Nationalism as Ideology: A Reflection on the Group Remaking Tendencies in Macedonia

Master Thesis

for the award of the academic degree of Master of Arts (MA)

at the Karl-Franzens-University of Graz

submitted by:

Branimir Staletovik

at the Centre for Southeast European Studies

Supervisor: Univ. Professor Florian Bieber

Graz, 2015 Table of Contents Introduction...... 1 The Rise of Nationalism in Macedonia...... 1 Chapter I: Nationalism as Ideology ...... 5 Antiquization and Skopje 2014 – a critical reflection on the existing approaches ...... 5 From Identity to Ideology ...... 8 Beyond Identity...... 10 Nationalism as Ideology ...... 13 Thesis Goals and Methods ...... 16 Nationalism in Macedonia and the Post-Yugoslav States...... 18 Chapter II: The evolvement of ancient narrative in Macedonia and ‘diaspora’...... 24 A Historical Reflection on the Development of Ancient Narrative in the Balkans and Macedonia ...... 24 Diaspora Nationalism...... 30 Chapter III: The ancient narrative in independent Macedonia – why narrative shift did not occur? ...... 38 Macedonian Context ...... 39 Between Structure and Agency ...... 48 Chapter IV: “Antiquization campaign” and shift of dominant national narrative ...... 53 Post-conflict Macedonia ...... 54 Agency, Nationalism and State ...... 56 Nationalism as Ideology – “Antiquization” and “Skopje 2014”...... 61 The Dissemination of the Ancient Narrative and Ideologisation Process ...... 63 Beyond Nation-Building and Identity ...... 70 Concluding Remarks ...... 72 Bibliography ...... 75 Abstract This thesis examines the recent rise of nationalism in Macedonia, which unprecedentedly highlights the importance of ancient symbolism and narrative. The central focus lies on the process of narrative shift, that is, a tendency to make the ancient narrative a dominant national narrative. I tried to show that the scholars’ focus in this regard is predominantly structural, which prevent us from a comprehensive analysis of the Macedonian case. While acknowledging the significance of larger factors, I tried to explain the ongoing phenomenon by focusing on the role of agency and state. Moreover, unlike the state of art in this regard, I attempt to argue that the rise of nationalism in Macedonia is better explainable by looking at ideology, rather than ‘identity’ and ‘nation-building’.

Zusammenfassung In dieser Arbeit wird der jüngste Aufstieg von Nationalismus in Mazedonien analysiert, der wie nie zuvor, die Bedeutung antiker Symbole und Narrativen unterstreicht. Der zentrale Fokus dieser Studie liegt auf dem “Narrativ-Transfer” Prozess, bzw. auf der Tendenz das antike Narrativ zum dominanten nationalen Narrativ in Mazedonien zu hervorzuheben. In der Arbeit habe ich versucht auf bisherige Forschungen in diesem Themenbereich einzugehen, welche hauptsächlich Struktur-fokussiert sind. Während diese Analyse einen sozial-politischen Kontext in den Vordergrund stellt, liegt der Hauptfokus auf der Rolle von regierenden Eliten und dem Staat. Im Vergleich zur bisherigen Forschung über das Thema des „neuen mazedonischen Nationalismus“, demonstriert diese Arbeit, dass man den Nationalismus in Mazedonien besser durch Ideologie verstehen und erklären kann, und weniger durch die Kategorien, wie „Identität“ und/oder „Nation-Building.“ INTRODUCTION

The Rise of Nationalism in Macedonia Before I reflect on the recent rise of nationalism in Macedonia championed by the ruling conservative party VMRO-DPMNE, which unprecedentedly highlights the importance of the ancient past, events and heroes, I would like to clarify what I mean by the “rise of nationalism.” This does not imply that the nationalism was present in a (significantly) smaller-scale before the VMRO-DPMNE took the power in Macedonia, nor that the nationalism has to be discussed as a detrimental and violent force. As a matter of fact, as we have learned from Michael Billig’s banal nationalism,1 Ernest Gelner’s account of nationalism as a product of modernity,2 but also from other studies reflecting on the everyday nationalism,3 as well as from Siniša Malešević’s thesis on nationalism as a dominant operative ideology of modernity,4 it would be misleading to reduce nationalism to retrograde and conflict nature. This view dominates in political and journalistic discourses, yet, things seem to be far more complex. In order to approach nationalism methodologically and conceptually better, it is of crucial importance to avoid moral connotation surrounding it. This, however, does not mean that we should avoid criticizing and condemning its conflictual potential. To the contrary, we shall be able to better understand its ubiquitousness – and condemning it accordingly if necessary – if we conceptualize it beyond the violent and retrograde assumptions often ascribed to it. As Billig observes:

“Analysts, such as Giddens, are reserving the term ‘nationalism’ for outbreaks of ‘hot’ nationalist passion, which arise in times of social disruption and which are reflected in extreme social movements. In so doing, they are pointing to a recognizable phenomenon – indeed, one which is all too familiar in the contemporary world. The problem is not what such theories describe as nationalist, but what they omit. If the term nationalism is applied only to forceful social movements, something slips from theoretical awareness.5[…] It

1 Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage Publications, 1995). 2 Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983). 3 See for example, Jon E. Fox and Cynthia Miller-Idriss, “Everyday Nationhood,” Ethnicities 8, 4 (2008); also Tim Ederson, National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life (New York: Berg, 2002). 4 Siniša Malešević, Identity as Ideology: Understanding Ethnicity and Nationalism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). 5 Billig, Banal Nationalism, 44.

1 would seem more likely that the identity is part of a more banal way of life in the nation- state.6

The last sentence I quoted implies that the real strength of nationalism might lie exactly in this banal and non-disputed form that takes ‘national identity’ for granted, without even contesting and wondering about its reality. It suggests that the nation-state is a both natural and normative environment. In this sense, nationalism might not be endangered as it is in times of smaller or larger (violent) ethno-national conflicts, which, in turn, makes it less likely to be harmed or lost. However, the line between “banal” and “hot” nationalism sometimes is very thin, and further empirical insights of when and how nationalism evolves into a violent action are of essential analytical importance.7 One of the examples for this kind of ‘everyday nationalism’ is a massive urban project called “Skopje 2014.” With over 130 monuments and dozens of newly erected buildings “Skopje 2014” offers to the citizens an exceptional experience, and in this way communication with nationalism on daily basis. However, the banality of the project, often interpreted through the “disneyfication” phenomenon, has been producing tensions and divisions in the society, suggesting that the line between the ‘banal’ and detrimental nationalism is not always that fine indeed. I will reflect on this issue later when discussing the project “Skopje 2014”. Before that, it is necessary to acknowledge that this urban undertaking is considered to be a part of the larger process called by the opposition and opponents as an “antiquization campaign.”8 This process attempts to prove the presumed linkage between ancient Macedonia(ns) and today’s Macedonia(ns).9 This has been carried out through invention of new traditions, introducing a new popular discourse and symbols, a shift in the historical production, re-naming streets, squares, airports and highways after ancient heroes, to culminate with the massive

6 Ibid., 46. 7 See for example the case of Gostivar I discuss in page 41-2 in this thesis; The term “banal” and “hot” nationalism has been introduced by Billig, Banal Nationalism; see also Malešević’s study that objects the dominant perception of nationalism as an intrinsically violent action, in Siniša Malešević, “Is Nationalism Intrinsically Violent?,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 19, 1 (2013). 8 Boris Georgievski, “Ghost of the Past Endanger Macedonia’s future,” Balkan Insight, October 27, 2009, accessed December 10, 2015, http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/ghosts-of-the-past-endanger- macedonia-s-future. 9 Anastas Vangeli, “Nation-building Ancient Macedonian style: the Origins and Effects of the so-called Antiquization in Macedonia,” Nationalities Papers 39, 1 (2011): 13.

2 intervention in the built environment. Anastas Vangeli sees similarity with what Eric Hobsbawm called a “mass producing traditions” in the Third French Republic and Second German Empire.10 Several monuments to ancient figures have been erected in Skopje, among them is the 23 meters high monument to Alexander the Great, encircled by warriors, that dominates the main square in the Macedonian capital. Both “Skopje 2014” and “antiquization campaign” are phenomena which I will be analysing in this thesis. Both are shaped by unprecedented need for ancient symbolism that marks the rise of nationalism in Macedonia.

In the first chapter of this thesis, I develop the theoretical and research framework. I reflect on the state of art when it comes to the nationalism in Macedonia by showing scholars’ structural prevalence and relying on language of identity and nation-building when explaining the nationalism in Macedonia. Drawing on Rogers Brubaker as well as on Siniša Malešević, I am pointing out the overextensive usage of identity in the social sciences. In this sense, I build a research framework that shall enable me to move the focus from identity towards ideology. In the second chapter of this thesis, I am reflecting on the historical evolvement of the myth of Alexander the Great in the Balkans and Macedonia. Furthermore, I examine the role of the ‘diaspora’ by trying to assess the reasons behind the cultivation of the ancient narrative among Macedonians in Australia. I also point out their role in fostering the narrative of remote past in independent Macedonia. One of the central arguments taken by scholars dealing with the “antiquization campaign” and “Skopje 2014” centres on the fact that these phenomena are primarily a product of the external and internal “identity threats”, more precisely, a response to the frustration from the Bucharest NATO Summit held in 2008, when Greece blocked Macedonia’s bid to the Euro- Atlantic organization. However, when we look at this issue through the relational nexus with other nationalisms we may encounter an empirical puzzle. One of the questions that is omitted from the discussion on “antiquization” is why this policy is taking place in this particular period and not in the nineties when the “threats” were far more detrimental for the

10 Vangeli, Nation-building; Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: University Press, 1983).

3 Macedonian state. This puzzle invites us to pay more attention on the role of agency in shaping the rise of nationalism in Macedonia. Accordingly, in the third chapter, I am examining the question of why in the situation of persistent tensions the ancient narrative was not comprehensively diffused in the nineties. In this regard, I discuss the role of both structure and agency. The last chapter is the central part of this thesis, in which I discuss the reasons behind the narrative shift. I am focusing on the role of the agency, state and ideology in formatting the newly risen nationalism in Macedonia. I paid particular attention on the role of ideology, more precisely, on the process of ideologisation discernible in the ‘antiquization campaign” and “Skopje 2014.” Lastly, I critically approach the notions of ‘identity’ and ‘nation- building’ by asserting that the rise of nationalism in Macedonia has more to do with power, agency and ideology than with ‘identity-constructing’ or ‘nation-building’. In the final chapter, I sum up the main points tackled in this thesis. I try to point out some points for further researches as well as the limitation of this work. Lastly, I suggest that Siniša Malešević‘s model for studying operative ideology can be broaden by looking at the architectural forms of ideological expression.

4 Chapter I. Nationalism as Ideology

Antiquization and Skopje 2014 – a critical assessment of existing approaches The recent rise of nationalism in Macedonia has attracted a lot of attention both on domestic and international level.11 There is a growing body of academic literature addressing what Anastas Vangeli termed as “new Macedonism”.12 In an attempt to explain these phenomena, scholars are primarily relying on language of identity and nation-building. Thus, Goran Janev in his analysis on project “Skopje 2014”, argues that “[t]his narrative space is purposefully created to counter the Greek denial”, adding that the “project is about asserting Macedonian identity at a time when it is under threat because of the name issue.”13 Similarly, Nade Proeva perceives the evoking of ancient past as “a reaction on the negation on the part of other neighbours”, while Katerina Kolozova claims that “[t]he insistence on incorporating Macedonian ancient history into the formation of the contemporary Macedonian identity, seems to be an evident response to the frustration caused by the events that took place at the Bucharest NATO Summit in 2008.”14 Petar Atanasov notes that “the effect of non-recognition of full Macedonian national identity, especially vis-à-vis Greek objections, directly influences and reinforces the shift towards the ethnogenesis of the

11 Katerina Kolozova et.al., Skopje 2014 Project and its effects on the Perception of Macedonian Identity Among the Citizens in Skopje (Institute of social sciences and humanities, 2013); Goran Janev, “Skopje 2014: Instrumentalizing Heritage for Unexpected Results,” Cultures of History (N.N) ; Morten Dehli Andreassen, “If you don’t Vote for VMRO-DPMNE you’re not Macedonian: A Study of Macedonian Identity and National Discourse in Skopje.” (Master thesis, University of Bergen, 2011); Nade Proeva, “Savremeni Makedonski Mit kao odgovor na nacionalne mitove suseda: albanski panilirizam, bugarski pantrakizam i grčki panhelenizam,” Zgodovinski Časopis 64, 141 (2010); Katerina Mojanchevska an Maine Pieter Van Dijk, “A Future of the Past: Disjunction between Urban and Cultural Policy Planners in the City of Skopje” (N.N); Petar Atanasov, “Antiquization and the Macedonian National Identity: Three examples one explanation,” (Proceedings from the International scientific conference, Central and Eastern European Library, 2012); Vangeli, Nation- building; Robert Pichler, “Staging the Nation: “Skopje 2014”and the Claim for Recognition” (A photographic Art, 2014); Andrew Graan, “Counterfeiting the Nation? Skopje 2014 and the Politics of Nation Branding in Macedonia,” Cultural Antropology 28, 1 (2013); Aleksandar Sazdovski, “Effects of Security Discourse on Post-Conflict Nation-Building: the Case of Macedonia” (Master thesis, Central European University, Budapest, 2013); Jasna Koteska, “Troubles with History”: Skopje 2014,” Art Margins, December 29, 2011, accessed December 10, 2015, http://www.artmargins.com/index.php/2-articles/655-troubles-with-history- skopje-2014. 12 Anastas Vangeli, “Antiquity Musing:Reflection on the Greco-Macedonian Symbolic Contest over the Narratives of the Ancient Past” (Master thesis Central European University, Budapest, 2009), see pp. 83-92. 13 Goran Janev, “Ethnocratic remaking of public space”- Skopje 2014,” Efla Journal, 35 (2011); Sazdovski offers a similar argument, claiming that the antiquization is a response to the external “identity threats”, in Sazdovski, Effects of Security Discourse. 14 Kolozova, Skopje 2014 Project, 35.

5 Macedonian nation”, maintaining that “the search for antique roots is the third wave of defence.”15 Anastas Vageli reflects on the origins and functions of the ancient past in Greece and Macedonia. He argues that Macedonia and Greece have entered into a symbolic conflict over the legacy of the ancient past in 1991. The conflict went through different phases, whose dynamic Vangeli observes through an interdependent relationship.16 One of the reasons for introducing contemporary antiquization in Macedonia is the symbolic capital of the ancient past, which, according to Vangeli, may inspire political movements, serve as an effective mechanism for political mobilization, and legitimize the ruling elites.17 Moreover, it is an “escapist” mechanism, which by promoting the glorious past aims at distracting the citizens from the difficulties of the present. Furthermore, it has an anti-communist and anti- Albanian appeal, as it negates the significance of the communist legacy and huge Albanian community living there. It brands the nation-state on international level. It provides “identity transfer”, “initiating the redefinition from one set of dominant narratives to another” i.e. from slavic to ancient.18 Although Vangeli reflects comprehensively on the functions of antiquization, it is not clear from his analysis what is the relationship between ‘nation-building’ process and ‘antiquization campaign’, more precisely, how and why the recent rise of nationalism is related to the processes of building a ‘nation’. In addition, he does not discuss the question of why there are tendencies to place the ancient narrative on the top of the hierarchy of narratives.19 Although different, the scholars’ accounts of nationalism in Macedonia share a few things in common. First is their structural determination, whereas the role of agency is either acknowledged in passing or is completely neglected. In this respect, the evoking of ancient past has been mostly discussed as a product of geo-political dynamic, while the relationship between state, party and national ideology has been analytically ignored. This is not to object validity of scholars’ argument, but rather to point out that by neglecting agency we

15 Atanasov, Antiquization and the Macedonian National Identity, 1. 16 Drawing on Simon Harrison, Vangeli analysed Macedonian conflict through four phases: valuation contest, proprietary contest, innovation contest and expansionary contest, in Vangeli, Antiquity Musing, 26. 17 Vangeli, Nation-building ancient Macedonian style, 22. 18 Ibid., 23. 19 Thanks for this insight to Professor Florian Bieber.

6 may not be able comprehensively to understand the rise of nationalism in Macedonia. Additionally, ‘antiquization’ has been perceived as a third wave of development of ‘Macedonian identity’.20 By doing so, we may risk falling into the trap of naturalization of social processes and consequently positivism. Secondly, the scholars do not comprehensively explain the rationale behind the narrative shift, primarily due to their focus on the larger factors and the language of identity. The relations with the neighbors, and especially with Greece, were at odds already in the nineties, when Greece put a lot of effort to reject international recognition of Macedonian state. What is more, Greece imposed an economic embargo in 1994, having a direct effect on the material status of the citizens in Macedonia. Yet, this situation did not lead to a response of the kind of ‘antiquization campaign’ and ‘Skopje 2014’. Puzzled by this notion, I will more extensively analyse the role of agency in shaping nationalism in Macedonia. Another analytical issue concerns the conceptual definition of the ‘antiquization campaign’. This phenomenon has been primarily defined as an attempt “based on assumptions that there is a direct link between today’s Macedonians and Ancient Macedonians.”21 Defined in this way, it resembles the discourse articulated by Macedonian nationalists. What slips from the conceptual perception is, however, the state-driven tendency towards a narrative shift, which is the main concern of this study. I define ‘antiquization’ as a primarily political and ideological process instigated by the ruling elite, who tends to make the ancient narrative a dominant national narrative in Macedonia. Accordingly, when referring to the “antiquization process”, I have in mind not only its intensified proliferation and tendency to claim continuity between ancient and today’s Macedonians, but primarily the position it has in the hierarchy of narratives – that of a dominant national narrative. This approach shall yield sociologically more relevant questions, such as, for instance, why there is a narrative shift occurring and why the state insists on modifying the dominant narrative paradigm? Which mechanisms have been used in this regard? What is the role of state, party and academic institution concerning the dominant narrative shift? To which extent the ancient narrative appears in the normative and operative ideology of the ruling

20 Atanasov, Antiquization and the Macedonian National Identity. 21 Vangeli, Nation-building,13.

7 party? Why the ancient narrative has not been comprehensively used as a defense instrument against the internal and external threats in the 1990s?

From Identity to Ideology In the last couple of decades, the concept of ‘identity’ has become an inevitable reference point when commenting, discussing and theorizing group behavior phenomena. In addition to its abundant usage in everyday social life, ‘identity’ gained wide currency in the academia as well.22 In the studies of nationalism and ethnicity is one of the scholars’ central concerns, while being also analytically employed in a number of social disciplines, from sociology, political science, urban studies, economy, to cultural, gender and literal studies. Its extensive usage in social sciences led some critical-oriented scholars to voice concern that the concept has been overused, opening thus the old debate on ‘conceptual stretching’, that is, when a particular category ‘stretches’ to cover new cases and contexts.23 Contemporary usage of ‘identity’, notes Siniša Malešević, grew into a “grand umbrella term”, attempting to explain all emerging phenomena of our world.24 Until this point, scholars theorizing ‘identity’ have developed a variety of approaches seeking to capture its ‘origins’ and functions. It has been analyzed in relation between individuals and groups; as imposed and constructed by the authorities or constituted in social interactions. Some authors are exploring the role of ‘group identity’ in causing social conflicts as well as how through conflicts ‘collective identities’ can be created. As pointed out by Cook-Huffman, ‘identity’ became a dominant concept in explaining social conflict,25 being even treated as a basic human need.26

22According to Siniša Malešević, ‘identity” owes its success the most to the ‘ideological vacuum’created after demise of three dominant concepts: ‘race‘ (after the collapse of Nazism), the ‘national character’ and social/class consciousness (after the end of the Cold War and collapse of the communist block), in chapter one in Malešević, Identity as Ideology. 23 On overuse of identity see the chapter “Beyond Identity,” in Rogers Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2004); On ‘conceptual stretching’ see David Collier and James E. Mahon, “Conceptual “Stretching” Revisited: Adapting Categories in Comparative Analysis,” The American Political Science Review 87, 4 (1993). 24 Malešević, Identity as Ideology, 34. 25 Celia Cook-Huffman, “The Role of Identity in Conflict”, in Handbook of Conflict Analysis and Resolution, ed. Sean Byrne et.al. (London: Routledge, 2009), 20. 26 John Burton holds that identity is one of the four basic human needs, along with security, recognition and personal development, in J.W. Burton, Conflict: Human Needs Theory (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990).

