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.

Independence, the ‘Transition’ and the Road to Ohrid (2/5)

The communist period had no bearing on the wider discussion on social democracy in its development or present state, other than on the impact of communist legacies from this period, which is highly relevant and will be pursued. Avoiding to address the causes of the collapse of communism, as this event was in no way influenced by social democracy, allows us to look at this as an historical fact in its influence upon social democracy, in that the League of Communists transformed into the later named Social Democratic Union of Macedonia and so social democracy could have parliamentary expression. 

Kiro Gligorov - First President of the Republic of Macedonia

Enter Democracy

Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott see that ‘democracy is a political system in which the formal and actual leaders of the government are chosen within regular intervals through elections based on a comprehensive adult franchise with equally weighted voting, multiple candidacies, secret balloting, and other procedures, such as freedom of the press and assembly, that ensure real opportunities for electoral competition.’ However, from this come many variables as to the practice of democracy, not just in Macedonia, but the world over. Further to this, these practices will, and often do, change over time. Hence there is a need to avoid applying non-communist democratization processes to post-communist states, as their experiences are starkly different. Dawisha and Parrott note these variables include the international discourse relating to democratization at the time, whether a state exists or needs to be created, the homogeneity of the population, the extent of political participation, the nature of the party and electoral systems, the legacies of communist elites in the new era, the functioning of political society and culture, and economic liberalization. However, for democracy to function an awareness of, and adherence to, the rules of the game is needed; a major component of this is the ability to accept defeat (Ghia Nodia). Yet, independence is linked to democracy via nationalism according to Ghia Nodia: ‘Whether we like it or not, nationalism is the historical force that has provided the political units for democratic government.’ Thus independence, even if only covering part of the Macedonian nation, fulfilled the political goal of nationalism, and thus provided a space for democracy to function. Nationalism has been said to be able to either unite or divide a country, but a state that has to cater for a sizeable ‘other’ nation within its borders creates problems in the configuring of that state.

A State for the Nation?

During the transition to multi-party elections a debate on how to define the constitution of the new independent Republic of Macedonia emerged. The choice was simple; either an ethnic state for the Macedonian nation, which nationalists wanted and even sought to extend its boundaries to their brethren in Greece and Bulgaria, or a push for a civic state of individual citizens. The balance was between group rights and individual rights, but fundamentally it was about inclusion and exclusion. President Gligorov had to balance the demands of nationalists on both sides of the ethnic divide who thought in group terms. However, the result didn’t appease either side and highlights the downside to democracy. Donald Horowitz states that ‘The problems of inclusion and exclusion do not disappear when new institutions are being adopted and put into operation. At these points, conceptions of the scope of the political community will limit the participation of some groups in the institutions of the new regime.’ Therefore the ethnic divide that derived from nation building prior to independence, acted as the cleavage with which to include and exclude people using citizenship, when debating the relationship between the state and the nation(s) in the constitution during democratization. 

However, ethnic conflict was avoided, unlike elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia. A model for explaining this from Gojko Vuckovic involves two dichotomies, the first are ethnic violence and ethnic accommodation, and the second are whether integration or disintegration results. The alignment of certain variables place states, at different times, within this matrix. Macedonia during the transition managed to resist ethnic violence and disintegration by functioning within a multiethnic state system through bargaining between the groups. Given that democracy is in essence competition, the management of these divisions expressed during competition is necessary in an ethnically divided society.

Development of the Electoral and Party Systems

The role of the electoral and party systems, which are interlinked, initially helped eased tensions because this is where groups or individuals engage in the democratic process. Yet set in an ethnic frame, these became institutionalized and thus hard to change in the future. The electoral system after independence elected officials via a two round system, it then moved to a mixed one with elements of proportional representation, to one of full proportional representation for the 2000 elections (Peter Emerson and Jakub Sedo). Although democratic in theory, the definition of democracy, as previously illustrated, was open to interpretation. The setting of constituency boundaries is one mechanism by which ethnic divisions and exclusion can be fostered, either by grouping ethnicities separately or by demographically engineering a mono-ethnic victory in a mixed area (Horowitz). Given the minority status of the Albanians, numbering 25.1% of the population in 2001, they could never achieve power at the national level alone. So it became an unspoken rule, then codified in 2001, that the winning ethnic Macedonian party would include Albanians in the coalition. However, this is assuming that ethnic groups vote for ethnic parties, which sadly was the case in the 1990s and beyond. There remains an element of ideological difference between the two dominant ethnic Macedonian parties, yet all parties were more or less led by identifiable leaders of an ethnic type. In summary, Lenard Cohen and John Lampe state ‘Questions of party ideology or socioeconomic cleavages between the two largest ethnic Macedonian parties have been less important. There has been considerable partisan identification by adherents within the two parties, and a low rate of voter movement between the two organizations.’

