By Nikica Korubin
Truth and knowledge have been and remain the primary immanent structural determinant. At any time, historically viewed. In the present, this means access to relevant information, or a focus on the narrative, which in the age of social media, is as difficult to create as it is to control. And the narrative is, in essence, the attitude toward truth itself – do we want it to be just that (truth) or a lie disguised as truth (manipulation)?
The answer is very simple, although the circumstances are complex. And it is easily visible in seemingly different situations, which nonetheless have the same effect on one’s attitude toward truth – either principled or hypocritical. Locally and regionally, our situation is Bulgaria and the approach to the questions raised by the Agreement with Bulgaria. Globally, it is the United States and the approach to the questions raised by the U.S. (Donald Trump). The “similarity” that can be observed in both cases is the first (instinctive) reaction – attack and discrediting of the one posing the question – rather than analysis and response to the question. From this, the true intentions of those who discredit or analyze and respond to questions can be discerned.
And so, unlike the Prespa Agreement, the Agreement with Bulgaria in fact triggered irreversible tectonic shifts in society at a sociological and cultural level. This is because, unlike the Prespa Agreement, which formally closes the “Yugoslav” phase of the state, the Agreement with Bulgaria definitively laid the groundwork for confronting what we should have faced independently – the truth (and knowledge) about Macedonia within the framework of the SFRY. And if the Prespa Agreement speaks to world history (based on facts and science) and our approach to it, the Agreement with Bulgaria raises the question of the “Yugoslav (and Serbian)” version of our history.
The fact that chronologically, social and sociological debate comes last, rather than at the beginning of our independence – during which Bulgaria was tendentiously portrayed as the “arch-enemy” – also reflects the multi-year “imprisonment of truth” – at the scientific, political, media, and analytical levels – and the “wasting” of that imprisonment due to inverse-proportional behavior. Instead of confronting in the early years of independence the truth about ourselves as constructed by others, we were placed in a conflictual situation against everyone outside the “preferred Yugoslav perimeter” – Greece and the rights of Albanians in Macedonia – as a constitutive and decisive factor for the European and Euro-Atlantic future of the state.
In other words, no topic like the Bulgaria issue forced Macedonians to reflect and reconsider topics that should have “remained forever closed.” The hostile stance toward Greece and the delaying of resolving issues under the Interim Agreement – the state’s name, its borders, and the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of neighbors – was intended to maintain the situation of the “temporary state” FYR Macedonia, whose complexity itself never allowed for a genuine (rather than superficial) treatment of the communist system and the narrative from which we emerged from the SFRY, incompatible with the democratic parliamentary state system.
The systemic and inherited discrimination of Albanians, and the fundamental rejection and antagonizing of the Ohrid Framework Agreement, were intended to “cement” Macedonians’ confrontation with themselves, and above all with the “constructed truth” about them under the SFRY and the Kingdom before it. From there seems to emerge all the “manufactured drama” surrounding the Agreement with Bulgaria (and the Protocol with Bulgaria) – questions that should never have been posed.
Difficult questions are never pleasant. Especially those direct, without the protective veil of the narrative. Behind this veil, unfortunately, many comfortably hid, “enjoying” the para-communist/demagogic rhetoric of the Canadian Prime Minister, which falsely conformed and avoided legitimate questions such as – is it acceptable for Iran to have an openly totalitarian regime and call it an “international legal order”? Is Russian and Chinese influence in the core geography of the “Western world” – Greenland – acceptable? Is there open anti-Semitism in fascist style hidden behind the “Palestinian question,” shaping the stance toward Iran? Is communism as a totalitarian doctrine more acceptable than “Western values,” upon which, incidentally, the “international legal order” functions?
Transposed to our context, the political and social stance should be constructed through the approach to the “difficult” questions, not through the demonization or verification of the “obvious” questions. Therefore, the political stance toward the concept of the “Serbian world,” which in the European Parliament report is marked as a threat to the “sovereignty of states in the region” – including ours – can be “read” in the stance toward the Agreement with Bulgaria, the Prespa Agreement, and the Ohrid Framework Agreement; and in the insistence on completing our obligations – the negotiation framework and constitutional amendments – rather than toward our neighbor Serbia and their internal affairs. There are veils, and there is truth. But the truth is not behind the veil.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney refers to Thucydides, who said, “The strong do what they can, and the weak endure what they must”; perhaps forgetting that Thucydides came from the side of the “strong” (the Athenians), with his own fleet and gold and silver mines in the vicinity of today’s Kavala and Thasos; by origin a Thracian, an Athenian citizen, commander, and preeminent historian.
The same Thucydides who knew that “Athenian democracy” was protected by the “Athenian navy”; among the many speeches he recounts, particularly interesting is the speech of the Spartan commander Brasidas, who encouraged and comforted his frightened army during the encounter with the combined forces of the Illyrians and the Lyncestian Macedonians under King Arabai; when they retreated together with the Spartan and Macedonian armies of the king of the Argead dynasty, Perdiccas; before the unknown and terrifying enemy forces; here among us and in the neighboring area around Bitola and Florina (Lerin).
Because they were practical and knew how to assess both their capabilities and the events around them. Without abandoning their principles, and the culture and civilization that defined who they were. Brasidas moves toward Amphipolis, where we will go too, metaphorically and literally, depending on the truth and knowledge we hold, and our attitude toward it.