Page:Bulgarian Policies on the Republic of Macedonia.pdf/54

 Such practices persist in various forms in the present Macedonian state. The reason lies in the model of nation building chosen by the newly independent Republic of Macedonia in the early 1990s. One of the available options, which is still current, was to recognize the objective parameters of this development as they are, i.e. independent statehood within the borders of the Republic of Macedonia (a joint state of the ethnic Macedonians and Albanians); changes in ethnic self-awareness among much of the population of Vardar Macedonia (today’s Republic of Macedonia) after 1944; the centuries of historical development of the majority population on the territory comprising today’s Republic of Macedonia as an integral part of Bulgarian ethnicity; and the Bulgarian ethnic identity preserved among a certain portion of the population of the Republic of Macedonia. Regrettably, the political elite of the new state chose the alternative option of following the Serbo-Yugoslavian, anti-Bulgarian scheme unaltered, now in a different environment and to some extent with new protagonists and propagators.

In other words, the consolidation of a distinct Macedonian nation proceeded in conditions of independence not on the basis of recognition and appreciation of objective historical evidence, but rather persisted in falsifying the past, and projecting processes confined to a particular territory and period of time (Vardar Macedonia in Yugoslavia, 1944 -1991) into other territories and other times. Given that the history of the population of the Republic of Macedonia and that of its neighbouring countries are interrelated, this exercise in rewriting history (extending back to the Balkan Revival of the 19$th$ century, the Middle Ages and even to Antiquity), while aimed at adjusting the historic ethnic identity of the population of the Republic of Macedonia to its present one, effectively attempts to redefine the historic – and hence the modern – identity of neighbouring nations, especially the Bulgarians. This attempt is perceived as outrageous by the latter.

A new aspect of this old project is that its masterminds and propagators today comprise not only political and other factions ideologically and biographically connected to the former Yugoslav nomenclature, but also their ideological opponents, including the offspring of families persecuted in the past as Bulgarians or Bulgarophiles.

Subsequently, due to Skopje’s failure to follow a good neighbour policy, the very name of the Republic of Macedonia began to generate problems in the traditional use of the name ‘Macedonia’ for other major