So what we have are two mutually supportive processes whereby an ethnically divided party system is supported by a proportionally representative electoral system that reifies ethnic difference and exclusion, which gradually come to institutionalize ethnic politics in the state. This consociational form of government, as detailed by Arend Lijphart, may not provide majority rule but it ultimately provides stability, and that is its purpose. This stability rests on the attitudes of the political elites along with the type of political culture and extant subsystem autonomy in action. Pessimistically, this insinuates that a move to an ideologically based party politics will be difficult because of this institutionalization. This I will approach further on. However, debates on minorities in the party systems have failed to address minorities within dominant parties in multi-ethnic societies.

The Conflict over Macedonia™ 

Since independence, disputes over the unique identity of ethnic Macedonians have fed both internal ethnic divisions and external foreign relations, leading to a test of the country’s stability. The perceived threats were to the cultural, historical and ethnic nature of Macedonian identity and thus seen as a threat to the security of the state itself.

Ulf Brunnbauer’s polemic on historiography in Macedonia argues that during socialism, the task of creating the Macedonian nation was ongoing, yet after socialism’s collapse it actually intensified. He believes that this is because there was a need to provide continuity, in the economy and administration, which included the sciences. The creation of myths aided by historians could not go against this continual nation building, so it progressed. But its foundations were in the very period mentioned earlier, immediately after the Second World War. So Brunnbauer argues that in the 1990s ‘Any Macedonian national narrative that wanted to present the events on the territory of “Macedonia” as Macedonian national history was bound to come into conflict with these older historiographies.’ Greece was the main threat to Macedonian nationhood. The disputes ranged from what the independent state should be called and the design of the flag, to the more recent claim to Alexander the Great in order to trace the history of present day Macedonians to ‘ancient Macedon’. From the Greek perspective, this highlighted Macedonian expansionist intent for northern Greece. According to Loring Danforth, underlying impacts such the suspension of economic relations by Greece in 1994, international recognition of the republic, and the situation of Macedonians outside its borders all added to Macedonia’s problems stemming from its identity crisis. Ultimately ‘the Macedonian Question is a symbolic conflict that centers on the construction (or production) of conflicting ethnocentric national narratives.’ (Roudometof). This links to Hobsbawm and Ranger’s thesis on the invention of traditions, and is built upon the definition of where Macedonia is and the historical origins of the nation, which I tackled in the previous chapter. 

An important point to note is that by the time of independence, everyone under forty five years of age had been born within this Macedonian national culture. So, irrespective of claims to the ‘creation’ of Macedonians, this is what people were socialized into, how they understood their history, and went about ‘existing’ as a nation with a state in the 1990s and beyond.

Ethnic Division and the Pull of Nationalism

As the 1990’s came to a close, along with the symbolic contest with Greece, ethnic tensions within Macedonia began to increase. During this period, UNPROFOR then UNPREDEP was in the country providing stability and peace at the request of the President. However, their departure in 1999 along with the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo led to a renewed politicization of the ethnic Albanians domestically. The binary of inclusion and exclusion were in evidence during this period and reflective in the processes and discourses previously outlined. Strikingly leaders didn’t want independence or incorporation into Albania. Instead they grew tired of the political system that had not answered their calls for Albanian rights. These issues included language and education rights, one important example being the request for a university in Tetovo taught in the Albanian language. The failure of the system, the political parties as actors within this system, and of events outlined, altered the variables that kept the peace, which led to a challenge to the state’s stability. ‘Feelings of insecurity and lingering threat perceptions also contributed to the Macedonian majority’s reluctance to respond favorably to Albanian demands for expanded rights in the areas of education, language and state employment.’ (Jenny Engström). The incompatibility of Albanian nationalist demands with that of Macedonian nationalism present in the state, as well as the feeling of inclusion and exclusion from the state and access to power, led to a security dilemma and conflict (Thomas Hylland Eriksen). The unrest was situated in the Albanian areas, and the guerilla forces were clashing with Macedonian state forces. A political solution was fashioned and agreed by the two ethnic Macedonian parties and two ethnic Albanian parties at the time in 2001. The deal fulfilled the demands sought by Albanians the previous decade involved in the parliamentary process, but had now been accepted after violent conflict, and resulted in the National Liberation Army leader, Ali Ahmeti, entering the formal political system. But of importance was the fact that the state remained intact and the decentralization of power was agreed as a solution to end perceived ethnic oppression. However, ‘the decentralization model in Macedonia did little to de-ethnicize political loyalties or transcend intergroup conflicts…’ (Cohen and Lampe)

During this period a political culture developed, but one that may not have been suited to the changing situations in the country. A delicate balance of factors and pressures meant that although nationalist sentiments could be observed in the politics of the country, ethnic conflict was avoided for a considerable period. It was when the equilibrium between these factors altered that led to conflict.