8 The vast theoretical debates on identity prompted sdcholarts to distinguish two approaches of ‘identity’: hard, known also as essentialist, which is related to the so called primordialist and ethno-symbolist tradition (despite some differences between these traditions, they share similar view on categories such as nation, ethnicity and identity); and weak approach of identity, which is associated with the constructivist tradition of thought, and according to which ‘identity’ needs to be re-conceptualized as flexible, changeable, constructed, situational or multiple concept.27 However, these debates, beside their indisputable benefit for the social sciences, led to a number of problematic conceptualizations. Those operating with hard notions of ‘identity’ are subject of criticism due to their essentialism and positivism in analyzing dynamic and contingent historical and social processes. Analyzed as such, ‘identity’ is something that all ‘collectives’ have, or ought to have across time and persons.28 Thus, Anthony Smith, one of the most productive scholars on nationalism, argues that the inter-national conflicts arouse from the competing claims of ‘national identity’,29 which, according to the author, predicates on the pre-modern ethnic identities.30 Smith, as posed above, operates with a teleological understanding of ‘identity’; one that may endure across time, but can also transform itself from ‘ethnic’ into ‘national’, retaining, yet, the main attributes that shape this category.31 On the other hand, the weak approaches prefer to use ‘identity’ in a new, re- conceptualized manner. As argued by Stuart Hall, ‘identity’ is an irreducible concept in explaining social and political action, and “cannot be thought in the old fashion, but without which certain questions cannot be thought at all […and it requires] a reconceptualization – thinking in its new, displaced or decentered position within the paradigm.”32 What

27 Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups. 28 John Armstrong, for instance, insists that identity was maintained over big historical and structural changes. This was to a large part due to the religion, which played a significant role in forming and maintaining ethnic identities in pre-modern times. See John Armstrong, Nations before Nationalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992). 29 Anthony Smith, National Identity (Reno: University of Nevada, 1991),VIII. 30 Ibid., 52. 31 In Smith’s view, identity is far from an elusive concept. As he argues, we can talk about clear sense of identity when following six “syndrome of elements” are present – “a collective proper name, a myth of common ancestry, shared historical memories, one or more differentiating elements of common culture, an association with a specific ‘homeland’ and a sense of solidarity for significant sectors of the population,” in Smith, National Identity, 2. 32 Stuart Hall, “Who Needs ‘Identity‘?,” in Identity: A Reader, eds. P. du Gay, Jessica Evans and Peter Redman (London: Sage Publication, 2000), 16.

9 characterizes this modified approach, and in the same time separates from the essentialist accounts, is the proposed shift towards more fluid, multiple and constructive understanding of identity. However, as Rogers Brubaker discerns, it is not clear why something that is contingent, fluid or multiple must be conceptualized as ‘identity’.33 Furthermore, the weak notions fall short of persuading why ‘identity’ is indispensable concept for analyzing social and political actions/actors, and, as pointed by Malešević, both conceptualizations have not even attempted to dispute whether ‘identity’ exists or not.34 In the following, I will try to point out the necessity to treat ‘identity’ as practical category rather than as analytical one. Furthermore, by drawing on Brubaker and Malešević, I shall argue that identity is not an indispensable concept for analyzing group actions. Other categories, such as identification, categorization, groupness, commonalitity, ideology, to name a few, may do the work and thus enable more comprehensive empirical account.35 Insisting on identity as a category of analysis hampers (as I will try to show by examining the contemporary nationalism in Macedonia) coming to grips with the question of why there is a tendency to set the narrative of ancient origin as a dominant national narrative in Macedonia. Therefore, to tackle this issue comprehensively it is necessary to move our attention from identity, as a presumed result of social and political action, towards exploring what Malešević calls ‘identity as ideology’. Nationness and ethnicity, adds Malešević, have much more in common with ideology than with identity.36

Beyond identity Brubaker and Cooper point out several problematic assumptions when it comes to the abundant usage of ‘identity’ in today’s social sciences. One of them, serving as a core of their critical approach, is the reification practice, which is a tendency to represent a “transitory, historical state of affairs as if it were permanent, natural, outside of time.”37 That is, in short, to treat categories such as ‘nation’, ‘race’ or ‘identity’ as substantial entities, as

33 Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups, 33. 34 Malešević, Identity as Ideology, 13. 35 Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups; Malešević, Identity as Ideology. 36 Malešević, Identity as Ideology, 157. 37 Umut Özkirimli, Contemporary Debates on Nationalism: A Critical Engagement (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 171.

10 things in the world, rather than as perspectives on the world, to use Brubaker’s expression.38 Reification, argue Brubaker and Copper, has been present in both essential and weak understandings of identity, and is associated with what Brubaker depicted as ‘groupism’, defined as a practice to talk about ‘race’ or ‘nation’ as externally bounded and internally homogeneous groups. That is, to speak of Serbs, Croats, Americans, Turks, Muslims, Catholics, Jews or Palestinians as “collective actors with common purposes to which agency and interests can be attributed.”39 According to Andreas Wimmer and Nina Schiller, the practice to naturalise social phenomena has excessively been present in the contemporary social sciences. We should be careful not to fall into the trap of what the authors call ‘methodological nationalism’, “understood as the assumption that nation/state/society is the natural social and political form of the modern world.”40 Similarly, Brubaker holds that social scientists must refrain from employing categories of everyday social practice, such as nation or identity:

“We need, rather, to decouple categories of analysis from categories of practice, retaining yet as analytically indispensable the notion of nation as practical category, nationhood as institutionalized form, and nationness as event, but leaving “the nation” as enduring communities to nationalists.”41

On other occasion, Brubaker writes:

“Everyday ‘identity talk’ and ‘identity politics’ are real and important phenomena. But the contemporary salience of ‘identity’ as a category of practice does not require its use as a category of analysis. The mere use of a term as a category of practice, to be sure, does not disqualify it as a category of analysis. […] What is problematic is not that a particular term is

38 Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups, 65. 39 Ibid., 8. 40 Naturalisation is one of three methodological flaws that scholars do, along with ignorance or ‘nation-blind theories’ (those neglecting the significance of modern nation-state/nationalism in shaping our world) and territorial limitation (a practice to reduce social analysis to the boundaries of nation-state), in Andreas Wimmer and Nina Glick Schiller, “Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation-state building, migration and social sciences,” Global Networks 2, 4 (2002). 41 Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National question in the New Europe. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 22.

11 used, but how it is used […] in an implicitly or explicitly reifying manner, in a manner that implies or asserts that “nations”, “races” and “identities” exist as substantial entities.”42

Brubaker’s and Cooper’s central concern target the constructivist (weak) tradition theorizing ‘identity’. Asserting that it is misleading to claim that ‘identity’ is multiple or contingent, for it still implicitly suggests that it exists in a substantial form, he proposes shifting the focus from ‘identity’ – a term that denotes a condition rather than a process – towards more ‘active’, processual and theoretical qualifiers that may capture complex and dynamic nature of our world.43 Collective identity cannot be created, even when a sophisticated agent, such as state, attempts to do so, notes Brubaker.44 In the same vein, Richard Handler contends that “there is no definitive way to specify “who we are”, for “who we are” is a communicative process that includes many voices and varying degrees of understanding and, importantly, misunderstanding.”45 This, however, does not invite us to reject the reality of ‘identity’. It leads us rather to explore and comprehend reality in a different way. As Katherine Verdery suggests, we should take the social categories as an object of study, carefully refraining from treating them as actually defined objects.46 We shall, in other words, go beyond common truism that nation and identity are social inventions, and to concentrate on the processes of construction and not on the presumed outcome itself

42 Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups, 32-33. 43 In the influential work Ethnicity without Groups, Brubaker and Frederick Cooper propose several alternative terms to identity (see pp. 41-48). Identification and categorization are one of them. As processual terms, they specify the agents that do identification or categorization. What is more, identification does not necessarily result in internal sameness. Of special importance is the categorical identification, which defines the individual within a group of persons sharing some similar categorical attributes such as ethnicity, gender, nationality, citizenship etc. Brubaker discerns the state as the most powerful actor when it comes to the process of categorization. The state possesses a “power to name, identify, to categorize, to state what is what and who is who” (p. 42). Other terms that are not affected by the external categorization (such as state, family, schools) are self-understanding and social location. They refer to the subjective perception, which is an independent identification, well captured under the expression “situated subjectivity”, implying a self-understanding of who “we” are in a specific time and place. The last three qualifiers are commonality, connectedness and groupness. They refer to group phenomena or group belonging. Commonality implies sharing of some common characteristics with other people, while connectedness refers to ties that relate individuals. Together they may create a sense of ‘groupness’, which is a perception of “belonging to a distinctive, bounded and solidary group” (p. 47). All of these proposed terms are free from the reifying implication of identity. According to the authors, they do not suggest sameness and boundness in a strong sense, and are as such better suited to capture the dynamic, contingent, constructive and fluid nature of our world. 44 Ibid., 43. 45 Richard Handler, “Is “Identity” an Useful Cross-Cultural Concept?,” in Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity, ed. John R. Gillis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 30. 46 Katherine Verdery, “Whither “Nation and “Nationalism?,” Daedalus, 122, 3 (1993), 39.

12 (identity in this case). Consequently, in order to be able to encounter these processes, I will be using Malešević’s conceptualization of ideology.

Nationalism as ideology Both ethnic and national identity, writes Malešević, “covers too much ground to be analytically useful […] and since it is now commonly acknowledged that identities are fluid, complex, multiple and dynamic, then no full explanation of this or that social problem is possible.”47 According to Maleševic, identity is a non-sociological idiom (derived from mathematics), conceptually porous term and one that can never be empirically located. He holds that identity is a predominantly ideological device and that often has served as a potent device for nationalist ideologies, and in some cases (such as in Bosnia and Rwanda) had been misused for mass murder operation. Instead of trying to explain nationalism by virtue of identity, Maleševic maintains that more productive way is to focus on ideology, or to perceive identity as ideological instrument.48 Similarly to Brubaker, Malešević rejects the static understanding of ethnicity and social action in general. Both authors are process- oriented, looking at the social affairs as a world of dynamic, contingent, never-ending actions. Accordingly, Malešević speaks of ideologisation, understood as a complex process – not exclusively one way, top-down operation – that requires mutual reinforcement of diverse social organisations (for example media, education and church) and is able to penetrate deeply on both macro and micro level.49 He defines ideology as “any politically motivated or action-oriented set of ideas and practices related to the conceptual organisation of society.”50 Moreover, he rehabilitates the dominant ideology thesis by placing nationalism as a dominant operative ideology of modernity, unlike Nicholas Abercrombie who has argued against the dominance of any ideology.51 Acknowledging that ideology is highly contested term in the social sciences,

47 Malešević, Identity as Ideology, 34. 48 Malešević, Identity as Ideology. 49 Siniša Malešević, The Sociology of War and Violence (Cambridge: University Press, 2010), 11. 50 Siniša Malešević, Ideology, Legitimacy and the New State, 48. 51 Nicholas Abercrombie and Bryan S Turner, “The Dominant Ideology Thesis,” British Journal of Sociology 29 (1978).

13 Malešević provides a novel conceptualization of this disputed category. Three steps are important in this regard. The first thing to do is to move the theory of ideology from structure-based focus more to the agency-oriented analysis. Drawing critically on structuralism and post-structuralism as well as on Marxist favoring of structure over agency, the author argues that agency and ideology (in our case nationalism) have many relationships with one another and “excluding agency from analysis certainly cannot properly explain the role of politically motivated ideas and practices of social life.”52 Secondly, he makes an important distinction between normative and operative ideology. Unlike the normative realm, in which ethical norms are supposed to shape social relations and determine the future by calling on some universal principles, inspired whether by religious books, political memorandums, constitutions, party programmes, great thinkers or theoreticans, the operative one functions as an “arena of everyday life with all its complexities, contingencies and ideational flux.”53 Whereas the normative ideology appears predominantly in party programs, doctrines and manifestos, the operative one can be principally found in media, speeches and schools, but also in the built environment, as I will try to show in the case of Macedonia. If we closely look, emphasizes Malešević, how respective ideologies manifest in both layers, we can discern that even in normatively distinct political and ideological systems – such as United Kingdom, Iran and Socialist Yugoslavia – nationalism stands as a dominant operative ideology.54 One of the strengths of nationalism lies in its ability to intermesh smoothly with what Michael Freeden calls “mainstream ideologies” such as conservativism, liberalism and socialism.55 Even though these “mainstream” set of ideas shapes the normative political realm, nationalism is one that is extensively present on the everyday, that is, operative level.56 As we have learned from Michael Billig, nationalism is not only present in the state

52 Malešević, Identity as Ideology, 72. 53 Ibid., 92. 54 Ibid., see in particularly pp. 96-108. 55 Michael Freeden, “Is Nationalism a Distinct Ideology?,”Political Studies, XLVI (1998). 56 This is not to claim the normative principles are absent from everyday discourse. Rather, in order they to be clear they have to be backed up and transformed into a simple and overtly national rhetoric. For example, Barack Obama’s recent speach has been articulated in a simple, emotional and apparently national tone. See “Remarks by the President in State of the Union Address”. The White House, January 20, 2015, accessed 12

14 institutions, media, elite discourse, political movements and parties, history and historiography, but it also penetrates unnoticeably through different forms and contents in schools, families, tradition, art, urban space, cultural festivals, architecture, sports arenas and so forth.57 The last point suggests shifting the focus from function-oriented analysis to the form and content of ideology. As Malešević emphasises by drawing on Max Weber, a social action (in this case ideology) is not always manipulative, and it may be determined by either instrumentalists, value-oriented, emotional or traditional behaviors.58 Yet, the central focus shall be on the form and content of ideology, for in doing so, we can “break the structure of ideology into a number of mutually compatible elements.”59 As stated by Malešević:

What matters in such an analysis is not whether a particular statement or practice is false, deceiving, manipulative or instrumental […] this is often no more than simple daily politics – but rather […] what does it tell us about the particular understanding of the social world – what type of language it relies on, who is the targeted recipient of its message, what kind of popular appeal it makes […].60

Malešević recommends a model through which form and content can be thoroughly analysed. He proposes seven elements to be examined in this regard: economy, politics, culture, nation, dominant actors, type of language and images, and lastly the counter- ideologies.61 Adjusting this research strategy to suit the study of contemporary nationalism in Macedonia, I will look at the role of state and party in disseminating the narrative of ancient origin, as well as to which extent the narrative of ancient past appears in both the normative and operative realms of ideology. I will pay a attention on the forms and content in which the process of narrative shift is taking place. This is not, to make it clear, to underplay political, historical and institutional factors that have contributed to the rise of nationalism in Macedonia. To the contrary, by analyzing the

December, 2015, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/01/20/remarks-president-state-union- address-january-20-2015. 57 Billig, Banal Nationalism. 58 On the types of social actions, see Max Weber, Economy and Society (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), 25. 59 Malešević, Ideology, Legitimacy and the New State, 47. 60 Malešević, Identity as Ideology, 77. 61 Ibid., 75.

15 conditions under which the ancient past has been disseminated, I shall try to provide an account of when, why, how and under which conditions the ancient narrative came to represent an ideological tool in the hands of the ruling elites. In other words, I am interested in how the actors behave in the context in which they operate, are they tend to change the dominant ideological setting, and if so, in which ways they tend to do so. Any analysis of nationalism, indicates Verdery, must reflect on the geopolitical, societal and institutional setting in which nationalism operates.62 However, as Malešević points out, as well as Özkirimli,63 the last word for dissemination of national narrative lies in the hands of powerful agents such as state, power elites, cultural and academic institutions. 64 The same argument, only for the earlier period, can be found in the works of Eric Hobsbawm, Benedict Anderson and Elie Kedouire.65 I will test this thesis by looking at the relationship between structure and agency in Macedonia after 1991. I will examine whether the elites are constrained by the larger structural conditions in which they operate, or they have, as Vangeli puts it, a “complete freedom” to disseminate national narratives.66

Thesis goals and methods I would like to outline two hypotheses in this study. Firstly, I argue that identity has a less analytical value as it cannot explain the narrative shift process. As previously emphasized, in an attempt to explain nationalism in Macedonia, most of the researches rely on the language of identity and nation-building, arguing that the nationalism is a response to the external and internal ‘identity threats’. They omit the fact that ‘identity’ was a subject of persistent threats during the nineties; yet this situation did not lead to a response we are experiencing today. Identity is not an ad-hoc mechanism that activates whenever the nation- state is under threat. Moreover, authors offer little evidences that ‘identity’ is particularly the one under a threat.

62 Verdery, Whither “Nations” and “Nationalism, 39. 63 Umut Özkirimli, “The Nation as an Artichoke? A critique of Ethnosymbolists Interpretations of Nationalism,” Nations and Nationalism 9 (2003): 347-8. 64 Malešević, Identity as Ideology, 152. 65 Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition; Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006); (Elie Kedouire, Nationalism (Oxford: 1960). 66 Anastas Vangeli, Anticka Segasnost: Osvrt kon grcko-makedonskiot spor za Aleksandrovoto Nasledstvo (Skopje: Templum, 2011), 116.

16 In this sense, I am building on both Rogers Brubaker and Siniša Malešević’s critical reflections on the incapability of identity to explain the different range of phenomena that eventually do not have much in common with identity itself.67 Accordingly, I move the focus from identity to ideology. In this respect, I follow Malešević model for analyzing ideology.68 Ideology in this case is free from any normative connotation. The form in which appears and content it disseminates are of importance in this study. Framed in this way, ideology shall have a better analytical potential to explain the contemporary antiquization in Macedonia. Besides the content and forms, I will examine to what extent the ancient narrative appears in the normative and operative realms of VMRO-DPMNE’s ideology. Secondly, in order to be able to understand of why and how the government fosters the myth of ancient past/origin, I suggest looking at the relationship between, on the one side the party that in the course of nine years managed to capture the state institutions, and on the other the state, which is in possession of symbolic and material resources to disseminate the national narrative.69 The hypothesis that is to be proven is that the ruling elites in Macedonia have the final word for the dissemination of national narrative. Focusing on the ideology and agency does not imply neglecting the context in which nationalism appears. To the contrary, I will take into account larger structural and geo- political factors. After analyzing the conditions under which the ancient past has been developed, disseminated and discussed, I move my attention from the structure towards agency. Although questions of why and how are central in this study, I find the question of when important as well i.e. why the narrative shift process takes place only after 2006? Following the arguments that hold that the “antiquization campaign” and project ‘Skopje 2014’ represent a response to the internal and external identity threats, still, the open question remains – why Macedonia did not use these mechanisms already in the 1990s to protect the ‘national identity’? Although the ancient past gained prominence after the independence in 1991, it did not produce a narrative shift that we are witnessing today, neither have we experienced something similar to “antiquization campaign” and Skopje

67 Rogers Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups; Siniša Malešević, Identity as Ideology. 68 Siniša Malešević, Ideology, Legitimacy and the New State. 69 Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups, 43.

17 2014. In this sense, the researchers’ argument creates a puzzle that merits shifting the focus form the larger factors to the agency and ideology. The attempt to understand the context of the present by looking at the role the ancient narrative played in the past can be related to the Weberian concept of “Verstehen und Erklären.”70 According to Weber, understanding is crucial in explaining the human action. This implies acknowledging the historical and structural factors and what relationship they have with the social and political actors, their beliefs and ideas. It gives an analysis a “historical causality: It must be explained why something comes into being, why it developed in this particular way and not in another.”71 This approach shall equip me analytically better to answer the question of why only after 2006 there is a tendency to set the narrative of ancient origin as a dominant national narrative in Macedonia. In order to better articulate the role of the agency and ideology I am relying on elite-discourse analysis. Furthermore, I examine the “antiquization campaign and “Skopje 2014” as political and ideological processes. Lastly, I will critically approach the concepts of ‘nation/identity- building’ by bringing it into ‘discussion’ with other elements present there. As Florian Bieber observes, there is always a hierarchy of reasons and responsibilities to be considered.72 In other words, I am interested in examining what principially shapes the project ‘Skopje 2014’ – is it nation-building, identity-reconstructing, national ideology or party-building elements?

