CHAPTER 6
A FIGHT FOR RIGHTS: MACEDONIA 1941
The Law on the Anthem of the Republic of Macedonia, passed by the Assembly (Sobranie) of the Republic of Macedonia on 11 August 1992, made ‘Today over Macedonia’ (‘Denes nad Makedonija’) the state anthem of the Republic. Almost a year earlier, on 25 September 1991, the Republic of Macedonia, following a referendum, declared independence from the SFRY. The new state adopted a constitution in November 1991. Thus the anthem was legalised almost a year after Macedonia's declaration of independence. ‘Today over Macedonia’ is a song from World War II which, as we shall see below, served first as an unofficial and then, from 1989, as the official anthem of Macedonia while it was a federal unit in the SFRY.
In its current amended form, Article 5 of the Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia requires that the law regarding the flag, the coat of arms and the national anthem be passed by a two-thirds majority. Amendment X of the Constitution also requires that a majority of the representatives of those other than the majority of the population must be in favour of such a law. This, in effect, means that any law pertaining to these matters must be passed by a majority of the representatives of the Albanian minority in the Assembly. The current law of 11 August 1992 was not carried by the majorities required by the Constitution, but by the time the Law on the Anthem was enacted, ‘Today over Macedonia’ had in fact been the official anthem of Macedonia for three years. On 14 April 1989, the Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, which was still a federal unit of the SFRY, adopted Amendment 24 to its Constitution of 1974, which replaced Article 10. Article 10 previously asserted that ‘The Socialist Republic of Macedonia has an anthem’ but its replacement, Amendment 24, stated ‘The anthem of SR Macedonia is “Today over Macedonia”’ (Pavlović 1990: 291).
The constitutional sanction of ‘Today over Macedonia’ as anthem parallels that of the Slovenian anthem ‘A Toast’, which became the Slovenian anthem through an amendment of Slovenian Constitution in September 1989 (see Chapter 3). As had been the case in Slovenia, the 34 constitutional amendments passed in April 1989 in Macedonia paved the way for its later declaration of independence and for multi-candidate elections (Rossos 2008: 262). And as in Slovenia, following the independence of the federal unit and first multi-party elections in 1991, a new law was enacted proclaiming the anthem already chosen in 1989 as the national anthem. There are, however, some significant differences between these two cases: the Slovenian assembly chose a song that was neither a World War II song, nor even a national song while the Macedonian assembly opened a public competition for the national anthem, which the already adopted national anthem allegedly won. There was never a public competition for the Slovenian national anthem and no one has ever proposed one. Unlike the laws on anthems in Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, the Macedonian law does not establish a text for the lyrics of the anthem. The official text of the lyrics appears on the website of the president (see below) but this is an informal arrangement and appears not to have been codified by law.
At the time of the adoption of the anthem the Assembly also adopted a new flag for the newly independent state and that choice was vigorously contested by the government of neighbouring Greece. The Greek government objected to the design of the new flag on the ground that it represented the ‘Vergina Star’ a golden object retrieved from an Ancient Macedonian tomb (alleged to be that of King Phillip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great). In taking the Vergina Star, it was claimed, the Macedonian state was taking a piece of heritage and a symbol of the Greek state.1 The Greek government, more importantly, also objected to the very name of the new state, ‘Macedonia’ claiming that this was already the name of a Greek province bordering on the newly declared republic.2 The latter objection delayed the EU and US recognition of Macedonia as an independent state and its admission to the UN. To gain admission the state had to be ‘renamed’ as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia or FYROM (Rossos 2008: 271). However, neither Greece nor any other neighbouring state objected to the national anthem, in spite of its title ‘Today over Macedonia’. There was no requirement, for example, to rename it as ‘Today over FYROM’. The Greek government apparently did not care how the Macedonians – singers of their own anthem – named their own country among themselves; moreover, the Greek government did not object to the singing of this anthem, in Macedonian, with the word ‘Macedonia’ in it, at official ceremonies in other states or international events.
The whole dispute, which has still not been fully resolved, demonstrates how state symbols and even names can become objects of contestation when they appear to be threatening other particular forms of national self-identification (in this case, Greek national self-identification). The Macedonian anthem escaped the inter-state contestation with Greece but did not, as we shall see, escape contestation by the politicians representing minority populations in Macedonia, primarily Albanians.
