RELIGION

Relegion was another important tool for the new authorities, and the freeing of the Orthodox Church in Yugoslav Macedonia from Serbian control, with the establishment of the autocephalous Macedonian Orthodox Church and the revival of the ancient archdiocese of Ohrid in 1958, was an important step along the path to nationhood -a rare incidence of co-operation between the atheist state and organised religion.

The Serbian Orthodox Church resisted this move, as it did the final declaration of the autocephalous status of the Macedonian Church on 18 July 1967, and in common with the other Orthodox Churches, remains firm in its refusal to recognise it.

There have been reports of a faction within the Macedonian Church that wishes the Church to give up its claim to independence and rejoin the Serbian Orthodox Church. This faction, apparently centred around Bishop Petar of Prespa and Bitola, was believed by some to be the true reason for the ultimatum issued by 200 Macedonian Orthodox priests in 1990 for the bishop's resignation ostensibly on grounds of neglect and embezzlement although others denied this.

On the other hand, relations between the Macedonian Orthodox Church and the authorities in Yugoslav Macedonia have remained cordial, encouraged by a common front against the threat of Albanian nationalism and the attendant growth of Islam.

However, there were those who retained their pro-Bulgarian sympathies and suffered severe repression as a result. Bulgarian sources assert that thousands lost their lives due to this cause after 1944, and that more than 100,000 people were imprisoned under 'the law for the protection of Macedonian national honour' for opposing the new ethnogenesis.

In January 1945 1,260 leading Bulgarians were allegedly killed in Skopje, Veles, Kumanovo, Prilep, Bitola and Stip under the supervision -so the Bulgarians claim- of Vukmanovic-Tempo abd Rankovic.

In 1946 Dimitar Guzelev and Yordan and Dimital Chatrov were sentenced to death, and seventy-four people led by Angel Dimov were imprisoned for trying to detach Vardar Macedonia and join it to Bulgaria.

Another organisation called the 'Ilinden Democratic Front' was uncovered in 1947 and similarly accused, and there were successive trials througout the new republic in 1947 and 1948 of which the most celebrated was that of Metodi Antonov Chento.

Sporadic trials of those who denied the existence of the Macedonian nation continued, for example as reported in 'Politika' of Belgrade -Petar Zaharov and tried for asserting that Macedonians were Bulgarians, and in April 1977 two Skopje citizens, Lazar Krajnichanec and Angel Miterev (Gerojski), were each sentenced to five years' imprisonment for similar offences under Article 118 of the then criminal code dealing with 'hostile propaganda'.

Such punishment was used in S.R.Macedonia not only against recalcitrant Yugoslav citizens.

In January 1984 Ivan Zografski, a seventy-year-old retired doctor living in Sarejevo who was a Bulgarian citizen, was tried under Article 136 (which had replaced the analogous Article 118) having been accused of 'denying the existence of the brotherhood and unity of Yugoslavia's peoples and in particular denying the existence of the Macedonian nation', as well as making disparaging remarks about Tito and the situation in Yugoslavia. For this he was sentenced to six and a half years' imprisonment, reduced on appeal to five years, with confiscation of his property and permanent expulsion from Yugoslavia on completion of his sentence by the Sarejevo district court.

While the punishments for such actions had been reduced by the time Yugoslavia came to an end, the attitudes behind them remained, as late as 21 January 1991, a Bulgarian citizen, Nedka Doneva Ivanova, was arrested and fined for stating that all Macedonians were Bulgarians.

The change from the pre-war situation of unrecognised minority status and attempted assimilation to Serbia to that in which the Macedonians were the majority people in their own republic with considerable autonomy within the Yugoslav federation had obvious attractions.

The authorities were also aided by the comparative lack of attraction for its population of Bulgaria, which remained within the Soviet bloc, in comparison to the new Yugoslavia.

However the increasingly desperate economic, political and social situation in Yugoslavia which developed throughout the 1980s, and the national question of the Albanians within Yugoslavia which threatened the new republic including Serbia, as well as Bulgaria's continued ambitions, made the future of the Macedonian republic seem full of uncertainties.

H.Poulton,

Who are the Macedonians? (1994), pp.118-120