Nationalism in Macedonia and the post-Yugoslav states Although it was perceived as “dormant” in Yugoslavia and in other socialist countries, nationalism has had one of the crucial impacts on the development of social and political processes, the inter-republic relations and institutional setting in the federation. It was far from frozen and suppressed in the socialist period, as some suggested. In fact, the communist countries (e.g. USSR, Romania, Poland, and Yugoslavia) were extensively

70 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: Routledge Taylor & Francis, 2005), IX. 71 Hans Jürgen Goertz, Geschichte Ein Grundkurs (Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 2001), 101-2. [translation mine]. 72 Florian Bieber, Nationalismus in Serbien vom Tode Titos bis zum Ende der Ära Milošević (Wien: Österreichischen Ost- und Südosteuropa-Institut, 2005): 4.

18 drawing legitimacy from the national ideology. The use of national rhetoric and images “was not the exception, but the rule.”73 The outburst of national rhetoric in the late eighties in Yugoslavia can only be grasped if we reflect on the institutionalization of nationhood before the nationalism took the violent form in 1991. The dissolution of Yugoslavia prompted scholars from different disciplines to explain the causes of its downfall. Despite the differences, scholars are in accord with, at least in my view, two aspects. Firstly, they have convincingly argued against the ancient “ethnic-hatred” argument in relation to the violent fall of Yugoslavia74; and secondly, they agree on the point that (ethnic) nationalism was of great importance in providing both the ‘new’ states and ruling elites with legitimacy. Digging deep in history was particularly important for the Croatian nationalism, which aimed principally at proving, as described in Tudjman’s writings and speeches, the century long continuity of Croatian statehood. Be it by appealing on history, speeches, invention of tradition, sport, identity, or through symbolic way of ideological communication, the political elites in Croatia used various ways to disseminate national ideology both during and after the war.75 The national ideology played a great role and depending on the context it had a different function in the successor Yugoslavian states. For example, Chip Gagnon argues that the aim of the national politics during the war in Croatia and Serbia was to create a homogenous political space, rather than ethno-national. An effective tool for this purpose was the strategy of immobilization of population, which was underpinned by violence, terror and silencing. His study is particularly useful for this thesis, since it invites us to look beyond the language of nation-building and ethnicity in order to be able to understand the sometimes complex

73 Martin Mevius, “Reappraising Communism and Nationalism,” Nationalities Papers 37, 4 (2009): 1. 74 See for instance Dejan Jović, “The Disintegration of Yugoslavia: A Critical Review of Explanatory Approaches,” European Journal of Social Theory 4, 1. (2001); Gagnon, The Myth of Ethnic War (Cornell University Press, 2006); Neven Anđelić, Bosnia-Herzegovina: The End of a Legacy (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2003); also Rogers Brubaker, “Myths and Misconceptions in the Study of Nationalism,” in The State of the Nation: Ernest Gellner and the Theory of Nationalism ed. John Hall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). 75 For analysis of Tudjman’s ideology see chapters 5 and 6 in Gordana Uzelac, The Development of Croatian Nation: An Historical and Sociological analysis (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006); as well as Siniša Malešević. Ideology, Legitimacy and the New State.; on formation of national identity through history, languages and sports see Alex Bellamy, The Formation of Croatian National Identity: A Centuries-old Dream (Manchester: University Press, 2003); as well as Dario Brentin, “A Lofty battle for the Nation: the social roles of sport in Tudjman’s Croatia,” Sport in Society 16, 8 (2013); on symbolic expression of nationalism see Reana Senjkovic, “In the beginning there were a coat of arms, a flag and a “pleter” (…), in Fear, Death and Resistance, An Ethnography of War, Croatia 1991-1992, (Institute for ethnology and folklore, 1993).

19 nature of nationalism.76 Similarly, the demobilization element has been acknowledged by Eric Gordy, who notes that the aim of what he termed ‘nationalist-authoritarian’ regime led by Slobodan Milošević, was to eliminate political and cultural alternatives and to embody passivity in the population in Serbia, which in the course of two decades had experienced a turbulent socio-political transformation.77 The development of nationalism in Serbia during the noted transition was examined by Florian Bieber, who provides a comprehensive analysis of its rise during the eighties and nineties. According to his study, it should be misleading to talk about one homogenous national space in Serbia under Milošević. He emphasizes a set of different nationalisms, such as, for example, the ‘romantic nationalism’ promoted by the leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement (SRW), Vuk Drasković, who was to a certain degree in opposition to the state nationalism advocated by the ruling elites (at least until 1997 when the SRW entered the government with Milosevic); or expansionist nationalism championed by the leader of the Serbian Radical Party, Vojislav Šešelj, seeking ‘Great(er) Serbia’, supposed to include parts of Bosnia, Croatia and Macedonia. When it comes to Bosnia-Herzegovina, Armina Galijaš has examined the development of nationalism in the second-largest town, Banja Luka. She analyses how ethno-national ideologies, which were principally defined by what she calls an “ethnic matrix”, managed to change the political landscape in the city, as well as to alter the perception of the part of the population on belonging to “imagined communities” (Anderson). Prior to the outbreak of violence in Yugoslavia, the number of those who have identified as Yugoslavians in Banja Luka was among the highest in the socialist-Yugoslavia; however, this quickly has changed in favour of identity politics that flourished in the course of the war, without the city even being affected by the fighting.78 The power of ideas and propaganda, which were disseminated in the exceptional war-conditions, has proved, once again, how ideology can successfully shape social actions and group identification. On the other hand, the Montenegrian case displays peculiar dynamic in comparison to other countries in Yugoslavia. This was due to the failure of the Montenegrian state to project a homogenous sense of identity on the population living there, since a large number still identifies as Serbs.

76 Gagnon, The Myth of Ethnic War. 77 Eric Gordy, Culture of Power in Serbia: Nationalism and the Destruction of Alternatives (Penn State Press, 2010). 78 Armina Galijaš, Eine Stadt im Krieg (PhD diss., University of Wien, 2009).

20 According to a study by Erin Jenne and Florian Bieber, the reasons for such a development lie in the regional “identity environment”, as well as in the institutionalizing new national categories in socialist Yugoslavia.79 Unlike Montenegro, Macedonian national project can be considered as a successful story, and despite being severely contested, it has managed to achieve unified national identification. In its immediate post-socialist transition, Macedonia adopted a democratic course, being often praised by the international community as a successful post-communist case.80 However, the shift from one-party system to political pluralism was characterized by many difficulties and challenges for the democracy and state-building process. In the geo-political context, Greece disputed the usage of name ‘Macedonia’ as well as the usage of ancient symbols which, according to Greece, belong to modern Greek’s cultural heritage.81 Bulgaria contests the language and Macedonian nationhood, while Serbian church was explicit in not allowing establishing of an independent Macedonian Orthodox church. On the other hand, the internal dynamic in Macedonia was shaped, among other things, by the opposing views of Albanian and Macedonian nationalisms that had different perception in terms of how to define the new state.82 Comprising between 20-25 percent of the population in Macedonia, Albanians were appealing for more inclusiveness and redefining of the ‘nation-state’ so that it can provide more right for them. This resulted in several events and incidents such as, for example, the proclamation of independent Republic of Ilirida in 1992, clashes in Gostivar in 1997, the large students’ protests against the introduction of Albanian language at the Faculty of Education, to lead into the violent conflict that occurred in 2001. In addition to the striking segregation along ethno-national lines, we have been witnessing, especially since 2006, a division along political lines between the current ruling party VMRO-DPMNE and its opponents. This conflict is being often described to involve VMRO-DPMNE and the main opposition party SDSM, and

79 Erin K. Jenne and Florian Bieber, “Situational Nationalism: Nation-building in the Balkans, Subversive Institutions and Montenegrin Paradox,” Ethnopolitics 13, 5 (2014). 80 However, this perception was partly construed in a comparison to the war and authoritarianism in Serbia (back then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia), Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Although Macedonia showed more democratic will than other ex-Yugoslavian countries in the aftermath of Yugoslavian dissolution, the democracy and state-building efforts were constantly under challenges. 81 Until today, this dispute has not been resolved. 82 See for example Dejan Jović and Kevin Adamson, “The Macedonian–Albanian Political Frontier: the re- articulation of post-Yugoslav political identities,” Nations and Nationalism 10, 3 (2004).

21 parties’ supporters. However, this relationship is far more complex, as it includes many civil groups that through protests and practicing some forms of civil disobedience have displayed a high level of resistance towards the government and the prime-minister Nikola Gruevski. The peculiar developments in Macedonia, with some analogies with Montenegro and Moldavia,83 attracted attention of social scientists from a variety of disciplines. Macedonia became an issue of interests by anthropologists, historians, political scientists, sociologists, prompting researchers to look at how the Macedonian conflict with Greece has been spread in Australia, Canada and USA.84 Much of the literature on Macedonia accentuated the significance of the competing claims over identity issues in shaping the Macedonian affairs. In most cases, ‘identity’ represents a dominant analytical category to explain nationalism(s) in Macedonia. Moreover, there is an obvious need by the scholarship to explore the contemporary developments in Macedonia by referring to the term ‘Macedonian Question’85. Thus, James Pettifer uses the phrase ‘new Macedonian question’, involving, according to him, the “four wolves” (i.e. Bulgarian, Greek, Serbian, Albanian nationalism). The actors seem to be the same, only the content of the claims has been changed. Similar view has been shared by Victor Roudometof, who notes that “[t]he presence of these [Greek, Bulgarian and Macedonian] mutually exclusive political identities is the source of the conflict in Macedonia.”86 He further argues that the Macedonian question has been modified by the presence of Albanian minority in Macedonia.87 On the other hand, Keith Brown takes a more local view. Acknowledging the significance of Macedonian question, Brown looks from an anthropological perspective at the importance of ideological changes

83 Jenne and Bieber, Situational Nationalism; on Montenegro see also Siniša Malešević and Gordana Uzelac, A Nation-state without the Nation?: the trajectories of nation-formation in Montegro,” Nations and Nationalism 13, 4 (2007); from an anthropological angle see Čarna Brković, “Ambiguous Notions of “National-Self” in Montenegro, in The Ambiguous Nation. Case Studies from Southeastern Europe in the 20th Century, ed. by Ulf Brunnbauer and Hannes Grandits (München: Oldenbourg, 2013); on Moldavia see Ermis Lafazanovski, “The Intellectual as Place of Memory: Krste Petkov Misirkov’s role in the Macedonian and Moldavian National Movements”, in The Ambiguous Nation. Case Studies from Southeastern Europe in the 20th Century, ed. by Ulf Brunnbauer and Hannes Grandits (München: Oldenbourg, 2013). 84 On diaspora nationalism see Loring M. Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational Word (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). 85 ‘Macedonian question’ is a historical term given to illustrate the politics of Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia over the region of Macedonia and the diverse population living there. The whole process begun in the late 19th century, and includes competing claims over the territory, symbols, and so on. 86 Victor Roudometof, Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict: Greece, Bulgaria and the Macedonian Question (Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2002), 3; See also in this context Johh Shea, Macedonia and Greece: the Struggle to Define a New Balkan Nation (North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 1997). 87 Roudometof, Collective Memory, 7.

22 and their impact on the small, but historically and symbolically of great importance for Macedonia, the town of Kruševo. Brown reveals how Kruševo’s event can have a variety of meanings depending on the dominant ideological and political setting.88 Being ‘Macedonian’ today have different meaning, and this phenomenon is best illustrated by looking at the contesting claims over Macedonia through a transnational perspective. The conflict between Macedonian and Greece has spread from the Balkans to Australia, Canada and USA. Loring Danforth demonstrates the construction of groupness in Australia among Greek and Macedonian diaspora, the relationship between them as well as the linkage with their homelands. His work is far-reaching, as it challenges views which hold that the globalization reduces the significance of nationalism and nation-states. As he stresses: “national communities are not being replaced by transnational ones; they are being constructed on a transnational scale.”89

88 Keith Brown, The Past in Question: Modern Macedonia and the Uncertainties of the Nation (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2003). 89 Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict, 80.

23 Chapter II: The evolvement of ancient myth in Macedonia and ‘diaspora’

A historical reflection on the development of ancient narrative in the Balkans and Macedonia The narrative of ancient origin has been present long before Macedonia declared independence in 1991. Even before the age of nationalism, different kingdoms and dynasties found it useful the myth of Alexander the Great.90 It was with the Enlightenment and flourishment of nationalism in Greece when the intellectual elite in Greece started showing more interest for the ancient past. According to Vangeli, the Greeks nation-building project was an attempt to copy the western admiration for the ancient Athens.91 Dodovska notes that the myth of Alexander the Great century was present in the oral tradition in Macedonia in the 19th century, mostly among the scarce “Macedonian intelligentsia.”92 However, it acquired its full potential in the Balkans with politics of nationalization of the modern Greek and Macedonian state in the late 19th 20th century and early 21st century. In this chapter, I will reflect on the employment of the ancient myth in the Balkan Peninsula by different actors and under different conditions. In this context, a short reflection on the infamous Macedonian question is a necessity, inasmuch as this was one of the major issues shaping the geo-political relations in the Balkans in late 19th and 20th centuries.93 This was a period when Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia aspired to gain control over the territory of Macedonia (region known by its culturally, linguistically and religiously diverse population), which before the Balkan wars was in the realm of the Ottoman Empire. After the Balkan wars (1912-1913) the three mentioned states ultimately managed to divide the territory. Serbia gained the northern part (today this part constitutes the Republic of

90 Vangeli, Antiquity Musing, 6. 91 Vangeli, Anticka Segasnost, 121. 92 Ivanka Dodovska, “Budenje na Makedonskiot nacionalen identitet vo XIX vek, preku mitot za Filip i Aleksandar Makedonski,” Politicka Misla 16 (2006). 93 There are three discourses that should be distinguish when we using the term ‘Macedonia’. Historically, it designates the region that today includes the territory of the Republic of Macedonia, as well as a northern part of Greece and eastern Bulgaria. Secondly, the northern part in Greece is called Greek-Macedonia, and lastly, the Republic of Macedonia, a state that gained independence in 1991.

24 Macedonia) Bulgaria concentered on the east (Pirin Macedonia), while Greece obtained the southern part (the center Thessaloniki). In addition to these processes, the Greek state sought to confront the Bulgarian ambition over the same and neighbouring areas in the later 19th century. The “crucial factors” for introducing the myth of ancient Macedonians, notes Vangeli, were the anti-Bulgarian politics by the Greek state, carried out mostly by religious and secular institutions.94 Until 1870 the Greek Patriarchate had jurisdiction over the Orthodox population in Macedonia. However, with the establishment of an independent Bulgarian Church in 1870, the Greek patriarchy had to compete with Bulgaria for the loyalty of so called “Slavic-speaking population”. Greece was firmly against the spreading of Bulgarian cultural and national influence in the region of Macedonia.95 Since this area was inhabited largely by ‘Slavic population’, the Greek state sought to find instruments to impose cultural and ideological proximity on this population, more specifically on ‘Orthodox Slavs’. The myth of Ancient Kingdom of Macedon aimed, in this regard, at attaining some sense of connectedness of the population with the ‘Greek’ culture and to “stimulate closeness to Greeks through a linkage with ancient Macedonians.”96 It became prominent in the 19th century, owing mostly to the process of nationalizing the modern Greek state. Given the historical, cultural and geo-political context, however, it was only with introducing the so called ‘Megali Idea’ (an irredentist concept) in Greece, which aimed at unification of ethnic Greeks outside the Greek’s state border, that the myth of Alexander the Great gained its momentum in the Greek society.97 Prior to this, the remote ancient Macedonian kingdom had not been perceived as a part of the Hellenic commonwealth due to a dominant belief in Greece that ancient Macedonia was a non-

94 Vangeli, Nation-building Ancient Macedonian Style, 15. 95 The conflict in the Balkans in the 19th century and consequently the establishing of Bulgarian church in 1870, need to be observed through the interests of great powers as well, in the first place Russia, which wanted to extend its influence in the region, relying on Bulgaria as the main ally in this context. See in this regard Elisabeth Barker, “The Origin of the Macedonian Question,” in The New Macedonian Question, ed. by James Pettifer (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999). 96 Beside this, the Greek state embarked on nationalizing the population and space in the newly gained territory after 1913. Thus the names of the villages and citizens were standardized according to traditional Greek names, appearing in people’s identity cards, passports etc. See in this regard Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict, 160-63. 97 Vangeli, Antiquity Musing, 37.

25 Hellenic civilization, and as such an enemy of ancient Greeks.98 The important factor for embracing the ancient Macedon kingdom into the Hellenic tradition, was, as previously argued, the expansionist aspiration of the Greek state towards the parts of the region called ‘Macedonia’.99 As the core goal of the ‘Megali Idea’ – the conquering of Constantinople (Istanbul) – turned to be an impossible task, the Greek state centered on other regions, conquering ultimately these spaces during the Balkan wars. In this context, the authorities have embarked on what Vangeli calls an “innovation strategy.”100 This was carried out by disseminating the myth of Alexander the Great with a purpose to remake the national self of the population in the southern part of Macedonia, as well as to prove presumed continuity between the Ancient Macedon Kingdom and independent Greek state. It was based principally on the concept of autochthonism seeking to provide legitimacy for the nationalizing ambitions of the Greek state. As such, the ancient myth fits well into what scholars of nationalism and mythology would define as a myth of antiquity and myth of continuity. Once seen as incompatible within the Hellenist idea, the myth of the ‘golden age’ of Filip II Macedon and Alexander the Great found its place in Greek state-building process, becoming an integral, “if not the crucial part of the Hellenic world.”101 Analyzing modern Greek historiography, Danforth demonstrates:

According to Greek nationalist historiography ever since Greek-speaking people settled in Macedonia early in the second millennium B.C., Macedonia has been an integral part of the Greek world. Archaeological evidence clearly shows that through antiquity “there was never any break (either cultural or linguistic) in the unity of the Macedonians with other Greeks”. Ancient Macedonia was a Greek state with a Greek population, which spoke a dialect of ancient Greek, had Greek names and worshiped the same twelve gods of Olympus as other ancient

98 According to Smith, two central narratives existed in Greece, although not mutually exclusive: “Hellenism and Byzantinism,” in Anthony Smith. Myths and Memories of the Nation ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1999): 78-9.; similarly, Vangeli writes about two different tendencies: “pro-ancient and orthodoxy”, in Vangeli, Antiquity Musing, 32. 99 As Danforth argues, the “Macedonian question” was one of the two most important issues for the Greek state in the late 20th century, in Danforth, the Macedonian Conflict. 100 Vangeli, Antiquity Musing. 101 Vangeli, Antiquity Musing, 41.

