Social Democracy in Macedonia (4/5)

Having previously analysed social democracy in generic terms, the focus now turns to the nature of social democracy in Macedonia. Specifically focusing on the SDUM, I will look at its development from independence to 2012 through the prisms of legacies of nationalism, democratization and communism.

The SDUM – An Overview

The SDUM was founded in 1991 being the successor party to the League of Communists of Macedonia (LCM), and is an observer member to the Socialist International and associate member of the Party of European Socialists. Kiro Gligorov became the first President of Macedonia elected by democratic means in 1991 and held that position until 1999. At the time of writing, the President of the party was Branko Crvenkovski, who was the President of Macedonia from 2004 to 2009, held the position of Prime Minister from 1992 to 1998 and again from 2002 to 2004. One notable President of the SDUM recently was Radmila Sekerinska who held the position from 2006 to 2008 and led the party into the 2008 parliamentary elections. In 2012 the SDUM had twenty nine MPs of the Sobranie out of one hundred and twenty three, and all but three were of Macedonian ethnicity with two Vlach and one Serb. Eleven MPs were female and the age range was from twenty nine to fifty seven, with an average age of forty two. The party’s electoral support at the 2011 parliamentary elections was to be found in Skopje, the south, south west and parts of the north east of the country, and can be observed as poor in Albanian areas along with the support of the VMRO-DPMNE. However, during election time broad based electoral pacts, with the SDUM as the core, contest these elections. The executive board of the SDUM, which is elected by a central board of the SDUM that is elected at the congress of the party, is comprised of twenty three people, including six MPs.

Although the party came second in the first democratic elections in 1990, they gained power in 1992 following a ‘government of experts’ and when VMRO-DPMNE failed to garner support for a government. Crvenkovski invited Albanian party members to form part of his government. This initiated the informal establishment of a consociational model of democracy. Economic liberalization, the move to a ‘Euro-Atlantic’ direction, the easing of ethnic relations, as well as feeling the impact of a UN embargo on Serbia and an economic blockade by Greece, all occurred during this period. Although they won the 1994 elections, this was in fact a result of VMRO-DPMNE not contesting the second round of voting, even if some suggested that it was a sign that being a socialist or from the old guard was not a stigma. Defeat in 1998 was attributed to the perception of economic corruption during privatization. However, the acceptance of this defeat along with the Presidential election a year later was seen as a litmus test for the democratic idea to accept losing as elections. The party’s re-election in 2002 came after the 2001 ethnic conflict and the signing of the Ohrid Agreement, which it embarked on implementing.

Throughout this period, the party’s relationship with nationalist rhetoric and actions was fluid. Given its heritage, it is seen as the party that created the state of Macedonia and the Macedonian nation, and that it led the charge for independence during the collapse of communism, partially fulfilling the goal of nationalism in Gellner’s sense. But debates over identity and primordial links continued and are present even today. Debates over the constitution, decisions on the use of symbols and languages by minorities, relations with neighbours especially around the name issue, and the recent ‘Skopje 2014’ project in the capital, saw the SDUM develop its stance, which were in opposition to the line carried by VMRO-DPMNE. However, the nationalist rhetoric had moved somewhat from ethnic particularity to a more state-orientated patriotism. Some believed that this had simply bolstered the ethnic divide in the country and reified the mono-ethnicity of the party.

Internal party democracy and the relationship between the leaders, party organs and membership altered since independence. The side effect of having a less disciplined body, encouraging discussion and dissent, and some lack of acceptance of defeat, is that internal ideological splits became actual party splits; most notable was the departure of Presidential candidate Tito Petkovski in 2005 to form the New Social Democratic Party. This overview of the SDUM provided the contextual background for my fieldwork in 2012.

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My visit to Skopje spanned 6 days during the end of August 2012. My contact was the Programme Manager at the Progres Institut for Social Democracy (Progres) who was also a teaching and research assistant at the Faculty of Law in the city, whom I have worked with previously. Along with interviewing him, he organized interviews with people in the following positions; a Project Manager at Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Macedonia (FES); an executive board member of the SDUM and economic policy adviser (Economic Adviser); an executive board member of the SDUM (Exec Member); the President of the SDYM (President of SDYM); and the International Secretary of the SDYM (International SDYM).

