On June 25, the ethnic Macedonian party OMO Ilinden-PIRIN (The United Macedonian Organisation Ilinden-Party for Economic Development and Integration of the Population - the Bulgarian transliteration of the latter spells out PIRIN and also fits the name Pirin, a region in southwest Bulgaria which is considered to ethnically be part of geographical Macedonia), re-established itself in the city of Gotse Delchev amid claims that many of its founders were younger than 18, and probably less than the constitutionally required 500 in number, Bulgarian media reported.

The same day, fights broke out between supporters of OMO Ilinden-PIRIN and the patriotic and moderately nationalist Bulgarian VMRO (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation). The two traditionally clash each year in the Rhodope mountains, where the grave of revolutionary leader Gotse Delchev is, as they celebrate  the death of Delchev and the anniversary of the liberation of Vardar Macedonia (currently the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), respectively.

The OMO Ilinden-PIRIN party was banned in 1999 when Bulgarian authorities ruled it to be  unconstitutional and anti-Bulgarian. Both then and now VMRO supporters and others - most notably former public prosecutor Ivan Tatarchev - claimed it to be anti-Bulgarian because of its advocacy of the geographic and ethnic boundaries of Macedonia, which encompasses the whole of the Pirin region.

In 2006, Strasbourg ruled that the Bulgarian state had breached OMO- Ilinden's (another, more moderate, Bulgarian-registered Macedonian-protecting party), and OMO Ilinden-PIRIN's right to freedom of assembly and charged the Bulgarian state to pay 6000 euro, plus court expenses.

The clash and re-establishment of OMO Ilinden-PIRIN happens as former and current Macedonian prime ministers Ljubco Georgievski and Vlado Buckovski said that Bulgaria and Macedonia should celebrate the 1903 Ilinden Uprising together. It also happens at the same time as the Bulgarian drama over alleged State Security (SS) collaborators unfolds, which involved the names of VMRO leader Krasimir Karakachanov and President Georgi Purvanov, the former admitting that he had worked to protect the interests of Bulgarians in the former Yugoslavia - therefore appearing in current Macedonian newspapers as an anti-Macedonian figure, and the latter somehow managing to preserve his positive aura in Macedonia.

It is the first occasion in Macedonian history that former and current prime ministers have opened the topic of celebrating common moments of history, which moreover comes weeks before government elections. Buckovski said that Macedonia, under the influence of Yugoslav historians, had prohibited the use of the uprising's real name - the Ilinden -Preobrajen Uprising - for the past 50 years. The name comes from the names of the two spots where it broke out - Ilinden in Krushevo, Macedonia, and  Preobrajen in Strandzha, Bulgaria. Just days later, Buckovski retracted almost the whole of his statement after meeting with Macedonian president Branko Crvenkovski. Macedonian media boomed with statements by Macedonian historians announcing themselves to be  opposed to common celebrations.

Despite all the political unrest, however, it does appear that some ice is melting in the traditionally cool Macedonian-Bulgarian relations. So even if what we witness now sends chilling reminders of the Ice Age animation, we should know that dangerous cracks in relations are normal before melting.

There is the problem that the Macedonian political elite still thinks within Belgrade-set categories, says the Director of the Bulgarian National Museum of History, Bozhidar Dimitrov.

"When Buckovski finishes his conversation with Bulgarian politicians, he goes to Belgrade," a bunch of Macedonian Bulgarians say over a coffee at a Skopje cafe, "so there is this hypocrisy there." 

Ivan Kalchev, a Sofia University professor in philosophy and president of the Sofia-based Alliance for Bulgarian-Macedonian friendship, also talks about that hypocrisy, although he means it from the other - the 100 per cent Macedonian - perspective, even if he was born and raised in Bulgaria.

This article attempts to explain certain anomalies of Bulgarian-Macedonian relations.

