to compete with,
such as the Socialist one and Ottoman one, in buildings that remain in the
city. These include the Stone Bridge, Old Bazaar, Kale Fortress, Socialist
apartment blocks, shopping centre – along side modern capitalist constructs
such as the Rammstore. However the Macedonian Government still attempts to coerce
its ethnic Macedonian citizens into collectively remembering their national
history, by presenting the ongoing ‘national narrative’ of an imagined history
through ‘Skopje 2014’. Furthermore this attempt is a deliberate provocation of
Greece by trying to devalue their national identity through claiming ownership
of a shared history.
In tandem with this
reification and display of Macedonian national identity comes the distancing of
Albanians from ethnic Macedonians within the confines of an independent
Macedonian nation-state. I seek to narrow this to the two sides of the river
Vardar where ‘Skopje 2014’ is placed, by looking at the demographics of the two
municipalities that comprise it, Tsentar and Chair. The 2002 population census
shows that in the Tsentar municipality of 45,412, 38,778 or 85% were
Macedonian, and 1465 or 3% were Albanian. The 64,773 residents of Chair
municipality comprised of 15,628 or 24% Macedonian and 36,921 or 57% Albanian.
The rest of the population was made up of other minorities. Nationally the
figure was 64% Macedonian and 25% Albanian. The conflict between these two
groups was not based on a struggle over shared histories; instead theirs was a
conflict over citizenship in the newly independent Macedonian state. Ljubica
Spaskovska’s paper on citizenship and belonging presents a detailed narrative
of how citizenship policy in Macedonia developed and contributed to the
isolation of Albanians vis-à-vis their relations with Macedonians. The initial
downgrading of their nationality in light of their position in the former
Yugoslavia and inception of an ethno-national citizenship led to articulations
of discontent and the desire for a new framework; in parallel to other factors
accounting for Albanian discontent with the new state and its institutions. The
Ohrid Framework Agreement in 2001 and the continued practice of consociational
politics, just emphasise the differences between the two communities. So the
relationship between nationality and citizenship can be expressed as the
nationalisation of citizenship by the Macedonians, to the disadvantage of the
Albanians. This feeds into insecurities that Albanians have regarding the rise
of Macedonian cultural hegemony, and a lack of belonging to such a nationalized
state.
Viewed in the
post-socialist context of Skopje, one could see this as the pushing of minorities
to the periphery or hiding them altogether. This is a mirror image of what
Setha Low (‘The Anthropology of Cities’,
in Annual Review of Anthropology, 1996) describes as a ‘Divided City’, the
notion being that there are hidden barriers of race and class. The location of
the buildings on the riverside is one example of how this idea can be linked to
the spatial planning of ‘Skopje 2014’ in ethnic terms. If viewed from Macedonia
Square, or read as a ‘Macedonian perspective’, then it blocks out the view of
the Old Bazaar, and the Kale Fortress. Conversely, if one stands on the
Albanian side of the Stone Bridge, the Albanian perspective is that of
Alexander the Great on horseback striding towards the Albanians with the cross
of Christ up upon the hillside behind. The former can be read as a wish to
block out certain elements of non-nationalist history. This can also evident in
the recent disputes over the renaming of city streets. The latter can be taken
as an attempt to remind the Albanians of Macedonian cultural hegemony conjuring
up an image of an historical leader ‘leading’ Macedonians across the river, as
an attempt to rewrite history and to collectively ‘forget’ the presence of
Albanians.
In conclusion, ‘Skopje
2014’ can be viewed as a continuation of 6 decades of Macedonian
nation-building, in the form of urban planning and spatial development. On the
one hand, it is an attempt by Macedonians to claim single ownership over
Macedonian history against Greek attempts to do the same. This is present in
the numerous symbolic processes undertaken and ongoing in the city of Skopje,
in an almost ‘Andersonian’ attempt to (re)create an imagined Macedonian
community. On the other, this attempt at developing a national narrative
through ‘Skopje 2014’ is excluding the sizeable Albanian minority, already
fearful of their place in the nation-state due to citizenship issue, compounded
by their lack of presence in the present constructions of Skopje. This may be a
matter of perspectives on the construction through the location of the
individual in the city. So going back to Laura Kolbe, the Macedonian government
is not looking externally to present the city to the world, but is looking
internally to its domestic, Macedonian audience.
Addendum
Since writing this in
early 2012, more constructs have occurred, and some political changes. The
VMRO-DPMNE have recently won their third term in office, yet in the previous
municipal elections they lost the Mayoralty for the area where the regeneration
is occurring. This led to questions being raised about the hefty cost and the possibility of halting the construction.
Further updates to the
vista of constructions include galleons on the river, the ‘updating’ of
commercial buildings on the square, and the transformation of the National
Assembly building. All maintain the ‘national narrative’ of the ruling party. Yet,
succour was paid to opponents both political and ethnic. Further statues were
added recognizing socialist or communist ‘national’ heroes. Yet this just
underpins the nationalist zeal with which the ruling party is imposing its
version of history. It’s only of those it deems worthy of appearing in its
nationalised public space.
In the Albanian area,
a statue of Skanderbeg was allowed. But this reifies ethnic division on two
levels. It allows Albanians to have ‘their’ own statue, but it is
geographically placed outside of the arena where the other projects are
occurring, thus symbolically isolating the Albanian community in the present.
Yet it also isolates the Albanians historically as the choice of idol doesn’t
fit in with the Macedonian ‘national narrative’, thus creating a separate (and
deliberate) bridge between past and present for the Albanians. So the project
has continued to pursue the path of division in the name of ‘a’ perspective of
what being ‘Macedonian’ is meant to be.
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