The Way Towards Macedonian Independence - Nikola Kljusev by Infinity

The president of the first Macedonian democratic government describes the historical events of building the new political and economic system in the years of the independence of the Republic of Macedonia (1991/1992), expressed through the repercussions of the chaos of the crisis over the new changes, the affirmation of national patriotism, the referendum on independence, the adoption of the new constitution, and privatization. “When we write about the recent past, we doubt whether we have completely told the truth about phenomena, events, personalities, and finally about ourselves. How real we present the seen and the experienced... how many of the events shown are conditioned by known or unknown elements... how much they are the fruit of personal imagination and fantasy. Because the truth is not a thing that we can have. The truth is the goal towards which we strive... I believe that history alone holds the stick of righteousness and truth. It knows how to judge us.”

ISBN 978-608-4685-15-9

Published by: Foundation “Nikola Kljusev” 9 78608 4 68 5159

90000

Nikola Kljusev

The Way Towards Macedonian Independence

Nikola Kljusev

The way towards Macedonian independence

Foundation "Nikola Kljusev" Skopje, 2017

Preface Usually, when people write about the recent past, they doubt whether they have completely told the truth about phenomena, events, personalities, and finally about themselves. The truth is not a thing that we can have. The truth is the goal towards which we strive. For these reasons, it is difficult to understand "truth" itself. Namely, what is it which is "true" and "truth", when it is transposed through a person's filter and through his sincerity. And honesty is not a pure flame which breaks out from the spirit. For, as Edgar Morin (in the book Autocritica) says, the will for a person to be honest, when it comes to honesty towards oneself, is always lost in the labyrinths of internal dualities. The free will for a person to be honest is confirmed only in special conditions of pride and masochism. Therefore, in front of the act of sincerity for the revealed truth, we all fall into temptation and doubt about how realistically we present the seen and the experienced... how many of the events shown are conditioned by known or unknown elements... and how much they are the fruit of personal imagination and fantasy. For these reasons, we will agree with E. Morin, who says, "Honesty can be pure only at one particular moment of combustion between the gas that feeds it and the smoke that is released from it." I believe that history alone holds the stick of righteousness and truth. It knows how to judge us and not always in the direction in which we judge. It is a supreme judge, as Goethe would say. Therefore I ask the reader to judge my truth expressed in this book as something relative and changeable in front of eternity, and in front of history. Nikola Kljusev

The repercussions of the crisis over the new social changes 1. Our generation is witnessing the separation of one millennium which began with the flourishing of the Samuel state, the most powerful and the biggest state on the Balkans, a spiritual source of the literacy and culture of a civilization â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the Slavic one, with an enlightening spread of the Christianity. It was at the same time half a millennium of Ottoman despotism, slavery for the Macedonian people, and colonial slavery for many other nations in the world. In the last (20th) century of the second millennium the bloodiest and most savage world warshad occurred. It was a century filled with bunkers, dungeons, prison camps, and factories of death for millions of people. At the same time, it is a century when more than half of mankind obtained its freedom from colonial oppression, exploitation, and humiliationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a century that spread freedom and democracy, culture, and education. It was also the time when the first technological steps were made towards conquering space and detaching away from the gravitation of mother Earth by stepping on the divine, soft tenderness of the Moon.

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2. In this century, the Balkan tinderbox, where the most bloody wars began and still go on, a nation boils in Hell, torn apart and displaced by an insane genocide. Its people still cherish the hope that the century of sufferings, by its departure, will pay back to them and will allow them to live freely in one of their nests, recognized in its history, culture, territory, and language. I would like that hope to flutter happily in the hearts of our generation, which in a joint effort will give a victorious direction of an independent existence of the Macedonian nation and its culture in the wake of the new millennium by stepping into the third thousand years of Christ. 3. In such a hope, energy poured out into three important events of the history of the Macedonian people during this century. These events will be remembered forever for their connection to the continuity of the struggle of the Macedonian people for the creation of an independent Macedonian state. The first event marked the organized mass struggle of the Macedonian people in the ethnic borders of Macedonia at the time of the Ilinden Uprising1 and the creation of Krushevo Republic in 1903. It was the great Ilinden resistance against the five centuries of the Ottoman ruling, which celebrated the spirit of the victims of Karposh and Kresna-Razlog Uprising—a spirit filled with the desire for freedom.

Ilinden Uprising of August 1903 was an organized revolt against the Ottoman Empire, which was prepared and carried out by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (VMRO). Provisional government was established in the town of Krushevo, where the insurgents proclaimed the Krushevo Republic, which was overrun after just ten days.

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A spirit out of which radiated the thought and the energy of the younger generation of victims laid in the foundation of the fight on the second Ilinden. That second major event marked the recent history of the Macedonian people in which the ASNOM state was created on the 2nd of August (Ilinden) in 1944. With that glorious victory, for the first time after the powerful Samuel state and the ancient Macedonian Empire, the Macedonian people gained statehood on one part of their national territory. But before long the foundation of ASNOM state began to shake. Its sovereignty started to be taken away by the artificially formed Federation (Yugoslavia) in the most discrete areas of the state... in the sector of international relations (diplomacy), in the defense sector (military), in security sector (police), as well as in a number of important economic areas: monetary sphere, major investment and development decisions and so on. Such a situation conditioned an inferior position of the Macedonian state, with an emphasized paternalism over the Macedonian people in its material and spiritual life. The third event marked the new Macedonian exaltation with a winning referendum on the 8th of September 1991. On that day, Macedonians with a free will voted for an independent Macedonian state. To these events I dedicate my full attention in this book.

The crisis shock and the economic depression

1. Economic erosion brought about by a protracted economic, political, and social crisis in the former Yugoslavia from the eighties onwards destroyed the processes of food production and blocked the pace of transition in this great historical transition period. These large attempts to enter a period of transition created a theoretical confusion in the minds of many politicians and scholars, especially in the social sciences, where they briskly addressed the initial stages of this transitional period. Many of them wanted to see only small modifications of the political and economic system. They still lived both ideologically and emotionally within the system that had to be abandoned. They began to talk loudly about modeling and reforming the socialist self-management system, in order not to leave its foundation but merely to reform it. During that time, the government was vigorously standing in a position for building a new political and economic system.

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2. It is known that the protagonists of such views had formed their own party of reformers. With such a conviction the League of Communists reformed itself in the Socio-democratic alliance or the Socialist party into Socialist Alliance. Such an accumulated understanding of the current reform has become a favorite phrase that it is often used today in the performances of our top political and government leaders who were formely professionally obliged to create and explain the sequence of reforms of the Titoist system. 3. Contrary to the above observations, in the center of our belief lay the idea of abandoning the futile, destructive political and economic system and to build a new, democratic, pluralistic system. We suggested the need for such a system to be built, and we started to create this new political, economic, and sociological interpretation. For us, reforming a system that should be left buried was incomprehensible; it was political and economic nonsense. 4. The protagonists of the reforms i.e. the make-up of the existing, is intuitively understood. They created defense mechanisms for the existing system. Quite cunningly they advocated a continuity of that system. Its structure was wrapped with a nontransparent membrane so that its old anatomy could not be seen nor recognized. Old institutions and their personnel structures were jealously guarded.

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5. A particular sensitivity was expressed about keeping the management structures established under the criteria of moral-political suitability, or according to subjective criteria of the ruling party which demanded selective obedience, allegiance and obedience, spying, praising the superior politically powerful people, but least of all professional competence, creativity and work discipline. In almost all of the structures of society and state, the hierarchy management staff remained the same in thought, in the way of operation, and the method of behavior. This way was rife with bribery, corruption, and various privileges. 6. Hastily new alliances were created according to the already known schemes: Youth Alliance, an Alliance of women and so on. The alliances of trade unions, veterans, pensioners and other alliances of the old system were kept, whose criterion was the mystical identification with yesterdayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ruling party, which has changed its name twice. The logic of identification has become the backbone of the system of governance. At the same time, however, it became the call of revolt and resistance against the system, for the past has gone and the imitation of the one-minded identification with the party that has changed its color and its surrogates is irreversible. The membrane inevitably bursts. The curtain is dropped. The need for radical change was conceived in peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s consciousness. The government widely opened its doors so that all reformers nostalgic of the old system could enter the museum of antiquities, and with a sense of sympathy it stimulated the forces of changes to strive towards building a new legal-political and economic system.

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7. For these reasons, it became increasingly clear to me that the political analysis of these phenomena should become a critical policy, not a political servitude, neither slavery views from the type of mystical identification of the “truth” of yesterday’s ruling party. The critical policy should open space for respect of fair conditions, of actual processes in which we live and which we confront with. 8. In front of the great historical curves and the turning periods, such as during the transition period of our country, we estimated that this should not be a reform of the existing but an economic, political and moral purgatory should occur above all, filled with unpredictable contradictions, with fear and uncertainty, but with hopeful enthusiasm and faith in the future. We wondered why all this? What are the reasons? What does science offer? Shall we endure the big challenges? 9. In order to answer such questions we need a thorough research of the relevant factors and conditions which have led to the necessities of changes and to acceptance of the historical challenges. Here we will briefly point out only some aspects, because in our research we dedicated enough attention to these problems. 10. The question is about leaving the politically and economically ineffective and dysfunctional system in its own contradictions. A

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system based on utopian ideological postulates. That system, in practice, is filled with social conflicts and impoverishment of the people. Destructive repercussions of that system are most evident in the technological depreciation of economic and overall social development, and in the horrible consequences of economic and social being, on one hand, and moral erosion, political-ideological satanisation of individual freedom, and thought and creation of man, on the other hand. Abandoning that vestigial system, thereby, does not require reforming, but rather building a new political and economic system on a new ideological platform and strategic development, whose premises spring from plural democracy in which a liberated individual acts and realizes their spiritual and material initiative. In the economy, there should be a system of free entrepreneurial activity and competitive market conditions. 11. However, we should say that the basic aims and motives of the desired new system, its economic and social stakeholders, and the repercussions it conditioned in practice are theoretically not sufficiently known. At the same time, it presents a large challenge for the economic, legal and socio-political science in the discovery of new methods and criteria, new regulations, and in building its categorical apparatus. In this sense, it can be said that social sciences here still lack a theoretical background and scientific foundation for the operation of the desired new political and economic system. This is because regardless of the fact that there are economic and market regulations, the specific conditions and opportunities of each country require building on theoretical grounds, as well as measures, instruments and mechanisms of the system for effective functioning in a given country.

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12. In such conditions, the first phase of transition, which certainly will take more than a decade, will have to mobilize the intellectual thought of society in all its structures, to form the basis of the new institutional system, with all the necessary regulatory tools to its successful functioning. This phase is characterized with the following effects: First, a pronounced political euphoria in which thought and ideological commitments of each individual and his party affiliation will ferment or an abstinence until rules and mechanisms of pluralistic political culture are built; Second, social and class stratification by insufficient eminent economic criteria. It is the formation of new social stratification in society and on the basis of a new political and ideological structure; Third, highly irrational usage of available factors of production, and above all, human factors and technological capacities in terms of insufficiently defined property relations and related management structures. Our production capacity in the economy during that period had an annual average of about 50% usage. Our countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s labor resources used about 20% of the population. It will significantly decline in the structural and ownership adjustment in the first phase of the transition; It will be a phase of crazy expropriation (grabbing, enriching, and various criminal phenomena which may occur in the implementation of privatization and building the new market system) by existing political and economic structure. At the same time, in this economic chaos, it is the stage where a new economic strategy for the future ownership model in the country should be built; Fourth, building a legal state and its institutions that will enable civil emancipation in the use of democracy or the rule of the people, and not the tyranny and the cult of personality. In this

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context, there is establishing freedom of individual values and dignity, as well as building a new scale of moral values and ethical norms of behavior. At the same time, by maximal affirmation of the authority of Parliament through freely expressed will of the people of the elected representatives, there is the building of institutions and legal norms to guarantee the protection of human rights of political bureaucracy and various potentates with establishing monopolies in economic and social activities. This is because unchecked government power and monopoly positions in the economy may threaten individual freedom in all aspects of human life and over time turns into tyranny. This requires recognition and respect for a fundamental principle of free parliamentary democracy, â&#x20AC;&#x153;government which governs best, governs the shortest.â&#x20AC;? Thus, this process of transition will mean establishing new scale of values upon which to build appropriate ethics and aesthetics of our life and new political and business morality among the people. 13. The problems and dilemmas that can arise in the process of transition inevitably require a critical examination of their manifestation in our actual conditions or, more precisely, how our spirit, our thought, and our material opportunities give a chance for their successful resolution. We will adhere to the initial knowledge given by our short experience that the spontaneous processes and deformations that occurred every day, either under the action of objective limiting conditions or from the resistance forces, significantly canceled the initial effects of our effort in that process.

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14. In the euphoric surge in 1991, not everything could have been predicted accurately. The ambient was filled with uncertainties. New problems arose, new demands emerged, problems appeared every day, and opportunities did not provide chances for their quick solution. The old, existing problems disappeared very slowly and constantly pressed. Indeed, our generation survived a terrible time. Therefore, with a strong aspiration, we were preparing ourselves for another time, with a desire to capture it as good as possible, even though we were theoretically caught, materially limited and inadequately prepared organizationally. We intimately wished to experience the pluralism of the truth manifested in the freedom and democracy of civil societies. We also wanted the same in the economy, to join the growing challenge of technological innovation as soon as possible, because we were technologically lagging behind, being a technological periphery of the developed world. Our fixed productive funds were quickly aging and technically corroding, not experiencing technological revitalization for decades while facedwith an abysmal crisis. The process of disinvestment through an extended period of time during the cycle of crisis was throwing like a dark shadow the complex of technological inferiority onto our economy, which was already dying out in a number of segments. 15. The crisis chaos in our country left heavy traces in the social domain. Entering the stage, our government confronted this sensitive problem from the early days. On the streets and in front of the Parliament, hungry and feeble workers were on strike.