Whoever is Macedonian, let them say it now (or remain silent until the next elections)

The most recent episode in Macedonian-Bulgarian relations began when Macedonian ambassador to Bulgaria Abduraman Aliti said on April 21 that every Macedonian living in Bulgaria should be allowed to say freely that they are Macedonian. During his visit to Macedonia on June 9, Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev said that he knew of no Bulgarian intervention in Bulgarian Macedonians' self determination. According to a 2001 census, there are some 5000 or 3500 Macedonians in Bulgaria, depending on the political bent of the person speaking.

This article will attempt to refer to Macedonians and Bulgarians in Macedonia and Bulgaria in a way as to possibly avoid political incorrectness. It will therefore apply the below-mentioned (nefarious) terms:

Macedonian Bulgarians - to mean Macedonian citizens with Bulgarian conscience.

Bulgarian Macedonians  - to mean Bulgarian citizens with Macedonian conscience .

100 per cent Bulgarians  - to mean (probably nationalist) Bulgarians who have (probably never gone out of Bulgaria) and have always considered themselves Bulgarian (and have applied for Green Cards, worked in Italy, Australia, Greece…).

100 per cent Macedonians - to mean (probably nationalist) Macedonian-speaking Macedonians who (live in a region between Albania, Kosovo, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia).

The article will therefore become (nefariously) enmeshed in its own ways.

The Bulgarian Macedonian Hristo Georgiev says that the number of Bulgarian Macedonians had been 160 000 until 1954 -56. Consistent communist policy, however, reduced them to about 10 800. "At the time of Todor Zhivkov you could be jailed just for singing a Macedonian song," he says.

Georgiev is 74 and he is the Editor-in-Chief of the Macedonian-oriented newspaper Narodna Volja that has been published since 1980 - first in Australia, and then in London, where it was printed until 1992. Since 1992, it has freely come out in Blagoevgrad, south of Sofia, where its office is based. The Sofia Echo met him at the  Blagoevgrad Alen Mak Hotel, a communist remnant with torn upholstery and lost colour.  Georgiev talked about ethnic and human rights, and about breaking them here and there. It should be borne in mind that these censuses are very easily manipulated, he says. "Bulgarian census papers don't have a column saying `Macedonian' - there is the column saying `other'. Also, census officials often have to go to old people's houses, and they do the signing in for them. And old people won't say that they are Macedonian. Neither will they see and hear well. There is a lot of space for manipulations," he says. "I can't say exactly how many Macedonians there are in Bulgaria now because there is this fear of the Bulgarian reactions."

It is actually true that in the period 1877-1918 Bulgaria saw many Macedonians come to Bulgaria. Three million Bulgarians are of Macedonian descent, Dimitrov says. The seaside towns of Ravda, Nessebar, and the town of Plovdiv all have strong Macedonian roots. "This is why the Bulgarian VMRO received 9000 votes only from Plovdiv at the 2005 elections - more than it did from the Pirin region," he says. After the Berlin Congress, at some point 70 per cent of the political elite in Bulgaria was Macedonian. All of them came to Bulgaria to find business opportunities, especially in Sofia, which was then an artisans' town. Plants came with Zhivkov after 1945.  They usually sent their kids to military schools, so many generals were also Macedonian. Macedonians then held chief positions in newspapers, universities, media, army, justice, everywhere. So this is how this saying came about: "That they pat the Macedonian brat on the behind, and send him to govern in Bulgaria."

Maybe to an extent because Georgiev refuses to enter into detail and prefers to talk about ethnic rights, the situation of Macedonian Bulgarians in Skopje appears much more complicated to me, and I accept the Dimitrov's invitation to go to Skopje at the expenses of the National Museum of History.

The situation is even more complicated from the point of view of a journalist who had never touched upon the issue before: "We are all Bulgarians, only nobody allows us to say that," they say, setting a silent note into the hot and buzzing summer.

