History
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| Roman province of Macedonia |
North Macedonia geographically roughly corresponds to the ancient kingdom of Paeonia,
located immediately north of the ancient kingdom of Macedonia. The
Paeonians were a Thracian people (whilst the northwest was inhabited by
the Dardani and the southwest by tribes known historically as the
Enchelae, Pelagones and Lyncestae; the latter two are generally regarded
as Greek groups while the former two are considered Illyrian). In the
late 6th century BC Darius the Great conquered the Paeonians for the Achaemenid Persians
but withdre from their European territories when Second Persian
invasion of Greece (479 BC) failed. Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great conquered
the region and incorporated it in his empire, reaching as far north as
Scupi (close to current Skopje). The Romans established the province of
Macedonia in 146 BC and in Diocletian's times it was divied between
Macedonia Prima on the south and Macedonia Salutaris on the
north, (with parts of Dardania and whole of Paeonia, similar to the
current shape of North Macedonia, with the city of Stobi as its
capital). Scupi area was put under Roman rule in the time of Domitian
and it fell within the Province of Moesia.
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| The death of Emperor Samuel, Manasses Chronicle |
Slavic
tribes settled in the Balkan region by the late 6th century AD, raiding
Byzantine territories in the region of Macedonia, later aided by
Bulgars. One of the main kings of this Slavs was Presian, that extended
the Bulgarian control over the Slavic tribes in and around Macedonia.
During the reign of Tsar Boris I of Bulgaria (9th century) these Slavic
tribes converted to Christianity and Ohrid Literary School, institution established in Ohrid in 886 by St. Clement of Ohrid on the order of Boris I,
became one of the two major cultural centers of the First Bulgarian
Empire (along with the Preslav Literary School), being involved in the
spreading of the Cyrillic script. After Sviatoslav's invasion of
Bulgaria (with Kievan Rus attacking Bulgarian, then attacked by
Byzantines) the Byzantines took control of East Bulgaria and Samuel of
Bulgaria was proclaimed Tsar of Bulgaria. He moved the capital to Ohrid
(previously to Skopje) and reestablished Bulgarian power till 1014, when
Byzantine Emperor Basil II defeated his armies and restored control
over the Balkans for the Byzantine Empire.
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| Size of Eyalet of Rumelia in 1850s |
In these times the rank of the autocephalous Bulgarian Patriarchate was
lowered to the Archbishopric of Ohrid. Since the late 12th century
Byzantine suffered an important decline in the region and in the early
13th century, a revived Bulgarian Empire gained control of the region
but, due to political difficulties, the region came once again under
Byzantine control in the early 14th century. In that same century it
became part of the Serbian Empire and Skopje became the capital of Tsar
Stefan Dusan's empire. When he died a weak successor appeared and power
struggles took place again, situation that was used by Ottoman Turks.
One of this short-living territories was the Kingdom of Prilep.
Gradually, all of the central Balkans were conquered by the Ottoman
Empire and made part of the province or Eyalet of Rumelia.
The size of the province was reduced over the centuries until by the
19th century, when it consisted of a region of central Albania and
western North Macedonia with its capital at Manastir (present-day
Bitola). It was abolished in 1867 and that territory of Macedonia
subsequently became part of the province of Manastir Vilayet until the
end of Ottoman rule in 1912.
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| Band during Ilinden Uprising |
Many of the reformers of the Bulgarian National Revival in the 18th century were
the current area of North Macedonia and, in fact, the bishoprics of
Skopje, Debar, Bitola, Ohrid, Veles and Strumica voted to join the
Bulgarian Exarchate after it was established (1870). In the 19th century
this movement seeked the establishment of an autonomous Macedonia (that
would encompass the entire region of Macedonia); one of the earliest
organisations was the Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary
Committees (later becoming Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary
Organization, IMARO, and then Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, IMRO). In 1903 this organisation organised the Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising against the Ottomans that, despite some initial successes such as forming of Kruševo Republic (considered the precursor of the current Macedonian state), was brutally crushed. The leaders of the Ilinden uprising (like Gotse Delchev, Pitu Guli, Dame Gruev and Yane Sandanski) are now celebrated as national heroes in North Macedonia.