26 Greeks. […] For this reason, Alexander the Great has come to personify Macedonian Hellenism at the best.102

Another moment to be considered for the persistence of ancient narrative in Macedonia is the creation of socialist Yugoslavia after the Second World War. Within the frames of the new federation, Macedonia was among the six republics that constituted the new socialist federation. The new republic was founded on the part of territory that in the interwar Yugoslavia belonged to Serbia (called “Vardarska Banovina”), as well as on small parts of Bulgaria, Albania and Kosovo. In addition to the formation of the Republic of Macedonia, Yugoslav communists embarked on the process of nationalizing of this region. Thus, Macedonian language was codified and standardized; the Macedonian Academic of Science and Arts and the Institute for National History were established as well as Macedonian state University and Macedonian Orthodox Church. In the view of Stefan Troebst,103 Macedonian case was an exceptional one in the socialist Yugoslavia, since the ideology of “Macedonianism” prevailed over the one of “Yugoslavism”.104 Without getting into a detailed historical discussion over the reasons for such a development, as well as into the validity of these claims, it is still necessary to reflect briefly on these issues in order to be able to understand the function that ancient narrative had in the socialist Yugoslavia. According to Vangeli, Tito was building his policy over Macedonia on the narrative of Macedonian identification that already existed among Orthodox population in the 19th Macedonia. In his view, this narrative prevailed during the early nation-building processes that took place in the late 19th and subsequently in the 20th century.105 While it is debatable to which extent we can talk about united Macedonian national identification before communists came to power (as pointed out by Vangeli too), it was only with establishing

102 Danforth, Ethnic Nationalism, 37-8. 103 Stefan Troebst, “Historical Politics and Historical “Masterpieces” in Macedonia before and after 1991,” New Balkan Politics 6 (2003); the same argument has been given by Brunnbauer (Ancient Nationhood, 268), who argues that the national paradigm was central in the Macedonian historiography during the socialism. 104 Although the authorities in Yugoslavia made efforts of promoting of a so called “Yugoslav supranational culture,” (more precisely in the first two decades after the SWW), this policy did not evolve into a united Yugoslavian cultural policy. For the failure of this project see Andrew Wachtel, Making a Nation, Breaking a Nation: Literature and Cultural Politics in Yugoslavia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998). 105 Vangeli, Antiquity Musing, 44.

27 socialist Yugoslavia when ‘Macedonian nation’ was recognized.106 Beside the historical determinants, there are larger geo-political motives behind this to be considered in this regard. Tito attempted to create a larger Balkan Federation, which was supposed to include communist Albania, Bulgaria, and possibly the northern part of Greece.107 In this context, Macedonia was seen as a central element for a possible unification of all parts of the region of Macedonia.108 As stated in the ASNOM declaration from 1944:

“People of Macedonia! With the participation of the entire Macedonian nation in the struggle against the Fascist occupiers of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Greece you will achieve unification of all parts of Macedonia, divided in 1915 and 1918 by Balkan imperialists.”109

In Greece, these efforts of the Yugoslav communists were (and still are) regarded as irredentist claims towards Greece. However, the failure of Tito to create the “Balkan Federation”, which after the end of Greek civil war and Tito-Stalin split definitely shattered, had its consequences on the relationships between Yugoslavia and its constituent republic Macedonia on the one hand, and on the other, Bulgaria which ideologically, but also in every other sense, was adjacent to USSR. Bulgaria turned to more radical politics towards Macedonia after the Soviet-Yugoslav break, despite the initial after-war efforts to recognize Macedonian nation. This resulted in banning Macedonian language in Pirin Bulgaria in 1948.110 What is more, Bulgaria has denied existence of Macedonian nation and language in the fifties.111 As Ulf Brunnbauer points out, the conflict of Macedonia with the Bulgarian

106 Troebst notes that Macedonian case felt short of what Miroslav Hroch’s called phase B in national movements, questioning thus Hroch’s developmental theory of nationalism, in Stefan Troebst, “IMRO+100 = Fyrom? The Politics of Macedonian Historiography”, in The New Macedonian Question, ed. by James Pettifer (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999); Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 107 Danforth (in The Macedonian conflict, 51) notes that the aim behind establishing People Republic of Macedonia was to weaken Serbia and to claim distance from the Bulgarian leanings. 108 Ibid., 45; Same argument is provided by Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict, 66; see also Hugh Poulton, Who are the Macedonians? (London: Hurst & Company, 1995), 105-6. 109 Ibid., 106. 110 There was a large Macedonian community living in this part of Bulgaria. 111 Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict, 68.

28 historiography was the greatest, since “[B]ulgaria considered Macedonia and its Slavic Orthodox population constitutive elements of its own national past.”112 The process of de-Macedonization in Bulgaria provoked a response in Macedonia. Consequently, the need for a negative definition of Macedonian vis-a-vis Bulgarian nationalism can be identified by introduction of ancient narrative into Macedonian historiography. According to Irena Stefoska, the Macedonian historiography in socialism had two aims: to “legitimize communist ideology and national identity.”113 This was in accord with the ideological orientation of the Yugoslav communists towards the concepts of both class and nation. Thus, in the first edition of the “History of the Macedonian People”, published in 1969, the narrative of ancient origin found its place as a part of Macedonian history. However, as Vangeli stresses, this should be treated with caution, since the ancient myth was mostly instrumentalized with Bulgarian historiography.114 Despite the fact that the ancient narrative had function towards Bulgaria, it would have been misleading to give it more significance in socialist Macedonia, as it did not become a dominant one; neither there were tendencies in this direction.115 The historiography was under cautious ideological monitoring by the authorities, who had the final word for dissemination of any national narrative.116 What is more, the part on the ancient past in the “History of the Macedonian People” from 1979 did not address any ethno (national) perspective towards the remote events, and besides the small section in the historiography, one should not give profound meaning of the remote past in the socialist Macedonia.117 The dominant narrative resembled the Bulgarian one, as well as the broader Yugoslavian, that is,

112 Ulf Brunnbauer, “Ancient Nationhood and the Struggle for Statehood: Historiographic Myths in the Republic of Macedonia,” in Myths and Boundaries in South-Eastern Europe, ed. by Pål Kolstø (London: Hurst&Company, 2005): 270. 113 Irena Stefoska, “Nation, Education and Historiographic narratives: the case of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia (1944-1990),” in The Ambiguous Nation: Case Studies from Southeastern Europe in the 20th Century, ed. by Ulf Brunnbauer and Hannes Grandits (München: Oldenbourg, 2013). 114 Vangeli, Antiquity Musing, 50. 115 On the other hand, the ‘freedom’ for Macedonian historians to have an exclusive right to dedicate a part on ancient history may support Brunnbauer’s and Trobst’s claims of Macedonian historiography having monopoly over historical production in the socialist Yugoslavia. 116 A case in point in this regard is the replacement of the pro-national oriented leader Krste Crvenkovski with a “pro-Belgrade” successors in 1974. (Kolozova et.al, Ancient Macedonia, 11). Since then, the ancient period was absent from the Macdonian mainstream historiographical publications, only to reappear in the nineties. 117 Mihaylo Apostoloski (eds), A History of the Macedonian People, ed. by Mihaylo Apostoloski, Dancho Zografski, Aleksandar Stoyanovski and Gligor Todorovski (Skopje: Macedonian Review Editions, 1979).

29 the Slavs assimilated the ancient tribes when arrived in the Balkans in the 6th century.118 It was only after declaring of independence in 1991, more precisely after 2006, that the shift in interpretation of the ancient narrative occurred. Macedonian diaspora played a role in this context.

Diaspora nationalism One of the six aspects that define diaspora, according to William Safra, is the tendency to cultivate the myth about their homeland.119 In 1977 at Vergina, a small village in northern Greece, a Greek archaeologist Manolis Andronikos discovered the ancient sixteen point symbol (called Vergina star in Greece and sun of Kutleš in Macedonia) of Vergina. This symbol, according to Andronikos, belonged to the ancient Macedonian royal family. Prior to 1977, it was unknown and it did not play any role in Greek or Macedonian nation-building projects.120 However, it gained wide currency in Greece after 1977, after which it has been used for commercial and political purposes. This especially applies for Greeks and Macedonians living abroad, and especially in Australia, who “eagerly seized sun or star of Vergina,” claiming both continuity with ancient Macedonians and in this way inventing and cultivating new myths about their homelands.121 There is a set of reasons to be explained in order to understand why Macedonians and Greeks have enthusiastically seized the myth of Alexander the Great in Australia. To better approach this issue, it is first necessary to conceptualize the term ‘diaspora’. Although today this category is an object of extensive scholars’ interest, this was not the case two or three decades ago, despite the frequent movement of people across the state borders in the 19th and 20th century. One of the explanations for this trend in the social sciences is the rise of nation-states, which inspired scholars to pay a lot of attention on this modern phenomenon,

118 For a comprehensive elaboration on ancient narrative in Macedonian historiography see Katerina Kolozova, et.al, “Ancient Macedonia between Academic Knowledge, State Policy and Public Discourse (1991-2009): Revision or Continuity of the Concept of the Macedonian Nation,” in The Nation-State and the institutions of academic knowledge: production and legitimating of dominant discourses of / on knowledge about society. Research Paper (Euro Balkan Institute, n.d.). 119 William Safran, “Diaspora in the Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland Return,” Diaspora 1,1 (1991). 120 On the phenomenon of Vergina star in Macedonia see Keith Brown, “Seeing Stars: Character and Identity in the Landscapes of Modern Macedonia,” Antiquity 68 (1994). 121 Danforth, Macedonian Conflict, 164; This symbol represents an official crest of the municipality of Pustec, Albania, which is inhabited largely by Macedonians. Also, the United Macedonian Organisation, a political party from Bulgaria, displays Vergina on its party logo.

30 neglecting thus the large immigration waves occurred in the 19th and especially in the 20th century.122 Nonetheless, the widespread mobility of people, particularly the one after 1945, challenged the very logic of nation-building projects – “especially in places where the nation had never been imagined as plural and itself consisted of former immigrants.”123 Consequently, a complex set of relationships between ‘diaspora’ communities, their host- countries and their kin-states emerged in the modern world.124 To explain better Macedonian nationalism in Australia, as well as the cultivation of ancient narrative among the newcomers, it is necessary to take into account a set of different reasons. This includes the individual experiences, historical factors, (geo) political context, and social and institutional conditions in the host country concerning the multicultural policies. Importantly, to be able to understand this complex triangle of host states, homeland and immigrant communities it is necessary to avoid reification claims that perceive ‘diaspora’ as bounded, taken for granted entity. Although there are in some cases strong ties between ‘diaspora’ and their homelands, and consequently the sense of national identification might be more salient than in other cases, it would be still misleading to talk about diaspora as a sharply bounded entity. This would deprive us of a comprehensive analytical approach. As Brubaker suggests, instead of defining ‘diaspora’ as an externally bounded and internal homogeneous category, we should try to think of it as stance, idiom, project etc.125 In the similar vein, Wimmer and Schiller suggest rethinking the concept of diaspora (nationalism):

much of transnational studies overstate the internal homogeneity and boundedness of transnational communities, overestimates the binding power of individual action, overlooks the importance of cross-community interactions as well the internal divisions of class, gender, region and politics, and is conceptually blind to those cases where no transnational communities form among migrants, or where existing one cease to be meaningful for individuals.126

122 Wimmer and Schiller, Methodological Nationalism. 123 Ibid., 310. 124 On the relationship between the minorities, their host and kin-states see Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed (pp. 55-78). 125 Rogers Brubaker, “The ‚‘Diaspora’ Diaspora”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 28, 1 (2005). 126 Wimmer and Schiller, Methodological Nationalism, 323.

31 Conceptualizing diaspora in a non-reificatory manner shall enable us to pose interesting questions related to the phenomenon of “long-distance nationalism” (Anderson). Adopting Fredrik Barth’s non-essentialist understanding of ethnicity,127 Danforth tackled several questions when it comes to both Macedonia and Greek nationalism in Australia. He maintains that the national identity among Greek and Macedonians in Australia is a result of a complex net of relationship, depending on historical, political and individual experiences, as well as on multicultural policies endorsed in the host country that provide the immigrants with a possibility to freely exercise their cultural particularities. This approach afforded Danforth to reflect on several important questions, such as, “[h]ow do people choose a national identity when more than one possibility is available? How and why do people change their national identity? Finally, how it is possible for two brothers to adopt different national identities and to disagree about what nationality they both really are?.”128 To understand the development of Macedonian national identification abroad, and the role that ancient myth played in this context, it is necessary to reflect on historical and political context as well as on the individual experiences of Macedonians in Australia and their relationship with a large Greek community settled there. As previously stated, Orthodox Slav speakers encountered the narrative of ancient kingdom already in the 19th century, partly due to the Greek nationalizing politics. Later in socialist Yugoslavia, the authorities

127 Fredrik Barth, “Introduction”, in Ethnic Group and Boundaries: the Social Organization of Cultural Difference, ed. By Fredrik Barth (London: Allen & Unwin, 1969). 128 Danforth, Macedonian Conflict, 197; in his comprehensive study on the Macedonian-Greek conflict, Danforth has analysed the development of national identity among Macedonians in Australia and how group identification are dependable on several factors. “There are many factors that influence the process of identity formation […] [b]alkan history, village politics, family situation, and individual biography all play important parts in this complex process,” notes Danforth (p. 231). For example, many of those who had immigrated from the Northern part of Greece, (called in Greece Greece-Macedonia, among Macedonian nationalists known as Aegean Macedonia), where after the Civil War they were subject of severe political and economic discrimination, marginalization and assimilation by the Greek regime, showed later resentment towards Greek state and any Greek national projects, and decided to declare as Macedonians. However, as Danforth points out, there are examples in which this is not the case. For instance, in his anthropological approach of Macedonian issue, Danforth described the case of Ted, who parents and family were subject of harsh treatment by the Greek regime after the Civil War. Their property was confiscated on charges that they had sympathized or collaborated with the communist movement in Greece. This, however, did not lead Ted to adopt Macedonian national identification. However, after years of ‘being’ Greek, Ted converted to a radical Macedonian nationalist. Family’s experience, Balkan history, intercommunity relations in Australia, multicultural policies in Australia – all of this contributed to Ted changing his national affiliation. Unlike Ted, interestingly, his brother identifies himself as a proud Greek. On the other hand, “others avoid identifying themselves either of these two mutually exclusive national identities and attempt to maintain a neutral stance in what has become a highly politicized environment” (p. 231).

32 allowed Macedonian historians to include the narrative of ancient Macedon kingdom in Macedonian national mythology. However, the devoted use of ancient narrative by Greek and Macedonian diaspora is principally related to the symbolic conflict between Greece and Macedonia emerged in the 1990s as well as to the memories from the Civil War in Greece,129 or as Weber put it, the existence of “shared political memories.”130 After the Civil War in Greece, the refugees were fleeing from Greek-Macedonia, where the myth of Alexander the Great was already present. Many of those who immigrated in Australia after the war were most likely to declare themselves as Macedonians. This is partly due to the, as pointed out earlier, harsh treatment by the Greek regime towards those refusing to declare as Greeks and towards those who have supported, sympathized or collaborated with the communist movement during the Civil War. These refuges, notes Pichler, are firm to deny any definition of Macedonia that excludes the areas where they were born.131 This implies the incorporation of the myth of golden age of Alexander the Great in the corpus of national narratives. Most of the immigrants, as stated by Danforth, developed a Macedonian national identity:

“People who left Greece after the civil war, settled in Yugoslavia or some other eastern European country, and then emigrated to Australia from there are almost certain to have adopted a Macedonia national identity. People who experienced harassment and persecution at the hands of the Greek government in the years following the civil war, may also have developed a Macedonian identity.”132

Importantly, the newcomers in Australia have encountered institutions promoting and practicing Macedonian nationness, which at that point was already officially recognized in the socialist Yugoslavia. The Australian multicultural policy enabled people to express

129 The Civil War (1946-1949) in Greece followed the end of the Second World War. It was a conflict over the future ruling of Greece between the Greek government backed by Great Britain and USA, and the communists. Many people (especially those speaking Slav languages) stood on the side of the communist regime. After the defeat of left forces, those who supported communists were subject of persecution and discrimination by the Greek regime, and many of them emigrated in Australia, Canada and the USA. 130 Weber, Economy and Society, 390. 131 Pichler, Staging the Nation, 11. 132 Danforth, Macedonian Conflict, 234.

33 freely their cultural distinctiveness, providing institutional support for them.133 There was thus a possibility for expression of Macedonian nationhood in a variety of ways. While this kind of behavior would have been condemned in Greece, those declaring as Macedonians did not have such problems in Australia. As Danforth put it:

“[o]ne immigrant from Florina [village in Northern Greece] remembered driving through the streets of Melbourne with his windows down playing Macedonian songs on his car stereo. When a police car pulled up next to him, he panicked and immediately turned off the music. Then he realized that “it wasn’t a crime to be a Macedonian in a democratic country like Australia””.134

In addition, the newcomers encountered a large Greek ‘diaspora’ settled in Australia. This was a possibility for both sides to enter into a ‘discussion’ over a delicate history of Greece and Macedonia.135 In such an environment, in which people with troubled history, unpleasant family experiences and opposite ideological views may communicate on daily basis, the potential for politicizing of their everyday life is much greater, and consequently, it may intensify the inter-group animosities. When the dispute with Greece reached its peak in the 1990s the animosities between two ‘diasporas’ rose to another level. This was especially the case after declaring of independent Macedonia in 1991 and decision to display Vergina on the new Macedonian flag in 1992. This provoked a huge revolt in Greece and abroad, since this ancient symbol was perceived as exclusively Greek, excavated on Greek soil. Greece reacted swiftly by blocking an official recognition of Macedonia in the United Nations under the name “Republic of Macedonia”, and proposed other name designators that were supposed not to have any connotation with the northern region of Greece called Macedonia (Makedonia). Moreover, Greece imposed economic blockade on Macedonia in 1994, and since the independence has been denying existence of

133 For example, the Australian state enabled establishing of multicultural television services, radios, newspapers, providing also health care in variety of languages. There are many churches, societies, diaspora clubs, youth clubs, football teams, schools and so on. For instance, [m]odern Greek language is taught in twenty-five elementary schools and thirty secondary schools in Melbourne and in all four universities in the city” (Ibid., 206). 134 Ibid., 241. 135 Again, the case of Ted is illustrative how national identification results partly from what Brubaker calls nationness as contingent event. The example with Ted in Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict, 188; on nation as event see Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed, 18-19.

34 Macedonian nation, language and Macedonian minority in Greece. This dispute spread on other continents, having implication on the people living in Australia, Canada and USA. Many decided to show their resentment by taking the streets in Thessaloniki and Melbourne.136 During the protests in Melbourne, participants from both sides carried flags with Vergina sun. Thus, today we may encounter well-organized ideological networks, disseminating Greek or Macedonian national views, having considerable influence on the development of national politics in their homelands. In this way, the ties between the remote homeland and emigrant groups are constantly maintained, as well as the boundaries between them.137 Where the ties with the homelands are lacking, “the sense of ethnic membership is absent.”138 According to Poulton, Macedonian diaspora in Australia had an important role in adopting the sun of Vergina as a new state flag of independent Macedonia.139 In this context, Žarko Trajanovski pointed out the case of the Macedonian Coordinative Council in Perth, who, in 1992, urged the Macedonian government to adopt “the red flag with a golden sixteen-ray sun (Vergina)…[i]f not they warned the MPs, “”you will be condemned of treason by all Macedonian emigrants”.140 Undoubtedly, the ancient symbolism dominates in relation between the emigrant groups and their, imagined (or not), homelands. For example, the Australian Institute of Macedonian Studies (Greek-Macedonian organization) adopted the sun of Vergina on its logo. This provoked revolt by Macedonians in Australia, who took the streets, claiming that Greece denies the existence of Macedonians in Australia.141 Many semi-academic

136 While Alexander the Great has been celebrated as a Greek King in Greece, in Macedonia the efforts were made to deny such claims at any price. Thus Macedonian historiography focused on rejecting the Greek claims by holding that the ancient Macedonians were not Greeks. The conflict between two countries evolved into what Vangeli called contestation phase, in which the name and symbols of ancient past were at stake. 137 The formation of the VMRO-DPMNE in Macedonia, (currently the ruling party) with an overtly national orientation, has been linked with Macedonian emigrants from Germany. According to Lidija Hristova, two leaders of the party were called in Germany to make a final agreement about the formation of the party, in Lidija Hristova, “Politickiot Pluralizam vo Republika Makedonija“, in Politickite Identiteti vo Republika Makedonija, ed. by Lidija Hristova (Skopje: University Ss. Cyril and Methodius, 2011), 91. 138 Weber, Economy and Society, 390. 139 Poulton, Who are the Macedonians?:121. 140 Žarko Trajanoski, “National Flags” in the Republic of Macedonia”, in The Ambiguous Nation: Case Studies from Southeastern Europe in the 20th Century, ed. by Ulf Brunnbauer and Hannes Grandits (München: Oldenbourg, 2013). 141 During the demonstration in Melbourne in 1992, people from both sides were dressed and wore Macedonian ancient cloth, helmet and shields.

