by Jason Iliou
Introduction
The fluctuating political status quo of Eastern Europe, following the gradual collapse of Yugoslavia, stemming from the uncertainty that sprung from Tito’s death, led to the independence of the union states that comprised the Socialist Federal Republic. One of the successor states, the Republic of Macedonia declared its independence in 1991, and entered the United Nations in 1993 as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia following a naming dispute with Greece, in order to avoid any association with the Greek Macedonia. Regardless, the issue remains since the Republic of Macedonia claims to have a historic connection to Ancient Macedonia, an also significant part of Greek heritage. The Kingdom of Ancient Macedonia territorially involves parts of Serbia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Albania, while its largest part belongs to Greece, as this was settled after the Balkan Wars. The UN has unsuccessfully stepped in to mediate the negotiations, while the dispute revolves around the political spectrum serving inter-political and intra-political interests for both sides. The issue has since evolved into a succession of alternative name suggestions putting an emphasis on the legalities of the matter instead of analyzing it deeper from a sociological perspective. The aim of this paper is not to suggest a solution to the dispute, nor to dictate which side is historically or politically correct. On the contrary, this analysis argues that the Macedonian naming dispute is an issue of identity crisis that follows Macedonia from its independence and as such, it should instead be assessed sociologically by examining Macedonian identity controversies from the Yugoslavian era, juxtaposed with national identity issues that followed the dissolution of the former Socialist Republic. The results of this analysis will be compared to those of Bosnia – a socially and demographically similar case study – in order to discover identical patterns to serve a wider theoretical approach on nationalism and ethnic identity, to stress the interplay of the two in affecting national identity within territorially confined spaces.
