The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia – an Attempt at Defining a New Nation

A fundamental element in the establishment of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) in the passed twenty years is the ides of the national state which is meant to play the role of a Piedmont for all the “Macedonians” who live in parts of the territories of Bulgaria, Greece and Albania. The historical arguments in this direction have dominant role in Skopje over the critical understanding of the past. Reconsideration of Macedonism in FYROM is unacceptable for modern nationalists who find evidence for “Macedonian identity” in the latest political and pragmatic modelling of the past. Preserving the continuity with the nationalist doctrine, developed during the previous decades, the contemporary rulers along the Vardar realize a new huge project for re-defining the Macedonian nation. The experiment which is being realized does not concern only the issues of the ethnogenesis of the Macedonian nation, the history and the parameters of the national consciousness, but it extends to significant problems of common Balkan dimension referring both to the destiny of the Republic itself and the stability and the future of the whole region