35 conferences, funded by Pan-Macedonian Association, which is a Greek-Macedonian organization, have been organized in Greece and abroad, where people were eagerly defending their stances. One of them was held in Melbourne in 1991, and was sponsored by the Australian Institute for Macedonian Studies. Eugene Borza, “a well respected ancient historian”, was giving a lecture:

“In his lecture, entitled “Images of Alexander the Great”, Borza examined the long history of the use of Alexander’s image in the West. His paper concluded with a perceptive analysis of the way the modern Greek government has attempted to carefully manage the manner in which Alexander the Great is presented to the world […]. Some of the Greek archaeologists participating in the conference were so offended by the fact that Borza had in their opinion blatantly politicized what would otherwise have been a purely scholarly event that they walked out of his lecture and threatened to boycott all future papers presented by non-Greek scholars.”142

The willingness to defend and promote its national cause spread from academic to popular level. There are even sport clubs dubbed after Alexander the Great.143 There are newspapers and journals and many articles written, celebrating Alexander the Great as a hero of Greek or Macedonian nation. One can find today in Toronto a bust to Alexander the Great erected by Greek-Macedonians. The (in)famous slogan ‘Macedonian is Greece’ was hanging on all the lampposts in Chicago’s Michigan Avenue. Facebook and other social media serve as perfect platforms for articulating, commenting and disseminating different ideological position over Macedonian issue worldwide. Kirl Drezov points out that despite that the Macedonian emigrants are anti-Greek and pro-Macedonian oriented they resemble the nationalizing politics of modern Greece in their “obsession with antiquity and in downgrading the Slavness of contemporary Macedonians.”144 However, as documented by Danforth’s anthropological account of Greece-Macedonian conflict, besides these grand factors, we have to take into account people’s experiences in order to be able to grasp the meaning of Macedonian identity abroad. Along those who

142 Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict, 170-71. 143 There were constantly provocation between Macedonians and Greeks during football matches between the clubs formed by the newcomers. The confrontation occasionally were marked by violence. 144 Kyril Drezov, “Macedonian Identity: an Overview of the Major Claims,” in The New Macedonian Question, ed. by James Pettifer (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999).

36 firmly defend their national position, there are people who decided to embrace another national identification (as Ted did) or decided to declare themselves neither as Greek nor as Macedonians. Some of them say they are proud Australians.145 These ‘deviations’ are inviting us to think of ‘diaspora’, not as something bounded and taken for granted, but rather, as pointed out long ago by Weber, as a “native-country sentiment” (Heimatsgefühl), for the understanding of which a set of criteria is to be considered.146 Consequently, instead of asking what ‘diaspora’ is, more fruitful and sociologically interesting would be to answer why people evolve into radical nationalists abroad, while others reject any national affiliation? Why and how someone decided to change his/her national identification? Why someone develop (ethno) national sentiment, while for others it is less important? Why and how people who decided to emigrate abroad have proudly been cultivating the myth of Alexander the Great? This approach shall contribute for better understanding of both strengths and weaknesses of (diaspora) nationalism as well as of its origins and endurance. To sum up, the cultivation of ancient myth among Macedonians in Australia came into being by virtue of different factors. In this context, the conflict of two ethno-national perspectives, Greek and Macedonian, spread transnationally, having impact on Greeks and Macedonians living abroad. In their new host states, the newcomers may freely discuss their views over troubled history and politics. Moreover, due to the everyday ‘inter-group’ encounters, those identifying themselves as Macedonians or Greeks could frequently contend their positions. In this situation, the symbolic potential of Alexander the Great rose prominently, and, especially after 1990s, it stands as a well-established myth among Macedonians abroad, who seemingly played a significant role in promoting the myth of ancient origin in independent Macedonia.

145 Ibid., see chapter 7 and 8 in Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict. 146 Weber, Economy and Society, 388 [italics mine].

37 Chapter III. The ancient narrative in independent Macedonia: why narrative shift did not occur in the 1990s?

One of the scholar’s central explanations for the newly risen nationalism in Macedonia is that it represents a response to the external and internal (identity) threats. I want to question this notion by arguing that if we follow this line of reasoning, such a response could have already occurred in the 1990s – in a highly turbulent period for the Macedonian state. The intention, to make it clear, is not to refute this argument, but primarily to point out that it is predominantly structural as it does not discuss, or simply pays less attention, on the role of agency in developing of Macedonian national ideology. In this way, it seems imperfect to explain comprehensively the recent rise of nationalism in Macedonia. The central concern of this chapter is seeking an answer to the question of why the ancient narrative did not appear as a dominant national narrative when the conflicts, both internal and external, were at its peak in the nineties Macedonia. In this respect, I will reflect on the post-independence period, when the external and internal threats unprecedentedly challenged the existence and effectiveness of the Macedonian state. In this sense, my approach draws on Weber’s concept of Verstehen und Eklären. In other words, in order to be able to explain the social and political processes, Weber has primarily insisted on understanding how society works – understanding is “crucial to the explanation of human action.”147 In our modern world, this implies an analysis of both macro and micro processes, that is, how the structural and historical processes are related to the individual and collective ideas and actions. Importantly, this approach provides causality between the questions of how and why. By doing so, I shall be able to grasp the role of both agency and structure in shaping the recent rise of nationalism in Macedonia, and at the same time to test the thesis holding that the elites have the final word for dissemination of national narrative. In the previous chapters, I tried to explain briefly the historical background behind the evolvement of the myth of Alexander the Great in the Balkans, “not because the past

147 Weber, The Protestant Ethic, IX.

38 determines the future, but because it constrains it.”148 To offer a comprehensive analysis of why the narrative shift did not occur in the post-independence period, it is, however, necessary to discuss the larger structural and (geo)-political context as well as the internal dynamic and ideological conflicts among the two major parties in Macedonia.

Macedonian context Unlike most of the countries from the former Yugoslavia, Macedonia managed to avoid a violent conflict, for which it received credits for being a successful post-Yugoslav story. However, it would be highly misleading to take this notion for granted as it was to a certain extent construed in comparison to the violence and authoritarianism in other ex-Yugoslav republics – Serbia (back then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia), Bosnia and Croatia – which at the same time were lacking in Macedonia. The state, led back then by the President Kiro Gligorov, was persistently facing democratic challenges, internal and external political conflicts along ethnic and political lines, as well as continuous denials of both its statehood and nationhood. One of the most disputed acts in the 1990s, along with the name and new flag, was the new constitution, which defined Macedonian state as a state of Macedonia people. Macedonians earned the status of a “constitutive nation”, creating thus a system of “constitutional nationalism, meaning a constitutional and legal structure that privileges the members of the majority (ethnic) nation over the minorities in each state.”149 Albanians, who constituted the second largest national category in Macedonia, earned the status of a minority group. According to Adamson and Jović, this decision rooted in the communist understanding of the ‘national question’ in second Yugoslavia, where the Yugoslav communists created a hierarchical system between ‘nations’, ‘nationalities’ and ‘ethnic groups’.150 In Yugoslavia, Macedonians were granted the status of a constituent nation with a right for separation, unlike Albanians, who had a status of nationalities, with no right for self-determination. The institutional legacy thus had an effect on the ways in which the post- Yugoslav Macedonia has been defined – “a state of Macedonian people and of Albanian and

148 Daniel Little, “A Crisis in Sociology,” Understanding Society, February 17, 2009, accessed: September10, 2015, http://understandingsociety.blogspot.co.at/2009/02/crisis-in-sociology.html. 149 Robert Hayden, “Constitutional Nationalism in the Formerly Yugoslav Republics.” Slavic Review (1992). 150 Adamson and Jović, The Macedonian-Albanian Political Frontier.

39 Turkish minorities.” Unlike in Yugoslavia, where Albanians had the status of ‘nationality’ (Yugoslav communists considered the category ‘minority’ as a derogatory one), in independent Macedonia, they were granted with the status of a ‘minority’ group. This relationship between Macedonian ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ Albanian group was a “major point of contestation in the parliamentary debates while the constitution was being drawn up”, and generally in Macedonian society over the nineties.151 The new constitutional and institutional arrangements have created a socio-political base for what Weber has termed as “monopolistic [social] closure” in which social and institutional privileges are largely limited to one particular ‘group’. In other words, according to Weber, ethnicity is related to the social status of ethnic groups, which, as a result, may create a hierarchical relationship between ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ groups.152 According to Dejan Jović, the “majority-minority” narrative shaped the late Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav context. The fear of losing the status of consitutuent nation was one of the main motivators of the conflicts in the successor states of Yugoslavia.153 As for Macedonia, the decision of the authorities to grant only to the “Macedonian people” the status of constituent nation was met with resentment by Albanians, who comprising around 25% of the population, were firmly against this decision, being afraid that their social status will be jeopardized in these circumstances (c.f. Serbs and Croats in Croatia during the Yugoslav war, Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo, Whites and Blacks in America, Hungarians and Romas in Hungary today etc.).154 In such a situation, Albanians in the nineties were persistently seeking a redefinition of their societal position and constitutional changes. The more radical Albanian nationalists were seeking, according to the former

151 Danforth, Macedonian Conflict, 143. 152 I am not making a claim that ‘ethnic groups’ are only status groups. Moreover, the ethnicity, as well as the social status, are not exclusively limited to the economic interests, but also include symbolic and power oriented actions based on beliefs and ideas, as well as how ‘others’ perceive and define these groups (Barth, Introduction). The case with the flag in Gostivar (see page 42 here) is a good example of how symbols might be sometimes a powerful feature of ethnicity, along with political, instrumental and material determinants. 153 Dejan Jović, “Fear of becoming minority as a motivator of conflict in the former Yugoslavia.” Balkanologie. Revue d’etudes pluridisciplinaires 5, 1-2 (2001). 154 According to census held in 1994, Macedonians comprised 67%, of the population, Albanians 23%, Turks 4%, 3% Roma, Serbs and Macedonian Moslems 2%.

40 president Gligorov, to “converge on the general idea of uniting all Albanians in one state.”155 The fear factor has penetrated in the Macedonian society, having a significant impact not only on the minority groups, but on Macedonians as well. Despite being a part of every government since 1991, this was a period in which representatives of Albanians boycotted important political events in the country, displaying in this way displeasure with their position in the new state. They boycotted the declaration of independence in 1990 and the referendum for independence held in 1991. Albanian representatives held their own referendum in 1992, after which they proclaimed their own state an “Independent Republic of Ilirida.” Furthermore, Albanian deputies refused to participate in the parliamentary sessions during which constitution and new flag have been adopted, claiming that the flag was “an ethnocentric code”. Overall, they requested better status in the country, rights to the use of symbols and flags of the state communities, as well as granting the Albanian language and equal status to Albanians countrywide. On the other hand, there was (and still is) a present fear often articulated by Macedonian nationalists, and consequently adopted by many Macedonians, that the demographic changes will turn Macedonians into a minority “in their own country”.156 One of the most challenging moments for Macedonian state in that period were the clashes that occurred in 1997 after the display of Albanian flag on a municipal building in Gostivar, a small city in western Macedonia. While Mayor Rufi Osmani justified this act by saying that this is a cultural symbol of all Albanians, Macedonian authorities considered this action as unlawful since it represents a symbol of another state. The president Kiro Gligorov has emphasized that the state should protect its national symbols and the authorities removed the flag from the building.157 The “banal nationalism” (Billig) swiftly transformed into a violent one, with 196 people injured and four killed, and over 500 arrested, including the mayor

155 Kiro Gligorov, “The Unrealistic Dream of Large States,” in The New Macedonian Question, ed. by James Pettifer (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 98. 156 A telling example was the huge student protests against the introduction of Albanian language in the curricula of the Faculty of Education in 1996. Thousands of students took the streets in Skopje, while some of them were on hunger strike. This protest was backed by then the largest opposition party VMRO-DPMNE. The discourse against the introduction of Albanian language was wrapped in a nationalistic tone of fear and conspiracy against Macedonian people, culture and language. 157 Keith Brown, “In the Realm of the Double-Headed Eagle: Parapolitics in Macedonia 1994-9, in Macedonia: The Politics of Identity and Difference, ed. By Jane K Cowan. (London: Pluto Press, 2000), 146.

41 Osmani.158 This course of action reminds us to think of ethnicity not only as phenomenon explainable primarily to the material status of groups ((neo)-Marxist understanding), but also as a concept (status or not) based on beliefs and ideas that might be vigorously defended by those identifying with them.159 The event in Gostivar was a prelude for the larger conflict between National Liberation Army and Macedonian forces in 2001. Fortunately, the conflict did not evolve into a civil war, owing mostly to the Ohrid Peace Agreement (OFA) based on the consociational democracy, with an aim to protect primarily the ‘ethnic communities’ from “majorization in specific political fields.”160 The OFA provided Albanians with a status of community, redefining thus the majority-minority relationship. One of the most important measures was granting Albanians adequate representation in the state institutions with respect to employment in public enterprises and state’s institutions as well as declaring the Albanian language as a second official language in the country. However, while OFA set the constitution on new terms, at the same time it has cemented the concept of ethnicity in Macedonia, creating thus wider frames for articulation of mono ethnic-nationalism(s). Some are prone to argue that after OFA Macedonia became a bi-national state.161 At the same time, Macedonian statehood and nationhood were under persistent denial by Bulgaria in the nineties, and especially by Greece. In 1994, Greece imposed economic embargo on the weak Macedonian economy that was already burdened with a high unemployment rate. What is more, the United Nations sanctions imposed on Serbia resulted in blocking the major trade route from Macedonia to the central and western Europe. As one of the poorest republics from the former Yugoslavia, Macedonia faced a situation in which both the democratic and economic transition were under constant challenges. As already emphasized in this paper, while Bulgaria decided to recognize the Macedonian state, at the same time it has denied the existence of Macedonian nation and Macedonian

158 Ljupco Risteski and Armanda Kodra Hysa, “Strategies for Creating the Macedonian State an Nation and Rival Projects Between 1991 and 2012,” in Strategies of Symbolic Nation-Building in South Eastern Europe, ed. by Pål Kolstø (Ashgate: Ashgate Publishing, 2014), 179. 159 For a critical elaboration on the different perceptions of ethnicity see Siniša Malešević, The Sociology of Ethnicity (London: Sage Publications, 2004). 160 Stefan Dehnert and Rizvan Sulejmani, “Introduction”, in Power Sharing and the Implementation of the Ohrid Framework Agreement (Skopje: Friedrich Erbert Stiftung), 5. 161 Jenny Engström, “Multiethnicity or Binationalism? The Framework Agreement and the Future of Macedonian State,” Journal of Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe 1 (2002).

42 language.162 Bulgarian nationalists have been claiming that Macedonians are Bulgarians, or “when Bulgaria acknowledged it, they ascribe it entirely to Serbian, Comintern and Titoist propaganda.”163This decision was not a pure invention of the post-socialist Bulgaria, but its origins has to be historically traced in the development of both Bulgarian and Macedonian nationalism, Macedonian and Bulgarian state as well as in the relationship between the socialist Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. The dissemination of ancient narrative in Macedonia in the nineties can be thus interpreted as an attempt of distancing from the Bulgarian leanings.164 Despite the Bulgarian stance, the relationships between the two countries did not experience serious conflicts during the nineties. One of the reasons for this, as pointed out by Maleska, can be found in the content of the so called ideology of ‘Macedonianism’, embraced by the Social Democrats (SDSM), who were dominating Macedonian politics from 1992 until 1998. In her view, SDSM was championing a “status quo with the neighbors, because of which many sensitive questions of common history of Macedonians and Bulgarians were frozen in the course of the nineties.”165 When the conservatives won the elections in 1998, their leader and the Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski, leaning putatively ideologically towards Bulgaria, continued the status quo trend. While Macedonian-Bulgarian relations did not evolve into major conflicts, the issue with Greece is one of the most challenging episodes in the newer Macedonian history. The nineties were period in which Macedonia “struggled to gain international recognition as a sovereign state under its constitutional name – the Republic of Macedonia.”166According to Greek nationalists, Macedonian nation is an artificial one, invented by the Yugoslav communists. A similar view they share for the Macedonian language, which cannot be Macedonian since the language spoken by ancient Macedonians was Greek. At the same time, Greece has been refusing to recognize Macedonian minority due to their official not to acknowledge the ‘existence’ of any minority in the country.

162 Bugarian President Zelju Zelev stressed in 1991 that the recognition of the state does not entail the recognition of the nation, in Dimitar Bechev, Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia (Toronto: The Scarecrow Press, 2009), xxxvii. 163 Drezov, Macedonian Identity, 51. 164 Vangeli, Antiquity Musing, 59-60; 165 Mirjana Maleska, “Macedonian (Old-New) Issue.” New Balkan Politics 3/4 (2002). 166 Danforth, Macedonian Conflict, 142.

43 The most disputed were the name of the state and new flag displaying the ancient sixteen- pointed sun of Vergina adopted in 1992. Both national ideologies claimed property of the ancient symbols and history. The official position in Greece has been that there is only one Macedonia – a Greek-Macedonia, located in the northern Greece. Any other connotation may signify an irredentist claim towards the Greek state. One million of people protested against the recognition of Republic of Macedonia by the European Community in Thessaloniki in 1992, perceiving the name of Macedonia as an exclusive property of modern Greece. Due to the huge diplomatic pressure exerted by Greece, the European Community (EC) declared in 1992 that it would only recognize Macedonian state if it does not use the name Macedonia. Few months later, the Macedonian parliament adopted the Vergina sun as a symbol for the new flag. Interestingly, this symbol was previously unknown in Macedonian society, which makes it suitable to fit into Hobsbawm’s invented traditions.167Undoubtedly, this move affected the situation between the two countries, prompting Greece to adopt a new law designating Vergina as a Greek national symbol, preventing concurrently the use of the flag internationally – for instance at the Olympic Games or in the United Nations.168 Greece was furthermore insisting on changing the name of Macedonia, making a lot of effort to block Macedonian entry in the international organizations. In the same year, the United Nations decided to recognize Macedonia under the provisional name “the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”. The crisis profoundly affected the Macedonian society, having, as we could see, huge implications beyond the borders of the two states. The relations between the two countries worsened when Greece imposed a trade embargo on Macedonia in 1994. The monthly costs caused by the sanctions reached 80 million dollars,169 reaching the sum of 2 billion dollars totally.170 Consequently, the unemployment quickly rose to 36 percent, which represented a huge blow for the Macedonian economy. The authorities in Greece have emphasized that they will cease the embargo only if

167 For a politics of flag see the comprehensive analysis by Trajanovski, “National” Flags in the Republic of Macedonia. 168 This act has been by Vangeli described as “proprietary phase”, Antiquity Musing, 54. 169 Shea, Macedonia and Greece, 220. 170 Risteski and Hysa, Strategies for Creating the Macedonian State and Nation, 219.

