Malthus, Mayhem and the Myth of Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia, particularly the place that rose mythically from the ruins of World War II in the "experiment" of Marshal Josip Broz Tito, marked perhaps better than any nation or region the clash of identity and difference between "East" and "West" in Europe since the end of the Cold War. Indeed, such identities and alignments formed the core arguments that Slovenia and Croatia used in claiming to be different and "Western" in 1991 as they sought to break free from the hegemony of "Eastern" and "Ottoman" Serbia. Declaring their independence and freedom from the repression of then Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, the actions of Slovenia and Croatia deeply influenced (and in some ways forced) the Yugoslav republics of Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina to assert their own independence and freedom.
WITH THE EYES OF THE “OTHERS”
In this issue of the magazine, we publish articles by the Bulgarian historians and sociologists Kiril Kertikov, Mihail Ivanov, Vrban Todorov and Marija Bakalova (all from Sofia), as well as the text of Stefan Troebst, an anthropologist and historian from Leipzig, Germany.
Editorial: Kosovo and Macedonia
All of us here knew quite well that the great majority of the Macedonians considered the 2001 Ohrid Agreement an unjust act, the product of violence on the side of the ethnic Albanians supported by the “international community” against the Macedonian national state and against the interests of the Macedonian nation.
What kind of a political system did Macedonia get after the Ohrid Peace Agreement?
The Ohrid Peace Agreement signed after the armed ethnic conflict in Macedonia in 2001 has largely changed the constitutional framework of the previous political system of the country. The so-called Westminster democratic political framework established with the 1991 Constitution, which favoured the majority-ethnic Macedonians, has been abandoned.
Rumen KAMILOV
Macedonia, Skopje