CSIS Recommendations as regards FYROM name issue.

The key challenge for the ROM/FYROM is to resolve its name dispute with Athens, which would help unblock the country’s path toward NATO and European Union accession. Basically, there are three stark choices: indefinite stalemate and no solution, which could destabilize the ROM/FYROM; pressing Greece to accept the current constitutional name and potentially undermine the Greek government at a time of economic and social convulsion; or convincing the authorities in Skopje to qualify the country’s name. Of the three, the name qualifier is likely to be the least destabilizing both for the ROM/FYROM and for Greece, as well as the broader region. On the basis of this premise, the United States would need to pursue the following approach:

New Macedonian books available now on-line.

The Foundation for the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle and the  www.macedonian-heritage.gr/ are  pleased to make available on line two works:

the entire two volumes of the important work "Modern and Contemporay Macedonia" edited by Ioannis Koliopoulos and Ioannis Hassiotis and published in print form by Papazisis Publishers and Paratiritis Publishing House.

The volumes consist of 32 articles written by expert scholars and provide a detailed presentation of the history, economy, society and culture of Macedonia from the Turkish occupation to the present time. The work extends to more than 1000 pages and includes more than 1000 photographs.

The link is...http://www.macedonian-heritage.gr/ContemporaryMacedonia/index.html


and

the one volume “The History of Macedonia” edited by I. Koliopoulos, which consists of 19 academic articles in pdf format written by professinal historians presenting the history of Macedonia from prehistoric times to the present.

The link is...http://www.macedonian-heritage.gr/HistoryOfMacedonia/index.html

FYROM's Foreign Policy Objectives and the Name issue.

The FYROM name issue is not simply a dispute over historical facts and symbols. It is a problem with regional and international dimensions, given that FYROM is exercising a policy of irredentism and territorial claims fuelled by the falsification of history and the usurpation of Greeces historical and national heritage. It is also a problem   of a «cultural genocide».

The first steps of the former Yugoslav "Socialist Republic of Macedonia" towards independent statehood bear the marks of nationalistic visions mixed with territorial expansionism.

It is not a coincidence that, as a result of the first democratic elections (December 1990), the party which won first place in popular votes and parliamentary seats was the "Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation" (VMRO). Its platform declared specifically its intention to work for the unification of all the Macedonian lands in one state: the "Republic of Macedonia".

Similarly, VMRO's electoral poster depicted a map of a united Macedonia which included the whole of Greek Macedonia, as well as the Pirin district in Bulgaria.

In November 1993, under the influence of nationalists, the Gligorov government prepared and passed through Parliament the Constitution of the "Republic of Macedonia". In its preamble, the Constution stated that the new republic rests upon "the statehood–legal traditions" of the "Republic of Krushevo" (1903) and of ASNOM (1944). Both events are considered in Stopje as the first steps toward the establishment of an independent and united Macedonian state. It is worth quoting certain paragraphs from the ASNOM documents of August 21, 1944:

Pr. Dennis P. Hupchick as regards the Slavmacedonian nationality and language*

An interesting historical argument arose in support of an independent (Slav) Macedonian nationality that ultimately reached its maturity only after World War II and Tito's construction of a federated Communist Yugoslavia composed of six independent "historic" republics, of which one was Macedonia. The (Slav) Macedonian nationalists quite simply stole all of the Bulgarian historical argument concerning Macedonia, substituting "Macedonian" for "Bulgarian" ethnic tags in the story. Thus Kuber formed a "Macedonian" tribal alliance in the late seventh century; Kliment and Naum were "Macedonians" and not "Bulgarians"; the medieval archbishopric-patriarchate of Ohrid, which Kliment led, was a "Macedonian," not a "Bulgarian" independent church, as shown by the persistence of Glagolitic letters in the region in the face of the Cyrillic that were spawned in Bulgaria; and the renowned Samuil led a great "Macedonian," rather than a "western Bulgarian," state against Byzantium (giving Slav Macedonia its apex in the historical sun). Under control of the revived Bulgarian state, and later under the Serb Dusan, the (Slav)Macedonians had maintained their ethnic differences from their "foreign" masters, as demonstrated by their "king" VukaSin, who had died attempting to keep an independent Macedonia free from the Ottoman Turks. When ethnic-national consciousness reawakened among the Macedonian Slavs in the nineteenth century, the cultural revivalists, such as the Miladinov brothers, were consciously "Macedonian" and not "Bulgarian," in their efforts.