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| Balkan borders after the two Balkan Wars |
Following
the two Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, when the Ottoman Empire
disappeared, most of its European-held territories were divided between
Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia; the current territory of North Macedonia
was annexed by Serbia (named South Serbia), going under an
anti-Bulgarian campaign in the areas under Serbian and Greek control
(the use of all Macedonian dialects and standard Bulgarian were
proscribed). In today North Macedonia IMRO and local Albanians organised
Ohrid–Debar uprising against the Serbian rule (managing to
capture Gostivar, Struga and Ohrid but supressed by the Serbian army,
being killed of fleeing to Bulgaria or Albania). Bulgaria joined the
Central Powers in WW1 and occupied most of today's North Macedonia,
returned to Serbian control after the war, as part of the newly formed
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Anti-Bulgarian measures were
placed again and Serbian government pursued a policy of forced
Serbianisation (altering family surnames, internal colonisation, forced
labour and intense propaganda). Meamwhile IMRO
kept promoting the concept of an independent Macedonia (with the
territories that were part of Serbia and Greece); in fact, the Bulgarian
government offered in 1918 to give Pirin Macedonia for that purpose but Serbia and Greece opposed it. In 1929, the Kingdom was officially renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and divided into provinces (called banovinas) and all of what is now the state of North Macedonia became the Vardar Banovina of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
IMRO started an insurgent war in Vardar Macedonia, with guerrilla
attacks against the Serbian administrative and army officials there. On 9
October 1934 a IMRO member (Vlado Chernozemski) assassinated Alexander I
of Yugoslavia. Macedonist ideas kept increasing, supported by the
Comintern and in 1934, it issued a special resolution recognising the
existence of a separate Macedonian nation and Macedonian language.
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| Division of Macedonia during WW2 |
During
World War II, Yugoslavia was occupied by the Axis powers from 1941 to
1945 and Vardar Banovina was divided between Bulgaria and
Italian-occupied Albania. Bulgarian Action Committees were established,
mostly formed by former members of IMRO and the leader of the Vardar
Macedonian communists, Shatorov switched from the Yugoslav Communist
Party to the Bulgarian Communist Party. Bulgarian authorities deportated
and murdered of over 7,000 Jews in Skopje and Bitola. This harsh rule
encouraged many Vardar Macedonians to support the Communist Partisan
resistance movement of Josip Broz Tito. After the Bulgarian coup d'état
of 1944, the Bulgarian troops fought their way back to the old borders
of Bulgaria and the new Bulgarian pro-Soviet government sent troops to
Niš, Skopje and Pristina, whose aim was blocking the German forces
withdrawing from Greece.
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| Proposed Balkan Federation in Bled Agreement |
The Anti-Fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of
Macedonia (ASNOM) proclaimed the People's Republic of Macedonia in December 1944, part
of the People's Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Macedonian alphabet was
codified by linguists of ASNOM (based their alphabet on the phonetic
alphabet of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić and the principles of Krste Petkov
Misirkov). With the view to the creation of a large South Slav
Federation the new Communist government, led by Georgi Dimitrov, agreed
to give Bulgarian Macedonia to a United Macedonia in 1946, signed in Bled Agreement
(first time Bulgaria accepted the existence of a separate Macedonian
ethnicity and language). That federation wasn't finally created, mainly
because of Tito–Stalin split, and Bulgarian Communist Party revised its
view of existence of a separate Macedonian nation and language. During
the civil war in Greece (1946–1949), Macedonian communist insurgents
supported the Greek communists and many Greek refugees fled to the
Socialist Republic of Macedonia. In 1963 the People's Republic of
Macedonia was likewise renamed the Socialist Republic of Macedonia.
Today
North Macedonia got independece from Yugoslavia in 8 September 1991,
remaining at peace through the Yugoslav Wars of the early 1990s (but for
very minor changes to its border agreed with Yugoslavia) but it was
seriously destabilised by the Kosovo War in 1999, when an estimated
360,000 ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosovo took refuge in the country,
fact that was used by Albanian nationalists in their pursuit of
autonomy or independence for the Albanian-populated areas of North
Macedonia.
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| UÇK soldier handing in his weapon to US forces |
A conflict took place between the government and ethnic Albanian
insurgents (in the north and west of the country leaded by the National
Liberation Army, UÇK) between February and August 2001, ending with the
intervention of a NATO ceasefire monitoring force and it was signed Ohrid Agreement,
in which the government agreed to devolve greater political power and
cultural recognition to the Albanian minority while the Albanian side
agreed to abandon separatist demands and to recognise all Macedonian
institutions fully. Inter-ethnic tensions flared in North Macedonia in
2012, with incidents of violence between ethnic Albanians and
Macedonians. Since the independence, Macedonian authorities seeked to
find a past heritage that differenciated them from Albanians and
Bulgarians, promoting a nation building identity politics based on the
presumable direct ethnogenetic link between today's Macedonians and the
ancient ones. Since the coming to power in 2006, but especially since
the country's non-invitation to NATO in 2008, the VMRO-DPMNE government
pursued a policy of Antiquisation for the purposes of domestic
identity-building with statues of Alexander the Great and Philip of
Macedon have been built in several cities across the country (such as
plan Skopje 2014).