44 Macedonia decides to change the flag, guarantees no changes with its border with Greece and makes constitutional changes on issues that Greece considered irredentist.171 Greek’s extensive diplomatic and economic pressure brought some result in 1995 when both parties in the conflict signed the so-called Interim Agreement. According to the accord, Macedonia was obliged to use the temporary name “the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”, to change the flag displaying Vergina, as well as the disputed constitutional clauses that, according to Greece, had irredentist connotations. Greece, on the other hand, obliged that it would not block Macedonian bid to international organizations as long the state uses the name “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”. Until this point, a solution for the naming dispute has not been found. However, the relations between two countries were normalized, and Greece became one of the most important trading partners of Macedonia. Beside the geo-political factors, the introduction of ancient narrative in Macedonia has a lot to do with the internal ideologically and ethnically driven conflicts between different political parties and their supporters. After the break-up of Yugoslavia, Macedonian politics has been dominated by two major parties: national-conservatives and firm anti-communists VMRO-DPMNE,172 and the social democrats (SDSM). While SDSM (Social Democrats Association of Macedonia) emerged as a party successor of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, the VMRO-DPMNE was a new political movement that managed to win majority of seats at the first election held in 1990. However, it did not manage to form a government. The two major parties have from the outset displayed sharp ideological and political differences on international relations issues, domestic politics, minority rights and so forth. The political scene in Macedonia has been described by Mirjana Maleska as “an arena for fights between the two largest political parties, in which all means are used.”173 In this sense, the symbolical conflict has extensively shaped the Macedonian internal politics over the nineties. Trajanovski notes that the adoption of Vergina was a victory of nationalist over socialist ideology. This was preluded by “painstaking negotiations,” that is, a “real war between the advocates of Yugoslav symbols and the proponents of Macedonian

171 Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict, 152. 172 VMRO-DPMNE stands for the “Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization-Democratic Party of Macedonian National Unity.” 173 Maleska, Macedonian issue.

45 symbols.”174 Additionally, Albanian deputies boycotted the session on adoption of new flag, since, in their view, it was closely associated with the nationalist VMRO-DPMNE. Nikola Kljusev, the first prime Minister of Macedonia, has described Macedonian politics as a place in which some “waived the flag of Ilirida and dream about great Albania, others searched for the genetic legacy of Alexander the Great, some dream about the unification of Goce [Delcev], Aleksandrov, Cento, Brasnarov, while some were throwing them cynically into the arms of Bugarophils.”175 As Vangeli assumes, the crucial factor for embracing the star of Vergina as a new symbol on the flag lies in the attempts of the former communists to avoid the adoption of the Lion as a central symbol of the new flag. The lion is considered a symbol of the VMRO-DPMNE.176 As Trajanovski emphasises:

“[the] first flag [Vergina] acquired significance within the national political context due to its place in the fierce conflicts between the two ideological blocks (nationalist and communist) and the two ethnic blocks (Macedonian and Albanian). The first flag of 1992, therefore, epitomized the effects of the internal war over state symbols. It signified the triumph of Macedonian nationalists (symbolically supported by the diaspora) over their ideological opponents and their ethnic rivals, who could be considered their ‘internal significant others’.”177

The new flag was, however, completely unknown to the Macedonian public. As Trajanovski observes, as well as Danforth, the flag was perceived as a most powerful symbol of continuity of Macedonian culture by anyone but extreme nationalists.178 In this sense, the former leader of VMRO-DPMNE Ljubco Georgievski, has stated that the purpose for introducing the ancient myth was to awake the citizens from the Yugoslav daydream.179 In other words, the conflict over which symbols should represent independent Macedonia was reflecting the wider conflict between dominantly national (VMRO-DPMNE) and more moderate social democrats. Arguably, due to these opposing perspectives the flag did not manage to make a popular appeal as it did in Greece. A case in point in this regard might be the lack of protests against the United Nation’s decision not to fly the Macedonian flag

174 Trajanoski, “National” flags, 458. 175 Hristova, Politickite Identiteti, 82. 176 Vangeli, Anticka Segasnost, 95. 177 Trajanovski, „National“ Flags, 458. 178 Trajanoski, “National” Flags, 461. 179 Vangeli, Antiquity Musing, 54.

46 outside its building. Even after Greece conditioned the ceasing of the trade embargo with changing the flag displaying contested symbol of Vergina, there were no mass protests and “the flag was gradually accepted as a new national symbol.”180 Simultaneously, with the pluralization of political space in Macedonia, the ancient narrative earned more space in the Macedonian historiography. According to the scholars dealing with this issue, the central attempt of Macedonian historiography was to ‘prove’ that ancient Macedonians were not Greeks. In this sense, while the historiography devoted more space on the ancient narrative, it centered primarily on undermining the Greek’s position claiming continuity between ancient Macedonians and modern Greeks. There were no attempts to make a narrative shift; neither was there a tendency to remake the genealogical make-up that we are witnessing today. Rather, as observed by Kolozova and Panov, the historical discourse appeared as a reaction on the already constructed discourse by the political and public rhetoric.181 The apparent tie between production of historiographical knowledge and state was by no means product of post-Yugoslav politics. Both Stefant Troebst and Ulf Brunnbauer have emphasized that this practice has its roots in the socialist Yugoslavia. What is more, this phenomenon is not a syndrome of Macedonian historiography exclusively, since the historiographies emerging in, or from, socialist Yugoslavia have assumed a “single line of tradition – historical, ideological or political discontinuities and breaks have no place in such static, deterministic interpretations of history.”182 However, an important difference between historiographies in socialist Macedonia and independent Macedonia is that in the second more emphasis lies on the national discourse, which has been dominating the historiographical production since the break-up of Yugoslavia. Consequently, there was more room for articulation of those views perceiving continuity between ancient and modern Macedonia. Again, neither in historiography nor on the state level the narrative shift occurred, which again speaks about possible political congruence between them. As Kolozova pointed out, one would expect a “sharp change” to occur in the state policy and historiography towards

180 Trajanovski, “National” Flags”, 461. 181 Kolozova et. al., Ancient Macedonia, 16. 182 Troebst, IMRO+100, 62.

47 the fostering of scientific research on the history of ancient Macedonia, however this did not happen.183 The Slavic narrative remained the dominant one, even under the circumstances of persistent “threat”, embargos and conditioning by internal and external actors.

Between structure and agency In my view, the reasons for this are both ideological and structural. Importantly, it is necessary to acknowledge that the adoption of Vergina was not an attempt for changing the dominant national paradigm. Despite the display of the national flag, it is less likely that this process would continue in the way this has been carried out since 2006. There are no indicators, to my knowledge, that may reveal such a tendency. To understand why the elites did not respond to the Greek nationalism in the manner of the current regime in Macedonia it is important to take into consideration the role of agency and structure. In this respect, it is necessary to consider the Realpolitik argument in terms of weak and strong state relations. According to Vangeli, the dispute between Macedonia and Greece “in the realist perspective of the international relations it is a dispute between a strong state (Greece) and a small state (R. Macedonia).”184 In this context, Greece was in the position to block the Macedonia’s bid to international organisations, as well as to impose a trade embargo as conditioning mechanism on the weak Macedonia economy. Under these circumstances, “Macedonia has been forced to back down on the issue of its flag.”185 Similarly, Brown argues that “in the light of economic crisis the pressure to reach some form of compromise was unendurable.”186 In addition to the larger factors, it is necessary to address the ideological and political positions concerning the issue of dominant national narrative in Macedonia. This is compulsory since the weak-strong state argument seems puzzling when we look at the ‘antiquization campaign’ and the project ‘Skopje 2014’ that insists on redefining the narrative paradigm in Macedonia and at the same time openly defies the Greek’s position on this issue. Additionally, the possible narrative shift in the 1990s would have been

183 Kolozova et.al., Ancient Macedonia, 46. 184 Vangeli, Antiquity Musing, 20. 185 Shea, Macedonia and Greece, 179. 186 Brown, In the Realm of the Double-Headed Eagle, 142.

48 profoundly in contrast with the ideological and political determination of the ruling authorities. The President Kiro Gligorov187 and the SDSM were the dominant political actors between the period of 1991-98. The SDSM was formed in 1991 as a successor party of the League of Communists in Macedonia, while Kiro Gligorov was the first president elected by the parliament as a candidate of SDSM in 1991. According to Lidija Hristova, SDSM was overtly championing the traditions of communist revolution, having been perceived by the opponents as forging anti-macedonianism, ignoring at the same time other historical events, such as the Ilinden Uprising, IMRO, Alexander the Great and so forth.188 Concerning the (ancient) past, Kiro Gligorov stated in 1992:

Macedonian people came to the Balkans in the sixth and seventh century A.D. and are of Slavic origin. They have their own authentic culture, language and history, that is why Macedonians do not have to identify [themselves] with the culture and civilization of other peoples, nor with their contemporary achievements.189 I replied that we Macedonians have never used that flag [Vergina] in our recent history and that we should not be slaves to hypotheses that we are direct descendants of Alexander the Great.190

After the signing of interim Agreement with Greece, the relations between two countries normalized. A large portion of foreign investments came from Greece and this country supported Macedonian candidature to the EU in 2005. Even when the VMRO-DPMNE assumed power in 1998, the relations did not stagnate. To the contrary, the two states maintained a dynamic economic cooperation and stable political relations, without major provocation from the both sides. In addition, another national discourse permeated Macedonian society known as anti-macedonianism, defined as “movement for returning the Bulgarian consciousness in the Macedonians.”191 It has been advocated by “segments of the VMRO-DPMNE under the leadership of Ljubco Georgievski,” who was the prime-minster

187 Kiro Gligorov was a first president of Republic of Macedonia. He was holding important position in socialist Yugoslavia and was considered in independent Macedonia and beyond as a democratic and west- oriented politician. 188 Hristova, Politickiot Pluralizam vo Republika Makedonija, 89. 189 Shea, Macedonia and Greece, 179. 190 Gligorov, The Unrealistic Dream, 102. 191 Maleska, The Macedonian Issue.

49 between 1998-2002, and who was granted with a Bulgarian citizenship.192 He has argued that the ongoing ‘antiquization campaign’ is “highly instrumental and fallacious.”193 As for the nineties, he added that Macedonia could have used the narrative of ancient Macedonians more prominently, as a “mean for waking up from the Yugoslav daydream, but we never did that.”194 Yet, this claim has to be taken with cautiousness, since it contradicts with his statements on ancient Macedonia given in the early nineties. As long as in office, Georgievski did not give more credit for the ancient narrative. In an article written in 2009 he emphasized:

“Do we have to look for the Macedonian ethnogenesis in Antique Macedonia? Surely not! Why? Primarily, because this idea jeopardizes our state in an actual political sense.”195

This stance implies a possible political awareness of the danger of giving more significance to the ancient narrative, since this move might have exacerbated the already shaky relations with Greece. Additionally, in the article mentioned above, Georgievski overtly mocked the ongoing antiquization as “a virtual history based on no arguments.”196According to him, the ancient narrative has been mostly instrumentalized in the relations with the legacy from the Yugoslav past. The sensitivity over the ancient past issue was recognized by Gligorov in 1995:

“We should not have to fight for something that was 2300 years ago and to transform it into Cyprus issue, which cannot be resolved for 20 years. If we fight for that symbol, the next thing will happen: all young people who are 20 years would have to have 40 years to get in the situation to live normally, to have to access to the world, and to us so we can begin the process [of] EU accession. Whether it should be the price of our insistence that is our symbol?”197

192 Vangeli, Antiquity Musing, 89. 193 Ljubco Georgievski, “Za vnucite na Aminta,” Fokus, 20 March, 2009. 194 Ibid. 195 Ibid. 196 Ibid. 197 Kolozova et.al., Ancient Macedonia, 55.

50 This reveals a lack of clear and comprehensive strategy concerning the ancient past and narrative. One of the differences between Greek and Macedonian nationalism lies in the fact that the Vergina flag and the myth of ancient Macedon Kingdom acquired different popular and political appeal in Greece then in Macedonia. As pointed out earlier, in independent Macedonia there have been strikingly opposed perspectives on the past and history, which prevented a development of joint policy concerning the national narratives. Moreover, the lack of protests against the decision to change the national flag implies that the new national narrative did not succeed in making a comprehensive popular appeal in the society. Unlike in Greece, where the “most moderate Greek historians and politicians rejected the use of the unqualified adjective ‘Macedonian,’”198 in Macedonia a consensus over the ancient Macedon kingdom has not been achieved. This has been confirmed by Kolozova and Panov, who have emphasized the “lack of political and state interest in providing historical support” for fostering the heritage of ancient Macedonia.199 The decision to abandon the Vegina symbol from the national flag under these socio- political conditions questions the thesis holding that the last word for dissemination of national narrative lies always in the hands of dominant elites.200 Importantly, it invites us to understand the human action in the context in which it operates. While the abandonment of Vergina flag can be interpreted as a result of larger factors, the possible narrative shift, in a way it has been promoted since 2006, was of no interest to the political elites. Georgievski clearly stated that this would have consequences for the Macedonian state, indicating in this sense the weak-strong state paradigm. On the other hand, SDSM and Kiro Gligorov were ideologically close to the narrative of Slavic origin, being also aware of the huge risk for the state and Macedonian citizens if ancient symbolism was given more space: (Gligorov: “[…]If we fight for that symbol, the next thing will happen: all young people who are 20 years would have to have 40 years to get in the situation to live normally…” (p.50)). To sum up, having in mind the huge external pressure, the political, ideological and ethnic polarisation of both Macedonian politics and society, it would have been an immediate act of risk for the authorities to continue foregrounding the ancient myth under these

198 Drezov, Macedonian Identity, 47. 199 Kolozova et.al., Ancient Macedonia, 55. 200 Such an argument has been raised by Malešević, Identity as Ideology, 152; Özkirimli, The Nation as an Artichoke, 347-8; Vangeli, Anticka Segasnost, 116.

51 circumstances. The space for a political manoeuvre was simply constrained due to series of reasons. Instead of that, the elites decided to adjust their everyday politics to the pressing political context by reversing the insisting on ancient symbolic, if nothing else than on the state level.201

201 One of the shortcomings of the thesis is that do not rely on interviews with the actors from the nineties. This would have better explained the complex question of dissemination of national narrative.

52 Chapter IV. ‘Antiquization campaign’ and shift of dominant national narrative

The central task in this chapter is to explain the process of narrative shift and to discuss the rationale behind the state-driven ‘antiquization campaign’. Similarly as in the previous chapter, I will be taking both the micro and macro conditions into account. Special focus lies on the role of the agency, the interdependence between state, (ruling) party and national ideology. I am reflecting also on the transformation of the current government and Nikola Gruevski from neoliberal technocrat to predominantly semi-authoritarian leader, who heavily relies on national-conservative discourse. This is especially the case after the Bucharest Summit and the convincing electoral win in 2008, after which the ancient narrative gained new momentum in Macedonia. I will also look beyond the dominant nation/identity building discourse by trying to bring “antiquization” more closely to operational realm of VMRO-DPMNE’s ideology. To better articulate my analysis, I build my arguments on discussions arguing that nationalism can be best understood in the relation to the modern state and its institution.202 Yet, contrary to Breuilly’s claim that the “organization and ideology of national movement are central to its activity when in opposition, [and] this becomes less the case once it acquires power,” I will try to argue the opposite – that is, that the national ideology becomes central operational activity of the ruling elites in Macedonia.203 The modern state possesses not only monopoly of physical force (Weber), but also possesses a monopoly of legitimate symbolic force (to name, categorize etc.),204 as well as “organisational and ideological power” to extensively disseminate its governing ideology, notes Malešević.205

202 John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004); Nationalism Reframed; Siniša Malešević, “Did Wars Make Nation-States in the Balkans?: Nationalism, Wars and States in the 19th Century and early 20th Century South East Europe,” Journal of Historical 25, 3 (2012). 203 Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, 8. 204 Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups, 42. 205 Malešević, Did Wars Make Nation-States in the Balkans?.

53 Post-conflict Macedonia The Ohrid Framework Agreement signed in 2001 was designed to prevent spreading of the violent conflict between the National Liberation Army (NLA) and Macedonian security forces. Тhe agreement worked in favour of minorities, particularly for Albanians, since it granted several political and symbolical privileges in comparison to the pre-OFA period. Overall, the agreement raised the status of Albanians to the level of community, granted equal representation in the public institutions, and create ground for making Albanian language a second official in the country. It seems that the OFA brought more stability in the relations between minority and majority groups, at least on the political level.206 To a large extent thanks to OFA’s implementation in 2005, Macedonia became an EU candidate country, which was positively welcomed by most of the citizens in the country. The relations with the neighbours were on solid terms, and, as Vangeli points out, Greece “had strongly supported” Macedonia’s bid to the European Union.207 Unlike in the turbulent 1990s, the overall socio-political situation in Macedonia was more promising. Ilka Thiessen, an anthropologist engaged with Macedonia, notes that none of her informants “said that Albanians were keeping Macedonia away from Europe – a statement that was common in the mid 1990s.”208When the VMRO-DPMNE won the election 2006 there was a lot of hope that the new Prime Minister and “western-oriented pragmatist” Nikola Gruevski would bring Macedonia closer to the European Union. Generally speaking, the overall socio-political situation looked slightly better for the country in the post-Ohrid Macedonia, mostly due to the prospect of EU integration, respect of minority rights and improvements in the regional political and trade relations. In this sense, there were fewer reasons for a negative redefinition of Macedonian nationness vis-à- vis “internal and external” nationalisms. Even after the Bucharest Summit in 2008, the geo- political situation is hardly comparable with the events in the nineties. Therefore, the initial politics of ‘antiquization campaign’ surprised many. Even after the government announced

206 For a critical assessment of OFA see Florian Bieber, “Power Sharing and the Implementation of the Ohrid Framework Agreement,” in Power Sharing and the Implementation of the Ohrid Framework Agreement Published by Friedrich. Skopje: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (2008). 207 Vangeli, Nation-building, 25. 208 Ilka Thiessen, “EU as Future?: From a Macedonian Viewpoint-The Multiple Ways of Being European in Macedonia and Not Being in Europe,” in Macedonia, the Political, Social, Economic and Cultural Foundations of a Balkan State, ed. by Victor C. De Munck and Ljupco Risteski (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013): 55.

54 building of monument to Alexander the Great, the mainstream media perceived this with a high dose of scepticism, primarily due to the possible worsening of the relations with Greece.209 In this sense it is rather puzzling why did the Macedonian government decide to provoke Greece in situation in which Greece could set severe condition for the Macedonian state.210 This is the point at which the question of when is analytically useful, that is, why particularly the group remaking tendencies are taking place after 2006, and especially after 2008. It allows a discussion over the relationship between present and past, indicating that the structural conditions were similar but the outcome is different. Accordingly, this invites us to look beyond the geo-political dynamic in order to be able to understand why the narrative shift occurs. The Greece’s blockade of EURO-Atlantic integration in 2008, in my view, seems less detrimental for the country than the persistent negation, threats in the nineties, accompanied by economic embargo and constant presence of Macedonian geo- political position in domestic media, diplomacy and among intelligentsia. Moreover, the state did not back down the insistence on ancient narrative as it did in the nineties, even in the situation in which the Euro-Atlantic integration depends on Greece. These developments go against the logic of Realpolitik argument discussed previously in this thesis, and, importantly, urge taking into consideration the role of the agency in shaping nationalism in Macedonia. Furthermore, there is an obvious attempt by scholars to explain ongoing narrative shift by focusing on identity as an analytical category. It seems that ‘identity’ in this sense represents a by-product of their structural determination. Thus the rise of nationalism has been perceived as a reaction to “external and internal” identity threats, although these threats were far more perilous in the nineties. Moreover, ‘identity’ has been discussed and used, even when couched in a constructivist language, as something that exists, whereas the important thing to do is to discern how it has been redefined, renegotiated, consolidated and structured. In this sense, scholars’ attention lies on the outcome (‘identity’ in this case),

209 “Skopje Prodolzuva” (13 episode), Youtube, September 20, 2014, accessed: December 13, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDZHRzbmzo0 210 The “symbolic conflict” has been acknowledged by the EU, emphasizing that the politics of “antiquization” is “liable to increase tensions with neighbours and create new internal divisions”, in Zoran Thaler, “The 2009 progress report on the Former Republic of Yugoslavia”. European Commission (2009).

55 which deprives us from looking at the processes of construction – in this case of ideologisation – that is, to more extensively engage into discussion of why and how the ancient narrative has been disseminated since 2006. As Malešević points out, identity primarily represents an “ideological symptom of a problem in need of explanation”, rather than an explanatory solution.211 Hence, to better explain the narrative shift phenomenon as well as to focus on the processes of ideologisation, I move the focus from both structure and ‘identity’ to the role of agency and ideology.