‘Today over Macedonia’ is a song about the Macedonian fight for freedom. It does not exhort or urge Macedonians to fight; rather it relates the fact that they are fighting and that, as a consequence, Macedonia will be free. In spite of the lack of exhortation per se the fight that Macedonians are carrying on as they sing the song remains the principal theme. Apart from being a fighting song, it is also self-congratulatory, in so far as it lauds the singers and their motherland for the freedom that they are to attain for themselves and for the state – the Kruševo Republic – they once had. In this chapter we shall discuss the song's genesis as a national anthem and its main competitor ‘Rise the Dawn of Freedom’ as well as the recent controversy over its lack of any reference to non-Macedonian minorities.
From a festive song to anthem
Picture a quiet New Year's Eve night in December 1941 in Struga, a town in western Macedonia, under Italian occupation. A group of young men and women gather quietly to celebrate because too much noise may attract the attention of the Italian authorities. One of the young men picks up his guitar and sings a new song, which he has rehearsed over the last a month or so. Other participants take up the song enthusiastically and then sing other songs and chat happily in between. This would seem to be just an ordinary festive gathering of young and educated Strugans. Yet appearances can be deceptive: most of the participants, including the singer and the poet/composer, Vlado Maleski, later left the town to join a small Communist-led Partisan detachment fighting against the Axis forces (60 godin 2001: 22–3). There were very few Partisan detachments in Macedonia and at that time only a few recruits. Yet by 1945 the Partisans had been victorious both in the war against the Axis and in a series of civil wars fought in various parts of Yugoslavia.
In the Communist-ruled Macedonia, a federal unit of Yugoslavia, the singer and poet Vlado Maleski (1919–84) became not only a famous writer, the author of widely acclaimed novels, poems and dramas, but also a state official, the director of the main radio station and the Yugoslav ambassador to several countries. His song had also an illustrious career: it was sung on many official and festive occasions in Macedonia until in 1989 when it officially became the national anthem. The song is called ‘Today over Macedonia is being born’ (‘Denes nad Makedonija se radja’).
Here is the official version of the current anthem which, as we shall see below, differs from Maleski's original song:
The song was not initially composed to serve as a national anthem. Its original aim appears to have been primarily to stir up patriotic sentiments in the singers, raise national pride, and direct the singers' patriotic sentiments toward the fight for freedom of their national group. In this sense, the song clearly belongs to the frequently (but not necessarily) linked genres of the patriotic awakening song (‘budilica’ in Macedonian) and the fighting song. The former aims at arousing patriotic sentiments among those who either lack these sentiments or have not had much public opportunities to expressing themselves. The latter serves to bolster the fighting spirit and encourage singers to join in the fight for freedom. Many anthems start as songs belonging to either or both of these categories. The current Croatian national anthem ‘Our Beautiful Homeland’ and the Czech ‘Where is my home?’ both started as patriotic awakening songs under the Austrian and Hungarian rule. ‘The Marseillaise’ started as a fighting song of French revolutionary regiment. ‘Marcha Patriotica’, the current Argentinian national anthem, composed and performed in 1813, was a fighting song of the South American wars of independence against Spain. National anthems also aim to stir and channel the dormant patriotic sentiments of the singers, as vehicles for the musical and poetic articulation of those sentiments and for their public expression in unison. Hence the purpose of anthems often coincides with that of awakening and fighting songs. In consequence, the latter provide good anthem material which is easily transformed into anthems. In the case of this particular song we are privileged to know the story of the awakening, which commenced with its first private performance in 1941.
Another unusual feature of this anthem lyric is its listing of the names of the illustrious dead (reminiscent of the listing of the martyrs in Yeats's ‘Easter 1916’). In the initial version of the song, these illustrious dead were called the ‘builders’ of the Kruševo Republic – the first, briefly independent state on the territory of the present Republic of Macedonia.
An ode to a state of one's own
The sun is an ancient symbol with wide connotative range; for example witness the monotheism of the Aten cult in the reign of Akhenaten and the Roman ‘Sol Invictus’ (in both cases the sun symbol is used to convey the idea of unchallengeable power). Reborn every day, the sun is a culturally widespread symbol of life-giving, rebirth and associated hopes. The association of sun and freedom is also known from the Tarot. The sun is associated with health and with happiness (the ‘place in the sun’ for which people strive). Probably for all of these reasons the sun has long been a staple of national symbolism, for instance in flag design: for example in the flags of Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, Uruguay, Argentina, Tibet and Kazakhstan.
In the context of the Macedonian flag and the lyrics of its matching anthem, we may take the sun of freedom as focusing national devotion. This sun shines equally on all, and, as the real sun bestows light and warmth that gives life to all living beings, so the sun of liberty/freedom bestows freedom and removes oppression and shackles from those it reaches. In the case of ‘Today over Macedonia’ three associations are obvious – freedom, power and rebirth.
