Dear Bulgarians, you are welcome at the grave of Gotse Delchev, and we invite you to Vatasha as well

Srѓаan Ivanovi / / Photo: Free Press

Someone needs a tightening of the Skopje-Sofia route. I have a proposal that might calm the situation and bring some order to the relations between the two countries. If it is celebrated jointly, then it should be done for everything, that is, on all the dates resulting from the so-called shared history.

I was never clear about the interstate agreement between Macedonia and Bulgaria for joint honoring of historical figures and joint observance of holidays and important dates from history. Does this mean that both sides will honor together all the greats of the past without exception, or do they have the right to choose whose grave they will lay flowers on?

The announced joint celebration of Gotse Delchev's birthday in Skopje caused great unrest in our public. This year marks the 151st anniversary of the birth of the revolutionary, and the top government fears that possible provocations from Sofia, similar to those from the other day when Mara Buneva was honored, could threaten the stability of the country. The fears go so far that the National Security Council of Macedonia did not sit for three whole hours, and almost the entire time was spent on the planned commemoration of Delchev's grave in the church "St. Spas" in Skopje, scheduled for February 4.

President Stevo Pendarovski indicated that the event is of high security risk. He added that the directors of the security services referred to the Council, who announced that an organized group from Bulgaria is expected to arrive at the celebration of Gotse Delchev's birthday in our capital, which could lead to tension, but also to an open conflict with the native admirers of the figure and work of the great man.

Let me remind you that Gotse Delchev is just one of the figures in history, which the Bulgarians claim is theirs. That is, that it is part of the Bulgarian national corpus and that it is part of Bulgarian history or, to be precise, part of the so-called common history of Bulgaria and Macedonia.
So Gotse is not the only one - "spears break" around Cyril and Methodius, through Kliment and Naum, to Tsar Samoil and Gavrilo Radomir in the Middle Ages, to modern revolutionaries and revivalists. It refers to all the names inscribed in the Macedonian anthem and without exception to every historical person from the Ilinden epic. Bulgarian historiography is merciless when it comes to the greatest Macedonian heroes, so I will repeat that I was never completely clear about the decision of our top government to agree to the joint commemoration with the Bulgarian side. But that is not so important. The important thing right now is to predict in time what kind of provocations are being prepared and to react decisively in order to avoid incidents and, God forbid, physical violence. Otherwise, it is easy to judge from the daily activities of the Bulgarian MEP Angel Dzambaski, that someone "let him out to the fullest", apparently with the intention of igniting the atmosphere on the eve of February 4 and the announced event in Skopje.
For some reason, someone needs a tightening of relations between Skopje and Sofia, and the organized group from Sofia may be just the sacrifice that needs to be made to formalize the enmity.

That's why I have a proposal, which might calm the situation and bring some order to the relations between the two countries. If it is celebrated jointly, then it should be done for everything, that is, on all the dates resulting from the so-called shared history. So, from Gotse's birthday, jump to Vatasha and jointly lay flowers on the grave of the murdered youths, who suffered from the Bulgarian occupier. You can also travel to the village. Dolgaec and other places where historians have recorded in detail the massacres and mass murders of Macedonians by the Bulgarians during the occupations during the two world wars. It is not bad to honor the graves of Steve Naumov, Kuzman Josifovski Pitu, Cvetan Dimov and all the other Macedonian revolutionaries who were killed by the Bulgarian "administrators" because of their liberation activity. I also assume that the term common history refers exactly to these two occupations, because there is no other period in history in which Macedonians and Bulgarians lived together.

Therefore, without much fanfare, let's visit all the "common" cemeteries in Macedonia together and in an organized manner. The tour could end at the Holocaust Museum of Macedonian Jews in Skopje. There, guests from Sofia will have a rare opportunity to see, for example, how the carriages of their railway looked like in 1943. I promise it will be instructive.

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