North Macedonia is a Balkan country that only gained independence 33 years ago. The center of its capital, Skopje, is filled with a strong historical atmosphere.
A statue of Alexander the Great towers over the central square. A statue of his father, King Philip II of Macedonia, towers over a nearby square on a massive pedestal. The city is also dotted with sculptures in bronze, stone and plaster that pay tribute to generations of heroes from what the country considers its glorious and long history.
The problem is that much of the history on display is owned by other countries. Present-day North Macedonia, created after the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, has no real connection to Alexander the Great, who lived 2,000 years ago in what is now Greece, while many of the other historical figures commemorated as statues are Bulgarian.
Slavica Babamova, director of the National Archaeological Museum, has spent her career excavating and exhibiting ancient artifacts and has no qualms about focusing on history. But she said she was troubled by the large number of statues her country has erected in an effort to build a national and ethnic identity.
“We have such a rich history — there’s so much to say. But I don’t think there’s a need for this excessive marketing,” she said in an interview, pointing to the statue of Alexander the Great.
She added that what is more important for North Macedonia is that it is undoubtedly part of its history. Gold funeral masks and other amazing artifacts The artifacts, which predate Alexander the Great, were found in an ancient cemetery near the village of Trebenishte in North Macedonia.
North Macedonia’s identity has long irritated Greece. Claims that ancient Macedonia is part of its cultural heritage Neighboring Bulgaria is also outraged, as it has a strong claim to some historical figures, especially a 10th-century Bulgarian ruler whose statues now crowd Skopje’s city center.
Disputes over who owns history have not only unsettled academics but have also had serious consequences, hindering North Macedonia’s bid to join the European Union. They have also cast a shadow on ambitious nation-building projects based on history that others insist belongs to them — especially Alexander the Great.
Alexander was a conquering hero whose empire stretched from the Balkans to India in the fourth century B.C. He was born in a city in what is now Greece. Historians generally agree that he did not live in what is today North Macedonia or speak the Slavic language there. Slavs arrived in the region several hundred years later.
But part of North Macedonia Actually part of the ancient Kingdom of Macedonia And it is dotted with archaeological sites containing artifacts from the time.
The problem, said museum director Babamova, is not that North Macedonia has no connection to the days of Alexander the Great, but that it has exaggerated its sovereignty. She added that this began after the breakup of Yugoslavia, when nationalists began looking for ways to consolidate their fragile new states.
“In the late 1990s, there was a kind of hysteria,” she said.
Greece was outraged when neighboring Macedonia declared independence in 1991 under the name Macedonia and vowed to block Macedonia from joining NATO and the European Union.
As part of a 2018 agreement with Greece, Agree to call themselves North Macedoniathe Greek government believed that the name was sufficiently distant from the ancient Macedonian Kingdom and Alexander the Great.
Even as Bulgaria’s troubles with Greece fade, the country is also raising historical complaints. Nationalists in the country insist Macedonia is a forged state created by communist anti-Nazi partisans who declared independence in 1944 and use the Bulgarian dialect. Bulgaria was an ally of Nazi Germany during World War II and has created obstacles to its path to joining the European Union.
“Our problem with Bulgaria is the same as Ukraine’s problem with Russia. They say: ‘You don’t exist,’ ” said Nikolay Minov, a history professor at St. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje.
Ukraine has struggled to maintain an independent identity separate from the Russian Empire. But the land now known as North Macedonia has had to deal with intermittent rule by the Roman Empire (which ruled it for five centuries), the Ottoman Empire (which ruled the land until the early 20th century), and other outside powers, including the Serbs and Bulgarians.
In 1903, the new country was independent for only 10 days, and the central government, in search of a historical pillar to consolidate the country, invested hundreds of millions of euros in a large-scale reconstruction of Skopje ten years ago.
It erected statues in city centers and transformed drab government and commercial buildings into colonnaded palaces that looked like kitschy Hollywood sets for ancient films.
The country’s restive ethnic Albanian minority has also clung to its own distinct identity throughout history, with a massive statue dedicated to Skanderbeg, the Albanian military commander who led a 15th-century uprising against the Ottoman Empire.
“I miss the old Skopje,” said Ms. Babamov, the museum director, nostalgic for the city as it was before the statues and Greek columns. “It has lost its soul.”
Most of the columns are hollow, and some of the antique facades have begun to crumble. Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, who ordered the renovation, fled to Hungary in 2018 to escape a corruption conviction.
But his nationalist party Winning presidential and parliamentary elections May 8th.
The party’s current leadership appears to have cooled enthusiasm for Alexander the Great but sees no reason to remove statues of him or others. “This is not a false history we have invented,” insisted Timko Mukunski, the party’s deputy leader. “There are historians who say we have a real connection to ancient Macedonia.”
The new government is determined to maintain that connection and has expressed a desire to remove “the North” from the country’s name, a move that has angered Greece. At his swearing-in ceremony in May, the newly elected president referred to the country as Macedonia, prompting the Greek ambassador to resign.
The deputy leader of the new ruling party, Mukunski, said the 2018 agreement with Greece to drop Macedonia as the country’s name would be considered a “political and legal reality”, but he added: “Do we like it? No!”
Prominent Skopje historian Dalibor Jovanovski said he also disliked the name “North Macedonia” but believed it was an unfortunate price to pay for joining the EU.
“Everyone thinks history belongs only to them, and there is no shared history,” he said. “But in this world, everything is fluid. Everything is mixed together.”
Some residents of Skopje say they dislike the clutter of so many statues, but many are proud of the statues, which they see as a tribute to a long history. “The Greeks claim that his is a statue of Alexander the Great,” said Lupcho Yefremov, walking past Alexander the Great. “But he is Alexander of Macedonia, not Alexander of Greece.”
Former Culture Minister Bisela Kostadinov-Stoichevska said she had planned to clean up the city’s statues by moving at least some of them to parks outside the city, but she abandoned the plan after her staff, ordered to look for violations of zoning laws, found “unfortunately everything was legal.”
She said she particularly wanted to get rid of a large sculpture of the 10th-century Bulgarian king Tsar Samui, which faces Alexander and is not only ugly and obstructs the view, but also “really irritates Bulgarians,” she said.
She’s not a big fan of Alexander the Great either. “I don’t feel connected to him at all. Linguistically, culturally, emotionally.”