The opening lines assert that the sun of freedom, unlike the real sun, does not arise by itself. For the sun of freedom to appear to oppressed and occupied peoples – at least in the context of fighting songs and anthems – these peoples have to fight. And that is exactly what the Macedonians are said to be doing: the sun of liberty/freedom arises as the Macedonians are doing the fighting. Interestingly, they are not said to fight for their liberty but for their rights. But what rights are they fighting for precisely?
To answer that question, we need first to note the identity of the fighters who are said to be Macedonians. In 1941, the Bulgarian occupier of the large part of Macedonia (but not of Struga) rejected this as a national identification because it differentiated Macedonians from the nation of the occupier, the Bulgarians. The pre-1941 government of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia also rejected this is as a national identification because officially the Macedonian-speaking inhabitants of Macedonia were held to be Serbs. Identifying the individuals standing up and fighting as Macedonians was not only an act of political defiance to the occupying authorities in 1941 but was also an act of generally defiant national self-identification. In naming this group of people as Macedonians, the poet and the singers are rejecting any other national identity as imposed by a hostile power. The first stanza could be thus read as saying: ‘We are neither Bulgarians nor Serbs – we are Macedonians. And to prove it, we are all fighting together for our rights. Today, as we all fight for our rights, we show that we are free from any imposed identity and we show that we are Macedonians.’ Through their struggle for freedom, Macedonians are reborn as a nation distinct from their neighbours.
The next stanza tells us a bit more about the rights for which the Macedonians are fighting. In the original version this stanza offers an eschatological image of a state resurrected. As the Macedonians fight, the creators (masons) of the first modern Macedonian state are also resurrected. In the current version, it is only the flag of that resurrected state – the Kruševo Republic – that is resurrected. This is the most immediate sense in which the sun of both the Macedonian flag and the anthem represents rebirth. The flag of the first independent state serves here as an obvious symbol of independence resurrected. The resurrected flag is then followed by a list of four names. These are the well-known leaders of the movement which sparked an insurrection against the Ottoman rule in 1903, known as ‘the Ilinden insurrection’ after the Feast Day of St Ilias. It is their insurrection that led to the liberation of the city of Kruševo and its environs and the proclamation of the Kruševo Republic on 3 August 1903. The Republic lasted only ten days but, however short-lived, was the only state that claimed independence within the territory of the present day Republic of Macedonia until 1991. The listing of these four illustrious dead identifies the cause of the Macedonian fighters: like the insurrectionists of 1903, the song suggests the Macedonians are fighting for the same cause – the independence of Macedonia.
The stanza thus asserts the continuity of the Macedonians' striving for an independent state and, in doing so, asserts, most emphatically but still indirectly, the independence of Macedonia. Both assertions make the song eminently ‘portable’ over time. At any time that Macedonia's independence appears to be contested or needs to asserted, the singing of this song reassures the singers that they still strive and fight for independence and freedom.
If identity and fighting are the topoi of the first stanza and the resurrection of independence is the topos of the second, liberty/freedom is the topos of the third. Macedonia is asserted to be free at present and to live freely or in liberty in the future. The forests who are announcing the freedom can be read as metonyms for the guerrillas who are fighting or about to fight in those very forests. It is the Partisans living in the forests – whom Maleski and his fellow-celebrants were planning to join – who will bring Macedonia its freedom. The song is thus confirming to its singers and listeners that if Macedonians continue to fight for the independence of their state, the independent state will guarantee them the opportunity to live in freedom. Fighting for the cause of independence – at least in anthems and patriotic songs – always brings freedom!
The three topoi that dominate this patriotic song (identity, independent statehood and freedom) are frequent themes in many patriotic songs and anthems. Identity is expressed through the repeated use of Macedonia (four times), Macedonians (twice), Macedonian (for woodlands, once), identifying the land, the motherland, its landscape and its fighting people. Independent statehood enters via the allusion to the first and (until 1991) the only (modern) independent state on the territory of today's Macedonia. That state is the focus of the second stanza. As we shall see, in the process of its transformation into an anthem, the song was shortened and its content modified. In spite of this reduction, these three topoi were preserved in the final anthem version, together with the repetition of the word Macedonia and its cognates. These three topoi thus provide a conduit for the projection of a self-selected image of the nation-singing-in-unison and are eminently suitable for a national anthem. Yet, they also serve another purpose in asserting the state's independence, which makes them particularly suitable as an anthem of a new state seeking to assert its independence and national identity among neighbouring states whose governments do not appear to recognise either the former or the latter.
