Publishing House Balkani has a long-standing relationship with writers from the Republic of North Macedonia. Balkani was founded in 1991. The Balkan Library series started in 2004 along with the Literary Balkans Magazine. For the first time in Bulgaria’s cultural history dozens of authors from all Balkan countries, without exception, have been featured in both the magazine and the series. For Macedonia, now the Republic of North Macedonia, there have been 40 names.

1.
Does a Macedonian language exist? Yes! I could understand it since I was little. As it is known, the so-called “Macedonian classicists” are Bulgarian classicists who wrote in the Bulgarian language. This is well known to those working in the cultural institutions in Skopje as well. By the way, I have a book I received as a gift from the former Ambassador of Macedonia to Sofia, former President of the Macedonian Assembly, Prof. Lyubisha Georgievski (Ljubiša Georgievski), now deceased, unfortunately. It is the Bulgarian language textbook he used back in 1944. The first author featured in it is Paisiy . “This clear spring water vanished somewhere after 1944”, the Professor used to say. The people who remained on the territory of today’s Republic of North Macedonia are at no fault about their historic fate.
Only here on the Balkans, a mother can have four sons, each of different nationality depending on the territory where they chose to remain - a Bulgarian, a Greek, a Serb or a Macedonian! We know how Bulgaria was ripped into pieces.
Lyubisha Georgievski authored the Dictionary of Prejudice (“Речник на предрасъдите”, Publishing House Balkani) while he was Ambassador. He was the first director to stage Yordan Radichkov’s play Image and Likeness (“Образ и подобие”). In Skopje at that.

The barrier posed by this prejudice is huge and it is not only Greek, Macedonian, Turkish, Serbian or Romanian. It is Bulgarian prejudice as well. I know personally some of the best writers in the Republic of North Macedonia. I have published them as well. Including the former Prime Minister Lyubcho Georgievski (Ljubčo Georgievski), now featured in the news. We published a collection of poems of his in the 40th edition of Balkan Library. Later on, we published his book Facing the Truth (“С лице към истината”). In 2006, at a book fair, at the premiere of my novel Prey (“Плячка”) in the Macedonian language, the then Prime Minister Vlado Buchkovski (Vlado Bučkovski) came to get an autograph. I have a picture of it. Now he is something like a Balkan Kissinger shuttling back and forth between Skopje and Sofia.

That was 13-14 years ago. Since then the same statements and claims have echoed over and over. That Macedonians don’t want their freedom. That ambivalence has left a deep mark on them. That they say one thing in private and quite the opposite in public. I have personally witnessed this.

2.

This applies to people of renown - poets, writers who have created worthy literature and culture over the past fifty years during a time of mutual isolation on the Balkans. Their identity is split regardless of how monolithic they appear in their government propaganda.

They created and wrote in a language very close to the Bulgarian one. I don’t know what to call it, I’m no linguist. But a language that in its proper form has come to differ from Bulgarian and cannot be read without problems . Their work has been and is being translated into the main European languages much more than the work of Bulgarian poets and writers. Thanks to the more permissive political regime there, free ideas in philosophy and literature preceded those in Bulgaria by fifty years. Look at the land in the Republic of North Macedonia - there are no uncultivated fields, there was no land restoration because it had never been confiscated. Long before Ivaylo Petrov and his Wolf Hunt (“Хайка за вълци”), Macedonians had their catharsis on the issue. It is also true that about a hundred years ago, the Serbian philologist Novakovich (Novaković) said, “we should maintain the creation of a Macedonian language with at least a third of Serbian vocabulary so that at one point we can assimilate it.” Today this assimilation is almost complete. It was easy for me to understand the poems of Bogomil Gyuzel (Bogomil Gjuzel) of 1968, one of their greatest poets whose father suffered during the post-1944 repressions. His poems of 1983 are harder to understand - this is an illustration of how a language fills with deposits by constantly introducing new words to it. By the way, as an artificially created language, Turkish also sees new words introduced each year. Actually, Macedonians have lived outside of Bulgaria for 140 years. I don’t know how politicians, armed with a time machine, will revert the assimilation.

A culture was created, a language was created, which are known and translated across Europe and the world. Not to mention the faculties of the Macedonian language in all big western universities, as well as in Russia, that have existed for decades. I witnessed that for the first time in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) when I was studying Journalism and it surprised me very much. I was 22 in 1980. What happened to Bulgarian Studies in Europe, I don’t want to comment now.

3.

“The Case of Macedonia”, if we call it that, in my opinion, is a question of the Bulgarian culture and literature, of the Bulgarian language, not of the Macedonian one. The Struga Poetry Evenings, for example, for decades have been the main cultural event on the Balkans and brought together the most renowned writers of Europe, some even all the way from America, while Sofia was always short on funding. This negligence and controversial politics were not born yesterday, they go back to the time of Todor Zhivkov, to the tzarist time, and have been around for ninety years. Bulgaria is the only Balkan country that has no national strategy. Be it because its Renaissance hasn’t been completed or because it couldn’t unite itself. This is not the only example, and it is not only a matter of funding. Actually, in the land of Cyril and Methodius and Clement of Ohrid , the money was eaten or spent for something more profitable.

