Former Prime Minister and VMRO leader Nikola Gruevski dismissed Zoran Zaev’s criticism of his evocation of Macedonia’s ancient past in the building of the contemporary narrative. Gruevski quotes an article by professor Jovan Donev, which insists that the viewing of modern day Macedonians as exclusively Slavic in origin is deeply racist.
In a social media post, Gruevski also quotes articles detailing that the Macedonian team of historians which is negotiating with the Greek side on a shared historical narrative, has not made a single request of its own yet.
These worrying reports about the approach of the commission of historians. The head of the Greek delegation makes it clear that on our side there is a goal with no goal-keeper. He says that the “Greek side sees no counter-proposal from the other side that the contemporary N. Macedonia is an heir of the historic Macedonia from antiquity”, Gruevski writes.
The recent editorial from professor Donev, shared by Gruevski, explains how the Macedonian nation is made up of a dozen various peoples who settled in this region, including Slavs, Avars, Romans, Celts, Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Albanians, Turks and many others. Under Gruevski, Macedonia moved toward honoring its diverse historic heritage, unlike the period under Yugoslavia when the Slavic element was presented as dominant. For this, Gruevski was strongly condemned both by Greece, which wants the ancient heritage of Macedonia exclusively for itself, and by the Macedonian left, many of whom also insist on the exclusively Slavic origin theory.
Mr. Zaev had a bombastic claim that we are now combating the “antiquization”. A group of Zaev’s supporters from the Colored Revolution enthusiastically accepted the planted term “antiquization” and bitterly opposed the so-called “policies of antiquization”, allegedly conducted by the VMRO-DPMNE Government. They would publicly blame VMRO-DPMNE, saying that their policies provoked Greece to block the Euro-Atlantic integration of Macedonia. These comments show how little they understood their own history and ethnic genesis, and even less the Greek foreign policy toward Macedonia. In their desire to protect their Slavic roots, they unconsciously waded into the waters of racism. Insisting they are Slavic and have no direct link to the ancient Macedonians, they uncritically accepted the theory of the Yugoslav Communist regime, which was meant to build a joint South-Slavic nation, Donev writes.
Professor Donev, in the article shared by Gruevski, adds that any nation is built on a myth, and the Macedonian nation in the 19th century was built on the widespread historic myth of Alexander and ancient Macedonia, which he says was kept alive through many various regimes, including the Communist ones.
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