Before ‘Today over Macedonia’: A blood-curdling march from Bulgaria
In 1941 there were only two small political groupings in Macedonia that recognised a separate Macedonian identity: the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (United) (IMRO (United)). The latter, although officially disbanded in 1936, still had an impact on political life in Macedonia, primarily through its former members and sympathisers. IMRO (United) was formed by the left wing of the IMRO in 1925. Until 1934 the IMRO, based in Bulgaria, was a highly influential organisation in Bulgarian politics, which promoted the annexation of Macedonia to Bulgaria, denied the existence of a separate Macedonian nation, and used terrorist tactics against its opponents in Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Greece. In contrast, the leaders of the IMRO (United) recognised Macedonians as separate from Bulgarians and it was partly due their initiative that the Communist International (Comintern) in Moscow issued, in 1934, a resolution that acknowledged the existence of a separate Macedonian nation and its separate language. In 1941, the Communist parties of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Greece, all controlled by the Soviet-dominated Comintern, officially followed the Comintern line (Rossos 2008: 167).
In June 1941, following the German invasion of the USSR, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY), acting on Comintern directives, organised an armed insurrection against the Axis forces occupying Yugoslavia. The attack on 11 October 1941 on a police station of the Bulgarian occupation forces by the Prilep Partisan detachment – organised by the Regional Committee of the CPY for Macedonia – marked the start of the Communist-led uprising in Macedonia (Rossos 2008: 192). In 1941, there was no Partisan detachment formed in the area of Struga which was occupied by the Italian forces. However, the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia (SKOJ in Macedonian and Serbo-Croat), a Communist youth organisation, had a network of activists in Struga. Members of this network planned the New Year's Eve celebration at which Vlado Maleski performed, for the first time, ‘Today over Macedonia’. Some 24 young men and women were present on the occasion (according to available oral sources) and their names were recorded only in 1981 (60 godini 2001: 22). Most of the original singers obviously identified as Macedonians. Yet it is unclear how many people in Struga and its environs would also have done the same. Identifying oneself as a Macedonian at the time was not only an expression of ethnic but also political allegiance: allegiance to an anti-Axis and anti-fascist left-wing ideology that promoted the idea of Macedonian separateness.
While the Communist-led Partisans were small in number in Macedonia in 1942, in the course of the war their forces and their supporter-base grew considerably. On 2 August 1944, on the anniversary of the establishment of the Kruševo Republic, Macedonian Communists organised the first meeting the Anti-Fascist Assembly for the People's Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM in Macedonian) in a Serbian monastery near Kumanovo. The president and one of the vice-presidents of the Assembly were former members or sympathisers of the IMRO (United). The Assembly duly declared Macedonia a federal unit, with state attributes, in the future federated Yugoslavia which was to follow the federal model of the USSR. The Assembly also made Macedonian, spoken by the majority population of Macedonian, the official language of the state (Rossos 2008: 196).
Vlado Maleski, the composer and the first singer of ‘Today over Macedonia’, was a delegate at this Assembly. Yet his song was not sung at the Assembly. Instead, the Assembly was opened with the unofficial anthem of the Yugoslav Communist state, ‘Hey Slavs’ (see Chapter 1) and the older IMRO anthem ‘Rise the Dawn of Freedom’ (‘Izgrej zora na slobodata’). In view of the election of two former IMRO (United) members to high office in the Assembly, it is perhaps not surprising that the anthem of the old IMRO was sung (allegedly spontaneously) at the opening of the meeting (Nova Makedonija 2011). This was the principal revolutionary song in Macedonia and the delegates, most of whom were either members or sympathisers of the Communist Party or of the IMRO (United), would have known it well (Blaževski 2005).
‘Rise the Dawn of Freedom’ is a fighting song par excellence: it threatens to drown the tyrants in the blood of heroes and evokes scenes of fighting, heroic charges and heroes dying for freedom in the sacred forests – the very forests that echo the battle cry ‘Hurrah!’ Its principal refrain is a threat to any oppressors:
Oh tyrants, we shall make wonders.
We shall not stand being slaves.
