At the turn of the 20th century, Macedonia was a region still controlled by the waning Ottoman Empire, though intensely coveted by the neighbouring Balkan states, which deployed national propaganda movements in Macedonia, in preparation for future territorial annexations. It is this author’s contention that the “Macedonian question” thus engendered gives rise to several overlapping triadic configurations of interlocking, interacting and mutually monitoring nationalisms, as per the analytical model put forth by Rogers Brubaker. Working on this premise, and after adjusting Brubaker’s model to account for the specific relational settings of the Macedonian question, this author proceeds to draft a case study of a specific triadic configuration, among several operating in fin-de-siècle Macedonia: namely, the one arisen out of the mutual monitoring and interaction of a Romanian nationalizing nationalism, a Greek nationalizing nationalism, and two Aromanian (or Vlach) minority nationalisms.
The Macedonian question was a key concern during the Greek Civil War, especially during its final phase (1946–1949). This article is based on research using primary archival material from the National Archive in Prague (Czech Republic) and on the bilingual émigré newspaper Agonistis – Borec. The first part of the article summarizes the contradictory approach to the Macedonian question by the Communist Party of Greece (hereinafter KKE) during different phases of the Civil War. Next, it examines the demographic structure of the Greek and Slavic Macedonian refugees, who had, after the defeat of the Greek communists, found asylum in the Soviet Union and its satellites, focusing on the example of political refugees in Czechoslovakia. After this, it focuses on the impact that important political events of this period, particularly the de-Stalinization and the removal of Nikos Zachariadis from the leadership of the KKE, had on the relations between Greek refugees and Slavic Macedonian refugees, mainly in the light of the establishment of the “Ilinden” organization, the education of refugee children, and the prospect of their repatriation.
This study analyzes the broad and many-layered complex of relations between Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia in the years 1980–1985, a period symbolically delimited by the deaths of Josip Broz Tito and Konstantin Chernenko. From this period onward, the bilateral political contacts were still powerfully influenced by the residue of mistrust and suspicion that had arisen earlier. At the same time, however – particularly under the influence of the conspicuous deterioration of the leftist authoritarian regimes in Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia – the Belgrade and, particularly, Prague governments began to seek paths to rapprochement with the partner country. Some of the areas where this took place were the development of trade and other forms of economic commitments, the growth of Czechoslovak tourism in the eastern Adriatic region, and generally, in cultural cooperation. In the bilateral contacts there were still lingering manifestations of potential conflicts (the relationship with the Yugoslav émigré community in the years 1948–1953, approaches to the Macedonian question, the emigration of citizens of the ČSSR through Yugoslavia to the West). Their influence on the mutual cooperation of these countries in the period analyzed weakend gradually rather than precipitously.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.