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The problems of the unemployed and the hungry have increasingly touched my consciousness. They were rippling my thought to look for solutions in the Government in such meager, limiting conditions. The dilapidated and impoverished economy, and the empty treasuries in the financial institutions did not provide an opportunity for a quick solution of the accrued social problems. Our citizens and workers, immersed in everyday problems of lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s existence, were increasingly falling into defeatism, losing sight of the future. 16. On that path, many forces came to our aid: some loud, some recognizable, and others silent, hidden, organized, and disruptive. All of them were pushed by the inertia of the old system, which aggressively opposed the new pluralist tendencies, especially the building of a new independent state. These forces occupied important places in the state, in the administration, in the various bodies of the legislative power, and more precisely, in the Parliament itself. A major resistance was given by the judiciary, which in the first phase, annulled several government decisions and laws, assessing them from the position of the old constitution and federal laws that still existed at that period. I openly stood up against various patchworks of the old laws in the Parliament, demanding our new constitution to be adopted as soon as possible. The resistance of the old forces was the strongest in the army, whose directives came from the Federal Secretariat for National Defense. Their Counterintelligence service was deeply rooted in Macedonia. This intelligence network controlled many institutions, bodies, and individuals in our Republic, whose exponents were still in managerial positions or were in the Parliament itself. Also, an unprecedented aggressive resistance was shown by Albanian parties and MPs. Every important decision and law in

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the Parliament was boycotted by them: the referendum for independence (on September 8, 1991), the Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia (on November 17, 1991) and the first census in 1991, and a sharp opposition towards the education system was also manifested. 17. All the resistance forces towards the changes for a democratic society and an independent Macedonian state had occupied various positions that did not leave easily. Many worked according to directives of yesterdayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s influential figures from the political underground of Belgrade, Tirana and Prishtina. They deliberately built defense mechanisms under the clash of new pluralist currents and during the process of building the institutions of the independent state. Those forces, drawn into their egoism and uncertain perspective, were not easily manageable to the laconic enchantment of the masses of people. These people, barehanded, poor, and disparaged from the events, were stimulated and encouraged only by the sense of national patriotism to support the big changes more energetically. 18. In such an environment, the government was constantly encircled. We had an extremely narrow space for action. The economy was completely drained, without any financial and material-commodity reserves. The situation with the supplying of the population was becoming more and more dramatic. The issue of supplying the population with elementary life products was raised daily: flour, oil, sugar, milk, oil derivatives, etc. The government made enormous efforts working in a state of emergency conditions for solving the problems. The population showed high moral and ethi-

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cal dignity, depriving themselves of a series of life pleasures, at the cost of limiting their existence. This moral act of the people encouraged the Government in its perseverance to find new possible solutions. Thus, for example, the purchase of all agricultural crops from the crops in 1991 and 1992 was successfully solved, which filled the material reserves of the state and the sowing programs were successfully implemented. We have opened the borders, especially towards Bulgaria, for the import of necessary products from that country and Turkey without customs and tax burdens. It was also a pleasure to see the rapid and energetic reactivation of FENI and the initial 15 million dollars from the first ferronickel extract. At the same time, “Goldmak” was founded, our first company for production of golden accessories. “Zhito-lux” utilized a very quickly developed new plant to offer new products from the palette of puff pastry. The construction of the most modern mill in the Balkans was started in Skopje. Skopje’s brewery also enriched its assortment. It established contacts with the famous “Coca-cola”, as it was included in its technological-production and marketing network. More and more hopes emerged in other sectors. The technological innovation areas were opened by introducing digital technology in the Post-office system. The program for export of lamb was successfully implemented. We overcame, though with significant difficulties, the consequences of the oil shock. REK Bitola and Oslomej worked at high speed. The construction of the dam “Topolka” in Veles was started. Dozens of small private companies were formed on a daily basis, and they successfully supplied the hungry market with a range of products. 19. In that effort, the Macedonian state received its national currency— the denar, and thus became a completely monetary inde-

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pendent state. The so-called â&#x20AC;&#x153;Easterâ&#x20AC;? anti-inflation program began to harness the galloping inflation, taming it in May-June 1992 to 4-6% on a monthly basis. There was a tendency for a mild relaxation of the market, where calmness started to reoccur by deferred payment at many commercial enterprises. And just when we began to rejoice at the first successes of the anti-inflation program, we stared receiving low party blows, with the law on salaries which was passed in the Parliament without the consent of the Government, which led to the demolition of the program. This thoughtless and tendentiously directed act was a start for the fall of the Government, which soon followed. 20. Our efforts were fully focused on the establishment of new standards and criteria for the development and revival of the national economy; towards a faster exit from the bottom of the crisis chaos, and towards the adjustment of the economy to new market relations and finding new partners for cooperation. The main goal of the Government was to strengthen and affirm the national economy in conditions of free initiative of all entrepreneurial undertakings and free operation of market economic laws. 21. However, the practice in the economy throughout the world and especially in the most developed countries today, goes in other direction. This is best manifested in the international capital movement, which does not recognize national borders. The criteria for economic cosmopolitanism are being affirmed on the basis of which new philosophy in international relations is being built, with emphasized economic-political and military paternalism of the great powers towards other nations in the world. This phi-

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losophy is widely propagated by the construction of a â&#x20AC;&#x153;new world economic orderâ&#x20AC;?. 22. However, there is strong resistance to this process today, especially in the most developed countries. In that sense, one or two decades ago, on the international level, some new tendencies arose in the perceptions of national economic interests and in the emergent manifestations of the so-called cosmopolitanism. Thus, for example, in the global context, phenomenal nationalism and cosmopolitanism are located in a new economic environment. Namely, in the domain of world globalization, the international capital movement reaches other goals, directions and interests. These characteristics are important for a number of national economies, especially for those of the countries in transition, such as the Republic of Macedonia, whose destinies also pervert into the political structures of those countries. For us, it is of a particular interest to critically monitor these processes and find alternative pathways in our future development. 23. International capital flows, whether financial or direct investment as equity capital, are directed to those countries that have a low risk coefficient, which are hungry for technology or have cheap development factors such as natural resources and labor; countries that are empty yet aspiring, while enabling the desired profitability. This magnetic force of capital has multiple destructive effects, as pointed out in a series of sociological and economic researches, in the countries where the capital flows, even though its export today is an objective necessity.

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This negative effect, above all, manifests itself in the decline of the sense of development, both in the sphere of communal urban development of the countries that export capital as well as in the interest of their national development. Finally, the sense and interest in the prosperity of their own nation decline in all of its domains, as emphasized by a number of western economists and sociologists. 24. As a striking example of this phenomenon, we can take the United States of America. A number of sociological-economic studies of well-known economists and sociologists (T. Lyser, J. Kotkin, D. Reef, K. Lash and others) indicate that the business and professional world in Los Angeles sees its city as an exit in the countries of the Pacific and the opportunity for engagement in their economies. In that sense, the movement of capital and population outside the national borders of the United States has transformed the whole former idea of that country for the development of urban agglomerations and the culture and economy of the cities. Regarding this phenomenon, Christopher Lash (in the book â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Revolution of the Eliteâ&#x20AC;?) notes that privileged classes in Los Angeles feel that they are closely connected with their duplexes in Japan, Singapore, Korea, etc. than with the majority of their fellow countrymen. In boundless global economy, capital loses its ties with the national sense and interests. On the other hand, in many countries in the world it becomes more and more evident that the international language of money (capital) speaks louder than their local dialect. In that sense, the Republic of Macedonia today presents a striking example because we listen to the voice of international money louder than the voice of our denar.

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25. These tendencies of the international movement of capital cause not only the neglect of the national sense in their own country, but also weaken the national states in which that capital enters by building a new philosophy of the so-called globalization through denationalization of large companies in the development of those countries, that is, by building the so-called economic and cultural cosmopolitanism, which is nothing but a new division of the world, new methods of both material and spiritual exploitation, as well as subjugation are introduced. On this platform, scenarios are being built for the new international economic order that will rest on the three pillars, the three economic centers of power: the United States, the Western European Union, and Japan with Oceania. On the other hand, all other countries in the world in certain phases should find themselves in some regional unions accepted under the dictation of the criteria and assessments of those three centers of economic power. 26. The main driving force and key role in the world globalization today is in the hands of the United States. Namely, their global policy relies on the widely branched system of alliances and coalitions that literally encompass the entire planet. In that sense, Zbigniew Brzezinski’s investigations are very interesting in his book: “The Great Chessboard – American Prestige and Its Geostrategic Imperatives”, published in 1997. The author systematically addresses the phenomenon of the globalization, in particular the US policy in that domain, which at one time began with the formation of the Atlantic Alliance and its institutional regulation through NATO, which includes the most developed and most important European countries, and the United States

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plays the key role, not only in the alliance, but also in the overall internal European affairs. Even Russia, the former military rival, has been drawn into various financial arrangements under the blessings of the US initiatives for closer co-operation with NATO, as in the case of the signed agreement “Partnership for Peace”. At the same time the double-sided political and military relations with Japan bind and subordinate the strongest Asian economy to the United States and, Japan remains at least for now, we would say, essentially an American protectorate. This process continues in the domain of the entire Oceania where various organizations have been formed. The most powerful of them, of course, is the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum in which the United States plays the central role. On the other hand, the Persian Gulf and the Iraq case turn this economically vital region into an American military reserve. In that sense, Z. Brzezinski says: “Unlike the earlier empires, this comprehensive and complex global system is not a hierarchical pyramid. We would rather say, America stands at the center of a mutually dependent universe in which power is practiced through constant negotiations, dialogues, mutual understanding and a desire for a formal consensus, although the power comes from the same center – Washington. It is in such a situation that the game of power should be played, according to the internal rules of America. Perhaps the greatest compliment that the world refers for the central role of the democratic process in American global hegemony is the degree to which foreign countries are drawn into the internal American political lobbying. Foreign governments attempt, if possible, to mobilize those Americans related by their ethnic or religious identity. Many countries use American lobbyists to work for their interests. It is particularly present in the Congress, where there are about a thousand lobbyists working for foreign countries in the U.S. capital. Domestic American ethnic groups also strive to influence U.S. foreign policy, and among the most efficiently organized are the Jewish, Greek, and Armenian lobby.”

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In such circumstances, the situation of little, poor countries that do not have conditions for organizing and paying expensive lobbyists, is very complex. The Republic of Macedonia is a striking example. It began (in 1991), under the suggestion of President Gligorov, by organizing a lobby group headed by Mr. John Bitov from Toronto, Canada, albeit with very poor results out of which about one million dollars were spent. This lobby group enigmatically broke down very quickly without giving any report on its activity either by the main lobbyist (John Bitov), or by its organizer (K. Gligorov). 27. In such a globalization emerges a new class of cosmopolitans that feel themselves as citizens of the world (we have recently heard in our Parliament one such exemplar in the image of Mr. Nano Ruzin, MP of SDSM, who publicly pretends to be a citizen of the world with a lost national feeling). This â&#x20AC;&#x153;newâ&#x20AC;? cosmopolitan class offers creating a common culture, destiny and history, sorting or ignoring national culture and history in the countries where they will invest. In doing so, they do not accept, as Robert Reich and Christopher Lough correctly note, an obligation of a status of a citizen, which is implied in a state. It is about building a closed system in private education, private health and health care, private security (police), private cultural clubs, lobby, sports centers, and so on. 28. The second phenomenon that manifests itself in the modern world in economically developed countries, which simultaneously follow the first phenomenon, that is, the process of cosmopolitanism and globalization of society, is the process of the international, public bureaucracy that through its vast administration,

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controls the most important domains in politics, defense, science, technology, and especially in the finances of member countries, such as: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Monetary Fund, the development agencies, the European Bank for Development, etc. This apparatus, concentrated in the institutions of the United Nations and its European subsidiaries, as well as in the institutions of the European Union in Brussels, Strasbourg, Vienna, and others, keeps and oversees the most important functions of individual countries. The latter are concerned and afraid of bureaucratic insensitivity to the bulky apparatus of the UN and the European Union, which increasingly dominates, devoid of any sense of national identity and belonging. And it is no coincidence that during the referendum declaration for inclusion in the European Union, a number of countries (Sweden, Switzerland, etc.) express a high degree of restraint and doubt, not to lose their nationality and their national interest. 29. Countries that do not have their own clearly defined strategic goals can be easily manipulated. The underdeveloped and smaller countries are fatefully left to the big games of international capital. Our country does not have a strategic defense mechanism (in the economy, diplomacy, protection, defense, etc.) and is largely left to the conductorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s stick of the external factor in the vital domains of living. For this reason, our intelligence is historically called, independently of the ruling nomenclatures, to build alternative scenarios of strategic goals and directions for our existence and future. 30. We live in a period of great technological challenges. Scientific and technological progress shape a radical turn in the way of our lives.