I also approached the Macedonia Project Manager of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy/Macedonian Centre for Parliamentary Studies (WFD) and the International Officer at the British Labour Party (Labour) in a personal capacity to provide further external observations in their work with the SDUM. These meetings were semi constructed in order for the interviewee to express more fully their opinions and observations. Notes of the interviews were taken, but not transcribed word for word. I will refer to them by the shorthand word that has followed their position titles in brackets above.

Social Democracy Movement

Upon my beginning the interviews I asked for general comments on the current state of the wider social democratic movement in Macedonia. Every person, apart from the Economic Adviser who wasn’t asked, responded by saying it was weak. The International SDYM person and Progres person both said that the SDUM party was essentially the movement. An explanation put forward by the Executive Member was that the transition period resulted in many losers because of the privatization policies that were enacted. On the other hand, the FES person looked to the political climate at the time as nurturing fear and repression for such a movement to have expressed itself. When asked about the roles of the trade unions in the wider movement, all the interviewees observed no link. The Executive Member believed that this was due to them being the losers during marketization, and the WFD person believed them to be weak during privatization so they ultimately could not resist such reforms. However, at the time, the Executive Member suggested that they were bureaucratized and did not support workers. Instead they worked with whoever was in government, and at the time that was the VMRO-DPMNE, sentiments which the Economic Adviser and WFD person agreed with. A link to the SDUM would only come when they returned to power. The Progres person highlighted the formal connections with the Trade Unions that Progres had, but he too acknowledged their function as an instrument of the government. This was the same opinion expressed by the International SDYM person in relation to the Students Union and student movement. Therefore the movement split because the trade unions were weak when the party asserted its renewed ideology during (and because of) the transition. A positive note was that Progres was the first official nongovernmental organization (NGO) set up that advocated political values and traditions, and could be seen as a satellite of the social democracy movement. Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and the Westminster Foundation for Democracy were other NGOs that provided resources to engage with these groups also; the former to develop social democracy, the latter to develop civil society.

The relationship to civil society should be mentioned here, as it links to social movements that could potentially have been part of a wider social democracy movement. The Executive Member and WFD person saw the links with civil society as weak. This is the view the Labour person expressed and believed needed addressing. However, the International SDYM person believed that the movement in itself was weak. They organized on a small scale, but if it failed they would turn to the SDUM for organisational help. There was a crossover of individuals in civil society and the SDUM, but the civil society groups did not want a political association. As the International SDYM person described, when she went to engage with the very NGOs she worked amongst prior to holding a SDYM position, she was jeered because of this political association. The perception here, as the WFD person saw it, was one of a double-edged sword. They wanted support, but ultimately they wanted their issue dealt with so they could forgo building supportive capacity to hopefully catch the ear of the government at the time. Whilst I was visiting, a protest regarding the high prices for utility bills was conducted. There was no party political presence from the SDUM, yet the next day’s news saw the government link the protest to the machinations of the SDUM. According to the Progres person, the government would also do this to organizations that had foreign funding and claim them to be anti-national. Progres and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung were also trying to build these links with the work that they undertook.

Social Democratic Ideology and ‘Social Democratization’

The anchor of social democratic ideology is in the economy. This view was expressed by the Economic Adviser and was seen as a priority of the party under the government of the day. He linked economic inefficiency to the politicization of state institutions. The impact of privatization was felt badly, but the party had to carry out this process, and so it became motivated to develop reforms for the people. Given that social democracy is built upon the assumption that there will be economic growth to invest in core state functions, the response to a recession is crucial. He articulated that this was a possibility in 2012, however the SDUM had located €300-400 million in efficiency savings within the state institutions should they be reformed. He mentioned that there were cases where people were paid, but no work was done. The 30% unemployment rate meant that austerity wasn’t an answer, but job creation was. An example was the building of the statues for ‘Skopje 2014’. It cost €200 million, whereas the state budget for wages in the public sector per year was €360 million, so money could be better spent. He believed that there were not enough experts on the economy so that policies could have been fully developed. Therefore, at that moment the economy and specifically unemployment was seen as the priority of the SDUM. Even pursuing non-ideological policies, such as pushing the government to pay off its debt to private companies was needed because it would retain jobs for people.

