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THE RISE OF MACEDONIAN FUNDAMENTALISM

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Macedonists have in recent years skilfully exploited the emotive issue of Macedonian Human Rights to enhance their general credibility and acceptability throughout the emigrant Macedonian communities. An important aspect of this strategy is to also isolate and alienate those Macedonian activists who openly challenge Macedonist sectarian beliefs. Since Macedonists presume a mandate to prosecute the global struggle for Macedonian Human Rights, any opposition to Macedonism is always viewed as an anti-Macedonian manifestation.

In reality, when stripped of its progressive nationalistic facade, and its untenable philosophical conclusions, Macedonism is simply the remnants of Serbian hegemony, communist internationalism (Yugoslavian and Bulgarian), and the persisting Kolishevski 'personality cult'. Macedonists have existed for many decades, Vardar Macedonia was established in 1944, yet the issue of Macedonian Human Rights was not an agenda item until very recently. Where were the protests of the Macedonists when Tito entered into a tripartite alliance with Greece and Turkey in 1953, allowing Aegean Macedonians to be stripped of all their possessions? Would the Macedonists argue it was not a denial of human rights in 1958 when Aegean Macedonians were forced to take oaths NEVER to speak their native language? During the many, many years of oppression and degradation since WWII the Aegean Macedonians listened for the voices of their Macedonist "brothers" but alas, the silence was deafening. There is not now, nor ever was any acknowledgement for the hundreds of our people who died in a desperate attempt to cross swollen rivers into Albania because Tito and the YCP closed the borders of the RM.

Within the last decade an astonishing phenomena has occurred both within Vardar Macedonia and the emigrant communities, particularly Australia and Canada. A schismatic Macedonist organisation has emerged with a significant and committed following. While it shares a common viewpoint with Macedonism - that Macedonians represent an unique ethnicity - the new group's fundamental beliefs are both different and unconventional. Amazingly, the members of this new organization, we term Macedonianists (in reality a form of Fundamentalism), claim lineage from the Ancient Macedonians (Philip II and Alexander III) and many centuries before that time period. Macedonianists are readily characterised by their vehement disavowal of any Slavonic ancestry; contrast this to the Macedonists who acknowledge a Slavonic heritage, but to justify their basic position are compelled to support a fallacious interpretation of contemporary and past history.

The strength of the Macedonianists has dismayed the Macedonists who refer to them as a collective rabble of ultra-nationalists, neo-fascists, and even neo-nazis; in retaliation the Macedonianists characterize Macedonists as comprising an assembly of communists, pan-Slavists, pro-Titoists and pro-Serbianists (for a detailed resume of the Macedonist vs Macedonianist positions, from purely a Macedonist viewpoint, read Radin M, Popov C. 'Who hijacked DOOM?'.

The rise of Macedonianism is an instinctive counter-reaction to the post-WWII Serbian policy of trying to shape and manipulate the very essence of the Macedonian national consciousness amongst all successive generations. The main Serbian aim in RM was to completely de-nationalize the Macedonians with respect to their Bulgarian ancestry while engendering a pro-Serbian (Yugoslavian) sentiment. In the early post-war years Bulgarian national nihilism actively supported this Serbian strategy. The change in the Bulgarian position since the 1956 April Plenum witnessed their active denunciation of Macedonism and forced Belgrade to respond with an ever increasing quantity of Macedonian cultural, linguistic and historic propaganda, which had the effect of intensifying Macedonian nationalism. Ironically therefore, the present strength of Macedonian nationalism may be largely attributed to the continuous Bulgarian evidence counteracting Serbian propaganda on the existence of a Macedonian Nation.

In time the young Macedonian nationals, inculcated to be anti-Bulgarian, anti-Greek and even anti-Serbian by a state controlled education and media system, started to question the parasitic association between the Macedonian intelligentsia and Belgrade. The Macedonianists' resentment and suspicion of the modern day RM leaders has stimulated a refocus towards the so-called past traitors of the Yugoslavian people like Metodi Antonov-Chento, first President of ASNOM, who advocated autonomy for Macedonia in 1946 and was sentenced to 11 years goal with hard labour. He subsequently died within a year of his release. While the Macedonianists justifiably praise Antonov-Chento for his declaration of an independent Macedonia, they fail to acknowledge that it was the unmistakable Serbian tactics to de-nationalize the Macedonians of their Bulgarian consciousness that led him to take this very action and therefore they commit an immense injustice against his ideals.

Macedonianism is a classical 'belief system' based on ancient traditions and not on any freely ascertainable facts. This simplistic approach has many benefits for its members; it provides not only an indisputable, but also an unique Macedonian national identity totally independent of Bulgarians, Serbians, Greeks etc; it also completely removes any need to consider the seemingly endless circular polemics of Macedonists and their opponents on the Macedonian Question. During the last decade however, the Macedonianists have progressively become more militant, conservative and defensive of dogma. Their realization that rationalism for the Macedonian Question should (could) not be answered in debate leads to attempts to overwhelm opponents by sheer violence of rhetoric. If this fails there is always suppression and intimidation to fall back on. This is fuelled by a growing intolerance that Macedonianism has not been universally accepted as the panacea for the Macedonian Question.

I certainly do not deny the Macedonianists right to hold their point of view. However is this what the Macedonian people have come to, an esoteric search for the right to simply possess the name 'Macedonia?' Are we rapidly approaching the equivalent of a Macedonian cultural armageddon? I am poignantly reminded that in a Ukrainian paper (Our Word) published in Poland, the following statement appeared

'a people without a historical memory
is blind on its road towards the future.'

'You have to know one thing, that the fight which is being waged for Macedonia, is for the preservation of the Slavonic-Bulgarian element therein. However they may be called, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Kastorians, or whatever, but they must be the Slavonic-Bulgarian element. I must tell you, the moment that element disappears, all reason to struggle for Macedonia is gone, our cause is finished. The purpose of our fight is to endure and preserve the Slavonic-Macedonian element within the separated regions of Macedonia.'

In the late 1940's at the height of the Tito-Dimitrov euphoria, Mr Boyadjief and countless others, were imprisoned by the Bulgarian Communist Party in squalid concentration camps for five long years. What was their crime? Only one of conscience, for as citizens of Pirin they refused to declare their nationality as 'Macedonian' instead of 'Bulgarian' in the 1946 Bulgarian census. And then again in the late 1950s Mr Boyadjief again spent another year in prison for his similar stand during the 1956 Bulgarian census. Can either Macedonists or Macedonianists please explain to me why the Bulgarian government would imprison its own Bulgarian citizens for refusing to declare themselves as 'Macedonian' nationals?