The Former Yugoslav Republic of Makedonija – FYROM, is the diminutive ex-Yugoslav state that since 1991 has relentlessly and vigorously sought recognition by the international community under its chosen assumed name “Republic of Macedonia”.
Greeks have puzzled the world over by steadfastly refusing FYROM´s recognition under this name, basing their refusal on historical and political arguments.
Skopje insists that their people are the only ones in the Balkan peninsula that deserve to be called Macedonians and they claim to have every right to be called as such, since they have lived in this land for
...at least two and a half to as many as ten thousand years. They claim to have produced such great kings in antiquity as Philip II of Macedonia and Alexander the Great, and such great minds as the philosopher Aristotle and the Apostles to the Slavs Saints Cyril and Methodius.
A federated Yugoslav People’s Republic of Makedonija was established in 1944 and by 1991 all it wanted to do was to simply drop the Socialist label and to become known thereafter as the Republic of Macedonia.
The Greeks had beat the drums back in the 1940’s and 1950’s against Titos’s policies on the Macedonia name issue (and all the irredentism and land annexation propaganda attached to Yugoslavian “Makedonism”) but they were eventually forced by the Americans to hush up since Tito was fast transforming himself into the West’s favorite enfant terrible of the Eastern Block, following the Tito-Stalin break up and Yugoslavia’s placement into the non-aligned camp, never joining the Warsaw Pact.
For the Greeks of the 1960’s, 70’s, and ’80’s the “Macedonian Issue” as such was becoming a dead, distant issue of the past. While it is true that a Socialist People’s Republic with that name existed right next to and north of Greek Macedonia, for all practical purposes it was a simply a province of a larger state, therefore it could be considered a bilateral diplomatic thorn, but still more of an internal issue for Yugoslavia. After all, there are many cases of two different states sharing the same name for their respective provinces.
But by 1991 everything was different. The newly independent state was not a province any longer. It wanted to become recognized internationally as THE Macedonia, even going as far as demanding that the Greeks drop the name of their own province, Makedonia. Irredentism flared up: United Makedonija Обединета Македонија/Obedineta Makedonija became the wear cry of the south Yugoslav ultra-nationalists. The Makedonist ultra-nationalists did not any longer live and made noise in Canada or Australia: they were now the government in Skopje. Most of the world did not seem to even suspect that there was an issue. Once the Greeks started screaming foul, others were puzzled:
Who in the world has the right to refuse this name to a people that has been called (if what they claim is true) Macedonians since the dawn of time?
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