In our school in Prilep, we are taught that the Greeks, Bulgarians, Albanians, and Turks were responsible for the ethnic cleansing of our Macedonian forefathers in the Balkan Wars.

What remains suspicious, though, is that no teacher can answer why it was only Macedonians who were killed.

Many have attempted to half-heartedly say that we were fighting for our freedom but have always stopped short when asked why our forefathers had Bulgarian surnames, and fought under the Bulgarian flag at Krushevo, and that our VMRO was actually initially named the Bulgarian-Macedonian Odrin Revolutionary Organisation.

The suspicious reference here is not Bulgarian, but the term Odrin which is the city of Adrianople right over on the Bulgarian,Turkish,Greek border. I mean, my geographical knowledge might be poor at times, but if I am correct, there were no Macedonian lands that far east in modern times and certainly no Macedonian people living there either.

When one of the girls in our class said that was because the people who lived there were Bulgarians, the teacher informed the local authorities, who in turn called at our friend’s parents’ house that same afternoon. The next day at our high school, she was publicly ridiculed and subsequently expelled. Her father was badly beaten.

Since then the Macedonian youth have investigated what (Macedonian prime minister Nikola) Gruevski’s government is not telling us about our own history.

Modern day politics is fixated on national narratives, and here our history is becoming more dubious by the day.

The encyclopedia is only one example of a long string of government attempts at winning over the people’s minds about their history, but it is in the diaspora where Macedonian history is being forged and fabricated. Rich businessmen in countries like Canada, Australia, and the US have poured millions of dollars into the world-wide campaign on the name issue, for example, and have successfully taken control of our nation’s political machinery.

Gruevski and co. are but a couple of window-dressing mannequins wearing anything the diaspora will throw onto them. Macedonian youth are asking uncomfortable questions which the education system doesn’t want to know about.

Sasha