Intro
I will focus on Macedonia for a couple of days. I think I am ready for the challenge. To me, Macedonia reminds me of those very very difficult math problems we had to work on in high school. I would hunch over my notebook, squinting down at the confusion, working it out, feeling frustration and despair, erasing, adding, throwing the whole thing out, starting afresh … and then, suddenly, there would be a very brief “A-ha!!” moment, light breaking in on my brain … and in one beautiful moment, I could “see” the answer. Clear as day. When 2 seconds before, I had NO IDEA WHAT THE HELL I WAS DOING.
I have read multiple books about the Balkans. Macedonia is really the key to the whole area. Always has been, always will be. But could I explain to you WHY? Occasionally I will have a bright-white “A-ha!!” moment, in terms of getting what is going on with Macedonia, but then the cloud cover comes down again. Sometimes I get the sense, too, that Macedonia is like one of those sub-sub-sub atomic particles in the world of quantum physics, where the only way you can tell that they exist, is by the effect these teeny particles have on OTHER particles. This is not to say that Macedonia does not exist. (Although, I suppose if you spoke with a nationalistic Bulgarian that is exactly what they would say: “Macedonia?? There IS no Macedonia! It is ALL BULGARIA!”) It is just that you can really only “get” Macedonia in relation to all the other countries in the Balkans.
Let’s begin.
TWO TREATIES HEARD ROUND THE WORLD
Macedonia is the Balkans in miniature. It is an old country, with memories of glory centuries ago. Alexander the Great, after all, was a Macedonian, and set out from Macedonia to conquer the world. Macedonia is filled with a mix of races and languages and religions and cultures, and nobody mixes with each other. They never have mixed and they don’t mix now.
But before I talk about generalities, let me try to describe what is known as “the Macedonian problem”, because it is the key. This problem has not disappeared and will definitely appear again one day to the forefront of world events.
Historic Macedonia overlaps Bulgaria and also Greece. Claims on this soil are legion. It’s like Armenia. There is a centuries-old question surrounding the issue: Is Macedonia a real country? What are its borders? It has been cut up and carved up and divided so many times that nobody seems to know, although everybody has a fierce opinion about it. And, at this point, everything is so mixed up and ethnically divided that no matter how you divided Macedonia, each state would be left with unruly pissed-off minorities.
So here’s a bit of history. The whole Balkan area was part of the Ottoman Empire. In the early 19th century, the Ottoman Empire began to show the first signs of a crack-up. Greeks, Serbs, and Montenegrins won a struggle for self-rule. In 1877, Russian troops arrived to liberate Bulgaria from Turkey. The Turks were defeated, and the Russians moved into the Bulgarian capital as an occupying force.
In March, 1878, the Russians dictated the Treaty of San Stefano to the Turks. The Treaty of San Stefano has been called “the first fuse of the Balkan powder keg”. It is one of those devilish things from the past which cannot be undone. It seemed like a good idea at the time to the Russians who dictated it, but here we are, over a century later, and people are still bemoaning the Treaty of San Stefano, and how it fucked them over, etc.
The Treaty awarded Macedonia to Bulgaria. The purpose of the Treaty was to recreate Bulgaria, along the lines of the medieval Bulgarian kingdom’s borders. So the treaty enlarged Bulgaria, creating a “Greater Bulgaria” which encompassed present-day Bulgaria, all of Macedonia, parts of Albania, and a huge chunk of Greek land surrounding the northern city of Salonika.
So what the Russians basically did with this treaty, was create a powerful pro-Russian state in the Balkans. It swept away the needs or desires of Macedonia and Greece. All that mattered was Bulgaria, and the population of Bulgars. The other big powers at the time (Britain, Germany, the Habsburg Empire) could not accept the Treaty, as written, and demanded that it be amended. Germany and England made it clear to Russia that creating a “Greater Bulgaria” would mean war with Great Britain. So here we are seeing the roots of World War I. Russia capitulated.
So basically, Greater Bulgaria was dismembered before it even had a chance to exist. A second treaty was drawn up. The Treaty of Berlin. The northern half of Greater Bulgaria became free (Bulgaria), and the southern half became a Turkish province in the Ottoman Empire (Macedonia). Macedonia was completely abandoned to the brutal Turks, as though the Treaty of San Stefano had never existed. It’s like what the Allies let happen to Czechloslovakia in WWII. They tossed the country to the dogs. No hope for them, nobody would invade and save them. They were on their own.
The Treaty of Berlin basically passed around Balkan chunks of land as though nobody actually lived there, it was merely territory. But it created such confusion and such anger that we are still living in the aftermath of that treaty today. Here’s the puzzle pieces of the treaty:
–Bismarck gave Russia lands in Bessarabia and Northeast Anatolia, to compensate them for the loss of Macedonia
–Serbs were given full independence
–Bismarck transferred Bosnia from Ottoman rule to Habsburg rule (this is the immediate cause of WWI). Bismarck did this to compensate the Habsburgs for the loss of Macedonia.
–Great Britain received Cyprus from the Turks.
Can you see how misguided all of this is? How crazy? How it solves nothing, and just plants the seeds of insanity for generations to come? Also: see how Macedonia is the key? This Treaty sparked an orgy of violence in Macedonia. The Turks brutally suppressed the uprisings. Macedonia is, historically, an Eastern Orthodox nation. So refugees (ethnic Turks, Muslim Bosnians) flooded into Macedonia to terrorize the Christian population. In 1878 there was a guerrilla uprising against the Turks. That uprising led to a century-long guerilla war. Macedonia is the birthplace of modern-day terrorism. They invented many of the tactics which we see so often now. Their rage at being tossed to the Turks and losing everything continues to this day.
The 1890s brought spreading terrorism and violence, no central government, no concept of nationhood. And the outside powers just used this country to play out their rivalries. The mountains were filled with gangs of mercenaries and murderers, waging 15 different terrorist wars.
Then (I’m skipping way ahead here), Macedonia was incorporated into the Yugoslav Federation which, although awful to some degree, also helped tamp down a lot of the ethnic hatred and violence. But the question continues: Who, actually, does Macedonia belong to? Bulgaria is convinced that there IS no Macedonia. That Macedonia is, and always has been, part of Bulgaria. Greece feels the same way about southern Macedonia, which used to be part of Greece. Greece has never ever given up their claims on that area.
In the books I have read, people lose their minds when they start to talk about Macedonia. Screaming, tearing their hair out, everybody convinced they are right. It’s a mess. It’s one of the most intense “flashpoints” on this planet. There are certain areas which seem destined, somehow, to make people go nuts. Jerusalem, Armenia, Poland (how many times can Poland be invaded??), the land bridge into Turkey where Istanbul/Constantinople stands … These are places which, geographically, nobody can be neutral about. If you even just look at their placements on a map, it is obvious why.
