A few weeks after Macedonia was told by European Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn that it could start accession negotiations this year, Macedonian academics caused great distress in and outside the country by publishing a new Macedonian encyclopaedia in two volumes.
The Macedonian Academy of Science and Arts (MASA) published a limited run of the book on September 17. Copies quickly sold out, prompting MASA to consider a re-print. Passages in the encyclopaedia immediately angered Macedonia’s Albanian population and led to three other countries lodging official protests with the Macedonian government.
History has always been a sensitive issue in the Balkans, especially in the past 20 years when Macedonia has been engaged in heated arguments with its neighbours – mainly Greece and Bulgaria – about historical facts and myths. It is enough to mention Macedonia’s name dispute with Greece and how it has hindered the former’s foreign policy efforts. As for Macedonia’s relationship with Bulgaria, the issue lately has been not so much whether King Samuil was Bulgarian or Macedonian (although that argument is still brewing) but on whether Bulgarians have oppressed Macedonians over the past 60 years or vice versa.
Thin ice
If arguing with Bulgaria and Greece about the past has become normal for Macedonia, the new encyclopaedia managed to bring Albanians into the conflict, so risking Macedonia’s fragile internal peace and integrity negotiated after the 2001 conflict when Albanians were given more rights and a new model of decentralisation.
Albanians in both Macedonia and Albania took issue with the encyclopaedia for its account of the origins of their forebears in Macedonia.
It says that Albanians were brought to Macedonia forcibly in the 16th century. This led to protests from intellectual and political circles within Macedonia’s Albanian minority who said that the encyclopaedia’s chauvinistic viewpoint undermined constitutional order and ethnic harmony.
Ali Ahmeti, whose Democratic Union of Integration is part of Macedonia’s ruling government, deemed the book a provocative polemic. Media speculation even suggested that a split in the coalition could occur, especially because, according to the encyclopaedia’s criteria, Ahmeti could be seen as a terrorist for participating in the 2001 civil war. All asked MASA not to publish more copies of the book and destroy existing ones. MASA’s two Albanian members also threatened to quit their posts in protest.
On September 24, Albanian prime minister Sali Berisha internationalised the issue by saying that the encyclopaedia’s content was "unacceptable". He made the comment at a meeting with Macedonia’s president Gjorge Ivanov in New York during the UN general assembly session. The Macedonian authorities should intervene and form a clear position to normalise the situation because "no one’s identity can be based on false history," Berisha said.
Cold War era
Just like Albania, Bulgaria was also offended by the encyclopaedia’s findings, some of which related to the alleged assimilation of Macedonians in Bulgaria. On September 24, the Bulgarian embassy in Skopje issued a statement saying that "yet again a publication claiming to be based on science abides by political and propaganda goals". It adds that it "is unthinkable for a state wanting to join Nato and the EU to use an out-of-date ideology and words from the Cold War era".
The UK and the US also became embroiled after the encyclopaedia’s authors decided to include a sentence that Albanian rebels in the 2001 conflict were trained by British and American secret services. Both embassies promptly protested against these "findings" and asked for their removal.
Official response
The Macedonian government’s first reaction was that the encyclopaedia was a product of MASA and not the government. After Albania complained, however, president Ivanov said he would investigate the matter. This was enough for MASA head Gjorge Stardelov to say that the controversial texts regarding Albanians would be amended, enabling another 2000 copies of the book to be printed.
This, according to Macedonian-language Dnevnik daily, meant that MASA should dissolve itself following the scandal and to clear itself of "lying scientific preachers instead of acting as neighbourhood tailors ready to cut cloth under pressure".
Encyclopaedic example - South Eastern Europe - The Sofia Echo
