page_title: Historiography in North Macedonia
hierarchical_section_title: Historiography in North Macedonia
caption_attribution_description: Български „Бѫлгарски народни пѣсни. Собрани отъ братья Миладиновци, Димитрıя и Константина и издадени отъ Константина. Въ Загребъ. Въ книгопечатница-та на А. Якича, 1861“ English Front page of „"Bulgarian Folk Songs collected by the Miladinov Brothers Dimitar and Konstantin and published by Konstantin in Zagreb at the printing house of A. Jakic, 1861"“ by the Miladinov Brothers Македонски Браќа Миладиновци, „Български народни песни“
context_page_description: Historiography in North Macedonia is the methodology of historical studies used by the historians of that country. It has been developed since 1945 when SR Macedonia became part of Yugoslavia. According to Stefan Troebst it has preserved nearly the same agenda as the marxist historiography from the times of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The generation of Macedonian historians closely associated with the Yugoslav period who worked on the actual national myths of that time are still in charge of the institutions. In fact, in the field of historiography, Yugoslav communism and Macedonian nationalism are closely related. According to Ulf Brunnbauer, modern Macedonian historiography is highly politicized, because the Macedonian nation-building process is still in development. Diverging approaches are discouraged and people who express alternative views risk economic limitations, failure of academic career and stigmatization as "national traitors". Troebst wrote already in 1983 that historical research in the SR Macedonia was not a humanist, civilizing end in itself, but
  was about direct political action.
context_section_description: Historiography in North Macedonia is the methodology of historical studies used by the historians of that country. It has been developed since 1945 when SR Macedonia became part of Yugoslavia. According to Stefan Troebst it has preserved nearly the same agenda as the marxist historiography from the times of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The generation of Macedonian historians closely associated with the Yugoslav period who worked on the actual national myths of that time are still in charge of the institutions. In fact, in the field of historiography, Yugoslav communism and Macedonian nationalism are closely related. According to Ulf Brunnbauer, modern Macedonian historiography is highly politicized, because the Macedonian nation-building process is still in development. Diverging approaches are discouraged and people who express alternative views risk economic limitations, failure of academic career and stigmatization as "national traitors". Troebst wrote already in 1983 that historical research in the SR Macedonia was not a humanist, civilizing end in itself, but
  was about direct political action. No such case of reciprocal dependence of historiography and politics has been observed in modern Europe. Despite ethnic Macedonians very seldom appear in pre-20th century primary sources, recently a nation-building project was promoted to impose the deceptive idea that the Macedonian nation is the oldest on the Balkans, with an unbroken continuity from Antiquity to Modern times. Some domestic and foreign scholars have criticized this agenda of a denialist historiography, whose goal is to affirm the continuous existence of a separate Macedonian nation throughout history. This controversial worldview is ahistorical, as it projects modern ethnic distinctions into the past. Such an enhanced, ethnocentric reading of history contributes to the distortion of the Macedonian national identity and degrades history as an academic discipline. Under such historiographies generations of students were educated in pseudo-history.
caption: Front cover of the Bulgarian Folk Songs collected by the Miladinov Brothers and published in 1861. In the early 2000s the Macedonian State Archive displayed a photocopy of the book, but with the upper part showing the word "Bulgarian" cut off.
exif: {}