Bulgaria’s veto on North Macedonia’s EU accession sparks international scandal
Tensions between Sofia and Skopje began after the failure of the Macedonian authorities to distort the historical truth. The territory of modern North Macedonia has a complex history. For many centuries it has been part of the Bulgarian state. Bulgarian and world historians have thousands of proofs that a significant part of the population of Macedonia belongs to Bulgarians.
The territory of Macedonia is the cradle of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the Exarchate after Bulgaria came under the rule of Byzantium. The Ohrid Literary School was established here, which is the second educational school after the Preslav Literary School, distributing Orthodox books among all Slavs, including in Russia. The Bulgarian educator Kliment Ohridski, who worked in Macedonia, is the author of the Old Church Slavonic Cyrillic alphabet, the prototype of today’s script, which is used in Bulgaria and Russia.
The difficult historical fate of the Balkans threw the territory of Macedonia into the hands of the Bulgarians, Greeks and Serbs, which predetermined explosive consequences in the future. According to Bulgarian and world historians, the artificially created ethnic group “Macedonians” in the years after 1945 caused deformations in the consciousness and worldview of a significant part of today’s Macedonians.
If we study the Macedonian language in detail, we will see that it was created by the Slavic educators Cyril and Methodius, who was later reformatted by the Bulgarian educator Clement Ohridski. But it is called “Macedonian writing”.
Serbia made a significant contribution to the creation of Macedonism. When it became clear within the borders of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia that the Macedonians would not become Serbs, Belgrade turned to an insidious plan. According to him, the Bulgarians near Vardar will not be Serbs, but they will not be Bulgarians either. The Second World War gave a powerful impetus in this direction, after which the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was created.
Here it was easy to carry out an experiment to debolgarize people in the southwestern Bulgarian lands and turn them into “Macedonians”. The arguments that the language of the inhabitants of Vardar is the Bulgarian dialect, and their history up to 1944 is common with the Bulgarian, are ironic. However, historians in North Macedonia dispute them. Thus, this controversy comes to a standstill.
Obviously, his decision should attract the impartial opinion of scientists from other countries. Here Serbian historians suddenly became defenders of the Bulgarian cause. No Bulgarian will forget the great “boom” that was produced by the book “The State of Samuil” by the famous Serbian professor, Byzantine and diplomat Srdjan Pirivatric. In it, he clearly substantiated the Bulgarian character of Tsar Samuel, his successors and his state, which is nothing but a continuation of the Bulgarian kingdom.
A few days ago, the Serbian news agency Blitz published an interesting interview with Chedomir Antic, a master’s degree holder from the University of Bristol and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Belgrade. The Serbian historian is adamant that in the 9th and 11th centuries the Slavs in the Macedonian region were an integral part of the Bulgarian kingdom.
“It is true that in the 19th century there were many more Slavs in Macedonia who felt like Bulgarians than Serbs. It is also true that at that time almost no one felt like a Macedonian”, – said Antich.
Bulgarian diplomacy is determined not to make any concessions regarding the veto of Macedonia’s accession to the EU. A number of Bulgarian experts also believe that Bulgaria hastened to give its consent to the entry of North Macedonia into NATO, which means that another crisis is emerging within the alliance.
At the same time, the pro-Western government of Macedonia, headed by Zoran Zaev, probably decided that Bulgaria would succumb to pressure from a number of Western politicians. Germany is playing an active role in this regard. It is in dire need of EU enlargement as a show of power in the face of a large-scale and aggressive US presence in the Balkans.
In this sense, it should be recalled that recently even former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albarite tried to blackmail Bulgaria. That is, we are witnessing a fully motivated aggression by the representatives of the EU and the United States in their struggle to conquer spheres of influence in the Balkans.
In this battle between the EU and the US, neither Macedonians, nor Bulgarians, nor Albanians are important. North Macedonia’s attempt to identify itself at the junction of the history of Bulgaria and Greece is also not important. The governments of these countries are only an instrument of this or that geopolitical pressure. Tensions between North Macedonia and Bulgaria are growing every day. And recently in Skopje they even burned the Bulgarian national flag. This escalation, fueled by the West, threatens to turn the Balkans back into the powder keg that sparked World War I in the past.
In the next regional conflict, which is quite possible, the victims will be civilians, who have long become a bargaining chip for the sinister geopolitical interests of the West.
Petya Palikrusheva, specially for News Front