Look at the paradoxes: in 1941, the Bulgarian Army, called the fascist army in Skopje, declared there were no Macedonians and no Macedonian language. Only five or six year later, the Bulgarian communist government declared there were Macedonians and there was a Macedonian language and gave the remains of Gotse Delchev to Skopje. It is now 2021 and … again there is no Macedonian language.

4.

In the beginning it was difficult with our Balkan Library, but we received support from ordinary people. We didn’t rely on the government or some organizations. Once, in Thessaloniki we were told, “This is something only you Bulgarians can come up with.” What they meant was that Balkan countries have their backs turned on each other, don’t care about their neighbors, but have their eyes set on prestigious countries and cultures. It seems it’s just us Bulgarians who are ready to sit at a table with everyone. I was able to bring together a Serbian and an Albanian author to talk in the heat of the conflict . I wasn’t able to do so with Bulgarian authors living across the street from each other who couldn’t stand each other. Stubbornness and boastful showing-off mark our mentality. Then our private and adventurous endeavor got noticed as a cute exception. It was never replicated in any of the other Balkan countries even though they have more money, and whenever it suits them, the cultural insight. They just don’t want to.

I think ordinary people get along very well, they would get along well now too without the politicians and governments.

Wherever you go around the world in prospering and big countries, from China to the USA, you see that nothing comes to be without big projects. The Balkans have no single big project - not an economical, let alone a cultural one. The infamous railway from Sofia to Skopje is still just an idea a hundred years later, because it takes two to make it happen. I don’t want to mention the high-speed Chinese trains… soon there will be one connecting Belgrade and Budapest. The Balkan bickering and splitting of something is funny, but also truly pathetic.

5.

Bulgaria is located in a completely different coordinate system from that of the Republic of North Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania. I was in Kosovo not long ago, travelled through Macedonia and entered Bulgaria happy that I was coming home to an EU-member country. The environment and atmosphere, not just the roads, differed drastically from the Western Balkans. Even though there is a new modern highway from Kosovo to Albania, a Turkish investment. Very little traffic on it, though. Just like the Sofia-Skopje highway, because of our Balkan thinking. Here in Bulgaria, things look more European, without going deeper into the literary and cultural details. You have traffic, you have life.

We shouldn’t be so optimistic since we have had reasons, not just this summer, to be critical of our elite, as much as we have an “elite”.

Language and literature, and culture are an identity. The Bulgarian culture has been shunned not just because of the never-ending transition and crisis. Right now, at this moment, the hefty bills are coming in. “The Case of Macedonia” or whatever we call it poses a question: Who will be paying those bills? The apathy and irresponsibility towards the Bulgarian literature and culture on the part of the so-called “elite” is substantial. The past has seen examples how Bulgarian politician give up territories in order to get a ministerial position.

…Is there a correct route to the future? Probably. Europe and the rest of the world have shown us. In developed countries, wealthy businessmen invest huge amounts in their national culture. That same Republic of North Macedonia has a culture budget equal to its military one. It is not enough to have an economy, without culture you have no identity.

So, I will say it again: the case of the Bulgarian literature and culture, of the Bulgarian language is far more important than the “Case of Macedonia”.

6.

As the external border of the European Union, one way or another Bulgaria will see the inevitable influx of migrants. How will our culture, similarly to our immunity’s response to the COVID virus, protect us from the influence of foreign cultures inevitably knocking at our door? How will it protect us from assimilation? The immigrant children of Kurdistan enter Swedish schools and come out Swedes. Do we know what our Bulgarian children come out as when they graduate Bulgarian schools?

Over the past centuries we have been tested many times - both during the Ottoman and during the Byzantine empires.

How did the Bulgarian language and spirit endure during the Ottoman rule, spanning over five hundred years? No one touched the Bulgarian language within the family, where grandparents and parents orally passed it down to children and grandchildren. That is why Bulgarians survived. That is why they weren’t assimilated, despite the Greek Phanariots or the formal Ottoman administration.

7.

I like to joke, so I want to share something: There is something between Bulgaria and the Republic of North Macedonia, and it must be big. That is what my Macedonian brothers keep saying to me. This big “something” should bring us closer, not pull us apart.

When I first visited Skopje a long time ago, I met Academician Georgi Stradelov who is an expert of the caliber of Prof. Isaac Passy, whom he knew. Halfway through the door, the Academician startled me with the question, “So, how are we going to split Krali Marko ?” “You can have him!”, I replied instantly in my surprise at my host’s silly question, afraid not to offend him.
He beamed and we became friends. However, would this formula work for politicians as well?



Jan 5, 2021