Five or six minutes after we sit down at the cafe Macedonian Bulgarian professors, doctors, lawyers, politicians - ranging from 25 to 75 years of age, start coming to greet Dimitrov and get new books -  this is how quickly the word spreads.

The reason for the visit - some six days before - on June 13, was that the Macedonian judiciary sentenced Macedonian Bulgarian journalist Jovo Stefanovski to six months in jail over an incident that happened in 2000, when the pro-Bulgarian RATKO organisation was being founded. After the organisers and members sang their anthem, someone rushed in and threw some smoke bombs. There was an altercation and the hand of a Macedonian journalists was broken. Stefanovski was blamed, but it was former and present agents of the Serbian investigation that provoked the beating, Macedonian Bulgarian Pande Eftimov says. The follow up of the Stefanovski event was100 per cent Macedonian media coverage that said that RATKO members had maltreated Macedonians, Eftimov says. Mile Nedelkovski, a renowned Macedonian playwright, poet and author of the screenplay of the Bulgarian-Macedonian production "Warming Yesterday's Lunch", says that Bulgarian journalists themselves are totally oblivious of what goes on with their compatriots in Macedonia. "They stick the microphone into your face and say: `Are you a Bulgarian?' How can you ask things like that? It is the disastrous thing - the ignorance of what goes on in here, and the ignorance about Macedonia in general."

Eftimovski has spent seven years in jail for being openly Bulgarian, and so have most other Macedonian Bulgarians, although their sentences vary. The sentence for legitimising yourself as Bulgarian during communism in Macedonia could reach 10-15 years.

At the moment, instead of easing the procedure for acquiring Bulgarian passports, the Bulgarian state complicates it, it is a "fearful Golgotha", Mitko Georgiev, a Macedonian Bulgarian, says. Part of the reason for this is that the working hours of the two Bulgarian agencies that accept the documents are absurd: 10am-12am and 2pm-4pm. There are often 70-80 people waiting in line to get a passport in a single day, so that means they often travel back and forth just to get their documents in. This makes the whole procedure, which officially costs about 10 leva, rather expensive. Once their documents get to the Ministry of Justice, which approves or refuses to accept proof of Bulgarian descent, the procedure can get stuck for years. Even though the law provides that documents clear the ministry in less than three months, that is.

"We think that it should be a holiday for a Macedonian to get Bulgarian citizenship, and instead it is Golgotha, seeing all these dishonest games." Eftimov calls this "trade in people" that both Bulgaria and Macedonia do. Eftimov has been waiting for his citizenship for two years.

When pressed to explain why the procedure takes so long, politicians use the EU as an argument: "They say Europe prohibits it, but this is not true. Europe needs about 150 000 emigrants a year because it is an aging continent. The second reason they give is plain funny: they say that they have only two officers who process the documents. Wonderful - then make them 20. Some time ago they incorrectly blamed President Georgi Purvanov for this, but this is not his responsibility, it is the responsibility of the government and the Justice Ministry".

At the moment, Eftimov and the rest hope to have Macedonian take on another meaning in Macedonia. Thus the most renowned Macedonian Bulgarians find themselves in an absurd situation: The Bulgarian state has continuously refused - throughout the transition period and even before, under Todor Zhivkov - to accept the Macedonian language and nation, thus silently stating that they are Bulgarian, but it has at the same time demanded Macedonian Bulgarians prove their Bulgarian descent.

"It should be the opposite - they should try to prove that they are not Bulgarian," Dimitrov says. "I understand that Bulgarians from the Ukraine, Moldova, who have never been in Bulgaria, should be required to produce these documents - after all falsifications happen a lot in this post-Soviet space. But the procedure for Macedonians should happen through the law for restoring citizenship that was illegally taken away, because this is what happened to Macedonians in 1944. And it would allow the procedure to finish within three days," Dimitrov says.

