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BIBLIOGRAPHY
| Title | "History, Myths and the Nation in the Republic of Macedonia". In (Re)Writing History. Historiography in Southeast Europe after Socialism, edited by Ulf Brunnbauer, 165-201 |
| Author | Brunnbauer, Ulf |
| Publisher | Münster: Lit-Verlag |
| Annotation | The Austrian historian analyses the development of modern Macedonian historiography in the context of Macedonian ‘nation building’ after 1944 as well as in nowadays’ post-Yugoslav conditions. He presents firstly the political and institutional context of historiography and highlights the structure, tasks and functions of the Institute for National History in Skopje. Brunnbauer emphasizes the ‘national mission’ of historians in Macedonia and points out the main ‘historical myths’ promoted by them: the ‘myths of origin’, of ‘continuity’ and of ‘victimization’. He likewise describes the most important historiographic revisions and controversies since the end of Yugoslav socialism. Brunnbauer concludes that, despite the political and economic changes of the early 1990s, Macedonian historiography is characterized more by continuity than by change. Its methodological paradigm is still dominated by political history and chronological approaches, its character is still narrowly national and its institutional matrix has not altered. However, Brunnbauer’s insistence that, in the late 1940s, Macedonians ‘had to begin from scratch in their efforts to present a long history of their nation’ underestimates certain previous attempts in this sense. The development of Macedonian historiography would hardly be possible without, for instance, certain interpretations of the local revolutionary movement already existing in leftist and communist Macedonian circles in Interwar Bulgaria. Considering the university formation and socialization of the Yugoslav Macedonian historians, the Serbian historiographic contributions should not be neglected either. (also relevant to sub-field 11) |
| Author of Annotation | Tchavdar Marinov |