We'll drown you in the blood of heroes
And we shall thus gain freedom.5
In August 1944 the Macedonian Partisan units were fighting a German army which was struggling to maintain its communication links with its forces in Greece. A fighting song that expresses unwavering faith in the gruesome death of any oppressors and an unshakeable readiness to die fighting for the cause of freedom must have seemed appropriate at the time. This is particularly true in comparison with Maleski's much milder and vaguer song that tells Macedonians they are fighting for their rights. However, ‘Rise the Dawn of Freedom’ was, as everyone singing it knew, a Bulgarian song written by a Bulgarian author in 1923 for an organisation that was based in and operated in Bulgaria. It uses the adjective ‘Macedonian’ only once in the following lines: ‘The new guerrilla fighters were coming/From the Macedonian country (zemja)’. In this sense the phrase ‘Macedonian country’ or ‘land’ does not suggest a bounded territory to be transformed into a state and populated by Macedonians. It is a purely geographical term that has no national or state implications. In short, unlike the Maleski song, this song did and could not anticipate or promote the creation of an independent or autonomous state of Macedonia as a homeland for the Macedonian nation.
Following the expulsion of the Yugoslav Communists in 1948 from the successor of the Comintern (controlled as before by the Soviet Communist Party) the Yugoslav and Macedonian Communist authorities branded this Bulgarian song as pro-Bulgarian and thus as anti-patriotic, and banned its use (Nova Makedonija 2011). However, the song has continued its career in Bulgaria where it is still the anthem of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation – the Bulgarian National Association in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia.6
The original song and its list of the glorious dead
As we have seen, ‘Rise the Dawn of Freedom’ has nothing to say on the question of Macedonian identity or statehood. In contrast, Maleski's song unambiguously states that Macedonians are a separate national group that should have a separate state of their own. And yet the song does not specify what kind of separateness that should be, either autonomy or full independence. This vagueness makes it equally usable as an anthem of a federal unit within another state as well as an anthem of an independent state. Here it is in its original version as it was printed in Koče Racin's collection of Macedonian revolutionary songs in 1943:
The current version omits two sets of verses from this original. First, it omits the two lines from the first stanza describing the enthusiasm of Macedonians of all generations and genders for the fight for their rights. In the current version, there is no jumping to one's feet and no mention of the inter-generational and inter-gender unity in the fight. These two lines – repeated as they are – make it more of an action and fighting song than its current version. Second, the current version omits the two lines from the last stanza exhorting the grieving mother not to cry. The call for a mother (usually of a fallen fighter or hero) not to cry but instead to lift her head proudly is one of the most frequent topoi of patriotic poetry in Europe. For example, it is found in the original of the Croatian anthem, Mihanović's ‘The Croatian Homeland’. Interestingly, just as the current lyrics of ‘Today over Macedonia’ omit the verses about the grieving mother, so do the lyrics of the current Croatian anthem. While this topos is a conventional device for spurring and/or displaying national pride – the national ‘stiff upper lip’ – it is not so suitable for an anthem that wants to leave no room for grieving. It is all right for grieving mothers to display their nation's pride and the quintessential ‘stiff upper lip’ by ceasing to weep, but this is not the image required in a national anthem that should primarily display the unity and resolve of the singers-in-unison.
The omission of these two sets of verses does not greatly change the overall tone and thematic focus of the song. Indeed, the changes in the third stanza of the above original are much more interesting and possibly politically relevant. The first line of the third stanza of the original is quite explicitly eschatological: the ‘Masons’ (Sidari) of the Kruševo Republic will rise from their graves. Such explicit eschatological images are not all that frequent in national anthems; anthems usually aim to resurrect glories and symbols and only very rarely do they depict the resurrection of humans. Thus it is understandable that an anthem of a Communist-ruled federal unit would omit such an eschatological image. The current lyrics resurrect only the flag of the Kruševo Republic, not its ‘masons’ or ‘builders’. Yet both the original and the current versions provide a list of the names of these ‘masons’ even if the current version does not tell us who they are in the way the original does. The list in the current version is shorter with only four as opposed to five names. Moreover, the current version omits two names (Karev and Vlahov) from the original and adds a new name (Dame Gruev). So who were these ‘masons’ of the Kruševo Republic?
The Ilinden armed uprising against the Ottoman authorities in August 1903 was organised and led by the Secret Macedonian Adrianople Revolutionary Organisation (SMARO),9 which after World War I was reorganised in Bulgaria and renamed the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (IMRO). The rebels took over the town of Kruševo in today's Macedonia and held it for ten days before much larger and better armed Ottoman forces arrived and pushed them out of the town and the surrounding area. The five men who were called to rise from their graves were all members of this organisation and all of them were born and fought in what was then the Ottoman Empire.10
Goce Delčev (1872–1903) was born in the town of Kilkes which is in today's Greece (in Macedonian or Bulgarian Kukus). He trained as an officer in a Bulgarian military academy but during his studies became a revolutionary, eventually becoming the chief military organiser of SMARO. He was killed while organising the Ilinden uprising which he initially opposed as premature and unrealistic. Thus he did not live to see the establishment of the Kruševo Republic.
