THEMES OF NORTH MACEDONIA ACROSS A VARIETY OF CEU PRESS PUBLICATIONS
This compilation features books of the Central European University Press, published since its establishment in 1993, that have some relevance to North Macedonia, its history and culture. After the latest release, titles in the backlist are arranged by content: contemporary topics are on top, older themes below. For more substantial information about the content and availability, please click on the covers of the book, or on the links inserted into the citations.
“The Carnegie Report condemned the actions of Serbia’s army and auxiliary, irregular Chetnik detachments: the ill treatment of Bulgarian prisoners, the cruel and repressive occupational tactics employed in Albania, Macedonia, and Kosovo, wanton looting, destruction of property, and scourging of entire villages.”—Philanthropy, Conflict Management, and International Law.
“In 1915, the Lausanne-based criminologist Rudolphe Reiss advanced the position that the Slavs in the Macedonian areas of Greece were neither Bulgarians nor Serbs, but rather ‘Macedonian.’”
“Professor Milyukov stressed that until the 1870s, no one in Serbia or Greece had seriously doubted that Macedonia was largely populated by Bulgarians.”
“Brailsford’s Pauline conversion, when he changed from a pro-Bulgarian ‘Saul’ into a pro-Macedonian ‘Paul,’ was not given much emphasis during the celebration of his work in the 2010s. During and after World War II, he concluded that the Orthodox Slavophonic Vardar Macedonians were in fact an independent South Slavic nation of ‘Macedonia.’”
“The old clashes between Byzantium and the Slavs were revived in the clashes between Greeks and Bulgarians over Ottoman Macedonia.”—Byzantium after the Nation.
According to Sami Frashëri, “Macedonia’s Albanians withdrew to the northern and western heights where they also mixed with the numerous Slavs; as a result, their language was lost as over time they adopted Serbian.”
“The conclusion of Stojan Novaković, the Serb historian, was that the Balkan peoples should unify on their road toward liberation, they should transcend their rivalries and unite into a federation. Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, had to overcome their differences, but Serbia had to secure its rights in Macedonia and Montenegro.”
“It is extremely interesting that both of the forefathers of the Slav-Macedonian nationalism, Georgi Pulevski and Krste Misirkov were strongly influenced by Belgrade in their efforts to distance themselves from the Bulgarian ethnic identity.”
Titles from the backlist, contemporary topics on top, older themes below:
“North Macedonia is a highly patronalistic country where regime-specific features (divided executive power) and country-specific features (ethnic cleavages) together ensured competition of patronal networks for more than a decade after the regime change. The two patronal networks could together carry out an anti-democratic transformation where we can discover signs of:
- turning both parties into transmission belts
- system-constituting corruption
- ideology-applying populism
- informal control of state institutions
- unconstrained power”
… taken from the momentous endeavor of analyzing post-communist regimes.
“Running the state as a criminal organization, the chief patron risks persecution and going into prison if he loses. Nikola Gruevski has managed to escape with the help of the Macedonian and Hungarian secret services.“
“At 9% share for the three channels, Macedonian public television probably has the lowest audience figures from all included countries.”—Up in the Air?
“In December 2015 only five out of 720 public service media employees in North Macedonia were regarded as having fixed-term employment conditions.”
“The newsrooms in Macedonian and in the languages of non-majority communities (especially the newsroom in the Albanian language) function as separate, parallel worlds that primarily focus on their ethnic community and frame and observe the events predominantly from the point of view of their own community.”
“The public service broadcaster has been acting as a means of disintegration rather than one of social cohesion.”
“The Macedonian-language media has a more balanced coverage of regional and international news, while domestically it offers little information on the activities of ethnic minority parties.”
Assessing the international media assistance in the Balkans.
“In 2009, the government bought advertising for €17 million, which rendered it the second largest advertiser in the country. Also the government has been accused of a lack of transparency in the way it chooses media outlets for its advertisements.”
“The European Commission in its annual progress reports on Macedonia could not criticize the work of the Broadcasting Council as an obstacle to the future EU accession of the country.”
“The United States remains hugely important as a diplomatic player in Macedonia and the region; its indifference to public broadcasting services may have encouraged the government to reject European advice about how best to fund it.”
“The development of intellectual property law in Macedonia took place in three broad phases: 1) from 1913 to 1945; 2) from 1945 to 1991; and 3) from 1991 to the present day.”
A book on the expansion and institutionalization of intellectual property norms in Europe.
“The 1978 law on copyright remained in force for five years after Macedonia’s declaration of independence in 1991.”
“The country clearly strove to improve intellectual property rights protection in order to implement the integration process with the aim of starting negotiations with the Union. The overall process is often perceived to follow a carrot-and-stick approach. The case of Macedonia is not unique. Other countries which became EU members over the last decade went through the same process of approximation and harmonization.”
“The Bulgarian Army occupied large parts of Vardar Macedonia and Aegean Thrace. The Bulgarian Parliament granted Bulgarian citizenship to the population of the newly ‘liberated’ regions with the exception of the Jews.”
A book on recent developments in postcommunist memory politics.
