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The centre of Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia, a Balkan nation that became an independent state just 33 years ago, is full of history.
A statue of Alexander the Great dominates the central square; a statue of his father, King Philip II of Macedonia, stands on an oversized pedestal towering over a nearby square. The city is also dotted with bronze, stone and plaster monuments to other generations of heroes from the country’s allegedly long and illustrious history.
But the problem is that much of the history on display is claimed by other countries: Today’s North Macedonia, which was formed out of the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, has nothing to do with Alexander the Great, who lived 2,000 years ago in what is now Greece, and many of the other historical figures honoured in statues are Bulgarian.
Slavica Babamova, director of the National Archaeological Museum, has spent her career unearthing and exhibiting ancient artefacts and said she has no problem with focusing on the past, but is uneasy about the number of statues the country has erected to forge a national and national identity.
“We have a rich history and a lot to say, but I don’t think we need to push for all this excessive marketing,” she said during the interview, pointing to a statue of Alexander the Great.
She added that even more important for North Macedonia, and undoubtedly part of the country’s history, are the golden funerary masks and other incredible artifacts that predate Alexander and were discovered in an ancient cemetery near the North Macedonian village of Trebenishte.
North Macedonia’s identity construction has long infuriated Greece, which claims ancient Macedonia as part of its heritage and has a region named after it, as well as neighboring Bulgaria, which has a strong possessiveness about historical figures, particularly a 10th-century Bulgarian ruler whose statues now abound in downtown Skopje.
The dispute over ownership of the past has not only unsettled scholars, but also has serious consequences, such as blocking North Macedonia’s bid to join the European Union, and casting a shadow over ambitious nation-building plans based on a history claimed by others, particularly Alexander the Great.
Alexander, the conquering hero who stretched his empire from the Balkans to India in the 4th century BCE, was born in a city in what is now Greece, but historians generally agree that he did not live in what is now North Macedonia, nor did he speak the region’s Slavic language, which arrived there hundreds of years later.
However, parts of North Macedonia’s territory were actually part of the ancient Macedonian kingdom and are dotted with archaeological sites containing artifacts from that time.
The problem isn’t that North Macedonia has no ties to the time of Alexander the Great, but that it has overstated its claims, said Babamova, the museum director, adding that the problem began after the breakup of Yugoslavia, when nationalists began looking for ways to strengthen the fragile new state.
“There was a kind of hysteria in the late 1990s,” she said.
Greece, infuriated when its neighbor declared independence under the name Macedonia in 1991, has vowed to block the country’s membership of NATO and the European Union.
As part of a 2018 deal with Greece, the country agreed to call itself North Macedonia, a name the Greek government deemed sufficiently distant from the ancient kingdom of Macedonia and Alexander the Great.
As feelings with Greece calmed, Bulgaria voiced its own historical grievances: Bulgarian nationalists argued that Macedonia was an artificial state created by Communist anti-Nazi partisans, that it had declared itself a state in 1944, and that it spoke a dialect of the Bulgarian language. As an ally of Nazi Germany during World War II, Bulgaria posed an obstacle to its entry into the European Union.
“The same problem Ukraine has with Russia, it has with Bulgaria. They say, ‘You don’t exist,'” said Nikola Minov, a history professor at the University of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Skopje.
Ukraine has struggled to assert its own identity against the Russian Empire, but the land now called North Macedonia has had to contend with the Roman Empire, of which it was a part, for five centuries, the Ottoman Empire, which ruled the region until the early 20th century, and intermittent rule by other outside powers, including Serbs and Bulgarians.
Seeking a historical anchor to stabilise the new state, which was only independent for 10 days in 1903, the central government poured hundreds of millions of euros into a massive redevelopment project in Skopje a decade ago.
The city center has been filled with statues, and modest government and commercial buildings have been transformed into colonnaded palaces that look like kitschy Hollywood sets for movies about antiquity.
The country’s rebellious ethnic Albanian minority has also asserted its separate identity and made history by erecting a large statue honouring Skanderbeg, the 15th-century Albanian military commander who led a revolt against the Ottoman Empire.
“I miss the old Skopje,” said museum director Babamova, longing for the city it was before the statues and Greek columns were erected. “It has lost its soul.”
Its columns are mostly hollow and some of the fake ancient facades have already begun to crumble. The renovation was ordered by Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, who fled to Hungary in 2018 to avoid a corruption conviction.
But his nationalist-leaning party returned to power after winning presidential and parliamentary elections on May 8.
The party’s current leadership seems less enthusiastic about Alexander the Great, but sees no reason to remove his or any other statues. “This is not a fake history that we have invented,” insisted Timko Mutszynski, the party’s deputy chairman. “Some historians say we have real connections with ancient Macedonia.”
The new administration is determined to maintain that connection, angering Greece by signaling its intention to drop “North” from the country’s name: At his inauguration in May, the new president referred to the country simply as Macedonia, prompting the Greek ambassador to walk out.
Mutsunskis, deputy leader of the New Government party, said the 2018 agreement for Greece to abandon the name Macedonia would be respected as a “political and legal reality”, but added: “Do we like it? No!”
Dalibor Jovanovski, a prominent historian in Skopje, said he doesn’t like the name “North Macedonia” either, but sees it as an unfortunate price that had to be paid to join the European Union.
“Everyone thinks their history is their own, that there’s no shared history,” he said, “but in this region, everything is in flux, everything mixes together.”
While some Skopje residents say they don’t like the abundance of statues, many are proud of them as a tribute to a long and proud history. “The Greeks claim his statue,” said Ljubcho Efremov, strolling past Alexander the Great, “but he is Alexander of Macedonia, not Alexander of Greece.”
Former Culture Minister Bisela Kostadinov-Stojčevska said the plan was to remove at least some of the statues and move them to parks outside the city, but abandoned the plan after staff tasked with investigating whether there were building code violations found that “unfortunately, everything was legal.”
She said she was particularly keen to remove a large statue of Tsar Samuil, a 10th-century Bulgarian king. Not only was the statue ugly and blocked the view, facing Alexander, she said, “it really irritates Bulgarians.”
Nor is she a big fan of Alexander the Great: “I feel no connection to him at all – linguistically, culturally or emotionally.”
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