Pitu Guli (1865–1903) was a native of Kruševo who became a leader of one of the guerrilla detachments of the SMARO and died defending the Kruševo Republic at the battle of Mačkin Kamen. He was a Vlach (or Arumenian) and did not belong to the ethnic majority group in Macedonia.
Nikola Karev (1877–1905), another native of Kruševo, worked as a teacher and was a member of the Bulgarian Social Democratic Party until joining SMARO and becoming one of its military leaders. Upon the take-over of Kruševo, he wrote the Kruševo Manifesto, proclaiming the independence of the Kruševo Republic. He was then elected its president. He survived the uprising but was killed in a skirmish with Ottoman forces in 1905.
Dimitar Vlahov (1878–1953), another native of Kilkes, was a member of the Bulgarian Socialist Democratic Party and appears to have joined SMARO only after the Ilinden uprising in which he did not participate. He participated in Ottoman politics (having been elected to the Ottoman parliament in Istanbul) and worked as a diplomat for the Kingdom of Bulgaria before becoming one of the leaders of the left wing faction of IMRO (previously SMARO). He was one of the founders the IMRO (United) and lived in the USSR from 1934 to 1944. In 1944, he returned to Macedonia and with other leaders of the IMRO (United) joined the Yugoslav Macedonian Communist government in which he held high positions until his death in Beograd, Serbia in 1953.
Jane Sandanski (1872–1915) was born near Kresna in today's Bulgaria and, having joined the SMARO, became a leader of the local armed bands in the Serres region. While he was involved in attacking the Ottoman forces in his region, he did not participate in the establishment of the Kruševo Republic. After the failure of the Ilinden uprising, he opposed the Bulgarian-based Macedonian revolutionary organisation and insisted on the creation of an autonomous or independent Macedonia. He was allegedly killed on the orders of the Bulgarian government.
Dame Gruev (1876–1906) was one of the founders and leaders of SMARO. In August 1903 Gruev organised an uprising in his own district of Bitola, which did not succeed because of the resistance of the Ottoman forces. Like Sandanski, he did not participate in the establishment of the Kruševo Republic but with Delčev was one of the best-known and most influential leaders of SMARO. His name appears to have been added to the song later.
Damir Vlahov and Jane Sandanski, listed in the original version but replaced in the anthem, did not participate in the establishment of the Kruševo Republic. They were not in or around Kruševo at the time and it is not entirely clear if Vlahov was even a member of SMARO at that time. Further, Goce Delčev, although he greatly contributed to military preparations for the uprising, was killed before the uprising took place. Only Nikola Karev and Pitu Guli were leaders of both the uprising and the resulting republic. In other words, both lists include people who were not ‘builders’ or ‘masons’ of the Kruševo Republic. However, the six revolutionaries were all on record as supporters of an autonomous Macedonia and all of them disagreed, in one way or another, with the project of assimilation of Macedonia into Bulgaria. There were, of course, other SMARO leaders who participated in the uprising and the establishment of the Kruševo Republic but they were not known for their persevering support for an independent or autonomous Macedonia, at least in 1941. This is probably the reason why they were not included in this roll call. Why some names were later dropped and another added to the song is the subject of continuing debate (Dnevnik online 2007), but there is no doubt that their inclusion in the song was motivated by their support for an independent Macedonia.
In listing these people as the ‘builders’ of the Kruševo Republic, Maleski is simply saying that in their time (that is, 1903) they were fighting for a Macedonia free from the foreign occupation (Ottomans) and not for its incorporation into Bulgaria. In this sense they were indeed fighting for the same cause as the Communist-led Partisans in Macedonia whom Maleski went on to join. Yet it is interesting to note that all six of the SMARO leaders are, in recent Bulgarian historiography, claimed to be Bulgarians and some, such as Delčev and Sandanski, are regarded Bulgarian national heroes. This trend of incorporation of IMRO (SMARO) revolutionaries into Bulgarian national history became even more pronounced in the 1990s (Frusetta 2004: 118–19). The issue is not, of course, how these five or six men would identify themselves – as either Bulgarian or Macedonian – because is far from clear that in 1903 these two identities were considered distinct or incompatible. Instead, the issue of national identity concerns the alleged ‘national’ legitimacy of a separate Macedonian state. Those who argue that these five or six revolutionaries were Bulgarians and not Macedonians (on the ground that Macedonians are indistinguishable from Bulgarians now and then) are in fact saying that there is no national basis for a separate Macedonian state and that Macedonia is in this sense illegitimate. ‘Today over Macedonia’, in both its current and original versions, rejects this type of argument and asserts the separateness of Macedonia from Bulgaria or any other state.