“The matter has become even more complicated in the context of the complex Bulgarian-Macedonian relations in the realm of history, and the Bulgarian sensitivity toward a number of Macedonian lieux de mémoire. The opening of the Holocaust Memorial Centre in Skopje is seen by some vocal public figures in Bulgaria as part of politics of memory aiming to inaugurate a particular reading of Macedonian history with an anti-Bulgarian thrust.”
“A major collection of archival documents—a total of 609 documents on 1,750 pages—on the deportation of the Jews from Macedonia and Thrace merits special mention in this respect. Unprecedented in its scope and richness, the collection sheds light on the life of the local Jewish communities under Bulgarian occupation.
”Gorbachev. I promise you that tomorrow there will be talk of Poland’s western territories, about Transylvania, Macedonia. About a million Turks live in Bulgaria. In a word, if we do not keep the issue of territorial integrity and inviolability of borders under control, chaos will break out from which we will never extricate ourselves.—from the minutes of the last superpower summit in 1991.
Baker. Here is the problem. The specific mention of territorial integrity and unity would be problematic.
Bush. We could note our concern about the events in Yugoslavia, call on everyone to respect the ceasefire, and condemn the use of force to deal with political problems. Let the Yugoslavs decide their own fate through negotiations.
Baker. We are in favor of a peaceful settlement; we are against unilateral actions that would anticipate the results of the settlement. We should avoid loaded wording like territorial integrity and self-determination. Self-determination is what the Germans are insisting on.
Gorbachev. I will speak on the essence of this issue. Even a partial breakup of Yugoslavia could create a chain reaction that will be worse than a nuclear reaction.
“By 1969, there were Kennedy Streets in Skopje, Zagreb, and Belgrade.”
A monograph on the Americanization of Yugoslav culture in the sixties.
“Pepsi-Cola was produced in Serbia, this American product had a Yugoslav character, because the bottles were made in a glass factory in Paraćin (Serbia), the caps in Ljubljana (Slovenia), and the crates in Ajdovščina (Slovenia) and Kavadarci (Macedonia).”
“The number of rock and roll groups grew exponentially. Among the bands from Skopje the best known were the No-Names and the Pearls.”
“A survey published in 1959 reported that female workers of the Makedonka factory in Štip needed on average one and a half hours for shopping, two hours for cleaning, one and a half hours for washing, one and a half hours for cooking, and three hours for childcare every day.”—from a book on labor under communism.
„In Titov Veles, Štip, and Tetovo, 80 percent of the workers were entering paid labor for the first time. New female workers were displaying a lack of discipline and a lack of understanding about the problems of the factory, and about their rights and responsibilities. Young village girls often have a distorted understanding of city life.”
“General Badoglio, the deputy chief of staff, received a ‘plan for action among the Yugoslavs’ from Trieste, which emphasized strong anti-Serbian currents in Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Montenegro, and Macedonia, and proposed use of ‘widespread propaganda to incite the local populations’ separatist tendencies” – from a monograph on the Croatian fascist leader.
Pavelić’s prestige spiked in December, when he appeared in Skopje in his capacity as a lawyer to defend twenty students accused of belonging to a Macedonian separatist organization.
The Serbian police had pressured the accused in a number of ways, even resorting to torture to coerce them into providing false accounts of the events. Pavelić encouraged them to speak out, and turned the trial into an indictment of the abuse of power perpetrated by the Macedonian police.
“The Macedonians contest the Bulgarians’ claim to the first Bulgarian Empire by saying that it was actually created by the Macedonians."—Words in Space and Time.
“In 1943 a Bulgarian-language university was founded at Skopje. At the end of World War Two the communist Yugoslav authorities recognized Macedonian as a language in 1944. During the latter half of the 1940s this institution was gradually revived, and finally, in 1949, officially made into the first ever Macedonian-medium university.”
“Macedonia’s Slavic vernacular was standardized with the use of the Serbian Cyrillic into a Macedonian language, thus making it different vis-a-vis Bulgarian with its own specific form of Cyrillic.”
“The 1946–1949 Greek Civil War between pro-Soviet communists and pro-Western democrats was the first Cold War style proxy war fought between the West and the Soviet Union. The Greek communists lost, among whom there were many Slavophone Macedonians, as well.”
“Pavlos Karolidis insisted that there were only Greeks in Macedonia. Local non-Greek speaking Christians were being forcibly compelled by the Bulgarian authorities and bandits to think of themselves as Bulgarians just because they spoke the Bulgarian vernacular. In actuality, according to Karolidis, as long as they had retained their identity as Orthodox Christians, they were Greeks.”—Imagined Empires
“Definitive distinctions between the Slavonic dialects did not exist, and their national selfidentity depended on the propaganda of political agents and their church orientation.”
“The Russian government did not have a firm opinion on the nationality of the Macedonian Slavs; it depended on the political situation of the moment.”
“Uskub (Skopje), Bitola, Adrianople (Edirne), Drama, and Kavala became centers of the struggle. For two decades Macedonia was a battlefield of guerilla action between Bulgarian and Greek armed bands, who terrorized the peasants and demanded loyalty from them.”
