Bulgarian author Ivan Nikolov calls on the Macedonian Govenrment to agree on a wholesale review of the post-war history. Writing in BGNES, the same news agency which published the scandalous interview with Zoran Zaev through which he announced his new policy toward Bulgaria, Nikolov praises Zaev’s new envoy Vlado Buckovski as “one of the few who early raised the issue of joint honoring of the Ilinden Uprising”, but insists that the issues that need to be reviewed are far more numerous.

Macedonian politicians and their entire intelligentsia are called upon to review the ideological heritage of Yugoslavia after the Second World War. Buckovski continues to talk about an “anti-fascist movement” and about a “victory” in the war, and “liberation” regarding the ASNOM assembly, which shows the degree to which the Yugoslav propaganda continues to plague the minds there, Nikolov writes.

He insists that ASNOM, the 1944 assembly when Macedonia was declared, was an attempt to declare a false link between the partisans and the 1903 Ilinden Uprising, in order to dupe the Macedonian people. ASNOM was held on Ilinden – August 2 – in a clear reference to 1903 uprising against the Ottomans.

Only months later began the removal of the ASNOM leadership, with Metodija Andonov – Cento at the top. Buckovski needs to explain why the closest associates to Cento, and the first ministers of Macedonia, such as Bogoja Fotev, Petre Piruze, Pavel Satev, Bane Andreev, Venko Markovski, were all brutally removed, in some cases ending their lives in tragedy. These Macedonian patriots lived with the hope that they can declare an independent Macedonia under the aegis of some of the major UN powers. But that didn’t happen because of the pro-Serbian Macedonians, Lazar Kolisevski, Lazar Mojsov, Vidoe Smilevski and the others, Nikolov writes.