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Mankind has reached the moon. It opens his eyes to the secrets of the unacceptable universe. New technologies allow changing of the way and conditions of human life through the various economic, information and medical disciplines, for the long-term maintenance of the human body, by changing the way of nutrition and hygiene, as well as by reconstruction and revitalization of its organs. The breakthrough of electronics and information technology with computerization in multiple measure and control instruments alters the conditions not only of the life of the body but, above all, of its spirit, performing substitution of human memory, even its thoughtful creation, in a more variant combinations and alternative solutions. 31. Humanity before the new millennium boldly stepped into the planetary and cosmic spaces, into the era of an unwritten human adventure whose cognitive effects will reveal new horizons, leaving in an inferior position a series of laws, hypotheses and category equipment. They as relics will meet the depots of an industrial civilization whose methods and modes of production, as well as models of the organization of life of our generation, cannot fit into the challenges of the new technological innovations in the information society. Today, this society is in rapid growth throughout the world, and we are increasingly witnessing how it gradually enters our country as well. However, at the same time it will mean a new crucifixion of a man who stands upright before great uncertainties and great dangers. History has shown us that industrial civilization, unlike the traditional (feudal) society, has put humanity on trial for millions of casualties from new murderous weapons, such as the atomic bomb on one side and the possible ecological wasteland of our planet, on the other.

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32. Now according to the experience of some developed countries, we come to several important, fundamental issues that will have to mobilize the energy of intelligence in solving problems that have a fateful meaning for the future of mankind. Namely, Edgar Moren (in the book â&#x20AC;&#x153;Autocriticsâ&#x20AC;?) will conclude with concern that comfort and luxury already pose the desperate question: how to live? The film, the radio, and the television, were supposed to fulfill the voids of the soul. At the same time, people free of material necessities tend to learn to play in order to live, to play in order to empathize with film roles, television games or sports matches, but nobody could play the great game that the technique would prepare: to play the man. Perhaps it was the knot of the contradiction: the philistine comfortable life was becoming a passive play filled with dreams, idleness, parties; the great technical adventure required an active game of the man, a dynamic and conscious introduction to life. This lifestyle quickly enters in our country, with uncontrolled processes, inadequate methods and means, with unprepared social environment, with incalculable devastating consequences. Drugs, idleness, nightlife around cafĂŠ-restaurants, drinking and prostitution, followed by suspicious suicides and murders and various criminal occurrences, weighed over the young generation and the vast army of unemployed with a lost hope for existence. With that social atrophy we enter the new millennium. The political nomenclature of power has no sense of responsibility to solve this social evil. With its criminal actions, it deepens the metastases of evil and society atrophies in terrible agony. 33. There is no doubt that history is subject to deep determinisms (technological, nuclear, state, party, etc.) imposed by social, eco-

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nomic and political forces. But, on the other hand, it also contains significant forces that are influenced by an immeasurable coefficient of uncertainty, so the accuracy of future predictions in all spheres of life is always filled with irreducible, immeasurable factors, that is, it depends on a series of coincidences. In all futuristic and behavioral studies and predictions of the future, there is some coincidence, because human consciousness is imperfect, and it is therefore exposed to new challenges in the quest for eternal truth. 34. In such complex domestic and international conditions, the Government of the Republic of Macedonia found itself faced with the temptation to build a new democratic and pluralistic system; new ethical principles and moral values. It aimed to implement the process of monetary independence, to change ownership relations in the process of privatization and to build new institutions of the independent state. It required knowledge, wisdom, responsibility, and courage. It sought national pride and patriotism, to engage in that process boldly, in order to shape the independence of the state more successfully.

AFIRMATION OF NATIONAL PATRIOTISM 1. Our Government opened spaces for affirmation of national patriotism according to the civilizational values built up in our tradition, as well as according to the values of the cultures of the European nations. We did this because of the struggles of our people, in this century where they are subjected to assimilation, genocide, and forced transplantation of foreign patriotism. We strove to link our creative effort with our tradition, as much as we could. With such contribution we revived and rejuvenated our tradition. That tradition and culture, our sensitive patriotic universe, filled our souls with a noble matter of beauty that radiated through the centuries-old Macedonian dreams and yearning hopes. For these reasons, we supported the political struggle that included the attempts for affirmation of the cultures and traditions of our country, as a civilizational advantage in our time, which provides us with a place and reputation in the moral history of our existence. 2. However, the Balkan region still lives nostalgically for the dark corners of the history; for the wild nationalistic passions and 31

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aspirations. By opening the pluralist process in the nineties, unfortunately, such tendencies are becoming visible again. Our government closely watched those tensions. Namely, the powers surrounding us today, as well as their minorities in our country, gather the ranks more and more and they wish to put us in a circle, pressing our people with their language, literature, media; with their political philosophy and civilization that in many ways deviates from the tradition, civilization and spiritual culture of our people. 3. Our endeavor was directed at leaving minorities in our country to be freely included in the general effort to build common civilizational values over the cultural values of this European spiritual space. In that sense, Macedonian patriotism demonstrated in the building and affirmation of the spiritual culture of its people, opens up an opportunity for acceptance of the spiritual wealth of the minorities, with the desire to jointly build the mosaic of our spiritual space, in order to stop the spiritual ghettoization of some minorities that aspire towards their self-closure. 4. I would like to point out that history knows, in a negative connotation, a national patriotism as a passion for enslavement of other peoples and minorities. In the past this was the case with the patriotism of great nationalisms, such as German nationalism, called Pangermanism, Russian, called Pan-Slavism, or French, called Monarchism. I should not emphasize Serbian nationalism that left devastation in recent wars. Similar is the case with Greek nationalism that does not recognize minority rights in its own state.

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Macedonian patriotism, because we are a small, subjugated and exploited nation, did not have and could not have nationalism in order to enslave other peoples and minorities, because in almost all of our history we ourselves were enslaved. 5. Macedonian patriotic feeling, above all, should be understood as a spiritual repulsion against enslavement, assimilation, and oppression. It is a primordial love for the fatherland. That feeling does not set off to impose a will of submission onto others. It takes all citizens as a state pride with the goal of building a democratic, civil society according to the principles and criteria of European civilization. In our hearts the national sense has become a nationwide national pride, and thus a national sensitivity. Macedonian people have no other country than this part of its ethnic territory. 6. For this reason, our Government built a sense of love and respect towards the fatherland, towards its own people. The love towards the people, towards a certain being, towards a group, movement, or a party, is like an intoxicated breath of affinity, proximity, and belonging. We naturally belong to someone. We belong to the primordial Ilinden ideals, to the Macedonian peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s movement led by VMRO to realize an independent Macedonian state. That belonging, to love naturally and unobtrusively, has a wonderful magnetic affinity that makes us meditate transcendentally. This belonging has the tendency to create a legend by itself and to constantly express its beginnings mythically; to repeat it in our consciousness to the extent of agony.

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7. This marvelous beauty, love, and affiliation is a mysterious gift of human nature, an unavoidable necessity that we all carry within ourselves and in a blissful moment, in a thrill, we give it to each other. And the very choice of that love, of that affiliation, is a gift to our senses, our feelings, and to our ethical and political beliefs. 8. Our effort built a general passion, a culture, and boundless love that dragged its roots from our historical past. It was striving, firstly, towards a complete realization of the ideals for national and social liberation, in an independent Macedonian state, and secondly, towards cementing the shattered foundations of the ASNOM state. We maximally affirmed these aspirations, giving them a character of a mystical generality, using the historical moment for Macedonian ascension in which the highest national and social values of the Macedonian people will finally be realized. 9. In doing so, the national ascension should not be understood as a desire to humiliate other ethnic groups. On the contrary, together with the native constitutive Macedonian people, they should enjoy all the fruits of the free Macedonian state. All ethnic minorities should feel as equal citizens of the state, expressing with love their loyalty to the country. 10. In the direction of this effort, at first (1991), there was significant support from the top political subjects, as well as from

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the Parliament itself, whose love later gradually withered in the accomplishment of the above goals. It became more and more evident in the sharpening of the political inter-party struggle in which the cracks in the determination and realization of the significant national interests, especially those that the Government created and supported, swept deeper into it. 11. We calculated that this historical moment requires building of a cult of national pride and a sense of patriotism. It became an essential premise for the construction of an independent Macedonian state. Such national pride is, at first, the name of the state and its insignia. No ruler has the right to disperse with that feeling, with the national pride of the people, which is deeply rooted into their being and transcends its biological-genetic existence, and through which its passion, culture, state, and national sensitivity is expressed. 12. Perhaps somebody will accuse me for exalting national patriotism and national pride, because I saw in them a mythical passion and a cult whose apotheosis flew into the independent state of the Republic of Macedonia. That magic for me was only one mental structure, although our lives, feelings and ideas cannot be simply reduced to magic, but were more or less structured from it. I did this above all, in order to emphasize the moment of affirmation in whose identification the Macedonian man and his wishes, emotions, love, hatred, and anger, historically challenged by this magic, was recognized as crystal clear, so that we will be strongly carried by unity and reconciliation, as well as faith in the future.

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Life without magic is impossible. It is our century old code and our existence. It is our karma, our objective reality. As soon as our national ascension fluttered, crowned by the independent Macedonian state, by the Referendum, it has already resurrected from the dream of magic. 13. I do not see nationalistic isolation in my national pride and patriotism, but a spirit of communication between people. This is an affirmation of the free spirit of all citizens in a democratic civil society, despite the authoritarian forces of the totalitarian political power of the rulers. Finally, this means construction of a model of civilizational behavior, as opposed to all alienation and autarchic tribal ghettoizations. 14. My faith in the Macedonian national pride opens the space of love, unity and reconciliation, against all ethnic isolations, with a desire for a higher mutual respect of the citizens, without the feeling of paternalism and oppression towards any ethnicity. 15. This also means equal participation in cooperation with all neighbors on any issue and in any form of civilization in future relations. We believe that the future with the necessary attention will require greater and more comprehensive opening of our space, greater tolerance and cooperation, which is already a practice in our wider European environment. We see our future neither in an autarchic isolation and closeness towards our neighbors, nor in the ghettoization of minorities, but in an open embracement and rapprochement, in mutual cooperation and respect.

BEFORE THE GREAT CHANGES 1. The observed occurrences have always aroused, or rather, they were of relative importance for me in an Einsteinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sense of the word. My dialectical views are directed towards discovering the opposites of the present, of the existing, and towards quest in the future, which is why critical observations are close to me. I am not devotee of greatness and cults. I do not glorify the existing effects. I run away from the given as a permanent, unchangeable. I am not fascinated by the shape, by the glaze. I dive into the seeds that ripen, which will create a new life, new fruit and taste. I search for the magic of life, in its mysteriousness, inexpressibility, in its unfathomable rhythm through which emerge the eternal chords of life. 2. We live in the world of legends, in the experienced or the narrated. We have been sustained by the story, first by the one that was told to us orally, and then by the written one. Customs, habits, beliefs, patriotic feeling, representations of legends and personalities, phenomena, and so on were built over it. Or, more precisely, that is how our tradition and culture were built.

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For these reasons, people are being deceived by the storytelling, by the terrible or joyful event, the sweet or the deceived adventure. Sartre rightly says: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Man is always a storyteller.â&#x20AC;? He lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees through them everything that is happening to him and demands to live his life as if he narrates it. 3. Although the memory of the past tires me and I do not want to be a slave to those memories, it just repeats itself nostalgically by reminding us of our past events that are an inseparable part of our beings. We constantly carry our opinions; we constantly rely on retelling our attitudes, views, obstinacies and old hatreds, of careful respects and tender loves. In the stories, in their simplicity and plainness, as if the oldest customs of the people resonate, and with all their suggestive mercy, we accept them unconsciously with their virginity in the memory. And so we are overwhelmed with sweet lightheadedness from the narration. 4. The soul of the masses of people, is not impressed by realistic but rather by legendary heroes who temporarily receive variable grades. Even history books should be treated as works of fiction. It is a set of fantastic stories of poorly perceived actions followed by additional explanations. It is the product of incredibilities and legends. In history, almost always, appearance played a much more important role than reality because the unrealistic by definition prevails over the realistic.

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Often, gullibility creates legends, fairy tales, and so on, which spread among people with astonishing speed. They have their own roots in the incredible deformations of the events in the fantasy of the people. For these reasons in the historical research based on the stories of various events, phenomena, personalities, etc. in our lives, the stories and legends cannot be simply reduced to the method of the odd Hegelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s triad: the thesis, antithesis, synthesis, but are fanatically accepted and transmitted from generation to generation. 5. Therefore, at the critical moment of our existence, of our magnificent ascension (1991), supporting the national memory of our legends and desires in the past, as well as the hopeful urges of the people for independence, I wanted to act in the direction of history, to connect my spirit with the spirit of the past and the spirit of the coming time. That time demanded the disease that was pressing the painful organism to be abandoned, to create a draught that would purify the Augeas stables in which the disease smoldered, in order new light rays in the awakening dawn of the day should enter. I began to make myself more and more perceptive of the smell of that day, the day of our resurrection. That spell drove me into the heart of the big changes. I accepted the challenge and with it the death risk it was carrying. I entered the whirlpool of the game of life, at the heart of the events, of the changes themselves. 6. I was looking for a way out of the burden of the existing social neurosis that was dragging from the diseased system. A very euphoric political atmosphere followed. Lots of parties from various

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proveniences multiplied very quickly, among which there were some with various different tendencies. Many, especially those of the minorities, did not emerge from certain ideological and political determinations, but from their sociological and nationalist ghetto. The Union of Communists of Macedonia no longer had an eschatological mission. It began to lose its role, and with it the false charm of the visionary party. I was more and more impressed by the forced aggression of some members of the Union of Communists of Macedonia and other newly formed parties, especially those from ethnic provenance. 7. I watched dirtiness in the parties, imbued with low passions. Soon vices and indecent blows among them started to emerge. The Union of Communists changed its name twice and soon began to use the old methods in the institutions of the state where it had greater influence. It started to supervise and control; to gossip other parties; to mount and produce affairs, with aspirations to inherit and grab the property of the party from the past. I was driven by the national patriotism, the one that fed me in the youthful days. The love for the independence of the fatherland increasingly paled my interest for a party affiliation. 8. Today I may be obliged to say where my party insensitivity came from in those critical days. Primarily, I would say, from the shocking experience of the atrocity of a party to which I belonged in the nucleus of my maturing, at the time of resistance against fascism, which was nurtured with a mortal challenge in my teenage consciousness.