Yet, the FES person believed that even if the impact of privatization was negative, the SDUM would claim it as their success. Her observation was that during the transition the SDUM were advocating policies that were the opposite of their ideology. In 2012, the VMRO-DPMNE was enacting ‘social democratic’ measures such as an increase in pensions. So there was a sense of ideological ‘cross-dressing’. So the SDUM needed to overcome this perception. The Executive Member explained this ideological incoherence projected by the party as a result of the transition to democracy and the appeal of Euro-Atlantic integration, which limited the extent to which an ideological and programmatic approach could have been developed. But in 2012 the SDUM had ideological markers to distinguish itself from the VMRO-DPMNE. He suggested that these ideological markers were starting to transcend ethnicity, although this was a long way off from completion.

Ideologically, the Executive Member observed two currents in the party. One was progressive, liberal, and stood for individual rights and was seen in the elite-end of the party. The other was more in tune with the members and electorate and was ‘socially and economically conservative’ and more nationalistic. The Economic Adviser observed this split in the approach to the economy between pro-business and pro-worker/for the unemployed. A split emerged in 2008, and a proportion of the middle ranking strata of the party went with it. The FES person saw the splits less in terms of ideology and more in terms of leaders and the positions they could offer to followers. However, The International SDYM person didn’t observe an ideological split within the SDYM but acknowledged the strength of charismatic leadership as exhibited by Crvenkovski. This could be an indication of the SDYMs freedom from legacies and their more progressive outlook vis-à-vis the main party. The FES and Labour people both acknowledged this strength of leadership. The Progres person also believed that the party in the decade before 2012 had become more progressive and moved from the neo-liberal approach to the economy, but was still changing. He pointed to Radmila Sekerinska as embodying this progressive approach by inviting different external ideas into the party for debate, which the Labour person agreed with.

The Economic Adviser believed that the process of social democratization was ongoing, The Executive Member and the Progres person saw it as becoming more aware and concerned for socially marginalized groups such as the gay community; whereas the President of SDYM believed that the party had changed significantly in membership and attitudes. However, the FES person observed a general weakness in progressive thinking. Progres had been active in promoting ‘social democratization’ by helping to establish the SDUMs value statement in 2009 (along with Friedrich Ebert Stiftung), opening up to civil movements and pushing policies for social inclusion of socially marginalized groups. A close working relationship was evident between Progress and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. The FES person mentioned that the NGO had facilitated debates on social democracy and sent a Macedonian representative to a discussion on social democracy in Europe but the ideas never filtered down. The Labour Party didn’t direct the SDUMs political programme but simply highlighted the mechanisms it uses when developing its own. However, if they didn’t like where the SDUM were going it would review its links with it in line with SI and PES principles and membership guidelines.

Even looking outside of the SDUM, the WFD person didn’t observe social democratic ideology in the Albanian parties. This was a sign of the obstacles to building a non-ethnic ideological movement, and he didn’t believe that a solution was achievable because ethnic identity was so contrasting and divisive.

Party Organization and Leadership

The Executive Member outlined the structure of the party as having seventy seven functioning municipal branches, with those in the East and West either not operating or functioned for symbolic reasons. The party congress held every four years elected a central board, which then elected an executive board, and in turn elected the President and Vice Presidents. According to the International SDYM person, this was the same for the SDYM. The Executive Member explained that authority lay with the President and the executive board, whose decisions were ratified by the central board. No decisions had been struck down in the three years he had been a member. During elections, a Central Electoral Headquarters runs the campaigns centrally and transmits objectives to the six regional offices that in turn communicate these to the branches. Membership fees, donations and the state finance the party, with the latter reimbursing the party after an election depending on how many votes they got. The Economic Adviser, Progres person, FES person and Labour person all spoke of the topical changes, led by Sekerinska, which included the setting up of policy councils. This was one aspect of the ‘social democratization’ of the party internally. However the Economic Adviser said that party members were not interested and attempts were made to approach them, but the process needed to be improved. A sense of value, beyond improving their socio-economic lot, was what was needed for this to have happened. He did accept that it was a great way to receive input from academics and businesses into their policy processes. The FES person saw the difference in the approach Crvenkovski was taking at the time as a strong leader, in that going into villages and speaking to voters was altering the party’s image. She believed, along with the WFD person, that the SDUM were seen as an elitist party, whereas the VMRO-DPMNE were seen as closer to the people.