Agency, nationalism and state As I have previously emphasized, I will look at the role of the agency and state in order to better explain the ongoing group remaking process in Macedonia. In this regard, it is important to note the change of the leadership in the current ruling party occurred in 2003 (at this time the VMRO-DPMNE was in opposition), when Nikola Gruevski took the leadership. Prior to becoming a leader of VMRO-DPMNE, Nikola Gruevski was a minister of finance in the government led by Ljubco Georgievski (1998-2002). Gruevski made several economic reforms in this period, creating a positive image for himself in the society. After the election in 2002, VMRO-DPMNE went in opposition. Gruevski was elected as a new leader of VMRO-DPMNE in 2003, while Ljubco Georgievski decided to step out after the presidential election in 2004. He formed his own party in 2005. Gruevski and his new and young team were perceived in the society as those who would bring Macedonia closer to the EU, professionalise the state institutions and make a “democratic breakthrough.”212 Such an expectation was present in the foreign media as well, in which Gruevski was perceived as a “reformer” and a “west-oriented pragmatist.”213 Interestingly, in the period between the elections (2002-2006), there are no indicators to be found (to my knowledge) that could portend the ongoing narrative shift process. I could not trace any statement by Gruevski, or by any other member of the VMRO-DPMNE, in the period between 2003 and 2006 in this regard. Moreover, in the comprehensive programme

211 Malešević, Identity as Ideology, 57. 212 Interview with Ivica Bocevski by Jadranka Kostova, “Rezimot na Gruevski e mesavina od sistemite na vladeenje na Putin, Chavez i Berlusconi,” Fokus, December 11, 2013. 213 Boris Georgievski, “Macedonia’s path from progress to problem child,” Deutschewelle, August 27, 2014 accessed: December 13, 2015, http://www.dw.com/en/macedonias-path-from-progress-to-problem-child/a- 17880976.

56 announced for the elections by the “rebranded VMRO-DPMNE”214 in 2006 and 2008 (Vangeli) called “Prerodba” (A rebirth), the ancient discourse has not been introduced, neither did it in a manifesto called “Doctrine”. Only after 2006 when VMRO-DPMNE won the election, and especially after the election in 2008, the ancient symbolism and rhetoric diffused profoundly in the society, but yet again not in any of the party’s official documents. This suggest moving the attention to the role of the state as a powerful agent with its “organizational capacity and a legitimising ideology” for implementing projected goals.215 Charles Tilly has noted that “those who control the state apparatus enjoy enormous advantage of power and wealth over those who do not.”216 The VMRO-DPMNE’s electoral win in 2006 provided the party with the possibility to promote its political goals, among which the economic improvements of the state and joining EU were on the top of the agenda. However, according to Ivica Bocevski, who was a vice president in Gruevski’s government and is the foreign policy advisor of the current president of Macedonia, Nikola Gruevski has embarked on promoting a “VMRO-DPMNE’s revolution instead of performing the promised democratic reforms.”217 This transformation of Gruevski from a predominantly neoliberal technocrat to chiefly national-semi-authoritarian leader merits a particular attention, since it has implications on the process of narrative transfer.218 Two critical junctures are important in this regard. These are the frustration from the Bucharest summit in 2008, and the convincing electoral win in the same year. When asked about the project ‘Skopje 2014’ Nikola Gruevski has clearly stated: “Yes, Skopje 2014 was my ideа and I absolutely stay behind this project.” 219 On another occasion he has stressed:

214 Vangeli, Nation-building, 18. 215 Malešević, Did Wars Make Nation-States in the Balkans?. 216 As cited in Rogers Brubaker, “Charles Tilly as a Theorist of Nationalism,” The American Sociologist 41, 4 (2010): 377. 217 Bocevski, Rezimot na Gruevski. 218 I am not making a claim that the neoliberal rhetoric has been marginalized by Gruevski and his team, but rather that the national and authoritarian practices began to take firm and comprehensive hold after 2008. 219N.N., “Yes, Skopje 2014 was my Idea,” Mina, January 07, 2012, accessed: November 26, 2015, http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/20045/45/

57 “How long are we going to be afraid, how long are we going to wait for somebody else to let us talk about our history and erect monuments to our heroes that would make a visible impression of our city and state.”220

The “VMRO-DPMNE-DPMNE revolution” would have hardly been possible without having state with its material and organizational capacity to implement its projects.221 Whereas the explanation for the rise of new macedonianism centres on the frustration from the Bucharest summit, the VMRO-DPMNE’s electoral victory in 2008 has been somehow analytically ignored, despite the fact that it provided the ruling part with more legitimacy for realization of its project of national Rebirth. It is important to note that the first ‘antiquization’ efforts began already in 2006. They gained new momentum after 2008. With a decisive victory in 2008, the government cemented its power, won an absolute majority, which provided the party with more credibility for its projects. In comparison to the election from 2006, VMRO-DPMNE obtained 14,43 per cent more votes – approximately 180,000 more in 2008, and 63 seats in the parliament, 18 seats more than in 2006. In 2008, Gruevski was the most popular politician in Macedonia. In this sense, the election in 2008 seems to be central in this process, after which the government gained greater legitimacy to carry out its projects and ideas. The close tie between party and state is not a recent phenomenon in Macedonia though. In the post-socialist period, Macedonian parties (SDSM and VMRO-DPMNE, as well as Albanian parties) did not seriously commit themselves to separate the party from state. The new parties have used the old networks to establish and exercise power. After VMRO- DPMNE won the elections in 2006, the party has been building its power on the existing structural networks. However, what differentiates the rebranded VMRO-DPMNE from both its predecessor as well as from the SDSM are the growing authoritarian tendencies, as well as the way in which state resources have been employed.222 Florian Bieber notes that one of

220 Skopje Prodolzuva, 13 episode. 221 In this respect, the recent BIRN investigation revealed that the project ‘Skopje 2014’ costs over 560 million euros so far, in Meri Jordanovska, “True Cost of ‘Skopje 2014’ Revealed,” Balkan Insight, Jul 27, 2015, accessed: 26 November 2015, http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/true-cost-of-skopje-2014-revealed 222 In regard to authoritarian tendencies, see Florian Bieber, “Die autoritäre Versuchung auf dem Balkan,“ Neue Zürcher Zeitung, December 14, 2014, accessed http://www.suedosteuropa.uni- graz.at/sites/default/files/page_attach/nzz__Fr_20140314_L1S20_16.00.pdf

58 the aspects that marks VMRO-DPMNE’s rule is the domination of party over the state.223 According to Ljubica Spasovska, the current ruling elite have embraced the worst illiberal practices from the socialist period.224Both ‘antiquization campaign and ‘Skopje 2014’ are considered to deepen the boundaries along the lines of ethnicity and particularly between the SDSM and VMRO-DPMNE and their supporters. Moreover, their implementation relies largely on the semi-authoritarian nature of the state. The government seemingly ignores public debates and experts’ opinions on this issue, and generally, the rise of nationalism has been marked by an apparent lack of transparency. In order to be able to implement ‘Skopje 2014’ several changes have been made in the city urban plan. The whole project has been wrapped into silence, as the authors and artists who worked on the new buildings and monuments are quiet when it comes to the intentions, costs and artistic appeal of “Skopje 2014”.225 Koteska emphasises that the government is treating urban space in Skopje “as if it is the four walls of its apartment.”226 What is more, Nikola Gruevski has been often, and especially since 2011, depicted as a dictator (this designation has little analytical value though) as a strong leader, ‘Macedonian Milosevic’, while his ruling is being labelled in the public as “Gruevism”.227 The project Skopje 2014 has been associated with other non-democratic regimes, while its monumentality inspired Jasna Koteska to describe it as “scary and totalitarian display of power”.228 In this sense, Bocevski notes that the “highest priority of VMRO-DPMNE is to invest in the party’s political reproduction.”229

223 Ibid. [italics mine]. 224 Ljubica Spasovska, “From feudal Socialism to feudal democracy -the trials and tribulations of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,” Open Democracy, July 23, 2014, accessed: 13 December, 2015, https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/ljubica-spaskovska/from-feudal-socialism-to-feudal- democracy-trials-and-tribulati 225 Maja Nedelkovska, “Macedonia Artists Keep Silent over Skopje 2014,” Balkan Insight, January 27, 2012 accessed: December 13, 2015, http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/macedonian-artists-keep-silent-over- skopje-2014 226 Koteska, Troubles with History. 227 Norbert Mappes-Niediek, “Mazedonien auf dem Weg in die Diktatur,“ FrankfurterRundschau, April 10 2014, accessed: December 13, 2015, http://www.fr-online.de/politik/mazedonien-mazedonien-ist-auf-dem- weg-in-die-diktatur,1472596,29949416.html 228 Koteska, Troubles with History; Project Skopje 2014 has been associated with the Nazi-ideology, and Hitler’s plan of rebuilding Berlin; Gruevski has been designated as a dictator in foreign media. See for example Andreas Ernst, “Der kleine Diktator,” NZZ, April 23, 2014 accessed: December 13, 2015, http://www.nzz.ch/der-kleine-diktator-1.18288391 229 Bocevski, Rezimot na Gruevski [italics mine].

59 On the other hand, Vangel Bozinovski, one of the architects of Skopje 2014, endorses the project by saying that Skopje was first baroque city in the Ottoman Empire, and that the baroque architecture was smashed and burned at the end of the 17th century.”230 The rhetoric coming from the authors and supporters of the project endorse the evoking of ancient past as something that would serve the unity, identity and the “mental stability of Macedonian people.”231 Generally, the promoters describe the whole process as a possibility to express and promote Macedonian identity, making Skopje an European city with the newly “pseudo eclectic architecture.”232 Foreign media use a similar discourse when reflecting on the peculiar Macedonian case. This language has been employed among scholars, who discuss the rise of nationalism as an attempt of constructing and redefining Macedonian nation and identity. Following Brubaker, however, I maintain that the nation-centric discourse should not be emulated on the scientific level since this would not yield any relevant sociological outputs beyond those propagated in the public. For the purpose of comprehensive analysis, we should not presuppose concepts such as ‘nation’ or ‘national identity’ as the final outcomes of certain national politics. As Lawrence Vale, who has studied the relationship between architecture and power on different continents, puts it: “the [architectural] rhetoric may be about unity, but the symbols chosen to represent it are products of an elite with its own set of group preferences.”233 VMRO-DPMNE discourse uses a discourse of “creating deeds” to appeal to the targeted recipients. Concerning the newly built Museum of VMRO-DPMNE and Museum of the Victims of Communism, Gruevski stresses:

“After visiting the EU summit in Brussels, we took all our documents in the plane and we went through them carefully. While examining them we spotted a proposal for building a

230 N.N., “Skopje: the Future is in the Past,” Euronews, April 22, 2013, accessed: December 13, 2015, http://www.euronews.com/2013/04/22/skopje-the-future-is-in-the-past/ 231 “Skopje Prodolzuva”, (episode 4), Youtube, 232 Vangel Bozinovski, Skopje Prodolzuva (episode 4), Youtube, September 20, 2015, accessed: December 13, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Stb-erKPRVQ 233 Lawrence Vale, Architecture, Power and National Identity (New Haven: Yale University Press), 50; According to Nikos Chausidis one the goals of the project of the author is to “show how great constructors we are,” in Nikos Chausidis, Proektot Skopje 2014: skici za edno naredno istrazuvanje (Skopje: Nikos Causidis, 2013), 76.

60 museum to all the victims of communism in Brussels. While reading this, I told to my colleague, look, this is a great idea, after which we started working on it.”234

This statement of Gruevski indicates three things. Firstly, it suggests that the Skopje 2014 is primarily a top-down project designed by the elites on power. Secondly, it reveals an apparent anti-communist element. Lastly, it indicates us that the project was not comprehensively planned, and that there is a lot of contingency in this regard. Therefore, further studies concerning the eventfulness of nationalism, as Brubaker suggests, shall provide more insightful details on the complex and comprehensive rise of nationalism in Macedonia.235 To sum up, the symbolic nationalism seemingly operates as one of the central axes of legitimization of VMRO-DPMNE’s government. The abundant dissemination of ancient symbols has been mostly related with the frustration from the Bucharest Summit. While this observation is correct, I tried to accentuate that the narrative shift phenomenon has a lot to do with the fact Nikola Gruevski and VMRO-DPMNE retained power in 2008. What is more, this process cannot be grasped without discussing the role of the state and party in this regard. The state has been captured by the ruling party, which use the state resources to maintain power and promote party’s ideology. Importantly, the Macedonian case challenges Breuilly’s argument of nationalism being the dominant discourse of the opposition rather then of the ruling elites. As Vangeli writes, the Macedonian state uses its power with an aim to harmonize its cultural values and symbolic practices according to the ideology of the governing party.236 In this sense, I will try to argue in the following that the rise of nationalism in Macedonia has more to do with ideology than with ‘identity’.

Nationalism as ideology – ‘Antiquization campaign’ and ‘Skopje 2014’ The researcher’s propensity towards an identity paradigm has already been emphasized in this study. This is understandable due to the extreme rise of this category in the social sciences over the last two-three decades. However, as I tried to show, identity is of little use

234 Skopje Prodolzuva, 13 episode. 235 Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed, 18. 236 Vangeli, Anticka segasnost, 157.

61 when one thoroughly approaches the case study, both diachronically and synchronically, since it cannot explain the narrative shift phenomenon in Macedonia. Similarly, I will try to argue that the national symbolic embedded in ‘Skopje 2014’ and ‘antiquization campaign’ has more to do with politics and ideology than with identity. Hence, building on Malešević I will try to place the recent rise of nationalism more closely to the realm of ideology, and more precisely, to the VMRO-DPMNE’s operative ideology.237 Lawrence Vale’s account of the relationship between architecture, power and identity is particularly useful when approaching the project “Skopje 2014”. Both “antiquization campaign” and Skopje 2014 reveal strong political and ideological elements, which merits a thorough analysis. As Vale has observed, “we can learn much about political regime by observing closely what it builds.”238 As I previously discussed, the ancient narrative has a long history of existence in Macedonia. Although employed by VMRO-DPMNE’s in the nineties the myth of Alexander the Great did not play a prominent role for this party back then. This has changed with the VMRO-DPMNE and the new leader Gruevski assuming power in 2006. The process of extensive evoking ancient past symbolically began with the installation of several ancient sculptures in front of the government’s building in 2006. This was the year in which the discourse over ancient Macedonia was re-actualized in the popular culture.239 Since then, and especially after 2008, it has been comprehensively diffused in the society. The urge to forge the remote past can be observed in the school education, historiography, urban environment and archaeology. Numerous objects, from sports arena, schools, airports to streets and squares have been (re)named after Alexander the Great and Philip II Macedon. The most visible manifestation of this phenomenon is the project “Skopje 2014”, in which the monuments to Alexander the Great and Philip II Macedon dominate Skopje’s central area. More than 130 statutes and dozens of new objects have been erected in the course of five years.

237 Malešević, Identity as Ideology. 238 Vale, Architecture, Power and National Identity, 3. 239 Kolozova et.al., Ancient Macedonia, 31.

62 As maintained by Malešević, states are in position to use their organizational and ideological capacity to monopolise the use of violence, but also to profoundly penetrate in the popular culture. While the organizational aspect requires a comprehensive bureaucratic and hierarchical system of relations, strict compliance and loyalty to the organisation (e.g. party, state, social movements or corporations), the ideological one is underpinned by the system of beliefs aiming, among other things, at projecting and imposing knowledge and mobilizing or immobilizing, in Gagnon’s words, diverse social strata.240 It implies a high level of cooperation and harmonization with the proposed politics on the macro level. The comprehensive presence of the ancient narrative in Macedonia suggests that the rise of nationalism relies extensively on these two complementary processes – bureaucratisation and ideologisation.241 Accordingly, the stunning tempo of constructing buildings and monuments in Skopje, which incidentally surprised many, as well as the intensive penetration of the ancient discourse in the popular culture and education, reveal a highly organised and extremely comprehensive operation and coordination.

The dissemination of the ancient narrative and ideologisation process It is important to note that the VMRO-DPMNE created a favourable condition for ancient discourse to be spread and accepted by different actors after 2006. This can be seen by looking at the different ways in which the ancient narrative gained the momentum. The scientific endeavours are case in point. In 2006, the Macedonian Academy of Science and Arts (MANU) published a study, claiming that the ancient Macedonian language was the same with the contemporary Macedonian.242 After their three day conference in Russia, the two researchers involved in this study were enthusiastically greeted by hundreds of people at the Alexander the Great airport in Skopje as if it was about a football match and not a

240 Gagnon, The Myth of Ethnic War. 241 Siniša Malešević, War and Violence. 242 However, these claims have been disproved by Petarl Ilievski, who labeled these endeavors as amateurism that dismisses the complete state of art, in Petar Ilievski, “Two Opposite Approaches Towards Interpreting Ancient Texts With Anthroponymic Contents (with special regard to the ancient Macedonian anthroponomy),” Contribution, Section of Linguistic and Literary Sciences, XXXI, 1. (Skopje: Macedonian Academy of Science and Arts 2008).

63 scientific conference.243 They have won the support on the popular level, as well as of the linguists and historians, having an opportunity to participate in television shows, mostly, however, controlled by the current government.244 This was the first paper published in an academic journal that undermines the Slavic’s language role in formation of Macedonian people.245 Beside the linguistic endeavours, the narrative shift process is taking place in the historiography and school system, where new theories on the origin of Macedonian people have been developed. According to Darko Stojanov, the “new controversial interpretation of important historical processes is introduced in the school system,” which stays in contrast with generally accepted theories on the great migration period.246 The narrative shift can be identified in the “History of Macedonian People”, published by the Institute of National History in 2008, where it has been claimed that ancient Macedonians had a profound influence on shaping the identity of Slav people. The continuity of ancient Macedonians as a dominant population has been stressed, which, according to the authors, had an essential influence on transferring the Macedonian tradition to the Slavs in the 7th century.247 This was not the case with previous editions, in which the emphasis lied on the Slavic origin.248 Whereas in the nineties both the political and academic community centred on proving non- Hellenic ties of Ancient Macedonians, the newly proposed discourse has a more ethno- centric focus, which has been congruently articulated by politicians, intelligentsia and academics. According to the study by Kolozova and Panov, the academic community and the institutions of political power in Macedonia are “mutually ideologized.”249 In this sense, it is worth emphasizing that this is the case ever since the socialist period, as there has been

243 “Precek na Tentov I Bosevski na aerodrome Aleksandar Veliki,” Youtube May 17, 2008 accessed: 13 December 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJTNfa9da0M. 244 More on this controversial event in Davorin Trpeski “Nationalism and the Use of Cultural Heritage: A Few Post-Socialist Macedonian Examples,” in Macedonia, the Political, Social, Economic and Cultural Foundations of a Balkan State, ed. by Victor C. De Munck and Ljupco Risteski (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013). 245 Kolozova et.al., Ancient Macedonia, 31. 246 Darko Stojanov, “In search of autochtony: A case study of Great Migration Period as Presented in History Textbooks in Macedonia;” Povijest u Nastavi (2012). 247 Mitko B. Panov, “Macedonia and the Slavs,” in History of the Macedonian People, ed. by Chepreganov, Todor (Skopje: Institute of National History, 2008): 83. 248 This theory is in line with the work by Florin Kurta, who argues that no Slavs settled in Macedonia during the 7th century, in Florin Curta, “Were there any Slavs in Seventh-Century Macedonia,” Istorija XLVII, 1 (2012): 74. 249 Kolozova et.al., Ancient Macedonia, 77.