“Paramilitary networks staged violent incursions into Ottoman Macedonia, and most notably led the Ilinden rising in 1903 with the involvement of up to 26,000 guerrillas.”— from studies over the precommunist period by scholars of the region.
“The tables turn dramatically, when an armed irregular group is viewed as being in the service of a rival national movement. Thus, the Bulgarian or Macedonian komitadjii evoke special dread in the Greek context, the Greek andartes do so for Bulgarians and Macedonians.”
“Christians from geographic Macedonia who participated in pro-Greek or pro-Serbian paramilitary formations are often referred to as grkomani and srbomani—deluded or traitorous ethnic Bulgarians or Macedonians with false Greek or Serb consciousness.”
“In May 1923, a Komitadji company of seventy men came to Smokvice (District of Đevđelija) and forced the locals to swear an oath to the Revolutionary Committee and to give a statement they would fight for the liberation of Macedonia.”
“In 1878, the region of Macedonia, which comprised roughly three provinces (Kosovo, Selanik, and Monastir), was returned to the Ottoman Empire on the condition of reform, especially improving the plight of the Christian population.”
The turbulent decades after the Russo-Ottoman War are explored with the ownership of land in focus.
“Ottoman Macedonia became a site of violent and bloody conflicts between the Exarchate and the Patriarchate as well as among armed bands associated with both or with Bulgaria or Greece. All fought over the loyalties of the Orthodox Christians, advancing autonomy or independence for Macedonia or, in the case of Bulgaria and Greece, advancing territorial claims, all the while terrorizing Orthodox Christians as well as Muslims.”
“In the Ilinden Uprising the violent nationalism of Christian Slavs in Macedonia horrified Turkish and Albanian Muslims, thereby severely undermining Bulgarian territorial bids to this heterogeneous region.”
“The struggle for Macedonia emerged out of the post-Congress of Berlin climate of insecurity about the Ottoman Empire’s near future.”
By exploring the development of ethnic diversity and national tensions, this book challenges the readers to engage in a new way of thinking about Balkan studies.
“Not everyone saw the Ottoman state as illegitimate and defunct—even among the Christian peasantry—nor were they ready to throw in their lot with one of the nascent national causes.”
“The recognition of a Macedonian nation in Tito’s vision of a resurrected Yugoslavia brought some stability to that area.”
“Bulgarian politicians were the first to recognize the independence of Macedonia in 1992, but they continue to treat the Macedonian language as a Bulgarian dialect.”
“In much of Greek Macedonia, many people who still speak Macedonian have a Macedonian identity when they are able to—and not afraid to—express it.”
Further titles with relevance to the history and people of Macedonia (going backwards in time):
- "The current absence of a clear roadmap for the negotiation of EU accession might lead to fatigue among the Macedonian authorities in charge of intellectual property protection.”
- A glance on minority media in Macedonia in the comparative volume on media policies;
- The book on education policies in former Yugoslavia discusses the universities in Tetovo;
- “The interest to retain the Yugoslavian community is still alive in Macedonia, but we must start from a minimum of common elements, and let life guide the rest in the upcoming process of civilization changes. With Izetbegović, we proposed an association of sovereign states. Let us start with the minimum possible”.—Kiro Gligorov at one of the last sessions of the Yugoslav presidency in August 1991;·
- Private and public recollections of lived experience of the past decades in Southeast Europe;
- All four major debates on modern Bulgarian history from Independence in 1878 to the fall of communism in 1989 relate to varying degrees to the „Macedonian question”; so do also the tussles over the legacy of Vasil Levski. Macedonia was an issue during the Bulgarian revival as well;
- In his memoirs that span almost half a century, the reporter of the New York Times dwells on the Macedonian dilemma;
- “Common heroes and divided claims” (between Bulgarians and Macedonians) are discussed in the successful publication on national identity. In the collection on nation building in south-eastern Europe you find “We, the Macedonians: The Paths of Macedonian Supra-Nationalism (1878–1912)”;
- The memoirs of Baron Nopcsa, the Transylvanian scholar and traveler, give captivating insight to the fermenting years of the demise of the Ottoman Empire;
- Volume 3 of East Looks West contains a bibliography of Macedonian travel writing, 26 entries between 1917-2001;
- Entries on Macedonian women in a biographical dictionary: K. Bojadjieva Nasteva-Rusinska, V. Malinska, E. Haim Ovadya, R. Plaveva and K. Racin;
- An excerpt in English from Partenij Zografski (1858) on language issues was published in the first volume of our collection of early documents on national identities. The second volume contains Gologanov’s “Letter on the Renewal of the Archbishop of Ohrid” (1891), and two Macedonian Manifestos from 1880 and 1881. Macedonia is a central issue in Anton Strashimirov’s “Book of the Bulgarians” (1918), cited and presented in the third volume, while Krste P. Misirkov’s “On Macedonian Matters” (1903) is discussed in the volume on modernism and national cultures;
- The collection on witchcraft and demons discusses the “evil dead” in Macedonian folk religion, and the demons of fate in Macedonian folk beliefs in another essay.