Internal party democracy was somewhat still in its formation. Instead of direct elections, a dialogue between members and the leadership occurred. For the Mayoral candidate selections, the Executive Member explained that the local branch selects four candidates, which the headquarters then choose one. This was based on a combination of the best person and the one least likely to cause division. He explained this as a by-product of a lack of understanding in democracy to losing as the reason for this mechanism. There was a one in three quota for the minority gender to be selected for elections, and there was a one in five quota for SDYM members. However this was seen as a stepping-stone and a place to be noticed for the future. There was no ethnic minority quota, as evidenced in the unrepresentative make up of SDUM parliamentarians at the time, but he explained that it was a mutual understanding that in mixed areas, candidates would be picked to match the community, especially for local government elections. The same quotas existed in the SDYM according to the President of the SDYM, but he mentioned the informal way of decision-making and influencing was by talking to the President or Secretary direct. The Progres, FES and WFD people all observed that party democracy was lacking and that this deafened any debate or criticism because member’s rights were not protected to do so. It would be a slow change but Progres and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung were working towards this goal. The WFD person hinted that party democracy was probably stronger when it was the League of Communist of Macedonia, as splits weren’t feared.

Having noted earlier of the overlap of people who were MPs and on the party executive board, this was also practiced by Progres. The Progres person noted that some held positions in the party and that at that point in time it was crucial so that they could influence the party internally. He suggested that in the future Progres could be more independent, but it depended on the progress of ideologies, a stable political system and if ideology overcomes ethnicity.

Consociational Democracy and Political Culture

The electoral and party systems work in dialogue. The consociational model of democracy, that results from these mechanisms of democracy that have been utilized, reaffirms national identity and ethnic difference. All interviewees whose opinion I asked of this agreed, both internal and external observers. The FES person believed that it also meant that these parties only mixed with their own people and didn’t communicate. The pre-election pact agreed in 2012 between the SDUM and DPA meant that a deal on where to place candidates would be made, according to the WFD person, and this limited the choice to ethnic parties. Some were pessimistic in their hopes for the future. The Executive Member saw the need in accepting the differences before co-operation could occur. But peace and security of the state took precedence, and acts of ethnic violence would cause instability. The President of SDYM believed it was hard to move to ethnic integration despite the form of governance, using the recent episode of the Albanian Defense Minister laying a wreath on the graves of the Albanian guerillas of the 2001 conflict with uniformed army personnel to highlight this tension. Also, electorally speaking, the Executive Member said that even if the parties sought to gain support from outside of their ethnic groups, they would be classed as traitors. Yet, the President of SDYM explained that the party did select candidates in mixed areas for the purpose of gaining ethnic votes, but only for local elections. The Labour person believed that the Albanian parties should move beyond ethnic rights and towards developing a different message, which the FES person said had only just begun.

Everyone apart from the Progres and Labour people and the Presdient of SDYM observed clientelism in the political culture of the country; and that it was expressed within the party structure, between the party in power and those in state positions, and between the state and civil society as mentioned earlier. The politicization of institutions acted as a function of the government to retain power. It also acted as a break on criticism being levied on the government by civil society through fear, according to the FES person, and by withholding state funding, according to the WFD person. What was lacking in the political culture was the acceptance of democratic norms, such as the recognition of losing so as not to act out of proportion, as explained by the Progres person. The FES person also believed that there was no political responsibility and accountability, and that politicians were not punished for wrongdoing. Even party politics was brushed aside to topple a government, as seen by the SDUM and DPA agreeing to this aim in 2012. The impression from all the interviewees was that ethnic cleavages were embedded, and even institutionalized, and thus would be hard to move to a more ideological party politics.

Legacies of Communism, Nation-building and the ‘Transition’

Legacies play an important role in how a party is constituted, and the SDUM was no exception. Ideologically, The President of SDYM said the party sought at first to distance itself from its communist past, but in recent years this had been seen as a positive connection, and some are even nostalgic according to the FES person. Electorally, distance was needed at first according to the Executive Member. Politically, he noted the unity of ethnic groups in the League of Communist of Macedonia with these networks remaining when ethnic parties emerged.

He also believed the SDUM saw itself as the party that built the state in 1945, so this legacy led to a belief in the priority of protecting the state. The SDUM also had people in positions in public groups thanks to the funding of these during the former regime thanks to the League of Communists of Macedonia. However the legacy of a strong organisation did not extend to the rural areas, where the League wasn’t as entrenched as in the urban areas, so it could not capitalize on this as much. The WFD person believed there to be individuals who were League members still in the SDUM, but the Executive Member said it was hard to gauge the number of members who were in the League, but he did have people who would say to him that they have been members for 50 years. The FES person observed a positive link through joint working between the social democrats of the former Yugoslav countries, which enabled them to share relevant best practice because of their shared experiences.

