This series of posts are re-drafts of my dissertation entitled '20 Years On: Social Democracy in Macedonia'. This piece was written in the summer of 2012, and involved my spending a week in Skopje speaking to individuals in the SDSM and wider social democratic movement. This first post sets the scene and provides an historical overview of the emergence of Macedonian nation.
(Macedonia - without borders both cognitive and material)
Three important historical developments impact on how social democracy in Macedonia constitutes itself today. The first two, to be covered here, from the pre-democratisation period are, the development of the Macedonian nation and the establishment of the first republic for Macedonians. An understanding of these place contemporary issues surrounding national identity, nationalism, and relations with neighbours in an historical footing. The establishment of a republic for the Macedonians, within the context of a Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), puts forth arguments as to why the communist political leadership pursued this task and would have future implications for the Social Democratic Unions of Macedonia in the post-independence era.
Nation and Nationalism – Definitions
But first, I must clarify what I see are the definitions of ‘nations’ and ‘nationalism’. I use Benedict Anderson’s understanding that the nation ‘is an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.’ For nationalism, Ernest Gellner’s definition that ‘Nationalism is primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent.’ and Eric Hobsbawm’s observation that ‘Nations do not make states and nationalisms but the other way around.’ are my anchor and both hold true in the case of Macedonia.
The ‘Macedonian Question’ in the 19th and 20th Centuries
The emergence of the ‘Macedonian Question’ arose during the latter part of the 19th century at a time when established territories surrounded the region whilst it was still formally part of the Ottoman Empire. In the words of Barbara and Charles Jelavich ‘When the struggle over Macedonia became more heated after the Congress of Berlin, anthropologists, linguists, and physiologists from the Balkan countries all used their specialty to claim the area for their own particular nationality.’ Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece were the three states that eyed the region, whose population was a diverse mix. The attributes for their claims came from religion, language, education, history, and culture; and were easily contested. Fundamentally, the geographic-strategic importance of this area for territorial expansion, economic gain and possible regional power status, were the reasons these claims were made, and backed by the ‘Great Powers’. Ottoman era social structures were breeding grounds for these contests, especially in regards to the church organization, to which language and education were tied; yet pro-Ottoman sympathies resulted from these clashes coming from all sides. The Balkan War of 1912 was fought to overthrow Ottoman rule, and Macedonia was split between the three states; however Bulgaria was unhappy and a second war in 1913 erupted, the result of which was the Treaty of Bucharest. During this period the people’s ‘perception from below’ in the region could be characterized as ‘not necessarily national and still less nationalist.’ according to Eric Hobsbawm. But this was of lesser importance for these belligerent states, which previously based territorial claims on co-nationals, but that soon became redundant.
The Foundations of Macedonian National Consciousness
Although a small group of people began to attest to a unique Macedonian national movement in the last decade of the 19th century, especially the establishment of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization in 1893, their sympathies were specifically Bulgarian (Jelavich and Jelavich). In applying Victor Roudometof’s ‘thesis that national identity is socially constructed, fluid, situational, and modified through encounters and interaction with other groups, thereby fostering the necessity for boundary preservation and the exaggeration of cultural difference.’, one can see that these clashes could be unending. In Ottoman administrative records there was no categorization of Macedonians with a distinct identity. The idea that the people in the region were a ‘blank canvass’ upholds Roudometof’s constructivist approach. However ‘the notion that Macedonian Slavs were not yet Serbs or Bulgarians was the germ of the idea that they formed a distinct ethnic category, neither Serbian nor Bulgarian’, according to Roudometof. This idea has its legacy in contemporary debates in the region. The debate amongst the intelligentsia revolved around delineating where Macedonia was, its administrative position within the Ottoman Empire, and took on attempts to unite the Christians of the region through a Bishopric. Although multi-ethnic autonomy was their aim, including during the Ilinden Uprising in 1903, the division of the region during the Balkan Wars took on a more important meaning. So, up to the Balkan Wars the region had become defined and markers were established as to who people were not; yet the division of this ‘imagined’ area (up to that point in time) sowed the seeds for future discontent.
Between the Two World Wars
After this territorial division of ‘Ancient Macedonia’ into Pirin, Aegean and Vardar Macedonia, and its subsequent codification after World War I, demographic consolidation occurred. Greece settled Greeks from Turkey in their area and established demographic dominance, whereas in Bulgaria the ‘Macedonian Question’ played heavily on domestic politics. Focusing on the Vardar region, whose borders are co-terminus with those of present-day Macedonia, assimilation was attempted by the Serbs with the aim to de-Bulgarize the region via methods such as name changing. Again, Macedonians weren’t acknowledged in the 1921 and 1931 census calculations as a separate entity, but were counted as Serb or as speaking Serbocroat according to Joseph Rothschild. Politically, Ivo Banac notes that in the 1920 elections ‘The chief beneficiary of Macedonian discontent was the Communist Party, which won 36.72 percent of all Macedonian votes…’ doing better in the urban areas of Kumanovo, Skopje and Tikves. Communism also provided an ideological alternative to nationalism in the region at the time, seeking to establish a Balkan Federation. However, with no sizeable proletariat, they sought to exploit national oppression for social revolution. According to Pavlos Hatzopolous the ‘nationalization’ of the peoples of the Macedonia region by the conquering states proved ripe for this agitation, even if it ultimately failed. Whilst de-Bulgarization, Serbianization, and the Comintern agreeing the existence of a Macedonian nation in 1934, were ongoing processes and events, Alexander Maxwell believes that the masses simply wanted an easy life and identified with whichever state controlled their area.
From World War II to a Socialist Republic of Macedonia
Alexander Maxwell continues that with the arrival of World War II to the Balkans in 1941 came the governance of the most part of Vardar Macedonia by the Bulgarians. At first they were welcomed, but re-Bulgarization and the removal of local elites, as well as the effects of war and displaced peoples, led to increasing support for Tito and the Partisans. The Partisans establishing a Macedonian literary language in 1944 accelerated this. ‘Macedonia’s Slavs simultaneously espoused both “regional Macedonian nationalism” and “ethnic Bulgarian nationalism” in the early twentieth century, but by 1945 an “ethnic Macedonian nationalism” incompatible with Bulgarian loyalties had emerged.’ Rooted in language, Tito sought to capitalize on this. It justified his attempt to gain control of Macedonia, retain it, eliminate Bulgarian national consciousness, and ultimately to act as a step to Yugoslav regional hegemony, according to Stephen Palmer and Robert King. The ‘Macedonian Question’ was a useful vehicle for this, and can be judged as a success in comparison to the strategy employed by interwar communists as suggested by Hatzopolous.
Only with the establishment of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, albeit obligated to be part of the Socialist Federal Yugoslavia, could state resources create the Macedonian nation. This was achieved by creating schools, a university and a press in this new Macedonian language. Added to this was the longer-term goal of acquiring an independent Orthodox Church. Thus the state existed because of communism, so when the Tito consolidated the communist organization in the republic via patronage and trading political and economic centralism for cultural autonomy, he could command the loyalty of large sections of the population (Ulf Brunnbauer). But fundamentally, echoing Hobsbawm, ‘the republic was established, but the nation had still to be created.’
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