US State Deartment Background Note: Macedonia Nov. 2004

This Background Note seems to have been recieved by the Greek journalist at the US State Department briefings like one recieves a "hot poker up ones butt". If I was a nit-picker I could find fault with it myself. Let's not.

We are thankfully referred to as "ethnic Macedonians" who speak the "Macedonian language" and have created a "Macedonian culture". "Macedonian slavs" is nowhere to be found.

Now if we can get a the US State Department to plug in Krste Misirkov's "On Macedonian Matters, published in 1901, we can put a stake through the heart of the Greek and Bulgarian slander that "Tito invented the Macedonian nation".

Maybe next year ..... for Christmas!


Macedonia (11/04)

Following the war, Macedonia became one of the constituent republics of the new Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia under Marshall Tito. During this period, Macedonian culture and language flourished.


During the Yugoslav period, Macedonian ethnic identity exhibited itself, in that most of Macedonia's Slavic population identified themselves as Macedonians, while several minority groups, in particular ethnic Albanians, sought to retain their own distinct political culture and language. Although interethnic tensions simmered under Yugoslav authority and during the first decade of its independence, the country avoided ethnically motivated conflict until several years after independence.

The expanded coalition of ruling ethnic Macedonian and ethnic Albanian political leaders, with facilitation by U.S. and European Union (EU) diplomats, negotiated and then signed the Ohrid Framework Agreement in August 2001, which brought an end to the fighting.