An ambivalent legacy had been privatization. The Executive Member, Economic Adviser and the WFD person all said that these reforms harmed the image of the party at the time, especially because of the emergence of an economic elite; but The FES person believed that the SDUM would claim credit for the changes even if the elite were still present. During this period, the party led the independence movement so it had a legacy of nationalism, but in 2012 it was moving to patriotic rhetoric, according to the Executive Member. The International SDYM person noted that SDYM relations with the Panhellenic Socialist Movement were sour because of the re-emergence of national historical issues including the name issue, but they were respectful to the recent imaginings of Macedonian history in ‘Skopje 2014’, even if they weren’t personally linked to those debates because of their youth.

National Identity and Ethnicity

To add to the previously mentioned presence of national identity and ethnicity in the processes and structures mentioned, the response to nationalist posturing by the government was an example of the SDUM displaying their approach. On ‘Skopje 2014’, the Executive Member said that they could not attack its national aspect, but to provide a socio-economic argument as to where the money could have been better spent, or to say that the ethnic tensions that could arise did not justify it, as the Progres person also believed.

Economically speaking, the Economic Adviser recognized the need to tackle poverty, either targeted to those worse off or more generally. He said that in the Albanian areas there was an economy, just not an official one that has a relationship with the state; so official figures of unemployment showed it higher in these areas. However, the SDUMs concern was with workers rights and protection, so it didn’t always involve an ethnic angle that needed to be appeased. He also believed that people understood that trade needed to occur between those states it had identity issues with, and that a functioning Greek economy was better for Macedonia. However, Greece wanted the name dispute to continue for its own internal political mobilization. 

And as such, these were there results of my interviews in Skopje in 2012.

Social Democracy in Post-Communist States (3/5)

Defining Social Democracy

Social democracy in its present form is the result of over hundred and fifty years of evolution, and breaks from its Marxist origins. Its ties to Marxism were broken after the October Revolution in 1917 in Russia because socialists disagreed on the means to reach socialism. There were those who sided with the revolutionary socialists in the ilk of the October Revolution, and there were those who preferred the democratic means to achieve similar goals. After this split, the former began to call themselves ‘communist’ whereas the latter became known as ‘democratic socialists’. This further evolved to become social democracy, as we know today (Andrew Heywood, and Bruno Coppieters and Kris Deschouwer).  Andrew Heywood states that ‘The social democratic tradition has therefore come to stand for a broad balance between the market economy on the one hand, and state intervention on the other.’ Although this is a theoretical development of social democracy, I seek to work with the definition of social democracy, advocated by Bruno Coppieters and Kris Deschouwer, in its practice as a social movement, an ideology and a type of society. I will focus specifically on the first two criteria.

The social movement is the unity of the wider, organised working class in political parties and trade unions. As a process it has its origins in the emergence of social cleavages as a result of the industrial revolution, and has developed and become institutionalised over the course of a hundred and fifty years advancing its causes slowly. However, this did not occur in the East. Reform was rapid and cleavages were blurry - hampered by other divisions, such as ethnicity, so as to weaken the movement. Ideologically, social democracy advocated a classless society like the communists, but this then altered after World War II to advocate an expansion of the welfare state within a liberal capitalist framework. Yet in the East, ‘socialism’ became discredited even when the ideological content was capitalist and populist. The transition saw a clash of principles where marketisation and economic liberalism rolled back the role of the state, especially in social welfare.   So social democracy developed into two different concepts between East and West based on its experiences of development, although they both face similar challenges today. These two defining features of social democracy will enable me to address its current form in Macedonia. Primarily, the point here is that one cannot directly or fairly compare the nature of social democracy in the East with that of the West.

The Socialist International experienced this problem of definition after the collapse of communism, when admitting members to the social democratic family. This is because the fluidity of the transition hasn’t harboured an environment to make lasting decisions, the concept of ‘left’ is defined differently in the East in ideological/policy terms, the differences between new and successor social democrats within a state make a decision difficult as to the trajectory of the party in the future, as well as a general inability by the populations to differentiate between revolutionary and democratic socialism. Hence a decision upon successor parties is based on the way they have structurally changed. This is evident in who these parties appeal to for support, the composition of their membership, and an experience of internal ideological splits due to democratisation. But the effects of these could lead to nationalist tendencies, the emergence of a small social democratic group within the parties led by individuals who are younger, and a pull to a strong party centre to maintain unity. However one observation by Heinz Timmerman is that successor parties retained a conservative approach to the economy during transition, albeit this may have altered since. Therefore, ‘social democratisation’ as a process of change within the successor parties can allow me to judge how far along this process the SDUM is at present.

