Macedonia faces revising how to teach its history
SKOPJE: From piles of toys cluttering the attic of his family home in Skopje, Nikola Cvetoski eventually extracts the “Legend of Ancient Macedonia”. With this big, red book written by a local politician and published two years after Macedonia’s 1991 independence, “society told us that everything we had been taught was no longer the truth,” he told AFP. “Suddenly, the schools were demanding that students buy this book,” fumed the 65year-old retired mechanic, who grew up during Josip Broz Tito’s regime when Macedonia was part of communist Yugoslavia.
Macedonia’s history textbooks now look set for another overhaul as the Balkans country closes in on a settlement with neighboring Greece in a decades-long, bitter dispute over the right to call itself the Republic of Macedonia. But revising the national narrative, built up over more than two decades, may prove harder than changing the country’s name.
‘National romanticism’
Under Tito, a common Yugoslav identity was promoted that eclipsed learning at school in Macedonia about the likes of
ancient warrior king Alexander III of Macedon, better known as Alexander the Great, and his father Philip II. But after the war-torn former Yugoslav Federation disintegrated during the 1990s, Macedonia like other Balkan countries saw a return of old nationalist sentiments that had been hushed by Tito’s regime.
Historian Todor Cepreganov said there was a “renewal of a national romanticism” in Macedonia, which would be boosted by right-wing leader Nikola Gruevski’s grip on power from 2006 to 2016. As a result, Macedonian history textbooks started to look quite different. By the 2011 edition, pupils aged 11 and 12 learned how, in the Macedonian state under Philip, the ancient king had “conquered the Hellenic colonies”.
And that his son, “Alexander the Macedonian”, had “managed to defeat them (the Greeks), forcing them to recognise his authority”, the textbook reads. Indeed, even if reconciliation now looks on the cards with Greece in the name row, both countries continue to stake a claim to Alexander the Great.
What’s in a name?
For more than a quarter of a century, Greece and Macedonia have rowed over the right of the former Yugoslav republic to call itself Macedonia, which Athens objects to because it has its own northern province of that name. Greece fears the name, Republic of Macedonia, may imply territorial ambitions and also accuses Skopje of trying to usurp the heritage of the ancient Macedonians and stake a claim to Alexander the Great. After recent talks between the two neighbors, a resolution may now be close.