Marxism and Myths: Why Bulgaria and North Macedonia Are at Odds

It seems that North Macedonia is about to part with some of the myths in its history under pressure from Bulgaria. Prime Minister Zoran Zaev have recently made such suggestions. The reason for this turn is that Bulgaria is blocking the negotiations of the former Yugoslav Republic to join the EU. The process in Skopje proceeds painfully and dramatically.

 About 2,000 people took part in an anti-government protest triggered by Prime Minister Zoran Zaev's statement before BGNES that Bulgaria is a friend of his country, not a "fascist state". Even President Stevo Pendarovski, who was nominated by Zaev's party, also criticized his speech. He said that a solution to the dispute with Bulgaria can only be made with respect for the dignity of the Macedonian people, and the anti-fascist struggle is "at the heart of the modern Macedonian state".

 This attitude of the elite and a large part of the Macedonian population is obviously rooted in the Yugoslav past of Macedonia, in whose ideological environment several generations have grown and been educated.

 The attitude towards today's North Macedonia and history as such in Bulgaria is similar and rests on an ideology that should have been forgotten and even declared criminal by law. The myths in Bulgarian history are not one or two. We can start with the idea of the proto-Bulgarians and the legendary bundle of Kubrat sticks as symbol of unity, the "Ottoman slavary", that Russia "has always been a friend of Bulgaria", that under Todor Zhivkov people lived much better, that the "Revival Process" was inevitable.

We can look for the roots of this mental paradigm in the society and in tenacity to explain historical events from antiquity till today through the idea of a nation that was formulated  as late...