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The dream of the fatherland lay in the enthusiastic power of that resistance. I was called by the verses of Venko Markovski, Racin, Shopov: “In a fight, in a fight, Macedonian people”, “We are sons of glorious Ilinden people”, “Like steel we are” and so on, in order to dream that dream later on and in a filthy hell to listen to the touching verses, “We are sons of glorious Ilinden people” and in agony, we, the old and the young people from Ilinden, to look at our own death in the dungeons and on the “Stone Island”2. 9. My generation matured prematurely. The fear and cruelty of life threw us out of the age of childhood and we lived in the ages of adults, and felt the great worries of life ahead of time, the great worries of that crucial time, when kingdoms and empires and harsh despots and cults quickly changed. We went through many hardships and sufferings, hunger and poverty, which is how we became hard and resistant, always filled with suspicion and uncertainty. That is how seriousness was planted into us, it lived with us, and we lived in the shadow of the seriousness of the times. And that’s why my party today is my fatherland and the fight for its independence and democracy. This is my ideology and my political conviction. That is the Ilinden's, theVmro’s faith.

2 Goli otok, meaning “Barren island” was the site of a political prison which was in operation between 1949 and 1989 in Yugoslavia. The island was a high-security, top secret prison and labor camp run by the authorities of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in which inmates were forced to labor in a stone quarry, without regard to the weather conditions and were regularly beaten and humiliated.

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10. I am increasingly convinced that the cunning of reason is indicative of the double game history plays, namely, it is progressing from its downside, as Marx would say. For we can say that good intentions pave the way to hell and, conversely, the infernal methods can make progress (Edgar Moren in the book Autocritica). Our history, unfortunately, confirms these findings with the purported liberating character of the Balkan wars in which the ethnic Macedonian organism was torn apart, as well as with the stolen sovereignty of the “Asnom state”3 by the artificial creation – Yugoslavia. Do we still need to feel that bad spite of history, today called continuity, to pave the way to our own hell again? Should new revenges, wars, and blood lead us to “progress,” as Tito’s dungeons and camps of death brought us into “welfare, humanism and paradise”?! 11. And that’s why I observe the world of my surroundings with innocent attention, and with the magic of my fantasy I stretch my thoughts on the white paper. Letters march in a military order. They discover the endless secrets of this world. A world trying to get out of the larva of half a century worth of monstrous nightmares that have dulled our hearing and our senses; a world that tries to overcome the

3 ASNOM (Anti-fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia) was the supreme legislative and executive people’s representative body of the Macedonian state from 1944 until the end of World War II. The first plenary session of ASNOM was convened underground on the symbolic date of August 2 (Ilinden uprising day) 1944 in the St. Prohor Pcinjski Monastery.

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pain and grief filled with fear and uncertainty from the touch of mystery and hellish sleeplessness; and a world of hopes for a happier tomorrow. 12. But this half century ended with a hysterical war, as a consequence of a pyramidal, causal nexus. The illusions about the “most humane” self-managing –Titoist system thoroughly collapsed. Only the conviction that everything was utopia remained. A false picture of wealth, justice, democracy, and freedom. Only the scars of the deviant spirit from the bloody trails and the nameless graves, of the frustrated lives and sorrowful destinies were left to witness. The empty heads of many “intellectuals” remained. The broken characters of countless denunciants, embarrassed executioners and torturers, have been left to pursue thoughts towards suicidal decisions. Before the venomous pressure of that system, many innocent spirits were broken in their youthful flowering, in their professional career and family existence. 13. For these reasons, I would not want young generations to receive kisses on the mouth and slaps at the same time. This is because the ghost of evil still looms. The chained ghosts of all the criminals in those decisive moments blocked the brain and waited the outcome of changes passively, with anxiety and fear. The spiritual poison as a lead plate was pressing upon their psychological restlessness. They were chased and controlled by their own shadow. The fragile characters quickly “liberated” themselves from the filthy denunciatory conscience, from the servitude and submissiveness. They like neophytes and converts ran to rejoin the parties with new names.

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On the other hand, many bloody executioners’ hands smashed their own brains at moments when all their neurons ended in suicidal stresses. Finally, some blazed exemplars from that system, with God’s punishment, remained like embalmed evil, to remind us of the half-century wasteland that they had left onto the bitter destiny of our people. 14. I looked, a little astonished, a little petrified by scorn, how those embellished, dandified, until yesterday “delicate butterflies”, today creep like caterpillars, while the people in the main squares were experiencing the dawn of a new life, which was decisive and important for all of us. The juice of the new life was rapidly circulating inside of us. Among those caterpillars there were also such who climbed the staircase of the party pyramids, to batter them more easily with denunciations, with organized affairs, up to touching allegedly suicides of innocent patriots. Many people scornfully smiled before those horrid facesmasks, with false relationships and constructed scenarios for omnipotent filthy affairs, before their, so to say, Byzantine delirium. 15. My co-workers and I, still insufficiently powerful, burst into the infernal cauldron of the surroundings that clung to us as a steel hoop. Here was the Yugoslav army, the KOS4, the old institutions, the old personnel structure and great psychologically-ideologized

4 KOS (Counterintelligence Service) of the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) that existed between 1946 and the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991.

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ballast with a large majority of the MPs in the Parliament. I felt all this as a painful act, like a sad fatality. However, the mass scenes, these magnificent moments through Macedoniaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s main squares for government policy support, in its struggle for independence, gave me comfort and strength to feel free from the dreadful weight of the historical fatalities that lurked on us. 16. I was filled with a grandiose sense of national pride that in waves called the past to embrace the future. Through our trembling bodies, peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s energy was discharged to water the thirsty country with love and unity â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the free, independent fatherland. These premises became the main motive and impetus for organizing the referendum for an independent Macedonian state. 17. All our efforts were directed towards the hope that the Macedonian man will live freely in his own independent country. We believed that in that hope, all the forces and all the prestige of the archaic magic of the Macedonian primordial are sublimated. That magic, that cunning mind led us to the mystery of events and gave us inner peace and comfort from all possible horrors, evil intentions and dark goals that burdened the immense present, to persevere on the path of Macedonian independence. We believed in boundless love and in this wonderful, inexhaustible source of hopes and expectations of the Macedonian man, the archaic magic to turn one day into reality.

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That day became for us the majestic Eighth of September 19915, worn on the white wings of the two great Ilindens, 1903 and 19446. 18. With all seriousness and with all of my inner thrill, I was sent in front of the joyful face of time. I embraced that joy, so unusual, so magnificent and desired. In those moments, I was flushed with happiness and admiration. I felt the years, the worries, the grief and all the pain that tightened my heart, withering away. I was thirsty for that admiration, that happy flutter among the people. I allowed myself to be drawn by all the enthusiasm of the times and to flow with all the inspiration of that time. I felt that in this massive thrill everyone lived, hopefully, expecting that something will happen tomorrow. I was directing the thought towards the good, the happy, the joyful, but at the same time, the fear of the bad was biting me. We lived in that cruel temptation of the uncertainty of what would happen, of what we expected; because we knew that nothing lasts forever. A rotten organism decays and a new child is born. 19. In that general excitement I started listening to the pulse of the grown heart of the people bouncing, wanting to get out of its painful soul, the soul that was constantly on the run, to escape from the past and escape from the present. That tortured Macedonian soul was doubtful and was afraid of everything. Wild winds

The Day of Macedonian Independence

6 Ilinden Uprising (1903) and ASNOM (1944)

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of history were ruthlessly whipping and writhing her and this escape from the past and the present were restless waves that she eagerly wanted to settle down in her own spiritual harbor. The feeling that my people for the first time looked with confidence in the future made me happy. 20. I was afraid that we in the Government might fall into the clutches of the drunkenness of power. From the euphoric floods of the masses of people on the main city squares, and in front of the Parliament, which gave us support, we became more and more spellbound by the history and we were overwhelmed by the fact that we climbed on the back of history and felt it beneath us, as M. Kundera says (in the novel â&#x20AC;&#x153;Jokeâ&#x20AC;?). I wondered, in those boiling conditions, do we really open the New Page of our History; do we have the right to conduct ourselves with it or it will receive its own natural course. Why! Who are we to hold the wand of the history? And indeed, we tried to create conditions for a more sensible and sober process of social changes, without seeing much of ourselves in it, and still to be here, to be just that primordial force that opens the door for all of us to move in the direction of the historical pace. Were we those? Did we keep the steering wheel of history well in those moments? We will leave it for others, after us, to tell that! 21. The referendum shone with a blinding light. It was steeling the spirit of the people. It fed us with faith and hope for the future. It returned the lost, the stolen. It became a mystical attractive force, a magic that tied us firmly to the code of the Macedonian Ilinden.

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It was becoming increasingly clear that, coming out of the chaotic nightmare and the barbarism of the one-minded system, this code was hidden in many Macedonian hearts and its primordial spirit has not been destroyed. 22. The spectrum of the disintegration of the old one-party system expanded. That system has long been closed in infantile neurosis. The nervous shock of the decaying forces grew. Their defense reflex chaotically weakened. More and more, they coped with the fear of the unclean conscience. They were very diffusely aware of the menacing danger of the survival of the metastatic rotting system. The warm wind of change was cleaning Macedonian regions. We became sowers of that warmth. 23. A membrane of an intoxicating euphoria prevented me from seeing whether in this massive energy and enthusiasm there is no chaos and destructive forces that can cause unwanted extremes. Slowly getting rid of that memory, I began to feel the need for caution. In such conditions, the enzymes of the diastase were boiling, whose activity could lead to alternative logic. It began to appear in various forms: silently or shyly, somewhere even aggressively, especially where it was fed by the centers of the old forces and by KOS. 24. People from the old structures, drawn into themselves, into their own egoism, we would say lost perspective, were not easily manageable to the laconic amazement of the masses of people. And

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these people on the streets and city squares, barehanded, pitiful and stunned before the changes, only by the sense of national patriotism were encouraged and stimulated to support the changes vigorously. 25. Almost all parties in the sphere of political turmoil were characterized by the absence of clear political programs and ideologies. They were only carried by emotions into new mental spaces. But soon the first parliamentary elections were politically differentiated. They did not result in so much from the social stratification as from the initial emotions of the electorate, which turned their feelings towards the values of the national self-narration. In this way, the elections threw to light another massively organized national core that began to politically oppose the existing chaos. Unfortunately, at the same time, all those influences from various sides, political parties and groups with their unreasonable romantic outbursts and demands, created tension with elements of a new chaos, uncritically reviving them without the selection of the totems of the past. 26. In that boiling nonsense, you could hear everything. Parliamentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s walls were sweating of the shame from the sterile speeches or from the proud glorified dignity of our history. Some raised the flags of Ilirida, dreamed for a Great Albania. Others sought their genetic heritage in the military victories of Alexander the Great. Others sought the dream of the Macedonian Reunion of Goce, Aleksandrov, Cento, Brashnarov7, and some others cynical-

Famous Macedonia revolutionaries

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ly threw them into the arms of the Bulgarofilia. Someone strayed out there in a drunken crescendo was looking for a certain Romanistan. In the end, in the shady nests nostalgically buzzed the aggressive appetites for Yugoslavia, whose watchdogs kept the Macedonian Government on a sniper shot. 27. From the parliamentary boot like a storm was spilled anger, despair and love. In that uncontrolled rage, reason often prevailed. Everything remained in the game of the words and in the end the most important decisions were made by acclamation. It was a school and a period of fermentation of parliamentary awareness in the new democratic state. In those conditions a sober catalyst was needed to successfully empty the negative energy. The Government with an exalted sense of national pride cleared the way towards the construction of an independent Macedonian state in a puritan way, with an orthodox love. Should we ask ourselves today what would our destiny have been if we had been left to the spontaneity? Even the slightest hesitation on that road could have led Macedonian people to fatalities.