However, Georgiev says that life on the other side - in Bulgaria - is not easy either. Macedonian Bulgarians have problems with everything from signing up in university to getting bank loans. The state provides stipends for a certain number of Macedonian students who want to study in Bulgaria, but in return for declaring themselves Bulgarian. This has led to problems. Dimitrov tells me of a Macedonia girl who got high grades in history exams, but found herself disappear from the lists of accepted students because of her nationality; she only reappeared after her father had paid a certain amount of money to someone.

So, there is no such animal as positive discrimination toward Macedonian Bulgarians wanting to come to live or study in Bulgaria, it seems. And it is a surprise as well, since all this is happening against the backdrop of a demographic crisis, Dimitrov says. "There are some four million Bulgarians outside Bulgaria, in different stages of assimilation," he says. If we could rouse their Bulgarian spirit, Bulgaria's negative birth rate problem would disappear just like that, he says. Bulgarian emigrants who live abroad bring a lot of money into the country, something like one billion 700 million euro a year; this was the amount of foreign investment in Bulgaria at a certain point, Dimitrov says.

About 220 Macedonians ask for Bulgarian citizenship every day, an article in Standart newspaper said. About 7000 people have received citizenship during the time of Purvanov's term as President, 785 got refusals - and those mainly came from Albania, Kosovo, and Greece.

"I understand that your country doesn't want Muslims," Hasan Ahmed, a Bulgarian from Turkey, told Dimitrov in Bulgarian when they met at the opening of an Orthodox church in Odrin some time ago. Seeing that Ahmed's family was young - 25-35 years of age, and knowing that the last deportation of Turks from Bulgaria happened in 1951, Dimitrov asked how come they had preserved their language. It turned out it was their grandmothers who had taught them. There are 53 other families in Odrin ready to accept Christianity and come to Bulgaria at the moment, Dimitrov says.

But of course, the symptomatic problem of the Bulgarian soul (and Balkan soul, for that matter), to have  memory swinging decades back to times when Turks and Muslims were an enemy, makes Bulgarian citizenship to Turks sound dangerous or exotic.

When Dimitrov approaches politicians and suggests changing the procedure for acquiring citizenship, introducing stipends for Macedonian students, or arranging a Bulgarian radio to be broadcast on Macedonian air (there is currently no Bulgarian TV or radio in Macedonia other than the Painer TV channel, which plays chalga), they say that they can't do much: "You know the conditions of the EU," they say. "Not to have fundamental problems"

Current political problems don't end here - there is a highway that waits to be built, and a railway project to connect Skopje and Sofia, which has been waiting for decades.

The heart of the matter
When speaking about Bulgarian politics toward Macedonia, and Macedonian politics toward Bulgaria, one should always be careful to differentiate between the so-called official state policy, and the so called unofficial one - that of swinging moods. And moods do tend to swing in the Balkans, not just in terms of politics, but also in terms of love, or the lack thereof, toward your neighbour.

On the way out of Macedonia, we see two huge road signs counting the kilometers left to Belgrade and Sofia. Dimitrov picks up his mobile, dials the number of Sofia mayor Boiko Borissov, who recently asked Macedonians to put up the signs, and the conversation goes something like this: "I see that they have put up the signs, they are quite new. We saw two 20 metres apart." Borissov was quite pleased. A month and a half ago, the `Sofia' had been smudged out of road signs and had replaced by phrases such as "good relations between Macedonia and Bulgaria," out of date and reality, Dimitrov says.

The National Museum of History's car continues winding down the narrow path that is the official road to Bulgaria. (Of course, this is not to say that Bulgarians are perfect in their brandishing the sword of friendship, but we already talked about that, although - cunningly enough - we put it in the context of Bulgarian interests in Macedonia as well.)

