The future is not uncertain, the past is uncertain. When politics steps into the field of history and begins to interpret it, it spreads everywhere, and the consequences of such engagement are much longer than their short-term interest.

Each revision has its own toxic radiation. Any appropriation of history and its protagonists is a guaranteed path to tensions. Does Nikola Tesla belong to the Serbs because he is Orthodox or does he belong to Croatia because he was born there? Whose is Ivo Andric? A Croat because he was Catholic, a Bosnian because he was born there, or a Serb because he spent most of his life in Belgrade?

Whose Gotse Delchev is, the Bulgarians and Macedonians and their historians have been arguing for decades, who refer to the documents that it is "ours". On February 4, the 151st anniversary of the great revolutionary's birth, the dispute threatens to turn the commemoration into a high-risk event that would further strain the two neighbors' already strained relations.
The citizens of Kumanovo, through social networks, were called with trucks, tractors, cars and "other machines" to prevent the passage of the Bulgarians, who would worship at the grave in the "Sveti Spas" church in Skopje. "Let's not allow the Bulgarian neo-Nazis to spit on the monument of the great Gotse Delchev." The opposition VMRO-DPMNE organizes an all-day presence at the grave to block "foreign propaganda".

It's time for rematch. In October, members of the Bulgarian VMRO in Blagoevgrad, after the opening of the Macedonian cultural club, prevented Macedonian activists from laying flowers on the monument of Delchev, whose remains were transferred from Bulgaria to Skopje in 1947.

"Illicit" incidents

Incidents will not be allowed, the interior ministers of the two countries said in Skopje, but since when are incidents "allowed"? The traditionally tense relations between Sofia and Skopje are back on the road to conflict due to diametrically opposed interpretations of history.

The official Bulgarian historiography, as well as the daily politics, claim that the Macedonian nation arose and was born after 1944, that it was built on the complete denial of the Bulgarian character. While challenging the Macedonian culture, the "non-existent and false" language and history, they spread fear that "they might try to Macedonianize the Pirin area".

Skopje retaliates with accusations from historians and politicians that behind the "negationist policy" of the Bulgarian nationalists lies an assimilation project, which carries dangerous territorial claims. "It is humiliating to talk about whether Gotse Delchev was Macedonian", as Elizabeta Damjanoska-Spasenovska once said.

The fact that Sofia, with a veto in the European Union, prevented the opening of the accession negotiations of North Macedonia for a long time is only a confirmation of those thinly disguised ambitions. Relations were somewhat improved after Bulgaria, under pressure from the EU, agreed to withdraw from the veto, but the new growth of tensions comes in the shadow of the recent incident, when the secretary of the Bulgarian cultural center "Tsar Boris Treti" was beaten in Ohrid. Skopje considers that the case is closed with the immediate departure of the Minister of Foreign Affairs to Sofia.

Bulgaria used the incident, as it happens everywhere when national tensions are high, to immediately tighten relations to the maximum. He stopped international projects with the RSM, called his ambassador for consultations, and President Rumen Radev asked the EU Commissioner for Enlargement to show an initiative to protect the rights of the Macedonian Bulgarians "to the same extent as he insisted on the rapid integration of the RSM into the EU". .

In such an environment February 4 is approaching. Foundations from Bulgaria organize buses that send those who are driven less by a desire to honor Delchev, and more with the intention of provocatively confirming with their presence that he is Bulgarian.

The Prime Ministers of the two countries, Dimitar Kovacevski and Galab Donev, talked on the phone so that the upcoming jubilee would pass smoothly. In Skopje, measures have been announced to ensure order, but in the event that everything passes without incident, the (mis)use of history for daily political purposes will not be stopped.

Sofia sets a trap

Gotse Delchev serves Bulgaria to present the RSM to the Europeans as a country that does not respect the rights of Bulgarian Macedonians and that relies "on hate speech and crimes". Ignore the assurances from Prime Minister Kovacevski that there is no anti-Bulgarian hysteria and that the state cannot be blamed for the actions of individuals in Ohrid.

Sofia likes escalation. There are too many of those who cannot get over the fact that Mrs. Ursula von der Leyen signed the first agreement between the European Commission and the RSM written in the Macedonian language.

President Rumen Radev asks Commissioner Oliver Varhelj that the EU guarantees the security of Bulgarians - as if they were being threatened with a holocaust. "Skopje should recognize the Macedonian Bulgarians, otherwise there will be no EU," said former Bulgarian Defense Minister Boyko Noev.

Sofia sets a trap. It would not be good for the Macedonians to respond to the incendiary Bulgarian nationalism with nationalism. That would only cause damage to North Macedonia, where Albanian nationalism is always smoldering. Let's remember Arachinovo.

Being fixated on the correctness of one's own history and ignoring factography are the strongest assumptions of anti-modernity, which prevents true integration into world-historical currents. The worse the government, the greater the chance to bring back the mythical glorified past of the nation. That is why Bulgaria also remembers Delchev.

If you get too close to history, you can easily get burned, but that doesn't seem to stop the Balkans from living in an era of unpredictable past. Commemorative landscapes are constantly changing, whether it is the ethos of victory or the tragedy of defeat. The synoptic map of the region shows that the dark clouds of the past will not recede anytime soon.

The author is a journalist.