Now that the story has happened with the opening of the “Tsar Boris III” club in Ohrid, proposals for new names are pouring in.
Do people across the border know Macedonian-born people who made careers in Bulgaria?
After the story on Friday, when another club of Bulgarians from North Macedonia was opened in Ohrid under the name of “Tsar Boris III”, dozens of suggestions for names that would be accepted by the local population across the border suddenly emerged. . And from ours, some of whom see in the use of the name of Tsar Boris an open provocation of the sensitive souls of the citizens of our southwestern neighbor. They may be right, but ultimately it’s a decision by the club’s founders in the lakeside town. What? Don’t you want the Bulgarian state and its institutions to check every citizen initiative, even if they come from North Macedonia, on how to name their club? Aren’t those times long gone?
For the politicians and institutions of Skopje, of course, it did not pass. After a parliamentary party, albeit a small one, organized a protest at the opening of the club, after Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski and Foreign Minister Buyar Osmani also spoke out publicly against the name, what can we say about those hundreds of people in Ohrid who, under the state flag of the now defunct SFRY, threw eggs to the organizers and founders of the club. I know many residents of Ohrid and can say that “there are no such people”. This protest was somehow introduced, somewhat unnaturally against the backdrop of the otherwise friendly attitude of the city towards Bulgarians in general and especially towards our tourists there, who in the early years of the separation of the Republic of Macedonia from the former Yugoslavia saved the Ohrid season, which lives on and is completely dependent on tourism. I think there were more journalists than protesters.
Now I have heard that the opening of another club of local Bulgarians in Bogdantsi is being prepared, which would bear the name of Tsar Ferdinand. The documents underwent the procedural path to receive official approval. The initiators had the consent of Simeon of Saxe-Coburg, who, as it turned out, also blessed the Ohrid club and gave consent to bear his father’s name. Now it is about his grandfather, for whom the local historiography is not as acute as it is for the Unifier King. (I do not hide that this very thing – Unifier after the name of Tsar Boris III caused a strong reaction in Skopje. There they decided that the emphasis on definition was a sign of a territorial claim of Bulgaria to North Macedonia. It does not matter at all. that the official Sofia has more than once announced that it was the first in the world to recognize it right within the current state borders).
I will be extremely curious to know the arguments that the administration will probably make for not registering the new initiative of the local Bulgarians. He who knows what historical fault will be attributed to Ferdinand for the eventual refusal.
The political elite close to Vardar is looking for a way to include in their legislation the problem of the emergence of similar forms of civil society manifestation as the clubs that Bulgarians register there. And in a way that would allow the administration and institutions to control not only the very implementation of those ideas, but their names as well. Although at least for now they are not that many, but in their names in Skopje they saw a threat to the identity and truth about the history of their country. It is a way to legitimize their future attitude towards the Bulgarians, especially when it has become clear that our country supports them through the request that they be included in the Constitution of North Macedonia. And thus participate in the distribution of the shares of the seats in the administration, as has hitherto been practiced with the representatives of the other parts of the peoples listed in the Preamble of the main document.
Let’s be honest: there is no denying that there is a certain provocation in the choice of names, both for the club in Bitola and now in Ohrid. I have worked long enough in Skopje as a correspondent, and have been dealing with this subject for a long time, not to know how much sensitivity to everything that comes from the East is heightened. Somewhere on social networks I read an opinion that whatever name the local Bulgarians give to their club, even the most neutral, will not be accepted and will be rejected.
Softer options are offered here and there, like that of Dimitar Talev, for example. The proposals come mainly from our Bulgarian side and from people who perhaps sincerely wish Bulgarians across the border to have their own associations, but so that their activities and “facade” are somehow more digestible by the population and local authorities. Let’s not bother them, let’s not hurt their feelings, let’s not cast a shadow on our bilateral relations, well, let’s respect them fully.
And to all those who in good faith propose Talev as a possible name option for the next club, I will say that, strange as it may be, few in the writer’s homeland have heard of it. Not to mention that they don’t know his work. I did a specific research on this topic. Just at the time of the so-called “Color Revolution”, which overthrew the regime of Nikola Gruevski, Talev’s theme and the right of local publishers to publish it in a manipulative way, according to his successors, became acutely relevant again. I have been to Skopje on another occasion but decided to check out how well known Talev is. We visited the city center bookstores and the many outdoor book stalls. In the “Tabernakul” bookshop in the busiest place in Skopje, the salesman also got angry with us: “Well, do you know how many people call me from Sofia asking me about this Talev? Now you too … first time, you’re so worried about him. ” Let me clarify: for the people around Vardar, a “champion” is something like our former fighters active against fascism and capitalism.
There were two outdoor book stalls in the central square. To one, who was on the square, meaning that once there was the birthplace of Agnese Gonza Boyajiu, who later became Mother Teresa, the seller replied that he did not know who was who wrote. Otherwise he had bragged about selling books for over twenty years. At the opposite counter, the woman who was selling remembered and offered me Talev, but only two volumes of Macedonian tetralogy in an old Bulgarian edition. Then I discovered that the lady in question is the first wife of the historian Professor Zoran Todorovski, the historical head of the local archives, who had many friends and colleagues in Sofia, and perhaps for this very reason …
Two weeks ago, on the same subject, I proposed in “Trud” that one of the next Bulgarian clubs across the border be called “Pande Eftimov”. I kept thinking that as a local man whose life had been shattered by the authorities in Tito’s Yugoslavia, he was quite famous. What was my surprise that my friend and colleague from Skopje, “Sitel” TV reporter Marijan Nikolovski, didn’t know who Pande was. Marian does not fail to come and cover the elections in our country, and now he was on the line, so we met. He will send him a copy of the book “The Galizian File or the Broken Life of Pande Eftimov” published by the Macedonian Scientific Institute to read. It will not be superfluous for him.