THE WAY TOWARDS INDEPENDENCE 1. In that Macedonian spring (1991), which mixed itself with the spring which was coming with the bright smiles of the white clouds traveling through the blue Skopje skies, spreading the smell of the blossoming chestnuts and linden trees, I was taken by the hopeful wind of the big changes that were born. The criticism of suspicion and the call for changes was growing inside of me. The call of wisdom and the call of fate were ripening. I surrendered to be taken away by that spring fragrance infused with the passion of the national ascension. With that feeling and enthusiasm, I entered the First Macedonian plural Government, carried by the Beethoven’s maxim “to rejoice through suffering”, passing along the path of the belief that the centuries-old ideals of our people to live in an independent state will be realized, remaining a prisoner of the magic of the victims that multiplied and lurked on me. 2. Those resurrected ideals united our people motivated by the patriotic national and economic-social goal. But with faith, never

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again to do this for an exclusively ideological goal, which can return them back to one-mindedness, fear, uncertainty, and tyranny. Macedonian patriotic tradition as a connective tissue can be expressed with the centuries-old saying: “Death or freedom for Macedonia”. We wanted to establish this slogan and ideal in the Eight-of-September call of the Macedonian people for independence, in order to reconcile and unite, placing the historical scars of its tortured body in oblivion. 3. People without tradition are an amorphous mass. Traditions consist of the thoughts, needs and feelings of the people. They, with their overall connection, monitoring and nurturing, are the synthesis of a nation upon which its existence is based. Without traditions, there would be neither soul of the people nor the development of civilization. As without occasional changes and abandonment of certain traditional norms, customs and habits would have no progress. Traditions of one nation are created and nurtured in a given space and they are a function of time. Time is the only true builder and a great destroyer. All traditional beliefs, ideas and customs appear in a certain period of time, they live, develop, and die. We will agree with Gustave Le Bon who says: “They (the traditions) are the daughters of the past and the mother of the future, but always slaves of the time” - (in the book “Psychology of the crowd”). Accordingly, time is our true master and it is enough to enable it to swing so as to expect the change of all things in all domains of life. 4. The Macedonian patriotic tradition was inspired by the centuries-old struggle for freedom and independence upon which the

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moral character of our man, his purity, faithfulness and belonging were built. If the notion of morality implies constant respect for certain social norms and permanent suppression of personal aspirations, then in the Macedonian tradition were built moral norms of behavior of citizens who with the ordinary right were maximally supported, while respecting certain characteristic features of individuals, such as religion, honesty, self-denial, self-discipline and devotion, a sense of fairness and love for the homeland. That love, the fatherland to become a free and independent state, smoldered in all Macedonian hearts. In some hearts, primordially purer, in others with a mixed taste of foriegn influences. These issues became the main preoccupation of political parties and their parliamentary groups in the Parliament regarding the independence of the Republic of Macedonia. The Government and the Parliament worked days and nights in the summer months of June and July, on those problems. 5. While the Albanian parliamentary group was passing by the hellish whirls in the Parliament from a distance, disinterestedly, silently, and Mr. M. Polozani dreamed of a so called Illyride, Macedonian parliamentary groups were constantly in the grip and politically inspired by various motives and goals, shaped their proposals to the Parliament and the Government. Thus, for example, on July 26, 1991, the parliamentary groups of the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia and the Reforming Forces of Macedonia - Liberal Party, with handwritten signatures of Branko Crvenkovski and Zoran Krstevski, submitted a proposal for adopting a decision for self-determination of the Republic of Macedonia as an independent and sovereign state and for joining an alliance of sovereign states of Yugoslavia through a declaration of the citizens of Macedonia by means of a referendum, with a

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request the proposals to be examined the same day, July 26, 1991, in accordance with Article 344 of the Rules of Procedure, as an urgent procedure. Because of the authenticity and importance of the proposals, I will give them in their original form. The text of the proposal reads as follows:

DECISION

For self-determination of the Republic of Macedonia as an independent and sovereign state and for joining the Union of sovereign states of Yugoslavia. 1. This Decision implements the right of the Macedonian people to self-determine and the right to constitute the Republic of Macedonia as an independent and sovereign state. 2. The Assembly declares the Republic of Macedonia as an independent sovereign state to enter into an alliance of sovereign states of Yugoslavia. 3. This Decision will be applied after the majority of the citizens of the Republic will declare themselves on the referendum. 4. The referendum for voting about the issue from the Decision will be held on September 8th, 1991. 5. By referendum citizens will declare on the following question: Are you for an independent and sovereign Republic of Macedonia and its entry into an alliance of sovereign states of Yugoslavia? Hereinafter, the reasons for the submitted Proposal are explained: For a long period in Yugoslavia there is an ongoing process of separation of some of the republics followed by serious

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difficulties in functioning, even with the failure of certain segments of the state. In such circumstances, the conditions have been met and the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia, that is, the citizens of the Republic of Macedonia, to declare themselves for the further status and for the future of Macedonia. 6. On the other hand, at the same time, on July 27th, 1991, the President of the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia forwarded to the Government of the Republic of Macedonia the proposal of the Parliamentary Group of VMRO-DPMNE for opinion, signed by the Coordinator Mrs. Ratka Dimitrova. The text of the Proposal concerns the draft of

DECLARATION for the independence of the Republic of Macedonia. Article 1 This declaration defines the Republic of Macedonia as an independent state with full sovereignty and state-owned entity. The Republic of Macedonia, as an independent state, in accordance with the norms of international law, guarantees to other states and international organizations that it will fully and conscientiously perform all duties and obligations, as a successor of the former SFRY8, in the part referring to Republic of Macedonia. Article 2 Expressing the independence and sovereignty of the Republic of Macedonia, the Assembly will adopt a new constitution with which, among other things, it will determine the constitutional and legal order of the Republic of Macedonia. 8

Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ)

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The Republic of Macedonia is democratic, legal and social state in which the highest values â&#x20AC;&#x2039;â&#x20AC;&#x2039;of the constitutional right are freedom, equality, social justice, peace, respect for human rights, respect for and protection of minorities, pluralism, inviolability of the privacy, preservation of nature and the human environment, the rule of right and the democratic plural system. Article 3 The Republic of Macedonia, on the basis of sovereignty and independence as the highest form of statehood, protects the rights and interests of its citizens regardless of their religious, ethical and racial background. In its new constitution and legal acts, the Republic of Macedonia will incorporate the basic principles of international law on which the protection mechanism will be based in order to improve the status of ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities. Article 4 The Declaration of Sovereignty and the provisions of this declaration are constituent and starting elements which constitute the constitutional and legal framework of a sovereign and independent Republic of Macedonia, on the basis of which the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia can adopt a constitutional law for proclamation of autonomy of Republic Macedonia. Article 5 With the proclamation of the constitutional law on independence, the assumption for recognition of the Republic of Macedonia as an international legal entity is realized, after which the President and the Government of the Republic of Macedonia will undertake all specific activities for its recognition in the international community. Article 6 With the constitutional law on autonomy, the current borders of the Republic of Macedonia become state borders towards other republics and neighboring countries of the former SFRY.

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Article 7 Republic of Macedonia recognizes the sovereignty and the international legal personality of the new states that arise with the separation from the SFRY within the existing borders of the SFRY and within their respective borders, established by the Constitution or by mutual agreement in a democratic manner. Article 8 With the establishment of an independent and sovereign Republic of Macedonia, it is not desirable to terminate the relations with other republics, nor is desirable the disruption of state, commodity and financial relations or operations. Article 9 This declaration shall enter into force on the day of its adoption and shall be published in the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Official Gazette of the Republic of Macedoniaâ&#x20AC;?. Following are 26 signatures of MPs from the parliamentary group of VMPO-DPMNE. 7. Based on the submitted Decision for self-determination by the SDSM and RSM-Liberal Party parliamentary groups, as well as the Draft Declaration on Independence of the Republic of Macedonia Submitted by the Parliamentary Group of VMRO-DPMNE for an opinion, the Government of the Republic of Macedonia sent to the Parliament of Macedonia on July 28, 1991 the following

OPINION On the occasion of the submitted initiatives of the parliamentary groups in the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia, submitted to the Government for opinion, referring to the constitution of the Republic of Macedonia as a sovereign and independent state, the Government of the Republic of Macedonia bases its response

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on the Conclusions (points 2 and 3) of the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia for the current political and security situation, from the sessions of the Assembly held on 24, 26 and 27 June and 6 July 1991. Namely, in point 2 of the Conclusions the process of independence of the Republic is defined depending on the outcome of the talks with the other countries about the Platform Gligorov-Izetbegovic for constitution of the future Yugoslav community as an alliance of sovereign states. In point 3 it reads: â&#x20AC;&#x153;If the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia assesses that a peaceful and democratic way cannot come to an agreement on the constitution of the future Yugoslav community as an alliance of sovereign states, it entrusts the Government to submit to the Parliament a constitutional law and all other acts that will determine all issues of a constitutional nature by which the Republic of Macedonia, as an independent state, shall undertake the execution of its sovereign rights.â&#x20AC;? * * * The initiatives of the parliamentary groups for independence of Republic of Macedonia (the Decision on the independence of the Republic of Macedonia delivered by the parliamentary groups of the Union of the Reforming Forces of Macedonia - Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia and the Declaration of Independence of the Republic of Macedonia prepared by the parliamentary group VMRO-DPMNE), the Government estimates as useful, but considers that, in the first place, a consensus should be reached in the Assembly, in accordance with points 2 and 3 of the above Conclusions in the Assembly. Therefore, the Government of the Republic of Macedonia informs the Parliament of the Republic of Macedonia that there are possibilities for a referendum to be held as a form of prior declaration on the basic issues that relate to the sovereignty and independence of the Republic. President of the Government Nikola Kljusev, PhD 58

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8. From the above presented it is quite visible which parliamentary group fought and persisted for which aims in the crucial days of 1991, while determining the Macedonian independence. These are radical approaches in the politics of independence of the Republic of Macedonia. While the left block in the Parliament (the Social Democratic Union and the Union of the Reforming Forces of Macedonia-Liberal Party) advocates for selfdetermination of the Republic of Macedonia as an independent and sovereign state and for joining an alliance of sovereign states of Yugoslavia, VMRO-DPMNE fights that the Parliament brings Declarations in which Republic of Macedonia is established as an independent state with full sovereignty and state-legal subjectivity. 9. The government found itself crucified between the proposals of the parliamentary groups and the Conclusions of the Assembly (points 2 and 3) adopted under the influence of the Utopian Platform Gligorov-Izetbegovic for the constitution of a future Yugoslav community as an alliance of sovereign states. That Platform brought confusion in many heads about a certain future Yugoslav community. More precisely, that Platform was the last attempt to save Yugoslavia in the wake of a deepening process of the separation of the republics (Slovenia, Croatia) on whose territory there were bloody events going on. 10. In those acts, the Government did not agree with the formulation given in the Decision of the Left Bloc for Self-Determination of the Republic of Macedonia as an independent and sovereign

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state and for entrance into an alliance of sovereign states of Yugoslavia, but for declaration of Macedonian citizens by the way of referendum and formulated the following question: Are you for an independent Macedonian state with the right to be able to enter into an alliance with all six sovereign states of Yugoslavia? Evaluating the fact that the main part of the question is: “Are you for an independent Macedonian state”, and the section “with the right to be able to enter into an alliance...” is optional because that right implicitly belongs to the independent sovereign state, if it wants, to be able to, i.e. does not have to use it. This right can be used in any future negotiations only as a legal entity of a sovereign independent state and in no other way. With this political platform (independent Macedonian state), the Government called on the people to take part in pre-referendum gatherings and rallies to vote in the referendum. Such were the interpretations of the Government. We do not enter into analyzes of all the goals and interests of the various conspicuous games of individual parties and political manipulators. 11. It is interesting to emphasize that the Government discussed the referendum issue in two sessions. We felt that the President pushed a question very similar to the one submitted in the Decision of the parliamentary groups from the left bloc, written manually by him on a piece of paper given to the Vice Prime Minister Blazhe Ristovski. The following content was written on the paper: “Are you for an independent Republic of Macedonia that should enter into an alliance of sovereign states of Yugoslavia?” We did not pay attention to this unofficial piece of paper and we did not allow it to be expanded to all members of the Government. However, there was a stormy discussion on the Government’s session, especially for the positions stated in the Decision of SDSM and RCM - Liberal Party. Many wondered about the

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essence of the independence. Where are the changes here? Should we join again some Yugoslav League of States? The majority in the Government firmly stood on the stand for separation from Yugoslavia, for an independent Republic of Macedonia. So we accepted our formulation on the issue of citizensâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; declaration on the referendum. We submitted this proposal to the Assembly and we proposed September 8th for the day of the referendum. 12. The road I was passing through in those days penetrated just under the line to which the smell of gunpowder touched from the catharsis of the war. While the people of Croatia and Bosnia were falling into the spasms of dying in a dirty war, Macedonia lived in deep uncertainty as to whether it would enter the tunnel without end or the hopeful hot winds that would blow the fogs of war away from us. My consciousness was split between the hope for the day that was born on one hand, and on the other the fear and the uncertainties that lurked on us. Between those two sides in crescendo I hear voices with lost chords: fuzzy, incomprehensible voices, violent or frightened, insidious voices of deception and shy voices of wisdom. And so I united the grief and the pain with the joy that loomed and in this reconciliation I saw the hope for collective deliverance, that volcano of love for freedom and independence. 13. In the disintegrated Yugoslav space, people in the states which aspired to become independent were as if cursed by God. They slaughtered and killed themselves in the euphoric flow of aggressive territorial appetites with paternalistic intentions, backed by the dark military forces of the Yugoslav Army.

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The awakened belligerent monsters (Kadijevic, Adzic, Kukanjac, etc.) came on the scene and phanthoms began to raise (Seselj, Arkan, etc.) that strengthened their perspectives in aggressive appetites. Behind them, the politicians (Milosevic, Karadzic, Koljevic, etc.) turned their nationalist hope into faith and with their obscure wisdom through sacrifices sought to create new satellite states in the scheme of the paternalistic Serbian state. This â&#x20AC;&#x153;painful birthâ&#x20AC;? took tens of thousands of innocent victims so that in the end the Dayton Accord was humbly signed. That agreement was both a reproach and a lesson about insanity. 14. We strove for humanity and mutual understanding. The geopolitical position of Macedonia in those fateful moments has helped a lot. Any aggressor in the Macedonian territory could have caused a Balkan war. Macedonian people had had enough blood and killing in the past. We wanted to escape from this curse as far as possible. Bloody scars from killing and slaughter weighed in every Macedonian home. Scars from cursed neighbors as well as from their own devious offspring. We, as a Government, were left nothing else but to move away, to stay far from the chaos of the bloody horror of the former Yugoslav space, which took over fifty of our innocent young lives and left over 160 disabled war veterans. At every turn, traps and dangers loomed. We passed through difficult, sleepless nights. 15. The Government, in the main part of its intellectual elite, nurtured humanistic national ideals in which a faith in humanity was igniting; confidence in the Macedonian spirit for independent existence and national pride was stirring.