Discordant voices: A contested anthem?
There was apparently no debate or discussion preceding the unanimous vote on 19 April 1989 that made ‘Today over Macedonia’ the anthem of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia. However, in 1992, the question of the selection of the anthem was raised again, this time in the context of the selection of a new flag and coat of arms. Less than a year after the proclamation of Macedonia's independence, the Committee for Constitutional Questions of the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia held a competition for the new lyrics and music of the state anthem. In June 1992, the Committee considered the three short-listed anthems, and by a majority vote (16 to 10), chose the existing anthem ‘Today over Macedonia’ (‘Denes nad Makedonija’).11 The choice was questioned by some members of the Committee as well as by the holder of the copyright, Danka Boškova, the daughter of the author Vlado Maleski (who died in 1984). She asked how the Committee could hold a competition for a new anthem without deciding first whether the old was to be used or not. She also did not consider the Committee for Constitutional Questions to be competent to judge the music and lyrics of the song (Trajanovski manuscript: 12).12 However, both the government and the (majority) Macedonian parties in the Assembly supported the Committee's decision and on 11 August 1992 passed the Law on the Anthem. All 88 members of the Assembly who were voting on that day voted for the anthem. However, the Assembly has in total 120 members and most of those who were absent were in effect boycotting the vote. Later, at a special press conference the coalition of (minority) Albanian parties in the Assembly stated that it could not accept the anthem because it was Communist and because it glorified the struggle of only one ethnic group and ignored the struggle of others, in particular Albanians (Trajanovski manuscript: 2 note 5).
This obviously indicates that the anthem is not acceptable to those citizens of Macedonia who do not think that the label ‘Macedonian’ in the anthem applies to them. Is this a song of, or for, the Albanian-speaking citizens of Macedonia? Is it addressed to them at all? As the press conference in August 1992 showed, the leaders of the two Albanian parties (at the time outside the government) clearly thought it was not. Nor is there much reason to believe sentiment will have shifted by the time of writing, more than 20 years later. The Ilinden uprising was led by people who were, almost without exception, speaking a Slavic dialect that was later codified as the Macedonian language. The same is true of the leaders of the Partisan uprising in July 1941. There is no record of an Albanian person among the initial rebels of the two uprisings.
As Trajanovski points out, the competition for the anthem and other state symbols specified that the anthem
should express the statehood, self-reliance and sovereignty of the Republic, the historical tradition, the cultural heritage, the striving for social and spiritual progress, the natural features of the Republic, unity and common life (???????????? ? ?????????????) and the contemporary striving for the democratic society and for the European and world integration’ (Andonov 2001: 31–2).
In view of the initial rejection of the anthem by the Albanian ethnic parties, Trajanovski questions the capacity of the anthem to express ‘the unity and common life’ of various ethnic groups in Macedonia. The ‘Macedonians’ in the original anthem obviously refers to the ethnic Macedonians and the list of the illustrious dead heroes does not include any ethnic Albanians (although it does include a Vlach, Pitu Guli, who is often identified as Macedonian).
During World War II, the ‘plurinationality’ dimension of Macedonia was not an issue that Maleski or the Communist Party leaders found important. Instead, it was the plurinationality of Yugoslavia as a whole that the Communist Party of Yugoslavia emphasised during the war. The national liberation struggle in Macedonia was presented primarily as a struggle for the recognition of Macedonians as a separate national group deserving of political self-determination.
In 1991, the Macedonians (or at least their leaders) faced a struggle for recognition under its self-proclaimed name the Republic of Macedonia. The Greek government objected both to the name and to the use of a specific sun symbol on the Macedonian flag. This was because a northern Greek province, bordering on the republic, has the same name ‘Macedonia’ and is populated by people speaking the same, Macedonian, language – although the Greek government does not recognise the language as Macedonian. This objection was sufficient for the EU and US to refuse, at least initially, de jure recognition. The Macedonian government were finally convinced to accept the recognition (albeit in their view only temporarily) under the name the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia or FRYOM.
