Nationalist Historiographies and the Rise of Ethnocracy in Macedonia and their Consequences
Nationalist Historiographies and the Rise of Ethnocracy in Macedonia and their Consequences

Summary/Abstract: Perpetual political fissures, fractures, ruptures, fragmentation, and conflict in the past three decades marked the region of South East Europe since the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s reviving the Balkanization metaphor. Local politicians managed to live up to the negative stereotypes held against the Balkan people. The political reality of the Balkan, divided in as many as possible nation-states and statelets and wannabe “Great nation-states”, contributes to slow and inefficient transition to functioning democracies. Consumed by hatred, hostility, mistrust, and suspicion, bilateral and multilateral relations of the Balkan states are far from friendly and cooperative as they could and should be. This results from interrupted domination of nationalism in every Balkan country where nationalist discourse is deeply embedded and normalized in the public sphere. This is particularly present in the historiographical production. In this article I approach history not as a set of events but as object of fierce proprietary battle over the historical symbols. In Macedonia this instrumentalization of history for political purposes became acute during the past decade. The effects of this effort are measured in the recent survey and the article finishes with a commentary of those findings.

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