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Perhaps for some our Government came to this world prematurely. Perhaps some had other goals. But the coming generations will realize what we wanted and what could have been done in a historically significant, but tragic time. 16. I dived into a world of closed horizons and a world of euphoric enthusiasm and boundless desire for changes. These two worlds were more or less stunned in space and time. Ones, lost and scared enough, saw the future blurred by the blindness of the fading idyll. Tears on the nostalgic eyes were weighing at their eyelashes. Others, imbued with new cosmic energy, with stirred hearts searched for the path lost in the thorny Golgotha â&#x20AC;&#x2039;â&#x20AC;&#x2039;of their ancestors. Those two worlds in the Parliament were occasionally reconciled by the fate by making the first steps towards the future precisely when they poured out cruelty among themselves. These two worlds, in spite of the cruelty in their mutual discussions, were still able to pass the most significant acts in the creation of the Macedonian independent state. The mutual smile was not missing on their faces. In joyous moments, they looked at each other cheerfully, while some out there in the corners were cynically sinking into wickedness, dreaming of another world, a world of hatred, separations and ghettoization. 17. But soon after that destiny played with them. The paradox of history was repeated again. In the painful gap the idyll of the socalled continuity in the one-way viewing of the future continued in which the seed of multinationality was conceived â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the seed of split and hatred. Sick, wild coalitions and alliances emerged, only for the power to be grabbed with devastating actions on the national being and state recovery.

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Shameful bargains and national humiliation took place on the stage, outside â&#x20AC;&#x201C; for changing the flag and the name of the state; at home â&#x20AC;&#x201C; blackmailing the education system and establishing wild universities, changing the flag, failure to adopt state coat of arms, inserting personnel keys for minorities in the Army of the Republic of Macedonia, in the security and justice, in diplomatic services, to the detriment of quality and the standards of the desired civil state, such criteria which the civilized world does not know and does not respect. 18. My thought, amplified by the fear of our surroundings, seemed as if it wanted to discourage me. Events everyday encouraged me in practical actions to go deeper into the examination of our concrete possibilities, in the manner of their usage, in the phases of the implementation of the adopted decisions and so on. The Government burned in search of the growing needs of the future. Roads were sought for a quicker way out of the crisis chaos. The road we chose for autonomy and independence was difficult and painful, but the only possible. We evaluated that not everything and everywhere was blurred. We searched and discovered new horizons of the truth through which our view began to loom, capturing the landscape and its brilliance. This shine brightened our truth â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the independent Macedonian state. 19. Everyday events reflected our path. These events directed the headlights so that we could walk more clearly and boldly along the path of independence. The idea for an independent state with magical attraction gathered the best, the most sacrificial, the ideally virgin from all of us towards one goal, to change life, to return to the primordial,

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to the centuries of countless sacrifices, to throw away hatred and fratricide in order to get rid of our shame and to restore the pride of our historical feats. 20. I cannot say for myself, but I want to know if and how lucid I was in my actions in those disturbing moments or was I a blind believer carried by the euphoric waves that splashed me. Turning to those moments, I am increasingly convinced that naturally I have been preparing myself for the inevitable that the changes demanded, so as not to be rejected by the world of reality or, more precisely, by the changes that ripened and built that world of the new reality. We accepted this new reality in order to give it juices of growth, to give it wisdom to accept the changes, to change the world that was pressing us for half a century. My feeling dragged me to the crowds that demanded change. Their revolt fulfilled me intimately and I was tied up with their desires. I became their need, their necessity and catalyst. That natural union happily built the citadel of our independence. I was filled with a sense of pleasure listening to the lyrical melody of the events and I was more and more captivated by the creativity of the times. 21. I followed the political discussions distracted. More and more episodes in my memory store were added. Many of them were chaotic, filled with nostalgic whining for the Yugoslav federation that broke up in the turmoil. Others, unstoppable, explosive performances, less romantic, less visionary, carried messages and wishes for changes in the construction of the new future. The latter increasingly touched my thoughts, climbed all the way up the

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stairs through which my thought traveled. This mosaic of the said absorbed itself in the Assembly walls: “We want an independent state out of the Yugoslav communist federation, we want a free, democratic, national state of the Macedonian people, we want our own army, our own currency, our own football team, we want ... “ 22. The surge for living in an independent state was euphoric. And just in moments when the belief in the changes brought me with a leverage to the future and more and more in the hug of their shine, I began to feel among some of those who surrounded me the veil of doubt, their views were filled with skepticism, with terrible negation, and behind them the shadow of egoism crawled, and above all, their disloyalty. My anger against those who remained stuck in the nostalgia towards Yugoslavia was increasingly waving around in my mind. I said to myself, where does this Titoist orthodoxy come from when his “stronghold” disappears into dust? 23. I respect the changeability of natural and social movements. I believe in the big changes and I do not want to separate our glorious Ilinden past from the future. I do not want to blur the past with the present and the future. Reflecting on the changes and searching for the future, I am inspired by the struggle and the aspiration of my people in the past, as something strong, objective, as our reality and the necessary continuity of the current phenomena. In doing so, I would like some of the dirty waters to remain in the past in order not to obscure the glitter of the new springs. That magic infuses me with new energy. I experience the present as an accomplished past, and I increasingly look forward to the future with a desire to enrich the

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present, to give it meaning and content, to remove the wild tendrils in order to recover the fruitful stems. 24. No one has the right to suppress, to underestimate, or to neglect the conflicting views of the present, the past and the future. No one has the right to a monopoly over history and no one has the right to commit violence against it. The autonomous will of man, as fruit of his ethics and worldview, should freely open up space so that he can try to accept the consciousness of the past, the demands of the present and the impulses towards the future, without violence and ideologized historical pressures of various political apologists. In the moments of our action (1991-1992), the present was stirred, tumultuous and lively, and the future mysteriously undetected, but hopeful. This agitated present melted its own glaze and pushed us to reach the mysticism of the future. We did this in order to melt the false historical glaze as soon as possible, because our wishes, our dreams for the future, for which we vigorously fought, were a consolation for the victims and the misery from our near past. 25. I, with wide arms, raised my eyes toward our excited people as the plants look toward the sun. For me, the independent state became a political, ideological and moral obsession. It became a common human premise in my actions whose superego had been deeply rooted into my being and my consciousness. The bell of independence strongly resounded in my pride. My faith in independence was not a means to hide the suspicion in it, as some did, who even tried to lose themselves or hide in front of the historical memory in order to show them-

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selves as intrusive later, when the independence triumphed, as its leaders. Independence for me had no alternatives and it was not contradicted by reserves and doubts. 26. Our state was not created by the moral cowards that were never bravely upright before the barricades of the opponent and therefore, we cannot expect them to save it now. The freedom of our people is not free. It costs time, means, sacrifices, and a lot of work. However, slavery is free, as Frye says. Freedom must be gained with a struggle, because an empty prayer and an apathetic people even God does not help. 27. Unfortunately, opposite tendencies also emerged. Namely, some forces persistently wanted to push the Government into a state of political catalepsy. We reacted fiercely and opposed any political pressure or blockade of the Government. Our political determination at those moments was clear: fast building of the institutions of the independent state in the spirit of constitutional determinations and political tolerance between the parties and their MPs in the Parliament. 28. Our government quickly faced many alchemists from the old system. They were anchored at the top positions. With their perverse antinomies, they Machiavellisticaly defended the conflicting interests of certain parties and minorities to the detriment of Macedonian people, only to be able to rule.

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Everyone was right for them. The truth was on all sides, forgetting that the final losers are the people and the state. With a semantic fraud, they explained the phenomenon of transition using Aesopean language in order to blur and conceal the truth from the people. Practice accurately confirmed this in the later period. 29. With those political manipulators, destiny has joined us into a critical time. While we in the Government endeavored to work and live for the good, for the happiness of the people in the creation of the independent Macedonian state, they frivolously composed the song for the pastoral co-existence of the lamb and the hungry wolf, sacrificing the Government in a dishonest and wretched way. I stood with dignity and I dismissed their apocryphal story in Parliament with a moral reputation. 30. And despite our perception of such phenomena that were created, above all, by the President and the manipulators in that period around him, we showed maximum tolerance in cooperation. We did not expect that the mean methods would reach so deeply, so immorally and demagogically, to the degree of disfiguration. The negative repercussions of such actions that we feel and experience today require that the main creator and his exponents bear the responsibility. For he pulled the carpet from under the feet of all of his friends and associates (Vasil Tupurkovski, Petar Goshev, Ljubco Georgievski, Miter Arsovski and the Prime Minister with the members of the First Democratic Government of the Republic of Macedonia, etc.) in order to take over the whole

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power in his hands. No one else but him held the strings of all those insidious games in his own hands. 31. The president of the state, with insidious, cunning methods, made a terrible concentration of domestic and especially foreign information. He provided information to the Government in doses, closing every movement of ideas in his mysterious illusion by which he governed over the entire society. Throughout his sieve, all information and mutations in the social structure were sowed and controlled. He formally sought to relativize political conflicts between the parties and their representatives in the Parliament, with the charm of the “spiritual father of the nation”, working intensively in favor of his party (SDSM). In essence, organized erosion was done in the ranks of the other parties, with a particular endeavor to block and destroy the largest national party VMRO-DPMNE. His cabinet became a terrible duplex of the Government. Totalitarian concentration of political, military, and diplomatic power was increasingly manifested. I felt that I should draw his attention to the motives of why he was doing that. He answered laconically: “I want to help you with the operation of the Government”. In practice, it was impediment by the refined method of controlling the government and establishing a system of autocratic governance. At first, I nurtured a feeling of a friendly trust: exchanging thoughts, using the experience, and mutual respect. But later it started falling apart, and he became deprived of the aureole of his mystical and eschatological excuses in my eyes.

IN THE WHIRL OF THE REFERENDUM APOTHEOSIS 1. The inherited ideas of Macedonian independence had such a strong momentum in our people, that they greatly stimulated and activated behaviors in the mass response to the referendum. These ideas have gone through all stages of resistance and struggle, and have grown such that they became the only ones determining our behavior and opinion, our activity, and our word. When such ideas are anchored in the soul of the people, they become an incredible force throwing into light a whole range of diverse effects. They are based in our considerations on the associations of freedom, democracy, independence, national independence, and pride. That was the motive and the bright hope in the referendum. Although it should be said that the categorical understanding of the words democracy, social justice, equality, freedom, etc., whose meaning is very indeterminate and as such in our country are not clearly defined, has a strong influence in the consciousness of people.

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2. In certain historical moments a magical power is linked around these words, as if the solutions to all life problems can be found in them. This was also very evident in the euphoric moments of the referendum from September 8th 1991 on Macedonian independence. Human reason and arguments were not able to confront these notions and slogans. In front of the people, they were communicated with such love and devotion that they immediately produced respect and mass approval because a supernatural power for deliverance was seen in them. It is precisely this insufficient definition of these terms that increases their mysterious force. That are mysterious, authoritative and inspiring words in which the believer trusts fully, thrilled and in agony. 3. However, in the same social community, the same words have different meanings for various social strata. In light of this, Tocquevilleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s thought is often used: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Some seemingly use the same words, but never speak the same languageâ&#x20AC;?. The situation was very similar with our Macedonian ascend in the time of the Referendum and in the times that followed. Namely, did we all give the same meaning to those words, or some people understood differently the democracy and the freedom of man, the national independence, and the perceptions of the national and social state? For quite a short period of time experience in our country has thrown to light some very significant and contradictory understandings of these notions. What was freedom for someone meant satanization of thought and spirit to others; what was national patriotism for some, meant national treason to others; what was social justice for some meant enrichment and robbery for others;

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what was free will and initiative of the individual for someone, for others meant limitation and pressure. 4. Unfortunately, this is also seen in many other countries in the world. Thus, for example, the notion of democracy, as well as the term social justice, in some countries is understood differently. Basically, for these notions, there are conflicting ideas and representations in the Latin and Anglo-Saxon nations. In that sense, with Laffan (in the book â&#x20AC;&#x153;Psychological laws and the evolution of the nationsâ&#x20AC;?), the word democracy basically denotes a loss or withdrawal of the will and initiative of the individual before the will and the initiative of the community, i.e. to the collective interests represented by the state. The state is obliged to manage with all, to centralize, to monopolize, and to produce everything that is needed. Among the Anglo-Saxons, and especially in America, the same word democracy means something quite the opposite, that is, intense development of the will of the individual, and less power of the state, from which is taken away all management except police, military and diplomatic relations, even the education. Accordingly, the same word (democracy) among some nations represents absence of individual will and instead, concentration of all power in the state, while among others it means the development of the will and initiative of the individual without any participation of the state. 5. Our creative imagination is an ability to form images and performances that go beyond reality, and it is not, neither can it be, a mere copy of reality. It creates a new life, invents a new spirit, and opens eyes that have new types of visions.