_(42853677381).jpg/1280px-%D0%9F%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%88%D1%83%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%9A%D0%B5_%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%82_%D0%B7%D0%B0_%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE-%D0%B3%D1%80%D1%87%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BE%D1%82_%D1%81%D0%BF%D0%BE%D1%80_(17.06.2018%2C_%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BF%D0%B0)_(42853677381).jpg) |
| Signature of Prespa Agreement (2018) |
Prespa Agreement
was signed in 2018 between PM Zoran Zaev and Alexis Tsipras,
acknowledging that their understanding of the terms Macedonia and
Macedonian refers to a different historical context
and cultural heritage, changing the official name of the country from
FYROM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) to North Macedonia. This
agreement was made possible because after a crisis in which the
VMRO-DPMNE leader, Nikola Gruevski, was accused of illegally spying
20,000 citizens and, after Pržino Agreement, there were elections in
2016 and SDSM leader Zoran Zaev could form a majority (despite 2017
storming of Macedonian Parliament when an Albanian, Talat Xhaferi, was
elected speaker of the Macedonian Assembly). The signature of this
agreement resulted in the withdrawal of the Greek veto in NATO and in
the European Union. In March 2020, after the ratification process by all
NATO members was completed, North Macedonia acceded to NATO (becoming
the 30th member state) and in the same month, the leaders of the
European Union formally gave approval to North Macedonia begin talks to
join the EU.
Unforgettable experiences
This
places and experiences are a must if you want to discover and
understand Moldova and all its situation. This is my top 3:
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| Ohrid |
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Ohrid:
this city by lake Ohrid is the most touristic one in all the country
and, despite noth being among the largest, it has its own airport. Ohrid
has
an awesome group of churches, specially St. Jovan Kaneo Church and St.
Sofija Cathedral, built during the times where Clement of Ohrid
established here one of the major cultural centers of the First
Bulgarian Empire and that make this city the only place in North
Macedonia that was placed in UNESCO World Heritage list.
It's also very interesting getting lost in town to discover its
traditional Ottoman houses, small churches and walking on the promenade
by the lake.
.jpg/1280px-04242-Skopje_(27904260825).jpg) |
| Skopje |
- Skopje: the largest city in North Macedonia
and its capital city is an interesting place to begin your journey in
North Macedonia With plenty of museums explaining Macedonia's history
and cultural legacy, interesting churches and the largest bazaar in the
Balkans, Čaršija,
it's worth to spend at least a day here. It can also be seen the impact
that plan Skopje 2013, a controversial plan that consisted in building
nationalist statues and modify building with a Neoclassical outlook.
- Galičica National Park:
largest national park in the country, located sandwiched between lakes
Ohrid and Prespa, close to the border with Albania and south from Ohrid.
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| Galičica National Park |
Its location make it
unique this park and the views are particulary beautiful when going up
any of its peaks, being able to see both lakes. But moreover this place
has many traditional mountanous and fishing villages by lake Ohrid, like
Elšani, and interesting places such as Bay of Bones Museum, St. Zaum Monastery, St. Naum Monastery, Golem Grad or many nice beaches.
Moldova (Moldova/Молдова in Romanian/Moldavian, Молдавия in Russian, Молдова in Ukrainian) is 2.6 million people country in the east of
Europe, part of Eastern Europe. It's part of the Eastern Partnership of the European Union (EU), and it's surrounded by Romania and Ukraine. Moldova has a territorial conflicts in Transnistria, and an autonomous region in Gagauzia. Most of the population come from a mostly Orthodox
Christian tradition (around 90%);
the official language is Romanian (sometimes called Moldavian), with Ukrainian, Gagauz, Russian and Bulgarian as recognised minority languages. The official currency is the Moldovan leu (MDL). The
main city, and the
capital city, of Moldova is Chișinău, with other important cities like Bălți, Ungheni or Cahul. 
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