The speech of the President of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, at the recent St. Sava Academy held on the occasion of the national holiday of the Serbian community in Macedonia, St. Sava, caused a storm in the public. The reactions of certain individuals went so far as to equate Serbia's behavior towards us with the behavior of Bulgaria.

Dodik's speech confirmed the conclusion that nothing else can be expected from him. Pro-Russian, pro-Putin, anti-NATO, anti-BiH rhetoric is something that is a trademark of this, by many criteria, to put it mildly, problematic and controversial politician. Of course, Prime Minister Mickoski and Deputy Prime Minister Stoilkovic knew this when they planned to call him in, and even suggest that he give a speech.

My opinion is that at the event held at the MNT on January 19 this year, there were many other important elements that were in favor of good relations between Macedonia and Serbia, such as, for example, the presence and speech of the Serbian Patriarch Porfirij, the man most deserving of the recognition of the autocephaly of the MOC - Ohrid Archbishopric, and the performance, among the famous Serbian songs, of the Macedonian "Zavetna", interpreted by the first opera singers of the National Theater in Belgrade, and even the speech of Prime Minister Mickoski, who made an interesting parallel between St. Clement and St. Sava. For respect.

So much for the Saint Sava Academy. I would rather address the reactions of some of the public towards the (erroneous) conclusion that the attitude of Bulgaria and Serbia towards Macedonia is one and the same.

The Macedonian has always fought against the three propagandas of our neighbors, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Greek, who throughout the centuries have tried to assimilate as many Macedonians as possible and turn them into Bulgarians, Serbs, or Greeks.

When it was clear that the Macedonians – as a result of historical events – did not have the capacity to free themselves from Turkish slavery, the neighbors decided to do it themselves, without having any relationship whatsoever with the Macedonian population living in that territory. If you look at it from the outside, you can find a justification for this – they liberated Macedonia from the Ottoman Empire and five centuries of slavery, but at the same time they enslaved the territory where the Macedonians lived and divided it among themselves, with the sole aim of increasing the territories of their own states. This is usually the case when you are late in history, and instead of organizing and reacting, you become passive prey. So, as a result of the two Balkan Wars and after the Bucharest Peace Treaty of 1913, Macedonia was divided between Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria. It is common knowledge that Greece received Aegean Macedonia, Serbia, Vardar Macedonia, and Bulgaria, Pirin Macedonia. In the period from 1913 until the beginning of World War II (1939), the three Balkan countries tried in every way to assimilate the population in the newly conquered territories.

Unlike the Macedonians in the Pirin and Aegean parts of Macedonia, those in the Vardar region managed to wage a war for national liberation in addition to the anti-fascist one, and thus, after the end of World War II, they managed to form Macedonia as a federal unit within the new Tito's Yugoslavia. After the collapse of the SFRY, only the Vardar region of Macedonia became an independent and sovereign state (without achieving and gaining independence through war), while the other two parts remained part of the states that conquered those territories with Macedonian populations at the beginning of the last century.

This brief and simple historical retrospective is needed to be the starting point for the analysis of who, what, and how much of our neighbors contributed to the current socio-political context of Macedonia and Macedonians.

If we look at the benefits that the three Balkan countries had after the withdrawal of the Ottoman Empire from Macedonia, we can conclude that, unlike Greece and Bulgaria, only Serbia has voluntarily and wilfully given up "its" conquered territory from the time of the Balkan Wars and the First World War. The last opportunity to "preserve" our people in some kind of federation was the chance that arose with the collapse of Yugoslavia, and immediately before the withdrawal of the Yugoslav People's Army from Macedonia, when the pro-Serbian and pro-Milošević Yugoslav People's Army could, instead of withdrawing, have remained in Macedonia, referring precisely to the provisions of the Bucharest and Versailles Peace Treaties of 1918 (let's not forget that Vardar Macedonia, part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, entered as part of Serbia, the so-called Southern Serbia) and opened another military hotbed, but that did not happen. On the contrary, soon after, Serbia recognized Macedonia under the constitutional name of the Republic of Macedonia, and after some time an agreement was signed to regulate the borders between the two countries, which were valid in AVNOJ-era Yugoslavia. At the same time, at no point was Serbia's respect for the Macedonian national identity, that is, respect for the Macedonian people and the Macedonian language, questioned. No one took the individual statements of the ultranationalists from Serbia seriously. The last and only open issue between the two countries was the topic of the autocephaly of the Macedonian Orthodox Church, for which an agreement was reached in 2022 between the church leaderships of the two countries. With this, all open issues between Serbia and Macedonia were closed.

On the other hand, in addition to the fact that Bulgaria is the first country in the world to recognize the independence of the Republic of Macedonia, all other issues related to our historical, cultural, national, linguistic and any other identity were problematized or totally disputed, and at the state level as an official position. Relations between the two neighboring countries in the last thirty years have been at the level of cold coexistence, with the possibility, whenever it is allowed, of Bulgaria opening up again and again the topics on which there is a different position on the part of the two countries. So, Bulgaria problematizes and does not recognize our history, culture, language and identity, telling us how to feel and what language we speak, which is essentially an underestimating, complex and behavior outside the framework of a normal relationship between two sovereign states. At the same time, neighboring Bulgaria does this unscrupulously, shamelessly and violating the basic postulates on which European and Euro-Atlantic values ​​​​are based. International acts, conventions and agreements, let alone mention them. Good neighborliness is out of the question here, despite the two agreements signed between the governments of Macedonia and Bulgaria, which have that word in the title.

If we add Greece to the equation, the country most responsible for our decades-long stagnation, we can conclude that after the Prespa Agreement and the compromise by adding a geographical determinant to the name of our country, Greece has recognized, i.e. does not problematize our Macedonian language, the existence of the Macedonian people, which, we can freely say, has an absolutely (after all) positive attitude towards us, both in terms of these issues, and in terms of the European integration processes, which are now stalled precisely because of Bulgaria.

Finally, if we add to all this the practical examples from life and society that show in action who considers whom to be close and friends, such as, for example, Serbia's attitude towards Macedonia during the Covid crisis, when Macedonian citizens were treated on the same level as Serbian citizens, so that tens of thousands of Macedonians were vaccinated in Vranje and Niš, through the aid with grain when there was a crisis for this essential product due to the war in Ukraine, finally, to the assistance that last summer Serbia unconditionally and at the first call provided us during the summer months when Serbian aircraft were extinguishing fires in Macedonian forests. Nothing was asked of us in return! These are examples from the last two or three years. Therefore, it would be decent, and without bias – to conclude that, in no case, Serbia's attitude can be equated with the one that Bulgaria has towards us, both in the past and in the present.

Anyone who cannot see this either lacks basic knowledge of what good neighborly relations between states should be, or is pushing some agenda known only to them, which aims to disrupt the good and friendly relations between the two neighboring countries and the two neighboring peoples, who build mutual respect and appreciation on equal grounds and without any conditions. This should be the future Balkan matrix and an example of good neighborly relations and cooperation.

(The author is a lawyer)

THE LANGUAGE IN WHICH THEY ARE WRITTEN, AS WELL AS THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THE COLUMNS, DO NOT ALWAYS REFLECT THE EDITORIAL POLICY OF "FREE PRESS"