Communist Successor Parties and their Legacies

Building on this issue of communist successor parties, as it is highly relevant given the SDUMs heritage, I look to arguments developed in Bozoki and Ishiyama’s ‘The Communist Successor Parties of Central and Eastern Europe’. In their opening chapter, they look at the transformation of political identities that these parties undertook during democratisation through the strategies they employed. The typology of four party positions comes from whether the party is still Marxist or not, and whether it is transmuted or not. Factors that impact on the strategy that is followed are either environmental or internal organisational. The former rests on the reaction a party has to certain stimuli such as election results or vying to dominate political space on the left from similar contenders. The latter, on the other hand, depends on whether the party is a mass or cadre party (as to whom can change its identity), the attitude of the former regime whilst in power, and events during the transition including the carry over of party personnel and internal ideological struggles. Therefore, Bozoki and Ishiyama write, ‘the evolution of the adaptation strategies of the successor parties can be seen as both the product of the interaction between political performance on the one hand and the internal organizational characteristics of the successor parties, on the other.’ These points will allow me to re-evaluate the party within the typology outlined to assess its current strategy.

Yet, it is the existence of legacies which allow me to return to the period prior to independence because ‘If epistemological criteria for causal explanation require a minimum of temporal causal depth, only institutions, structures, processes, and actions that antedate the “proximate” events of the transition qualify as the ultimate causal variables of regime change.’ (Herbert Kitschelt) Yet these legacies do not overcome exogenous ‘shocks’ and internal party maneuverings of ambitious politicians. Understanding the impact of legacies, in their variety, upon the party today helps to assess the extent to which the SDUM are hostages to their legacies, if at all. Kitschelt’s typology of predicting the strategies and organisations of communist successor parties starts his causal chain from the era around World War I. The variables include: the strength of precommunist political society, the professionalization of the state apparatus, whether it was a newly independent country seeking Western support, if the party strategy was programmatic or clientelistic, its ideological clarity, its electoral support, the ratio of members to voters and citizens, as well as the extent of internal party centralization. He describes Macedonia’s typology as ‘paternal communism’, a group marked different because of their association with independence movements.

The impact of legacies on the strategies of the Macedonian successor party show that because they emerged from dominant ethnic rulers, the regional leaders turned to independence, democratisation and reform. Because of weak precommunist political society and a weak state apparatus there was no mobilisation in opposition to communism, and the party was partial to promote clientelistic practices. This may have stymied the ideological renewal of the party. Yet a consociational form of governance possibly cut across these legacies because of internal ethnic divisions, external threats and international instability.

Those in the three-tiered hierarchy of the party may have felt the impact of legacies in the organization of the Macedonian successor party. The leaders (first tier) in newly independent states could expect support for politico-economic reform. The middle ranking bureaucracy (second tier) could lose out, so some may leave parties governed by reformists, as was the case in Macedonia. The members’ (third tier) incentives to remain would be reduced, but sentimental and clientelistic factors play a role in their staying.  The parties in newly independent states may lose members who lose out to reform and clientelist links, but nationalist-minded supporters will join. This was a consistency in membership during transition. The distribution of power within the organisation is also impacted by legacies because differences in political outlooks of the three tiers of the party may increase or decrease internal democracy. In Macedonia, centralisation has occurred, but wholesale purging of the old guard was avoided by a new membership intake. The link to trade unions is tenuous as they tended to be present in those industries that would lose out from reform, and thus proved problematic to parties who pursued economic liberalization such as Macedonia. But to what extent is this typology assigned to the Macedonian case still relevant today?

The Development and Consolidation of the Macedonian Nation (1/5)

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.’

Thoughts on The Anthropological Field on the Margins of Europe, 1945-1991 by Aleksandar Boskovic and Chris Hann

Anthropology – the study of humanity – has a well-argued history over the nature of the discipline.  Can it be objective, when it’s the product of an author that is to some extent subjective? Can the observed group of people really open up to the researcher about their ways of life?  To what extent do ideologies intersect with anthropology to shape what is studied, how it is studied, and ‘when’ it was studied? In this book, the central question is to what extent anthropology has been swayed by nationalism, and later socialism, in its development as a discipline.