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Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why the most significant and the richest events penetrate inside us long before the soul notices them. When we start opening our eyes to the visible, we have long been a devotee of the invisible, as Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Annunzio says (in the book Contemplation for Death). In this sense, the true creation, as a fruit of the creative imagination, represents a function of awakening. For these reasons we wanted to awaken the dreams and hopes of our people to live freely in their own country, to awaken their own dreams and open their eyes to see the future. 6. The desired independence smoldered in the great joy on the main squares in the Macedonian cities. Thousands of hearts bubbled like a volcano in the Skopje City Square. They spilled into the magnificent whirl of the victorious Referendum. In those happy moments, the main part of the Government, filled with patriotic feelings, walked along the main street (11th of October) towards the City Square. I looked around; the city did not have its usual look. It seemed to pulsate faster, as if it were smiling at us, as if it were caressing us. 7. I rushed to get into that space, in the square, among the people, whose breadth of the views merged with the breakthrough of the desires and love that sprang from their eyes towards the fatherland and in the shadow of the memory of the joys that I experienced there, I fell, and I fall even today, into a delight. 8. Everything was solemn. The houses had windows wide open and their balconies were full of people. Cheerful musical chords hit the square. Columns of people were moving along the streets

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playing music, waving flags and banners that read, “Let live the independent Republic of Macedonia”, “Long live the free and independent Republic of Macedonia” and so on. Long columns of blue workers’ uniforms, youths, students, the poor class of people from the suburbs, people from the city bazaar, citizens with flowers in their hands, without being called, were flowing down to the center of the city. 9. The square smelled of victorious libertarian breath and made us intoxicated with admiration and joyful enthusiasm for the newborn. It was the day that we so impatiently waited for. It was the day of the Macedonian ascension. The path opened for brave, youthful steps to start moving towards the future. They walked over their parents’ former bloody traces, who in protesters’ columns, marched towards the square half a century ago, with a joined look towards the south “We do not want to go to Srem”9. These touching traces have become a call for the sons to be the guardians of the independent fatherland, a call for their revived ideals. In the joint spirit of the generations on the square, the song echoed triumphantly. The square absorbed the joys in admirable, nation-wide harmony. 10. In that wonderful spectacle that fluttered from the jubilant breath of the people, the victorious Referendum splashed the Macedonian land with tears of joy and the vigorous sources of our prehistory flowed to fill all our hopes of this century.

9 Srem (The Syrmian Front) was an Axis line of defense during World War II. Around 25.000 Macedonian warriors were sent there.

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All over Macedonia, the voice of the President of the Election Commission reverberated when he announced that from all of the voters who went to the polls (over 70%), around 93% voted in favor for an independent Macedonian state. The enthusiasm for the widespread support of the referendum was mixed with the hopes, smiles, and songs of masses of people among which were the members of the Macedonian Government. We called the President of the state. After a while, he arrived, and we all went towards the podium in the center of Skopje. Champagne was opened, for the historical moment had to be memorized... the beloved birthday of the independent Macedonian state. A harmony of euphonious Macedonian songs was heard, a spontaneous majestic choir of thousands of mouths was singing the apotheosis of Macedonian independence. 11. In a happy fluttering, my thoughts brought me to the yard of the monastery of St. Prohor Pchinski, when in my immaturity on August 2nd (Ilinden) in 1944, I was kissing the holy Macedonian land on the day of the birth of the ASNOM state and in the night: We walked at a pace unstoppable, rapid, through rivers and living trails, towards Preshevo, Bujanovac, Ristovac. We celebrated Your birthday Mother, on the borders of Your eaves. The bloody struggle was a festive firework for us in front of Your altar, our gift and legacy. (from the book of poems The Power of the Word)

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That symbiosis which merged generations in the spirit of Ilinden ideals was permanently embedded in my consciousness and makes me proud of my life path, dignified to keep walking. 12. I experienced that spectacle in its historical pace. And I said, all of the beauties of life rest over the time, over the future. That inexorable rhythm links the past with the future. For a nation without a future is a nation without desires. We were filled with immense wishes for the future. With trembling joy I saw how that entire spectacle creates beauty. I am pleased to realize that it is a wonderful picture in all its scope, that there is some kind of inner beauty, some kind of active beauty that pulses harmoniously. I feel that triumphant breath of the people with all of its wonder, glowing in the colorful world of nature, breathing, and from the eyes of people flows a magnificent outburst of bliss. At those moments, I was astonished by the motives of the universal human values that were connecting us: friendship and love, trust and faithfulness, pride and dreams, freedom and courage, unity and sacrifice, in a word, humanity. 13. I feel calm joy. I see the city, our city of Skopje, left on the whims of the mild early autumn, and from the peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s love and admiration of the City Square radiates the spiritual and temporal power. Everything from the scenery passes in my trembling soul and I struggle to remember it for a long time, although at the same time I know that I cannot go back to the same instant of joy, admiration or pain. I cannot experience in the same way again, those merry days, those smiling faces, those pleasant events and historical moments.

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14. I turn around at the podium and notice that there are none of the leaders of the parties represented in the Parliament, except the leader of VMRO-DPMNE. I ask the Minister of Information. He does not know. He hasn’t been informed. I ask the chief of the protocol. He does not know either. After a while, I receive information from the Interior Minister that some members of the parties Converties, among whom Branko Crvenkovski, and others, were seen in a disco-bar, and the President of the Parliament and President of the Pro-Yugoslav Reform Party, Mr. Stoyan Andov had been spotted on the southern border, in the Dojran-Gevgelija region, on the way to Thessaloniki. The Government, the General Secretary and the Ministry of the Interior were not informed of his leaving the Republic. Recently, I heard him giving a statement on a journalist’s question in front of TV Skopje that he “went to the international fair in Thessaloniki to examine the pulse of the Greeks for our Referendum”. How incredibly funny! This is because, without the knowledge of the Government, the President of the Parliament cannot perform such an activity. It is not within the scope of his activities. 15. The disruptive activity of the KOS agency was widespread, that the referendum would not succeed, and KOS and the Yugoslav army would liquidate the Macedonian Government as secessionist and nationalist, because it wanted to secede from Yugoslavia. Certainly in those plans there were “saviors” who would take over the power in Macedonia. Certainly, here were the many pro-Yugoslav parties to carry out this filthy act.

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16. While we were asking about the absence of certain party leaders and parliamentary officials, in my eyes and in the eyes of the members of the Government, the optics of the seen started breaking. I already felt suspicion on their faces, sarcasm, and anger against those who were running away or hiding from the success of the Referendum or those who supported the horrors of the war. Those awful absurdities were rippling my mind, pressing my thought to dive into the roots of those absurdities, and I wondered if some people live with them as a result of the trapped ideological thought, or whetheer the fear plucks their desire and love for independence.

Fearful View of the Independence 1. And so, while some experienced the admirable elation of the independent state, along with the majority of the members of the Government, others, tied with the umbilical cord to Yugoslavia, were increasingly skeptical with the idea for â&#x20AC;&#x2039;â&#x20AC;&#x2039;independence, not seeing an exit outside of that closed circle of Yugoslavia. They pointed out loudly that Macedonia could not survive alone, neither economically nor defensively. They looked at Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav Army as their only protector. Such rumors were massively spread by the military establishment in Macedonia through the network of KOS and the Belgrade press. Some parties, as well as a group in the Parliament from the left-wing political party, worked on this platform very actively; with their syncretism they remained persistent successors of the continuity. Later, many of those people altered their features, attitudes and views in their Machiavellian pragmatism. 2. Some of the ministers (Denko Maleski, and in a certain sense Risto Damjanovski), watched and acted towards the idea of an

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independent state with cowardliness, irony, and finally with contempt. D. Maleski stated: “Independence only without me”. In your life, you will often hear, says Edgar Morin, that “People are not degraded by the great blows of fate, but by the imperceptible and easy detouring.” But was it an easy and imperceptible detour? He who judged (the President of the state) gave this kind of assessment: “Leave the man, we do not want to lose him. He does not think so.” The Government condemned D. Maleski’s opinion as hesitant, but President Gligorov vigorously defended him and protected him in the Parliament when his demise was demanded. Unfortunately he could not force himself to do the same when the fall of the Government was at stake. The bottom side of the emerging repercussions was already becoming clear. A philosophy was defended, a general determination, not a person. The person in this case was an exponent through whose crescendo echoed the accords of the composer. 3. Undoubtedly, Maleski was an intelligent person. He had a critical, but corrosive thought, which I called cynical. In those moments, his thought, filled with suspicion and cunning cynical tone which demolishes, created revolt and repulsion with other members of the Government, and even the youngest minister Lj. Frckovski during a session of the Government asked him to stop his “silk – salon diplomacy”. His religious attachment to Yugoslavia, covered with a sentimental veil, acted astonishingly before the urge for establishing an independent state.

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4. Everyone carries in oneself, more or less deeply, a layer of doubt, doubt of his own nothingness, of self- alienation, of closeness. Doubt for the unfathomable, untouchable, for the desired, and for the inexperienced. The drill of doubt constantly touches the heart, touches the thought, and it lives in anxiety. Metastases of cancer that bite the substance of our life are met in a kind of void. But in such depressions, disappointments, and misfortunes, the diseased organism creates its own defense mechanism â&#x20AC;&#x201C; antibodies, or, rather, its counter voids. In doing so, our persistent willingness to survive, to live, discharges endless hope, like a spring, that we will overcome or at least neutralize the illness, the disaster. In that magic we all fight to overcome the doubt, the nothingness which presses us from the inside. 5. I believed in overcoming the doubt, and that all those hesitant like D. Maleski would do it as well. But in our case, we will leave it for other researches. In conditions where uncertainties lurk, disillusionments, hesitations, despondencies occur, regardless of what the question is, people are overwhelmed with defeatism and fear. In the difficult days of temptations, such as those in 1991-1992, misunderstandings occured about the problems that the Government and other institutions and organizations of the State were taking into consideration. 6. I experienced those disappointments with a heavy heart, especially from some members of the Government, and I tried to

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be maximally tolerant of certain internal disagreements directed by distinct groups and parties. Some expressed disappointments (Tsvetan Grozdanov, Dimitar Dimitrov), others faintheartedness (Goce Petreski). 7. In the case of Dimitar Dimitrov, as the Minister of Education, there were pressures to perform the government educational program, as well as pressures on his personality in order to deviate from that program and leave it to the wild processes imposed by the President of the state with a group of PDP members. D. Dimitrov was asked to increase the number of Albanian classes in secondary education and pedagogical records and documentation to be kept in Albanian, contrary to the government program. Prof. D. Dimitrov kept himself pretty dignified. But, in his revolt, he hurried with his resignation. It did not give the government the opportunity to support him to persevere in his efforts. I reluctantly accepted his irrevocable resignation. After his departure, erosion in the Ministry of Education occurred, with visible negative repercussions in the educational policy. The chaotic processes in that domain continue to act decisively to this day. It was confirmed by the student demonstrations related to the growing reputation from the passing of the Law on the Pedagogical Academy in 1997, which institutionalizes the teaching of Albanian language in higher education. Undoubtedly, this shameful anti-constitution act will remain as a historical scar, to remind us of the political defensive of the then ruling nomenclature. In the case of academician Tsvetan Grozdanov, in the Ministry of Culture, political thugs from the left bloc blocked the process of realization of the Program of the Ministry. The same forces, especially at the top of the University, were opposed to the draft law on science and the issue of autonomy

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of the University. The Minister of Science Academician Georgi Efremov pledged his authority for radical quality changes in the field of science and higher education, but the nostalgic forces towards the old insistently broke the process of change that continues to this day. 8. At the same time, I was cruelly irreconcilable towards various currents of some external exponents who in various forms, through the media, the press, and through the parliamentary boot, opposed to our path towards independence. In moments of joy I felt a happy weight in the soul. I was filled with the subtle breath of collegiality, intimacy and cooperation in the majority of the government composition. From the strength of that breath, of that marvelous unity and respect, I was almost defeated. I highly appreciated it and the encouragement filled me with enthusiasm for new ventures. 9. I hear voices, I read letters of support saying, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The first government was the birth of happiness, our hope and our love, but someone immediately wished it to die the moment it appeared, because it had its own autochthonous path towards the goal, creating an independent state of the Republic of Macedonia.â&#x20AC;? Such support from the people filled me with new creative energy to stay on the way towards independence. In those moments my soul was filled with waves of happiness, delight, and gratitude. 10. There were also those who watched or still see Macedonia as an ethnically amalgamated amorphous mass through whose bliss-

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ful ideal flies the dove of peace. They forgot that such a look, however sweetened by the taste of some external and inner sweet appetites, brings in every Macedonian heart a hurricane of explosions, cataclysms for the Macedonian nation and state. We, in the Government, noticing such tendencies in their original form, vigorously distanced ourselves. We were weaving the folkloristic carpet on which the independent state should stand, as a unitary state of the Macedonian people, respecting the rights of all its minorities. 11. In my dialectical thought remains that the struggle between what is born and what is dying represents the motor law of history. And I began to be pressed by a vague premonition that the great changes we are facing require from us a great turn towards the future, and this, in turn, will require the sacrifice of the leaders or, more precisely, our sacrifice. All the hopes and suspicions, all our anger, love, and despair were absorbed in the mystical magic of the Macedonian ascension. The Yugoslav army demanded our liquidation. I stayed at a distance from the Army because my liquidation was required. I endeavored to avoid its immeasurable mental spaces where the satellite thought spread of their various executioners and murderers. 12. But they probably felt that each of our victims would transform our hope into the messianism of the future. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why they may have given up their evil intentions. Unfortunately, only one mysterious victim remained, Interior Minister Jordan Mijalkov, to remind us forever of the mysterious plans for sacrifice, the generations to remember the price of our deprivation of the thorny path towards independence.

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13. Dark thoughts settled their souls, and did not enter spring winds of historical change to blow them away. The great social draught did not purify them. The smell of the Eight-of-September referendum did not give birth to new thoughts or new wishes for them. But we will leave that for other researches to examine calmly, more intensely and with arguments, the sinking truth of those dark thoughts, their ontological nature and the effect of the temporal factor that conditioned them. Such thoughts and revolt against the independence of the Republic of Macedonia was not accidental. It carried the recognizable taste of a certain Yugoslav union that was nostalgically smoldering and evaporating from their souls.

