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The Rhetoric of War and the Reshaping of Civil Society in North Macedonia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 August 2019

Vasiliki Neofotistos
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Abstract

In this article, I explore recent efforts to “de-Sorosize” the Republic of Macedonia, arguing that they reveal an obsession in Macedonia—and more broadly in east central Europe—with defending ethnonational interests against assumed interlopers. New, self-proclaimed patriotic associations have mobilized ideas of combined external and internal threats to national existence as though there were a war frontier. This imagined war frontier marks the dividing line between belligerent nationalists, who claim that Macedonian sovereignty and national identity are under threat of extinction, and the Macedonian center-left and liberal (moderate and left-leaning) NGOs, which tend to promote greater inclusiveness in society, are assumed to side with “the Albanians,” and to have a direct connection to George Soros. The case study of Macedonia highlights the outright public rejection of liberal ideals and the key role that populist, militant sensibilities play in the formation of civil society groups in Europe today.

Type
Critical Discussion Forum: New War Frontiers and the End of Postsocialism
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 78 , Issue 2 , Summer 2019 , pp. 357 - 364
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 2019 

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Footnotes

I am grateful to Neringa Klumbytė and the anonymous reviewer for Slavic Review for suggestions that improved the article. Special thanks to Victor A. Friedman, who graciously read the penultimate draft and offered helpful suggestions for clarifying some points, and Dmitry Tartakovsky, for his invaluable assistance with copyediting and formatting the text.

References

1. In June 2018, Greece and the then called Republic of Macedonia signed the Prespa Agreement and agreed on the name Republic of North Macedonia, thus ending an acrimonious, decades-long dispute over the use of the name Macedonia. The Agreement came into force in February 2019. On the dispute over the name Macedonia between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia, see, for example, Danforth, Loring M., The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World (Princeton, 1995)Google Scholar.

2. See Македонска нација, “Обединување на Македонските Патриотски здруженија” (Unification of the Macedonian Patriotic Associations), at http://mn.mk/aktuelno/13096-OBEDINUVANjE-NA-MAKEDONSKITE-PATRIOTSKI-ZDRUZENIJA (accessed May 8, 2019).

3. “Интервју за ‘Република’: Груевски со книгата на Трамп размислува за ‘лек’ за ‘армијата на Сорос’ во Македонија ” [Interview for ‘Republika’: [Inspired by] Trump’s book, Gruevski thinks about ‘a cure’ for the ‘army of Soros’ in Macedonia],at https://www.mkd.mk/makedonija/politika/gruevski-so-knigata-na-tramp-razmisluva-za-lek-za-armijata-na-soros-vo (accessed May 8, 2019).

4. Nikola Srbov, Press Conference, at https://sitel.com.mk/stop-operacija-soros-novo-gragjansko-dvizhenje-za-desoroizacija-na-makedonija (accessed May 8, 2019).

5. Cvetin Cilimanov, interview, Skype, early 2018.

6. Verdery, Katherine, What was Socialism, and What Comes Next? (Princeton, 1996), 104CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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8. Маја Jovanovska, “Владата со 800,000 Евра ќе финансира невладини здруженија и фондации” (The government will grant non-governmental associations and foundations 800,000 Euros) at http://novatv.mk/vladata-so-800-000-evra-ke-finansira-nevladini-zdruzhenija-i-fondatsii/ (accessed May 9, 2019).

9. See Marinov, Tchavdar, “We, the Macedonians: The Paths of Macedonian Supra-Nationalism (1878-1912),” in Mishkova, Diana, ed., We, the People: Politics of National Peculiarity in Southeastern Europe (Budapest, 2009): 107–37Google Scholar. It should also be noted that in the period before the Balkan Wars, the slogan, while favored by speakers of what today we would call (and what many of them then called) Macedonian, could have also been used by speakers of other, non-Slavic languages, such as Aromanian and Albanian. Evidence to support this claim is found in the Aromanian and Albanian names, which were recorded in the Ellis Island archives, of people who identified themselves as “Macedonian” when they reached America at the beginning of the twentieth century (Victor Friedman, personal communication). On this point, also see Brown, Keith “Friction in the Archives: On ‘Macedonians,’ Macedonians and the Ottoman Transatlantic,” Balkanistica 28 (2015): 41–63Google Scholar. Many thanks to Victor Friedman for his generous help with the information in this footnote.

10. Such suspicions point to long-standing political antagonisms between Macedonians and Albanians, emanating from decades of political marginalization of Albanians in Yugoslavia. See Neofotistos, Vasiliki, The Risk of War: Everyday Sociality in the Republic of Macedonia (Philadelphia, 2012), 15–36Google Scholar. Also see Brown, Keith, “In the Realm of the Double-Headed Eagle: Parapolitics in Macedonia, 1994–9,” in Cowan, Jane K., ed., Macedonia: The Politics of Identity and Difference (London, 2000): 122–39Google Scholar.

11. Brunnbauer, Ulf, “Serving the Nation: Historiography in the Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) After Socialism,” Historein 4 (2003-4): 161-182CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 171-172.

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13. Marinov, Tchavdar, “Famous Macedonia, the Land of Alexander: Macedonian Identity at the Crossroads of Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian Nationalism,” in Daskalov, Roumen and Marinov, Tchavdar, eds., Entangled Histories of the Balkans, Vol. 1: National Ideologies and Language Policies (Leiden, 2013), 273–330CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 304.

14. Brown, Keith, The Past in Question: Modern Macedonia and the Uncertainties of Nation (Princeton, 2003), 40CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Perry, Duncan M., The Politics of Terror: The Macedonian Liberation Movements 1893-1903 (Durham, 1988), 202-209Google Scholar.

15. Ibid., 260.