In this struggle for independence and international recognition, ‘Today over Macedonia’ once again played the role of a ‘battle-song’. The threat to Macedonia's freedom this time was not foreign occupation of its land, but rather the foreign refusal to recognise its statehood and sovereignty. Yet, the anthem affirmed the perseverance of the Macedonians in fighting for their rights as well as the continuity of their claim to statehood and autonomy. The flag of the Kruševo Republic, depicted in the song, affirmed the latter and the verse ‘Macedonians fight for their rights’ again sounded as true as it did in 1941. In 1992, the time had come to proclaim, as the song does, that Macedonia is free and lives in freedom/liberty in spite of foreign threats.
A functional national anthem should have some degree of portability: it should be able to express the aspirations, self-understandings and, if necessary, defiance of the national group it strives to represent at different periods of time and in different political contexts. One of the ways of achieving portability is through the vacuity of references and vagueness of meaning (see Introduction; Kelen and Pavković 2010). Fighting for one's rights and living in freedom can be done at different times and in different contexts just as the verses of this song do not suggest a particular time or context. Thus ‘Today over Macedonia’ is highly portable and has proven its versatility by its use in various political contexts.
So the question arises: can that versatility be used to express the plurinationality of contemporary Macedonia? Since the brief but violent Albanian–Macedonian conflict in 2001 this has become a major political issue. In 2006, the leaders of the ethnic Albanian Party proposed that a new anthem be adopted without any lyrics because lyrics raise questions as to the ethnic or national ownership of an anthem (Nova Makedonija 2011a). It was suggested that the text of ‘Today over Macedonia’ does not express Albanian national group aspirations and self-understandings and that, for that reason, it should be omitted. This train of thought was later followed in the neighbouring Kosovo (following its proclamation of independence in 2008) where Albanian majority parties chose a lyric-free anthem entitled ‘Europe’ (see Chapter 8).
Political commentators like Trajanovski have some doubts that the text of the anthem can be tweaked to accommodate these demands or to express the multinationality of the current Republic (Trajanovski 2009). Others, including the former Minister for Ethnic Relations Ms Cvetanova and the historian Professor Dimitrijevski, believe that the text of the present anthem can be ‘refreshed’ or ‘modernised’ so as to express those aspirations and accommodate the demands of non-ethnic Macedonians for an anthem with which they can personally identify. The fact that the present text of the anthem was allegedly changed ten times before the 1992 version was adopted is an argument in support of the idea that the text can indeed be changed again (Nova Makedonija 2011a).
So how could the text to be altered to ‘include’ ethnic Albanians? Trajanovski (2007), in his online blog conversation has jokingly suggested that a few of the Albanian illustrious dead be listed along the IMRO/SMARO revolutionaries. For example, he suggests that the anthem could also include Skanderbeg, the fifteenth-century Albanian rebel against the Ottoman rule (who is today the principal Albanian national hero). But how does one incorporate an Albanian national hero, who has had nothing to do with Macedonian history, let alone modern Macedonia, among the revolutionaries of the Ilinden uprising in 1903? This somewhat flippant suggestion exposes a serious problem in the historical approach to anthem composition in the context of today's plurinational Macedonia. Of course, one could easily ‘modernise’ the present lyrics by introducing new verses without historical references that instead refer to specific ethnic groups – for example, ethnic Albanians – or perhaps make general references to the plurinationality of Macedonia. However, no actual text has been proposed. The topic is highly controversial and the differences in views on this issue reflect, at least to some extent, the ethnic divisions within Macedonia. For example, ethnic Albanians are apparently more likely to support the change while ethnic Macedonians do not.
It is therefore difficult to predict whether the text or the whole anthem will be changed in the future. If it were to be changed it would have to follow Amendment X of the Constitution in which any proposal for change has to gain the so-called ‘Badinter majority’ – a majority of members of parliament representing a non-majority population (that is, the Albanian minority).13 Thus any proposal for a change of anthem would have to be the result of an agreement between the ethnic Macedonian and ethnic Albanian parties. Any change in the anthem would therefore reflect a state of political alliance or cooperation between these ethnic groups.
At the time of the writing, there is no agreement on the need for wider national inclusivity in the national anthem, let alone agreement on the method of change. Nevertheless a question mark remains over this anthem. The question ‘Does the anthem represent all citizens of Macedonia, even those who are not ethnic Macedonians?’ was raised at the time of the anthem's adoption, and was answered in the negative by the leaders of the ethnic Albanian parties. There is no reason to believe that those feelings have changed. As the question resurfaces from time to time in public debate, it is obvious that it has neither faded from consciousness nor been resolved.