THE GOVERNMENTâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S INSISTENCE FOR ADOPTING A NEW CONSTITUTION 1. The successful completion of the Referendum opened the doors for building the legal institutions of the independent Macedonian state. The basis of this effort was the adoption of a new constitution of the independent state, on the basis of which all systemic laws will be adopted. Although on January 25th, 1991, in the adopted declaration on the sovereignty of the Republic of Macedonia it was demanded that a new constitution should be drafted that would determine the new social order and the new character of the Macedonian state, the Constitutional Commission was very slowly performing its competences regarding the preparation of the constitution. More precisely, at its first meetings, the debates were focused on the clearing of some political determinations dominated by the ideological approaches of political parties represented in the Parliament. The cruelty of the discussions was focused on clearing up questions about the character of the state, civil or national; the holder of the sovereignty; the position of the majority and minorities; the use of the official language; the rights and freedoms of the citizens, etc.

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Clearing these issues often blocked the work of the Constitutional Commission and temporarily prolonged the drafting of the constitution. 2. Prior to the act of determination for independence, the country has found itself in a legal vacuum. The entire legal system functioned according to the still existing Yugoslav legal order. Many acts proposed by the Government, which were accepted by the Parliament, came under attack of the Constitutional Court, which orthodoxly maintained the old legal dogmas. 3. Along the streets and on the main squares of Macedonian cities, mothers in stress and tears searched for their sons dragged from the Yugoslav army on the battlefields in Croatia and Bosnia. There was not enough bread in the shops, milk, oil, sugar; columns of cars were waiting in front of the gas stations. Belgrade press sowed defeatism that Macedonia was unable to survive on its own. Some of our Yugo-flunkies in their nostalgic dreams wished a return to the hugs of their old brother. Part of our press and media opened an intensified campaign against the Government, fabricated affairs, to throw lies over Jordan Mijalkov, Georgi Naumov, over me, and so on. Everything was criticized. 4. The Constitutional Court annulled a number of our decisions and laws by protecting the constitution of the period of one-mindedness. The Government found itself in a clinch. I vigorously stood in the Parliament against the patchwork of old laws. I asked

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for a faster adoption of the new constitution of the state we were building ourselves. 5. With a desire to help and speed up the work of the Constitutional Commission, I decided, even though the government was not competent to prepare a draft for the constitution, anyway to do so. I assigned Minister Lj. Frchkovski, who led the Commission for the Political System in the Government, to form a working group and to proceed urgently towards drafting a new constitution. I was surprised when, after 2-3 months, sometime in June-July 1991, he brought to the Cabinet the first draft of the Constitution. After brief consultations and consideration in the Government, I forwarded this proposal to the Constitutional Commission, which worked on its basis for 3-4 months, until it was accepted and established as a draft for the Assembly. Thus, the Constitution was adopted on November 17th, 1991. 6. The new Constitution established in its preamble the historical, cultural, spiritual and state heritage of the Macedonian people and its century-old struggle for national and social freedom and the creation of their own state. It embedded the state-law traditions from the Krushevo Republic and the historic decisions of the ASNOM state. This effort in the Constitution summarizes the historical fact that Macedonia is constituted as a nation state of the Macedonian people, which ensures full civic equality for all minorities: Albanians, Turks, Vlachs, Roma and others. On these constitutional foundations, the Republic of Macedonia should be built as a sovereign, independent, democratic, and social state with an inseparable, inalienable, and non-transferable sovereignty that arises and belongs to all citizens in the country.

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In doing so, the construction of a modern, democratic society in the spirit of the Constitution maximizes the freedom and rights of the citizen in the spiritual and material being; in the free expression of national affiliation; the rule of law, as well as the division of state power into legislative, executive, and judicial; respect for political pluralism and organization of free and direct democratic elections; legal protection of property; market freedom and entrepreneurship; respect for humanism, social justice, and solidarity; organization of local self-government and support of generally accepted norms of international law. 7. With the introduction of the new Constitution, were created institutional frameworks have for building a radically new political and economic system, in which the ideological misconception of the one-party socialist system is definitely abandoned and new possibilities for building a free, democratic-pluralistic society are opened up. 8. At the same time, the Constitutional Law for pronouncing the Constitution was adopted. In the Parliament, a very critical temperamental discussion was held on the question of whether to continue to the passing of the Constitution together with the Constitutional Law, or to pass the Constitutional Law first, and then the Constitution. The views of the parties were opposed. The position of the Constitutional Commission to adopt the two acts was accepted. The Government proposed that the Constitutional Law should be valid for a year and for that time the basic systemic laws should be adopted and new elections should be conducted. This was contained in Article 10 of the Constitutional Law.

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Unfortunately, without informing the Government and without its support, the Assembly arbitrarily, which is unprecedented in its work, sneakingly voted, instead of “at the longest for one year to be conducted new elections in the spirit of the Constitutional Law”, in Art. 10 to stand only... “until the new elections”. In this way, Parliament carried out a diversion, extending its mandate, as well as the mandate of the President of the state, whose continued work was in collision with the new constitution. Namely, the President elected by the Parliament cannot rule and implement a new constitution because the new constitution stipulates that the election of a president of the state should be carried out in secret elections by all adult citizens of the state, and for the duration of the Constitutional Law, but no longer than one year after the adoption of the Constitution. This is evident in Article 10 of the Constitutional Law, which explicitly states: “The election of the President of the state, of the Government and of the deputies in the Parliament will remain until the new elections.” As it is known, contrary to the Constitutional law, only the Government was voted mistrust, and the other bodies remained, under the false interpretation, to be formed a political Government. Although the First Government was elected precisely by the Parliament with more than two-thirds votes, which means that it enjoyed the trust of all political parliamentary parties in order to pronounce the Constitutional Law, which it was hindered to do.

PRIVATIZATION PHENOMENA 1. The socialist system as an offspring of a violent ideology, using the mechanisms of political (state) coercion in the forties and fifties, wanted to unite what was naturally divided. Various state coercive measures were used: nationalization, expropriation, confiscation of the wealth of fictitious war riches, forced cooperative enterprises, etc. In doing so, it was forgotten that only alchemy can manage to unite heterogeneous elements. In social development, this process of concentration of the productive forces can successfully be carried out by economic laws. Economic coercion with the force of exactness acts instead of palliative improvisations of state coercion. The history of our generation has unambiguously confirmed this. 2. Today we are witnessing how the state gets into new improvisations. With the same subjective forces and with political coercive measures, the state conducts a process of privatization, i.e. decomposition of the so-called social ownership.

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This process both in the first and in the second case was forgetting the man, his motivation, his existence, his social consciousness, and his biological destiny. The disintegration of the capital with political measures slows down or deforms the process of new social stratification. In the new social milieu, an army of hungry people was marching (the unemployed, the redundant workers) for whose fate nobody thought. The new accidental profiteers were being silent behind the discrete state cover. Politically supported by various criminal activities, they pampered themselves in the joint split of the devalued social capital. 3. The privatization process does not give effects without acting on the legality of the economic price of the fixed assets and on that basis without establishing a real capital for initiating a new investment cycle for economic development. Social charges are being cumulated with anger and despair. Where is the wisdom of the desired social state? We remain confident though that human destiny is interconnected with the tin of wisdom (Kundera). But where do we look for the answers for the man and his future? We already star hearing whispers that our future is beginning to become a secret covered with the veil of great uncertainties! 4. I would like to be taught by the goddess of wisdom, Athens, whether I should silence my critical spirit with regard to these omnipotent compromises and robberies imposed by the delirium of the system, or should I quietly retreat and opportunistically

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shut up. Something is scratching my thoughts. Will all these compromises, for such sale and, I would say, a specific robbery, lead to peace and prosperity? Unfortunately, I feel that my professional call makes me understand that these compromises are weak and painful, fulfilled with coincidences and organized greedy interests. Such policy can be judged as a wild nexus with temporary impulses of social peace, whose price is a “peaceful” acceptance of the chaos before explosion. Such policy becomes a servant of power in its own powerlessness, and that’s why I put myself on the side of the critical spirit that requires a democratic alternative out of the chaos. 5. Maybe I’m too critical and I do not see that even in bad intentions a good idea may be hidden?! I know that in this period of euphoria, in this rush of new quests, when there are no global strategic determinations of development and built mechanisms and instruments of the system, in the abundance of ideas, no matter from which side they originate, we will be able to recognize faith and deceit, visions for the future, and hypocrisy of the present. 6. We live and think in contradictions. Therefore, we need to keep lurking constantly, not to fall into the traps of evil, thinking that we are serving the good. For these reasons, we should endeavor to join the creative forces of progress in resolving the contradictions in our country. These are, above all, the forces that strengthen the material and spiritual wellbeing of the nation and the state.

Outline by Nadezda Kljuseva While reading the contents of this work, it is not possible not to co-participate with it. First of all, because of the detailed descriptions of the historical events which we witnessed at that time, and secondly, because of the rich palette of metaphors by which the author analyzes them. The national ascension that sparkled at the Referendum as a nationwide patriotic joy – which was expected with centuries of our existence, is very emotionally described. In an overview of the major changes, the author gives his own dialectical views when revealing the contradictions in the given time; he traces, examines and acts in a blend of his spirit with the spirit of the past and with the spirit of the new that emerges. In the heart of the big changes he accepts the challenge and with it the risk that was lurched, with exceptional love and duty, of course, together with the other members of the Government, he creates the conditions for continuous and virtuous running of the processes of social changes, because even the slightest hesitation in this decisive period could have brought fearful uncertainties. Starting from Beethoven maxim: “Towards joy through suffering”, traditional beliefs, ideas and customs followed in high moral norms and love in the building of the independent state, are described. “The road I was passing in those days stretched just under the line to which the smell of gunpowder could be felt from the war catharsis,” says the author, but the independent state was the main

guide that bravely overcame all the obstacles on that road. The independent state was a political, ideological and moral obsession for the author, because he knew that our country was not created by cowards who did not stand bravely in front of the barricades of the enemy. Freedom should be achieved, says the author. With his professional appeal, the author could not calm the critical spirit within himself, not pointing to the problem and the greedy interests of the profiteers, with political support, to seize the social capital. In the end, his life optimism prevails and his conviction that only with a blend of the creative forces of the process in resolving the contradictions these forces will strengthen the material and spiritual well-being of the state.

Other works by Nikola Kljusev Poetry: • Antithesis • Stone Island • The power of the Word • Ode to the Word • Non-sprout Seed • Dictionary of the Heart • Apparitions • I am sending a sunny beam • Grauntele de aur / selectie si postafata de Dimitri M. Jon • La Semence d’or • Hayat Cesilemeri Essays: • Views and changes • Faith and fraud, (Challenges; volume 1), • Sleepless nights, (Challenges; volume 2), • Sightsings (Challenges; volume 3), Novel: Lenman – A Chronicle of youth Selected works: 6 volumes • Theory and Politics of Economic Development • Investments: Theory - Politics - Economics • Problems of economic development • Investment development problems • The Way towards Macedonian Independence • Golden grain

Biography Nikola Kljusev (1927-2008), was born in Stip, Macedonia, where he finished primary and secondary education. In the developing years (194245) he participated in the partisan units of the Anti-Fascist Movement. In 1947, he started his studies at the Faculty of Economics in Belgrade, Serbia. Due to the political detention at the Baren Island (Goli Otok), he was excluded from the University for two years. He graduated at the Faculty of Economics in Belgrade in 1953. In 1953 he started working at the Institute for Scientific Research in the Industry of Macedonia. He did his doctorate at the University of Belgrade. Between 1961-1968 he worked at the Institute of Economics, Skopje. In 1968 he was elected Associate Professor, and in 1972 Full Professor at the Faculty of Economics, University St. Cyril and Methodius, Skopje. He attended study visits and specializations in the United States of America (Ford Foundation at the Universities “Columbia” in New York and “Berkeley” in San Francisco); UK (Sussex University in Brighton and the London School of Economics; the Academy of Sciences of the former Soviet Union, Moscow and the Academy of Sciences in Poland, Warsaw; and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development in Washington. He participated at International congresses of economists in Montreal, Madrid and Budapest. Within the international project “Instruments of Scientific Technological Policy” he participated in Barbados, Brazil, Venezuela, Egypt, India, Korea, Japan and England. 98

• 1985-1987 – Dean at the Faculty of Economics in Skopje • 1988 – A member of Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences • 1991-92 – President of the First Democratic Government of the Republic of Macedonia. • 1994 – President of The National Convention of Macedonia • 2000 – Minister of Defense of Republic of Macedonia • 2002 – Head of the Center for Strategic Research at MANU. He was awarded the “Golden Wreath Order” and the “13th of November” award for his scientific activity and “11th October” for lifetime achievement, as well as a number of acknowledgments and certificates from Macedonia and abroad. Posthumously he was awarded the Order “September 8th”, by the President of the Republic of Macedonia.

Publisher: Foundation "Nikola Kljusev" Address: st. Macedonia 12, Skopje, Macedonia Editor: Angela Nenovska-Krstevska Translated from Macedonian: Margarita Nenovska Language editing: Aleksandra Kljuseva Cover design: Aneta Gacevska Print: Nampress Address: bld. Srbija 11, Skopje, Macedonia 500 copies

Издавањето на делото е поддржано од Министерство за култура на Република Македонија Supported by Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Macedonia

CIP - Каталогизација во публикација Национална и универзитетска библиотека "Св. Климент Охридски", Скопје 304.4(497.7)"1991/97" КЉУСЕВ, Никола The way towards Macedonian independence / Nikola Kljusev ; [преведувач Маргарита Неновска]. - Skopje : Foundation "Nikola Kljusev", 2017. - 100 стр. ; 21 см Превод на делото: Патот кон македонската независност / Никола Кљусев. - Biography: стр. 96-98 ISBN 978-608-4685-15-9 а) Македонија - Општествено политички прилики - 1991-1997 COBISS.MK-ID 105526538

ISBN 978-608-4685-15-9

Published by: Foundation “Nikola Kljusev” 9 78608 4 68 5159

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