site.btaUPDATED Bulgarian-Macedonian Friendship Club Presented in Sofia

The Bulgarian-Macedonian Friendship Club, which was set up on April 19, was presented at the BTA National Press Club on Tuesday. A Zoom link was established with the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities (ISSHS) in Skopje.

"The Club has over 100 members," said one of its founders, historian Stefan Detchev. Another founder, entrepreneur Atanas Sharkov, specified that it was established by public figures as a civic community to respond to the challenges facing Bulgaria and North Macedonia.

"Under communism, the totalitarian regimes in both countries waged a severe propaganda war between them which actually continued after 1990 with a different intensity," Sharkov added.

He pointed out that working groups of experts and professionals will be set up within the framework of the Club, seeking an increased closeness in various areas like culture, education, science, cyber security, protection against and fight with disinformation, civil society and economy. A shadow historical commission will also be set up between historians of Bulgaria and North Macedonia, Sharkov also said.

The official Joint Multidisciplinary Commission of Experts on Historical and Educational Issues between Bulgaria and North Macedonia was set up under the bilateral Friendship and Good-neighbrouliness Treaty of 2017.

The founding members of the Bulgarian-Macedonian Friendship Club include writers Alek Popov and Chavdar Tsenov, university lecturers Alexander Kiossev, Ivaylo Ditchev and Maya Grekova, journalists Boyko Stankushev, Ivo Berov and Dimitar Kenarov, defence expert Velizar Shalamanov, economists Krassen Stanchev and Evgeni Kanev, tennis player Manuela Maleeva, historian Dragan Zajkovski and former Macedonian prime ministers Ljubco Georgievski and Vlado Buckovski.

Buckovski said that "in these critical times, when the political will of either side is obviously insufficient to reach a compromise and lift the blockade that since November 2020 has damaged seriously the anyway precarious bilateral relations, the civil societies must work harder on building an atmosphere of mutual understanding and respect." "The idea of our support is to enable the two governments to reach a lasting solution with which neither side will feel humiliated," the ex-PM commented. He was referring to Sofia's refusal to green-light a start of Skopje's EU accession negotiations before the open bilateral issues have been addressed.

Zajkovski argued that the joint commission on historical issues must be let alone to do its job and "we, as intellectuals, should enable it to work without any public pressure from either the Macedonian or the Bulgarian side". According to him, historians on both sides of the border must clearly say that history, being a science about the past, must teach both societies about the causes and the events that led to conflicts in the past and the consequences of these conflicts," the scholar said, insisting that "this is no longer debatable in the rest of Europe".

Speaking online from Skopje, ISSHS Director Prof. Katerina Kolozova said that both countries' governments ignored recommendations produced by a project with Bulgarian participation which sought to "find a way out of the dead end" resulting from Bulgaria blocking North Macedonia's EU accession talks.

The scholar explained that the participants in the initiative do not call into question the existence of two nations in two states, but claim that these nations, like all Balkan nations, share a common history. She noted that the participants in the project were branded as traitors of the respective country on social media.

"Macedonia certainly shares history with Serbia, Greece and Albania, too. I think we find this easier to admit than sharing history with Bulgaria," Kolozova noted, adding that both North Macedonia and Bulgaria "must overcome a syndrome of hysterical denial of a shared or common history with Bulgaria" and both countries should assume responsibility for their own errors and sins.

Prof. Kiossev, who teaches modern cultural history at Sofia University, said that Bulgarian governments over the last ten years "take credit" for a ten-fold increase of Bulgarophobia in the Republic of North Macedonia. "We should look into the little things that bring us together rather than into what sets us apart. When Bulgarian politicians say that a nation is invented, the relationship between the two countries cannot possibly be good," he argued.