64 an obvious overlapping between the state-driven discourses and the ones coming from the academic community.250 According to Ulf Brunnbauer, the historiography in Macedonia is more politicized than in other Balkan countries – “though not on the level of direct interference, but rather in terms of paradigmatic dispositions.”251 This situation suggests paying a closer attention on the relationship between the state and production of knowledge in Macedonia.252 An interesting aspect that reveals the state-driven tendency towards the ancient past and speaks of the comprehensiveness of the ongoing narrative shift process is the intensive archaeological excavation with purpose to find more ancient artefacts and to incorporate ancient Macedonia as an integral part of Macedonian cultural heritage. The chief person behind this project is the extravagant director of the Bureau for the Protection of Cultural Heritage Paško Kuzman, who claims he can find the tomb of Alexander the Great. Kuzman has been questioning the dominant Slavic narrative since the nineties. When VMRO- DPMNE assumed power in 2006, the state started allocating more funds for the archaeological excavation than before. Accordingly, the ‘Archaeological Museum of Macedonia’ has been built as a part of ‘Skopje 2014’, being one of the most impressive objects in the project. The comprehensiveness of government’s politics in Macedonia is to be spotted in the process of inventing new state traditions. This course of action fits well into the Hobsbawm‘s invented tradition who discerned this process already in the 19th century, as a part of “standard [national] stories”, to use Tilly’s phrase, meaning that the newly invented traditions were a common instrument in the process of state building worldwide.253 Thus, for example, the celebration of one of the most important state holidays in Macedonia has been accompanied by soldiers dressed in ancient costumes. Another example is the

250 See in this regard Brunnbauer, Ancient Nationhood; Kolozova et.al., Ancient Macedonia; Troebst, The Politics of Macedonian historiography; for the interdependence of national myths see Matvey Lomonosov, “National Myths in Interdependence: The Narratives of the Ancient Past among Macedonians and Albanians in the Republic of Macedonia after 1991.” (Master thesis, Budapest: Central European University, 2011). 251 Brunnbauer, Ancient Nationhood, 265. 252 I am not asserting that there is a direct link between the VMRO-DPMNE’s politics and Macedonian historiography. However, the fact that the process of narrative shift is taking place concurrently on the state- level and in the academic community speaks of the favourable environment created by the VMRO-DPMNE. Further studies shall either prove or dismiss a possible direct link between the ruling party’s politics and academic institutions. 253 As cited in Brubaker, Charles Tilly as a Theorist of Nationalism, 377.

65 renaming of the Balkan Folklore Festival to the Festival of Alexander the Great, and where antique dances are practiced to celebrate Alexander the Great’s birthday.254 One of the most bizarre events occurred in 2008, when a state delegation represented by the Prime Minister, Macedonian archbishop and the Mayor of Skopje welcomed the Hunza delegation from Pakistan, who claims that the are descendants from Alexander the Great.255 Al of this indicates the tendency and capacity of the government to introduce the ancient symbolism in varieties of contexts and events associated with the national-self of Macedonia(ns). I noted earlier that the ancient narrative was not introduced in the normative ideology of the ruling VMRO-DPMNE, neither discursively nor symbolically. This is why Malešević’s distinction between normative and operative ideology is particularly useful. According to him, operative ideology is “instrumentally driven and formulated, and hence make an appeal primarily to popular interests and emotions.”256 It gives a possibility to study ideology beyond the abstract texts appearing in the manifestos, doctrines and other official documents. If we examine the newly invented traditions in Macedonia, as well as at the urban space and architecture, we can learn a great deal about the content of ideology, intentions and type of the ruling regime. In the context of Macedonia, I will try to show that the “antiquization campaign” found its way to promote VMRO-DPMNE’s ideological values. Despite the absence of ancient discourse and symbols in the normative part, the ancient symbolism and tendency to narrative transfer can be noticed in VMRO-DPMNE’s everyday discourse and national ideology. Since 2007, the party youth of VMRO-DPMNE started to celebrate an ancient holiday called “Xantika”, wearing ancient shields and symbols just as the Macedonian phalanx in the time of Philip II and Alexander the Great did. Additionally, the ancient symbolic has been used by the governmental Agency for Youth and Sports.257 Furthermore, the Vergina star can be spotted on numerous party objects. In the picture below, one can see the Vergina star on the left side accompanied by the lion, which serves

254 Zarko Trajanoski, “Lakoverni Makedonci,”Dnevnik, October 15 2010, accessed: December 13, 2015, http://www.dnevnik.com.mk/default.asp?ItemID=50286303BB791549808FCC01A436B987 255 N.N., “Hunza Delgation Travels to Macedonia,” Balkan Insight, Jul 11, 2008, accessed: December 14, 2015, http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/hunza-delegation-travels-to-macedonia. 256 Maleševic, Ideology, Legitimacy and the New State, 4. 257 Vangeli, Nation-Building, 19.

66 as the main symbol of the ruling party. Both symbols can be found in the school objects as well.258

The party headquarters in Skopje, Aerodrom. Source: mine, photo taken in August, 2015.

Speaking of lions, this symbol is one of the mostly exposed in the project Skopje 2014. The supports and promoters of the newly erected lions endorse their widespread presence by stating that they were used as symbols throughout the Macedonian history. On the other hand, the lions reveal the government’s urge for leaving a mark on the urban space. Whether architectural projects are seen as debacle or success, notes Vale, they become associated with the regime “politically and perhaps iconographically.”259 According to Janev, the historical “Museum of VMRO-DPMNE and the Victims of the Communist Regime” mirrors the viewpoint of the ruling party, serving primarily for “ideological indoctrination.”260 Besides the Museum, VMRO-DPMNE’s notion of family, one of the nine core principles of the party’s Doctrine, is illustrative in this respect.261 The promoted idea of family values is to be found at the square called “Philip the Second”, (prior to 2013 called “Karposovo vostanie”) located in the heart of the city, where the monument to Philip II Macedon dominates the area. Under the monument to Philip II, which incidentally has been dubbed “Warrior”, three statues, one male, a female and a child, accompanied by two lions, are holding hands, conveying the message of family solidarity. Koteska describes this setting as

258 Zaneta Zdravkovska, “Lavceto i sonceto od vergina po ucilisni dvorovi,”Radio Slobodna Evropa, 14 October 2013, accessed: December 13, 2015. 259 Vale, Architecture, Power and Identity, 51. 260 Janev, Instrumentalizing Heritage. 261 VMRO-DPMNE, “Doktrina: Vrednosti na VMRO-DPMNE.”

67 a “family drama,” as the Project Skopje 2014 is consisted of three central monuments to Alexander (the son), Philip II (the father) and Olympia (the mother).262In addition, the government has been promoting its conservative values by carrying out campaigns related to the “third child” and “no abortion policy.”263 Interestingly, these practices are reproduced in Skopje’s architecture. For example, statues of three mothers, among whom one pregnant, each holding one child, complete the monument to the Mothers of Macedonia. This monument is evidently dedicated to Olympia (Alexander’s mother), depicting the process of growing of a young Alexander. In Robert Pichler’s view, the staging of what he called a “nuclear family” in the square ‘Karposovo Vostanie’ forms a core element of “Skopje 2014.”264 It is worth noting that the elite-driven desire to leave a mark on the urban environment is a phenomenon that accompanied the nation state-building processes worldwide. This was the case with the phenomenon of “statutomania” that is to be found in the Third French Republic and Second German Empire.265 According to Vale’s study, nationalism stands as a dominant form of expression in the architecture of the 20th century.266Similarly, Alexander Diener and Joshua Hagen demonstrate the dominance of nationalism in the architecture of the post-socialist cities. They point out the cultivation of nationalism among socialist governments as well.267 The hyperbolic monumentalism in Skopje is a reminiscence of the architecture of the city of Ashkhabad, Turkmenistan, in which the cult of personality has been diffused in the urban space, containing also features of nationalism, “state paternalism and historicism.”268 In the post-Yugoslav space, architecture and urban space are often used to break with the communist past, although not to the extent and with the intensity as in Macedonia nowadays.269 In Janev’s view, “Skopje 2014” is different than other cases

262 Koteska, Troubles with History. 263 An interesting fact is that all participants in the video spot have Macedonian names, which speaks of selective and targeted politics, see for example “Treto dete-Semejstvo,” Youtube, Jul 3, 2014, accessed, December 13, 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7XEMD8f6Ok 264 Pichler, Staging the Nation, 5. 265 Hobsbawm, The Invention of Tradition. 266 Vale, Architecture, Power and Identity, 16. 267 Alexander Diener and Hagen, Joshua, “From socialist to post-socialist cities: narrating the nation through urban space,” Nationalities Papers 41, 4 (2013). 268 Janev, Instrumentalizing Heritage. 269 See Amra Custo, Uloga Spomenika u Sarajevu u izgradnji kolektivnog sjecanja na period 1941-1945 i 1992-1995 – komparativna analiza (Sarajevo: Institut za Istoriju, 2013).

68 because of the timing of realisation and “shameless faking of architectural history.”270 Again, the newly erected district called ‘Andric Grad’ in the town of Visegrad, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, seems to largely rely on historical invention, displaying clear political messages as well, articulating symbolically the internal political grievances between two entities.271 Besides the attempt to “link Macedonian past”, the ‘antiquization campaign’ and the project “Skopje 2014” reveal an autochthonic message as well as mono-ethnic and anti- communist orientation. In the Macedonian context, this has been interpreted as act of marginalization of Albanian culture and the communist legacy, the second being linked to the social democrats, the biggest political rival of VMRO-DPMNE. Attempting to claim that “we are ancient since we came here first” the government tends to promote the historical rights over both the neighbours and Albanians living in Macedonia.272 “Skopje 2014” is erected across Skopje’s bazar, a traditional place of gathering of Albanians and people who identify themselves as Muslims. According to Vangeli, with the “antiquization campaign” the government displays a tendency to symbolically relegate Albanians to the status they had before 2001.273 In Koteska’s view, one of the main intentions behind the project is to finally break-up with the communist heritage and to build a “superstar nation.”274 The newly erected buildings concealed old objects built during the socialist period, which may be interpreted as an act of imposing the governing ideological vision on Skopje’s urban space and deliberately “forgetting”, in Renan’s words, of recent history.275 Although at first glance they seem banal, the project “Skopje 2014” and “antiquization campaign” produce tensions and create further divisions within the population. Thus the myth of Alexander the Great creates division between those identifying with Ancient and Slavic narrative, while the “antiquization campaign” triggered extensive discussion in the media about who is Slavic and who is Ancient in Macedonia. In this way, further boundaries are being created along ethnic, but more intensively along political lines. Those criticizing the projects are labelled in the media as traitors of the nation. In this sense, this discourse

270 Janev, Instrumentalizing Heritage. 271 Adelheid Wölfl, “Ein historisches Land wird erdacht,” DerStandard, 13 April 2014. 272 For the functions of “antiquization campaign” see Vangeli, Nation-building. 273 Ibid., 24. 274 Koteska, Troubles with History. 275 Ernest Renan, “What is a Nation?,” Paris, Presses-Pocket, (1992).

69 excludes a large part of population that does not identify itself with the government’s imposed narrative. This speaks of a complex, conflictual and plural nature of a purportedly homogenous (banal) national space in Macedonia.276 One of the most criticized aspects of the project “Skopje 2014” is the poor functionality of the objects. Many architects and urban experts pointed out the absence of systematic planning. According to Causidis, the authors of the project are indifferent both to the old and new buildings. Many of the new objects cannot fully express their grandiose, due to the ill-developed plan of constructing and selecting a less functional location for the newly erected buildings. Again, this signals government’s urge to promote its own vision on Skopje’s urban space by prioritising the content over functionality.

Beyond nation-building and identity The above-presented arguments speak of political and ideological determination of the ruling elites, of identity as an ideological instrument, but very little of “identity- constructing” or “nation-building”. Even in Vangeli’s study titled “Nation-Building Ancient Macedonian Style” there are little traces of nation-building process. The fact that “antiquization” is mono-ethnic, divisive, anti-ottoman and anti-communist oriented tells us a great deal about the dominant ideological and political perceptions of the promoters, rather than they are trying to (re)build a ‘nation’. The project Skopje 2014 reveals a complex relationship between power, state(s) and nationalism, the ways in which the elites understand the modern world and perceive themselves within, as well as the growing authoritarian tendencies accompanied by an obvious note of personal taste. It speaks a lot of the ideological conflicts and identity politics reproduced in the urban environment, the great level of organisation, harmonisation and coordination between macro and micro structures, of endeavours to enhance the sense of groupness while inventing, as Janev puts it, a country’s heritage.277 The identity is simply too elusive and static concept to be sociologically useful, at least in the Macedonian case. As Vale has discerned concerning the relationship between architecture and identity:

276 In this context, Bieber has discerned similar fragmented nationalisms in Serbia under Milošević, in Bieber, Nationalismus in Serbien. 277 Janev, Instrumentalizing Heritage.

70 “Architecture and planning are often used as tools for promoting something called national identity, but many dimensions of this phenomenon remain unarticulated.278 […] it seems important to reiterate that design decisions are often made by individuals whose own sense of identity is projected onto that of the nation they seek to build.279 The problem of national identity is not something that […] at the end architect or urban designer can firmly mold.280 Regimes build capitol complexes chiefly to serve personal, subnational and supranational interests rather than to advance national identity […] and governments still find it necessary to demonstrate their power through aesthetic exaggeration.”281

This is not, to make it clear, an attempt to abandon the concepts of identity and nation- building, but rather to point out that they are unable to adequately respond to the immensely huge task that has been ascribed to them. What is more, both categories overlap regularly and it is not clear what constitutes and what distinguishes ‘nation-building’ from ‘national identity-(re)building’. The overlap in this case carries no analytical usefulness. It is analytically important to distinguish when, how and which concept will yield more sociologically relevant results, more precisely, which is better equipped to tell us more about the complex nature of nationalism. To engage into a conceptual, methodological and empirical challenge that can disburden the significance of these meta-discourses in the social sciences is of crucial importance. The fact that these categories represent dominant analytical tools for more than two decades signals that more work needs to be done than just to renounce them. While Brubaker and Cooper are right when distinguishing between how one concept should be discussed on popular level and how on scientific, further methodological and empirical inputs are needed, which may provide a wider set of arguments, demonstrating more convincingly the weaknesses and elusiveness of these idioms.

278 Vale, Architecture, Power and Identity, 48. 279 Ibid., 52. 280 Ibid., 285-6. 281 Ibid., 293.

71 Concluding remarks The intensity and comprehensiveness of the newly risen nationalism surprised many in Macedonia and beyond. When announced in 2009, the Project Skopje 2014 was encountered with a high dose of mockery in the popular culture and media. Hardly anyone believed that the project would be finalized in the form and scale that it was announced. Despite this, the government displayed a high level of commitment to complete all of the promoted buildings and monuments, while both “Skopje 2014” and “antiquization campaign” are still in progress. Most importantly, the process reveals a great level of inter-relationship between agency and ideology. This study attempted to provide a more inward reflection on the recent rise of nationalism in Macedonia. The central focus lies on the process of narrative shift and the way in which it correlates with the state, party and ideology. Unlike other analysis, I tried to argue that the nationalism in Macedonia has a lot to do with the role of the agency and ideology, and less with identity and nation-building. Similarly, I tried to accentuate that the attempt to explain the rise of nationalism by looking solely at the structural factors leads to a partial understanding of how national ideology operates. Using Weber’s methods of Verstehen und Erklären helped me to comprehensively approach the case study, to understand the role of agency and structure in instigating social and political action. In this way, I attempted to bring in an interaction the past with the present (or more recent past), the way in which the ruling elites act in the context in which they operate as well as to which extent their actions are constrained by the larger factors. Accordingly, the abandonment of the Vergina star from the national flag in 1995 indicates that this move was determined by external factors, rather than ideological. In this respect, the empirical results question the thesis which holds that the elites have the “complete freedom” and the last word for dissemination of national narratives.282 On the other hand, the fact that that the ancient narrative has not been disseminated in the nineties in the way in which has been carried out since 2006, reveal more complex background. Beside the structural constraints, the possible narrative transfer would have been profoundly in contrast to the ideological and political determination of the dominant elites. However, to be able to more convincingly claim this further empirical and methodological engagement is required.

282 Vangeli, Anticka segasnost¸ 116.

72 This study is methodically limited since I did not rely on interviews with the actors involved in the turbulent nineties. The central part of this master thesis examines the reasons behind the process of narrative shift, which has been carried out since 2006. The government led by Nikola Gruevski openly defies the Realpolitik argument and confirm the thesis holding that elites have the last word for dissemination of national narratives. I examined the role and the process of remaking of Nikola Gruevski from neoliberal politician to predominantly nationalist-(semi-) authoritarian leader. Moreover, I tried to point out that that the rise of nationalism has a lot to do with the election held in 2006 and especially with the one held in 2008, when VMRO- DPMNE won an absolute majority, embracing thus more legitimacy for its projects. Lastly, I attempted to demonstrate that the rise of nationalism is better explainable by using ideology as an analytical category rather than identity. Despite the fact that the ancient symbolic and rhetoric did not appear in the normative ideology of the ruling party, this process can be identified by using Maleševic model for studying “operative ideology”. It allows studying ideology beyond the normative and abstract texts appearing in the political movement and parties. In this respect, a fruitful point of analysis represents the architectural symbolism embedded in the new buildings and monuments. In this way, Malešević’s model for studying operative ideology, which invites us to look at the contents of school books, newspapers editorials and speeches, may be enriched by examining the ideological production embedded in the architectural works. The symbols and urban environment can tell us a lot about the type of the regime, dominant ideology, structural and social conflict. As Vale puts it: “although there may be some well-intentioned search for a unifying national symbol, normally the choice of symbol, if examined, reveals other, structural, social, and economic tensions.”283 In this respect, I tried to argue that that the whole process of inventing tradition displays ideological, political and geo-political tensions. Instead of presumed identity and nation-building process, the project “Skopje 2014” reveals rather, among other things, the ideological messages of the ruling party as well as an ongoing process of de-democratization that merits a thorough examination.

283 Vale, Architecture, Power and Identity, 49.

73 This is line with the theoretical conceptualization I used, which argues against the extensive usage of identity in the social sciences. The lack of definitional and conceptual clarity within constructivism reduces identity’s analytical potential, while its asserted fluidness and multipleness brought even more confusion when dealing with this category. I tried to empirically point out its incapacity to explain the process of re-shifting national narratives in Macedonia. However, instead of abandoning this term, I argue that more fruitful would be to empirically demonstrate its lack of potential to tell us more about the phenomenon in question. As Brubaker and Cooper emphasize, the main issue is not that this term is being used, but primarily how it has been used, in a manner that reifies social action, as well as in a way attempting to explain a wide-range of processes that eventually do not have much in common with identity itself.284 In other words, identity seems to be too elusive concept to be analytically applicable in the way in which it has been used by the scholars. As Malešević stresses, “identity is an operational phantom that cannot be caught regardless of how tight our methodological nets are.”285 I accentuated previously that monumental hyperbolism found its way in the architecture of Western Europe, communist and post-communist countries. What is interesting in Macedonia case is the timing of construction, the amount of monuments and new buildings and rapid realization of “Skopje 2014”. Moreover, the ongoing “antiquization” attempts to distance Macedonia from the old-Yugoslav narrative of Slavic origin. This was not the case with the post-Yugoslav nationalisms. While the narrative of Slavic origin represents the dominant paradigm both on political and historiographical level in the successor-Yugoslav states, the current Macedonian government and academic institution overtly challenge the Slavic narrative by linking Macedonia(ns) chiefly to the glory period of Alexander the Great. The process of narrative transfer is still in progress, while Gruevski has announced that the project Skopje 2014 would transform into project called “Macedonia 2017.”286 The next elections are scheduled for April 2016. The rhetoric of creating deeds, of building the country and bringing foreign investments, in conjunction with a very vivid appeal to

284 Brubaker and Cooper, Ethnicity without Groups¸ 33. 285 Malešević, Identity as Ideology, 52. 286 “Nikola Gruevski za Makedonija 2017,” Youtube, February 12, 2013, accessed: December 14, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev_u4X0moZI.

74 nationalism and conservatism, seems to work well for the ruling party that has been governing the country since 2006. According to the recent polls, the VMRO-DPMNE leads decisively at the party rankings, despite the immense wire-tapping scandal and growing authoritarianism.287 Provided that the VMRO-DPMNE wins the elections in April, this would afford the party with more legitimacy, and presumably we will be witnessing monumental hyperbolism across the country.

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