Bulgarian Govt to Macedonia: Let's Leave History Interpretations Behind

Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov has greeted Macedonia for its national holiday. Photo by BGNES

Bulgaria and Macedonia should leave the political interpretations of history in the past, Bulgarian Foreing Minister Nikolay Mladenov stated in a letter to the Macedonian government on the occasion of August 2, the day of the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising, which is also Macedonia's national holiday.

"Let us leave the political interpretations of history in the past, and let our societies sincerely adhere to the Euro-Atlantic values of freedom, human rights, democracy, and rule of law. I am deeply convinced that only in this way we will be able to achieve the economic well-being that we all desire," Mladenov declared in a letter to Macedonian Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki Thursday.

"Macedonia has demonstrated a desire to work actively in order to meet the EU membership criteria. The Republic of Bulgaria is ready, as it has always been, to support the Republic of Macedonia en route to its EU and NATO membership by sharing our experience," the Bulgarian Foreign Minister added.

Mladenov's call for leaving "the political interpretations of history in the past" apparently refers to the fact that both Bulgaria and Macedonia celebrate the 1903 Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising, which was the apex of the fight for freedom and national unification of the Bulgarians left in the Ottoman Empire after Bulgaria's National Liberation in 1878, mainly in the historic and geographic regions of Macedonia and Thrace.

Subsequently, however, as much of the Bulgarian-populated region of Macedonia was seized by Serbia and then Yugoslavia in World War I, after World War II the authorities of communist Yugoslavia engineered a Macedonian national identity that was deliberated created to be distinct from the Bulgarian identity. After the breakup of Tito's Yugoslavia, this identity was used for the creation of the Republic of Macedonia, officially known as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, in 1991.

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