Thoughts on Gerald Creed's 'Masquerade and Postsocialism: Ritual andCultural Dispossession in Bulgaria'

2014 saw the relaxation of the transition controls that were imposed on Bulgaria after it was accepted into the EU as a mechanism to reduce the number of workers who travelled west seeking employment. Whilst this has been at the forefront of British media and political discourse over the past two months, and with it this notion that large swathes of Bulgarians teeming at the border eager to plant themselves in the UK, this refreshing text enlightens us with the converse notion. Creed returns to the villages of Bulgaria and their remaining residents to observe the annual celebratory events known as kukeri or survakari, and seeks to place them in their new postsocialist, globalised setting.

Kukeri, or mumming as it is known in English, is as striking in its visual display as it is unique in the rituals that it follows in the early months of the New Year. Creed, in his general introductory observations, describes the participants as usually having masks, furs, bells, a staff, and an assortment of other props. A usual celebration lasts a day or two, and starts from the making of the masks or the unpacking of ones from past events. The acts that make up this event consist, in varying order, of a procession, a ritual dance around a fire in an open space in the village, trips to nearby villages or visitors from them to perform together, setting up road blocks for ‘donations’, but all contain a central event – the procession around each of the houses in the village.

Each participant is assigned a different role, and each has their part to play during the proceedings. Even these adhere to village specific protocols. All the participants are traditionally men, their varying roles including the bride, the groom, a priest, an arap or gypsy, a bear and bear tamer, as well as other carnivalesque figures. He describes many visits, ranging from those residents accepting them cheerfully; to those who are obviously not playing the game, to those who lavish food, brandy and paper money or those less able that provide eggs, beans or coins to the guests. Mocking of the people or property through pinching or throwing yard furniture around is to be expected. The perishable booty is then consumed and money counted in the evening. This could be repeated the next day.

What Creed then does is go one to describe in more detail individual rituals but in the context of four themes: Gender and sexuality, civil society and democracy, autonomy and community, and ethnicity and nationalism. On the first, he looks at how gender relations have evolved through socialism and postsocialism, and how the mumming ritual took on or replaced lost symbolic meanings for men as women became more equal. Also, since socialism departed a Western image of homosexuality arrived and began to alter the way in which an all male troupe saw their innocent comradeship, especially centered on the transvestite bride.  Katherine Verdery and Jane Sugarman in their commanding review for the Slavic Review (Vol. 71, No. 1 (SPRING 2012), pp. 135-137) focus on Creed’s analysis of masculinity in this context, and highlight his observation that prior to the transition masculinity was a ‘whole’ and took on many behaviours, but now rested on a continuum whereby being a lesser ‘man’ equates with new ‘feminized’ behaviours. The homogenization of gender and sexuality roles is the consequence of postsocialism. In looking at civil society, he takes umbrage at the West’s perception of what civil society does and what it should look like. Mumming, he argues, has taken on this role, as the state withdrew during the transition, and it either retained or nurtured further relations between villagers and villages. Accepting that civil society can be formal and informal, in its interactions with the state, he sees elements of civil society in mumming that the West tend to ignore because he believes it is seen as a premodern ritual in a supposed modern state (i.e. a representative democracy with a formal civil society); and thus not accepted to be included in such classifications.

In terms of the third theme, he observes the paradoxes of conflict and atomization & community that the rituals express in social relations in the village. On the one hand social relations express conflict – over booty, over who plays what roles, between the performers and the villagers in their homes, or between rival groups. But it also showcases unity – in the face of ‘outsiders’ such as other village troupes, arguments between families actually underscore their unity as a ‘village’ through the autonomy and interdependence of households. Finally, in addressing ethnicity and nationalism, he looks at the character of the gypsy in the mumming ritual along side the inclusion of Roma in the events themselves. Although inclusion was ambivalent with racism still present, mumming allowed Roma to participate because indigenous Roma (according to the villagers) were ‘their’ Roma. However, the threat to inclusion was always from those who returned and never interacted with the Roma on a daily basis, anchored in ethnic Bulgarian feelings of national inferiority. And so Creed ends by mourning the modernizing trends in mumming ritual and appearance, as a result of the transition from socialism and the penetration of Euro-American norms.

Creed’s text does provide a provocative insight into one cultural event that Bulgarian’s enact by weaving it into a polemic on the legacies of socialism, the ‘transition’ and the difficulties of postsocialism for the ‘village’ and villagers. But by describing mumming as ‘modernity in drag’ he does perhaps pine too much for what he sees as a ritual that had better days before it, and perhaps even under socialism. But he does this not from a rose tinted view of the ‘golden age of mumming’, but more as a critique of how Western imaginings, assumptions and concepts have altered the symbolism and meanings the rituals had as they were carried out by the mummers. I would argue though that the cultural value of the ritual must still be worth something if villagers continue to practice it, even if it has ‘modernised’ in its attempt to be more Western. And this chimes with Creed’s pursuit to account for the increase in the practice of mumming. The fact that the celebration takes place owes much to the value it has to the participants and the observers, many who travel home to witness it, despite the overarching postsocialist and neoliberal challenges to it from outside ‘the village’.