The smudged out signs absurdly remind me of Kosovo. When you see Serbians and Kosovars, who had lived side by side there, kill each other over the same territory and wipe the memory of the other out, you feel shocked and surprised. When you see Macedonian Bulgarians, however, joke about Bulgarian and Macedonian identity, bad Bulgarian politics and a Macedonian party's possible decision to be first to recognise Kosovo, and then see icons saying that Cyril and Methodius are Bulgarian covered with tape in the Osogovo monastery, you feel vacuous and strange. You are supposed to feel so, of course. "Most journalists are like that," Dimitrov says. "I am sure this is the first time you have dealt with this topic yourself."

When I met Narodna Volja's editor Georgiev in 2006 and remembered how I had once shouted, outraged, at a young Macedonian about there being no word about a Macedonian minority in Bulgaria,  Georgiev's talk about the  "megalomania" of Bulgarians rang some small bells. "I have interest in having good relations with Bulgarians," he says, and has all my third eyes wide open. Because many of his relatives are married to Bulgarians and this is a reality that has to be borne in mind, he says. Plus, "who has the right to tell you that you are not Bulgarian in the 21st century? I am convinced that in the future, history will matter less, and culture will take over."

I continue to shrink and be heartbroken. I don't think "the conditions of the EU" and the term "ethnicity" and "ethnic identity" have much bearing when its about the Macedonian question, me liking Macedonian songs, and forgetting my passport when leaving for Macedonia, because it is just - well, come on, almost the same land and, I mean, come on!

But Georgiev goes on: "Nikolina Chakurdukova (the favourite folklore singer of Purvanov, by the way), has this song called Macedonian wedding, and instead of Macedonian, she sings Bulgarian." There are other examples as well, he says.  "All Macedonians know these things, and they laugh about it," he says. "It is not in this way that you win a people on your side"

God, I am broken and awake. How long will that last? ( I have started picking up my bags and pens.) "The minorities of a country form its bouquet," he says, and mentions the "megalomanian" aspirations of Bulgaria toward Macedonian territory again. (Isn't that fear of Bulgarian megalomania the Macedonian metabolism of the "legitimate" Bulgarian fear of OMO-Ilinden - Pirin, with  its "territorial claims" toward Bulgaria that the article began with?)

"There are many Bulgarian pseudo historians (who defend chauvinist ideas), which is an  especially untimely thing to do now when we are trying enter the EU," he says. I feel like I have disappeared - those are strong arguments.

The arguments for forgetting everything.

And when I landed in a chair in the Skopje cafe some days after the Georgiev interview, beset by Macedonian Bulgarians who didn't know how to arouse the interest of Bulgarians for their compatriots, I felt like a parachute. It was what Albin Kurti, leader of the Kosovar Albanian self-determination movement No Negotiations, said that the United Nations were like in Pristina, because they didn't understand anything about Kosovo.

"I think I have made myself clear about these things," Georgiev said, and shook my hand heartily. I arrest my breath and smile: "Yes, you have! I am going to a friend now - he lives in Petrich." "Well, have a nice time at our end," he says,  waving goodbye.

Ah, this Macedonia! (When I prepared a political-science presentation on Macedonia four years ago, I advertised its tourist spots with the sentence: "Visit Macedonia, and your heart will remain here!" My politics professor liked the presentation a lot, I guess it was supposed to be liked, as much as I love Macedonia, I guess.

No ordinary love
As I write about Georgiev now, his words about not minding Bulgarians thanks to his relatives married to Bulgarians make me remember the story of a Macedonian Bulgarian whom Dimitrov talked to at the onset of NATO's bombardment of Serbia in 1999.

When he saw planes flying above, the Macedonian Bulgarian said that he felt sad about Serbians. Dimitrov was surprised at this generosity of mind, and asked: `why is that?' There had been so many Macedonians dating and marrying Serbians and having two or three kids, or simply having business with them, that it was impossible not to "jalish" (be sad about") NATO bombarding them, even if Serbian secret agents killed or imprisoned your family during communism, the Macedonian Bulgarian said. Family and business contacts mean a lot, much more than history, Dimitrov says. So the strong relations between Macedonia and Serbia between 1942 and 1992 were in fact largely along these lines. "And this is just how long it would take for these connections to fall apart " Dimitrov says: "50 years". Dimitrov is an optimist, of course: "In 1992 no one dared admit that they are Bulgarian. They used to hide, but they became many and now they go shoulder to shoulder, so to say. Things are very different now. Still, sometimes everybody prefers to tell you that they are Bulgarian in private, in cafes, after the third rakia.