The obviously plagiarized historical argument of the (Slav)Macedonian nationalists for a separate (Slav)Macedonian ethnicity could be supported only by linguistic reality, and that worked against them until the 1940s. Until a modern (Slav)Macedonian literary language was mandated by the socialist-led partisan movement from Macedonia in 1944, most outside observers and linguists agreed with the Bulgarians in considering the vernacular spoken by the Macedonian Slavs as a western dialect of Bulgarian. In the interwar period (1918-39) the official language of... 

Letter from Pan Macedonian Association USA to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton regarding US Ambassador Reeker's comments

Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton
September 9, 2010
State Department United States of America

Dear Madame Secretary,

We, the representatives of the Pan Macedonian Association USA, one of the largest Greek-American organizations are writing this letter to you because we, along with the rest of the Greek community in the United States, are extremely appalled by recent comments made by US Ambassador to Skopje Mr. Reeker in an interview regarding the position of the United States on the name issue of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (the FYROM). In a TV interview (Alpha TV Skopje) the Ambassador stated that the USA government does not provide change of the constitutional name, essentially supporting a double name solution.

According to the official US website of the US Embassy in Skopje which has posted extracts from the interview promoting it as the “US position” Mr. Reeker stated "We do not believe that the solution must involve the change of the constitutional name or the Macedonian Constitution. This is your Constitution. This is your holy text. What is needed is that both sides, Greece and Macedonia, agree to an international reference that will be used in place of FYROM".

Furthermore, Ambassador Reeker calls on the public of Skopje to embrace the US position:

Victoria University conducts offensive survey ‘in partnership’ with nationalist lobby group, the ‘United Macedonian Diaspora’

PRESS RELEASE
8 September 2010

AMAC was disappointed to discover the content of a survey conducted by the Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, a research centre of Victoria University, for people of Slav-Macedonian background: http://www.cfses.com/survey-macedonia-2010.htm. According to this link, the survey was conducted “in partnership with the Macedonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the United Macedonian Diaspora”.

The UMD is a nationalist, US-based lobby group with its head office in Washington DC. The UMD is well-known for their supporting territorial claims by the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia against Greece and Bulgaria.

Question 1 asks for the respondent’s country of birth and gives the option “Aegean Macedonia (in Greece)”. This sort of terminology is highly inappropriate. The term “Aegean Macedonia” is a term coined by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in order to legitimise its claims on the Greek province of Macedonia and, in particular, the port of Thessaloniki.

Question 15 then asks.....

AMAC Launches Lecture Program 2010

PRESS RELEASE 7 September, 2010

Australian Macedonian Advisory Council (AMAC) Launches Lecture Program

AMAC Organises a Series of Lectures Australia-wide for West Australian classicist professor and Chicago-based expert in Macedonian studies.

The Australian Macedonian Advisory Council (AMAC) is pleased to announce it has arranged for a series of lectures concerning Macedonian history to be given across Australia by two highly esteemed scholars.

The first of those scholars is Professor John Melville-Jones of the University of Western Australia. The professor is 1 of 7 Australian academics to have signed the Macedonia Evidence Petition (see http://macedonia-evidence.org/). The Petition has now been signed by 332 mostly non-Greek academics world-wide and was sent to President Obama, it urges the President to reverse the US’ recognition of the FYROM as the ‘Republic of Macedonia’ and to ‘help the government to Skopje to realise it cannot build a national identity at the expense of historical truth’.

Professor Melville-Jones’ lecture itinerary is as follows: