The Council of the city of Skopje yesterday approved the changes of 570 names of streets, bridges and squares. The list was put together by the ruling coalition of left and Albanian parties, and is dominated by communist era party officials and Albanian figures. Out go some of the city street names from the ancient Macedonian history and from the days of national liberation struggle, which were promoted while VMRO-DPMNE had majority in the council.

Mayor Petre Silegov defended some of the most controversial choices – such as reinstating the name of Vladimir Ilic Lenin on a downtown city street that was renamed after the ancient Macedonian king Amyntas the Third. After protests in which the horrific death toll and human rights violations of communism were raised, Silegov insisted that the street will not be called Leninova to honor Lenin but because it is a name that has grown on the citizens of Skopje. “It’s a Skopje thing”, he claimed.

The Amyntas – Lenin street houses some of the poshest restaurants and cafes in town – including the sushi bar which is one of the bases of operations for controversial state security chief Saso Mijalkov. The name of Mijalkov’s father, Jordan, Macedonia’s first Interior Minister post independence who died in a suspicious car crash in 1991, is also removed from the list of city street names – the broad street leading to the Interior Ministry that carried Jordan Mijalkov’s name will be named Zeleznicka (railway street) again, after the old railway line that went there.

One of the names that Silegov did remove under protest is from the list put forward by his Albanian coalition partners – that of Ali Pasha Tepelene or Ali Pasha of Yoanina, the Ottoman era feudal lord of Albanian origin who ruled in Epirus. Many Albanians consider him a hero but he is reviled by the local Vlach community, after he put to the sword the city of Mospokople in 1788. Moskopole was a major center of Vlach economic and cultural life and was hoped to be the basis for a future Vlach state in the Balkans. “It’s like naming a street after Hitler”, Vlach activists protested. Other Albanian figures that will have streets named after them are also controversial – they include proponents of a Greater Albania, as well as members of the terrorist NLA such as Imri Elezi, who took part in attacks on Macedonian forces during the 2001 civil war.

With the local elections coming up in fall and the SDSM party unlikely to repeat its full sweep of municipal halls from the chaotic 2017 elections, Silegov is in a hurry to undo as much as he can from the imprint VMRO-DPMNE left on the city during more than a decade in control of the city hall. Silegov was unable to remove almost anything of the grand Skopje 2014 project promoted by Nikola Gruevski and local VMRO officials, but he is now pushing to rename city streets that were named after VMRO leaders in the prior decade. This includes streets dedicated to Boris Sarafov and Todor Aleksandrov. The latter street will likely get its old name back – that of deposed Chilean President Salvador Allende, who was honored by the communist Yugoslav regime to at the time of Non-Aligned movement to protest American imperialism.

Figures like Sarafov and Aleksandrov are also claimed by Bulgaria, and were shunned by the Macedonian communist regime for their relentless campaigning against the spread of communism in the region. SDSM famously protested the naming of streets after these VMRO figures in 2012 by chanting “Bulgarians” at the VMRO council members – things have since changed and now under their leader Zaev, the SDSM party seems eager to accept a complete rewriting of Macedonian history to fit the Bulgarian historical narrative.

But in the list of city street names proposed by the SDSM party the old style SDSM is still present. The list is chock full of partisan commanders who fought against the Bulgarian forces in World War Two – despite the fact that at the same time Zaev and his party are promising the remove World War Two memorial plaques that Bulgaria objects to. One of the city streets will be named after Koco Bitoljanu, a communist fighter who in 1942 killed a local Bulgarian police commander Mane Mackov, and was imprisoned by the Bulgarians. After the war, Bitoljanu was commander of the notorious communist era OZNA police. Another reviled communist era police chief Zlate Biljanovski is also going to be honored with a city street, as will Yugoslav era general Todor Atanasovski – known for decrying the VMRO term in office as “Aegean occupation” – referring to Macedonians who originate from Aegean Macedonia and were expelled by Greek forces and who generally see Yugoslavia in a far more critical light.