An unusual conversation
Again in a cafe over rakia, I witnessed a very interesting conversation between Petar Petrov, an associate professor in history, and Ivan Kalchev, a professor in philosophy and president of the Alliance for Bulgarian-Macedonian friendship, both teaching in Sofia University, and both Bulgarian citizens of Bulgarian descent. They have totally opposing views on "the Macedonian issue"- Kalchev defends the authenticity of the Macedonian language, state, and nation; calls the Macedonian language one of the most ancient languages; Bozhidar Dimitrov "that gipsy of Bulgarian science"; and Aristotle a "maybe" Macedonian; Bulgarian politicians he calls "hypocrites" who only talk about good relations, but won't recognise Macedonia.

Petrov defends the views of the pure Bulgarian state and says that there is no such country as Macedonia; that, consequently, the Sofia-based Macedonian cultural centre should be called Skopje centre; that it was a blatant mistake on the part of Bulgaria to recognise Macedonia and accept its name, because Macedonia is anti-Bulgarian; that only people of Bulgarian descent should be registered as Bulgarian citizens (and that consequently people like Sergei Stanishev should be neither prime ministers nor Bulgarians because they are Jewish);

By the way, Kalchev and Petrov are best friends. How come? "You often find friends among your ideological foes, and foes among your political friends," Kalchev says. So, if there wasn't an interviewer from The Echo around they'd be talking about "social things".

During the conversation, it also transpires that Petrov and Kalchev have one more difference - Petrov is Orthodox, and Kalchev is Catholic, and that this identity also tends to swing their views.

Kalchev: "I was once speaking to a professor here in Sofia University, and he said to me: `You are not Bulgarian, because Marin Drinov (a Bulgarian Revival historian, 1838-1906) once said that Bulgarian equals Orthodox.' `Then what am I?' I asked. And he said: `Well, you are European.' And I said: `Well, thank you very much.'"

Kalchev comes from Banat Bulgaria and is a descendant of Bulgarian Catholics who, unlike "the Orthodox braggers," organised the Chiprovo uprising in 1688 that "was much stronger than the April one."

Petrov: "Yes, but it didn't succeed."

Kalchev: "Exactly because it didn't succeed it was much more worth it."

This last comment reminds again, absurdly, of Serbian mythological memory,  Kosovo, and the fact that Serbians built their century-long state mythology around one poem over the loss of Kosovo in 1389. (And on the fact that two centuries earlier Kosovo had become the cradle of Serbian civilization, of course).

Seesawing memories
Since conclusions matter, this will be a metaphorical one.

Swinging memories, back and forth, through decades of Balkan darkness, like a seesaw, have made us prevent our enemies from taking over our souls and becoming like us - it keeps them always down when we are up, and the opposite.

What a Bulgarian soul hates most is having its uniqueness wiped out and ending up in the same way as others, and this is the same thing that the Serbian, Albanian, Romanian, Greek, Turk, and Macedonian soul, for that matter, hate most as well. (Did I miss any?)

A Kosovo boy that a friend of mine interviewed put all of this perfectly well, when asked about the European term "integration" and what it means in Kosovo: "Integration per se can lead to violence because the stranger is OK until they are different. The moment that they decide that they want to become like you, you want to get rid of them. After all, they should be different, they can't just be like you, on the same hierarchical level."

The Balkan soul craves difference so much that - to achieve it - it goes down in dark history again and again and again, and once more - till dawn breaks, in order to achieve it, no matter what the cost and who the enemy.