The interplay in this book is between western ideas of anthropology merging in with local practices of folklore, ethnology and ethnography. It also looks at the dichotomy of local and foreign anthropologists (and folklorists) and their impact on the nature of the discipline in each country, all under differing conditions of nationalism, socialism and levels of intrusion by the state.

One of the keys to understanding this text is to have an awareness of the political climate during the period, and the tumult that occurred. The examples range from orthodox communism as in Albania, through to conservative militaristic rule as was the case for a while in Greece, and via Titoism in Yugoslavia – all having periods of strict then relaxed impositions of ideology, with some having changes in ideology too. But the one process that they all went through was democratization, the end date of this book.

Yet, underneath the political clouds above, there were clashes between those who practiced the different methods of the study of humanity – whether in the present or historically.  For many, this book will read as an emergence from the outmoded ways of the study of folklore towards the western standard of social and cultural anthropology. Or, in other words, a move from an inward looking study of oneself, to one where comparison with others takes precedence. Nationalism or, more specifically, the extent to which the state reifies the dominant nation, is evident when looking at which communities are studied by folklorists/anthropologists.

The first example of this is Greece, where an oscillation of direction within the folkloric/anthropological field occurred. These have been strongly tied to the political leadership of the country, swaying between conservative dominance harking to a more folkloric unveiling of the past of Greek people, to the reformist Government in the late 1950s wanting state to have a modern vision and the ‘other’ to be studied. And back again. As the 21^st century approached, the education of students in western universities saw social anthropology being brought into Greece more pro-actively, but still having to compete with the historic and entrenched folklore of the past.

In Albania, the epistemological debates were secondary to historical materialism, relying heavily on a Marxist version of history, to draw up an ethnographic/ethnological narrative derived from Engels. Again the narrative was used to explain how ‘ancient’ the Albanians were by exploring folklore, yet while wanting to discover folkloric artefacts, the ideology also wanted it banished. Strict adherence to the one party state was obligatory, and thus no other methods of anthropology were explored.

Although under Socialism and with Marxist thought being the favourite methodology and practice, studying communities didn’t properly emerge in Slovenia until the late 1940s, and even then folklore and ethnology was dominant, as it was pre World War II. This detailed material, social and spiritual culture via a classificatory system and through collecting artefacts. After World War II there were no paradigms or theoretical perspectives to follow, so collection took priority over interpretation. From the 1950s onwards, academic trips and contacts began to occur, albeit limited. But this led individuals to move towards ethnology and the methods of analysis of daily culture and phenomena, allowing students in the 1970s and beyond to study and develop the variety of subjects they could discover.

Macedonia is probably one of the more intriguing because of its history prior to 1945 being that of a contested area by Albanians, Bulgarians, Greeks and Serbs.  The forbearers to anthropology all had a ‘nationalising’ slant to their work.  During socialism, Macedonia had to contend with the 4 established nation-states around it assessing it, claiming it, whilst looking for areas of similarity in order to acquire it. But the authors look more at how knowledge was produced in the work of the academics, and how politics had penetrated deeply their modes of working. Although the paradigm shifted from socialism to ethno-nationalism during this period, the two approaches of folklore and ethnology still worked on creating and recreating the nationhood of Macedonians.

One key observation is that this book buys-in to the ‘national narrative’ because the states that had a settled will of how anthropology should be researched, always saw the limits of its own borders as the limits of research. The investigation into the origins and development of the nation became the task these academics were enrolled in, irrespective of the name given to them by their methodology; social anthropologist, folklorist etc. Each state had a dominant nation, and those communities who could be studied had to confirm and reconfirm the uniqueness of that nation, irrespective if the political leaders were socialist or conservative. This is still the case after democratisation.

When reading anthropological texts, one should always place into context the time of writing and the persuasion of the author. One can never be purely objective, whether that is when classifying cultural or material objects, or when analysing and describing social relations and rituals in a community. As humans, we have our own unique perspective of the world, and base our judgments of the meaning of objects, rituals, and relations from that perspective. Whether from the community or foreign to it, the meanings will be different, and over time can and will change.  So by accepting the subjectivity of this social science, we can develop our own interpretation of those studied peoples, which have themselves been re-interpreted by the social scientists in a myriad of ways.