Problems of the Status of the Macedonian Orthodox Church in the Contemporary Bulgarian Politics of Historical Memory

Kyrchanoff Maksym Waler'evich ORCID: 0000-0003-3819-3103 Doctor of History Voronezh State University, Associate Professor of the Department of Regional Studies and Economics of Foreign Countries, Faculty of International Relations; Associate Professor of the Department of History of Foreign Countries and Oriental Studies, Faculty of History; ResearcherID: B-8694-2017; Scopus Author ID: 57193934324 394077, Russia, Voronezh region, Voronezh, Pushkinskaya str., 16, office 236 maksymkyrchanoff@gmail.com Other publications by this author

 Introduction.

In the modern world, no state can do without using the facts of the past by political elites to legitimize their own status and stimulate the development of projects of those political identities that they perceive as correct and consolidating a particular community. The countries of the Balkan region are not an exception to this universal logic of development. Bulgaria occupies a special place among them. Bulgarian historical policy has a number of features that are related to the collective historical experience that Bulgarians received in the twentieth century.

Religious narratives related to the church history of Bulgaria occupy a special place in the modern Bulgarian collective memory. Within the framework of church narratives, a special place belongs to the complex of Macedonian images that are associated with the formation and functioning of the Bulgarian political and historical myth. Macedonian images in the modern Bulgarian identity have a unique status. It is known that the Bulgarian academic science and the political elite do not recognize the separate status of the Macedonian language. Bulgarian scientists are not sure about the existence of a separate Macedonian nation, which contributes to the aggravation of relations between Northern Macedonia and Bulgaria.

Another aspect that complicates bilateral relations is the claims of intellectuals to church history, which Macedonian authors perceive as their own and interprets it in the categories of national history, understanding the latter as part of the collective historical Macedonian experience. In this situation, history has become an important component of the "memory wars" and memorial conflicts between Bulgarian and Macedonian intellectuals at the present stage of development of Bulgarian and Macedonian society.

The Macedonian ecclesiastical question in the historical policy of Bulgaria is heterogeneous and international in nature, which is associated with the peculiarities of the development of Orthodoxy on the territory of Macedonia. Historically, Macedonian Orthodoxy has had close contacts with the Bulgarian and Greek Orthodox Churches. Therefore, various national intellectuals and Churches perceive the Macedonian ecclesiastical and historical heritage as part of their own collective historical experience. As for Bulgaria, Bulgarian intellectuals and mass media tend to perceive the territory of Macedonia, being the main participants in the memory policy, as part of a large historical cultural space of Bulgaria.

Bulgarian characteristics and connotations are automatically extended by them to the history of the Macedonian Church, which is facilitated by the fact that until 1944 the territories of modern Macedonia were part of Bulgaria and were canonically subordinate to the Bulgarian Church. Within the framework of such a collective memory, the emergence of the People's Republic of Macedonia, its late transformation into the Socialist Republic of Macedonia as part of the SFRY, is perceived by Bulgarian intellectuals as an attempt to consciously alienate part of the Bulgarian people from Bulgaria. In this regard, historical politics actually becomes a space of dominance of the Bulgarian nationalist narrative.

The perception of church problems is burdened by ideological and political stereotypes associated with the functioning of Bulgarian nationalism. In such a situation, the Macedonian problem in the ecclesiastical component of Bulgarian historical policy is connected with the implementation of the Bulgarian national political project. In this situation, religious contradictions play a much smaller role in comparison with the claims of Bulgarian intellectuals and activists of historical politics on the perception of the history of Macedonia, including at the church level, in a Bulgarian-centered coordinate system.

The purpose and objectives of the article. Therefore, the focus of the author's attention in the presented article will be the ecclesiastical aspects of the memory policy in modern Bulgaria. The purpose of the article is to analyze the church level in the memorial culture of modern Bulgarian society in the context of imagination, invention and construction of Macedonian narratives. Among the tasks of the author is the analysis of the use of church history in the context of the modern memorial conflict between Bulgarian and Macedonian society for the church heritage, geographically and historically connected, according to Sofia, with the Bulgarian collective experience, which gives the church narratives mobilization potential.  Thus, the focus of the author's attention in this article will be the problems of the functioning of church narratives in modern Bulgarian memorial politics in the part in which the actors involved in its implementation are responsible for the formation and reproduction of Macedonian images reduced by Bulgarian participants in historical politics to local versions of Bulgarian historical narratives.

The Macedonian Church problem: historical and political background. The Macedonian church question in historiography is understood as a set of political, ideological, organizational and hierarchical problems related to the status of the Church in the territory of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The Macedonian church problem has become a consequence of the growing contradictions between the elites of the SR of Macedonia within the SFRY and the church structures of the Serbian Orthodox Church. In 1966, the faithful of Macedonia, with the support of the authorities of the republic, appealed to the SEC with a request to submit an autocephalous status, but Belgrade did not consider it possible to satisfy this aspiration of the party and church Macedonian elites. In response to this, the authorities of the republic and the Orthodox clergy loyal to them held a Church-People's Council in Ohrid in July 1967, which led to an aggravation of the situation.

July 19 , 1967 The Orthodox Church, geographically connected with SR Macedonia as part of the SFRY, proclaimed its autocephaly ^[1]. In response, the Council of the SPC declared the new Church schismatic. The reaction on the part of the authorities of the SR of Macedonia was the institutionalization of the new Church, for which a seminary was created in 1967, and in 1977 a theological faculty was created to train clergy in order to weaken dependence on Serbian theological educational institutions.

The issue of the status of the Church escalated after Macedonia gained independence in 1991. Throughout the 1990s and early 2020s, the Church issue related to the status of the Church in Macedonia has acquired an international character. Three Orthodox Churches opposed the existence of the MPC at once. The SPC could not accept the MPC due to canonical contradictions. The Bulgarian-Macedonian conflict turned out to be more acute and profound, being burdened at the same time by church-organizational (until 1944, the territories of Macedonia were part of the Skopje-Velesh and Ohrid-Bitola dioceses of the BOC) and ideological contradictions related to the fact that the Bulgarian scientific and political community does not recognize the existence of either the Macedonian nation or the Macedonian language, perceiving Macedonians as an ethnographic group of Bulgarians and reducing the status of their language to the level of a dialect. Greece turned out to be the third participant in the conflict: the country's government and the Greek Orthodox Church pointed not only to the controversy of the very appearance of the MPC as a political project, but also strongly opposed the use of derivatives from the word "Macedonia" both in the name of the former Yugoslav Republic and in the name of its Church.

Realizing the contradictions of status, including the name of the country, the Macedonian authorities in 2004 adopted a "Declaration in support of the Macedonian Orthodox Church", which provided for the existence of the MPC as the only recognized Church, since by the mid-2000s parallel church structures formally subordinate to the SPC had emerged on the territory of the country. An attempt to fight against communities loyal to the Serbian Patriarch provoked opposition from the Serbian authorities and the SEC. In 2005 Skopje turned to Constantinople, offering Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople to mediate in the dialogue between the MPC and the SPC, which, however, did not lead to a resolution of the conflict, which by the end of the 2000s had escalated again.

In 2009 The MPC decides to change the name of the Church on the territory of Macedonia to the "Macedonian Orthodox Church – Ohrid Archdiocese", which in fact became an attempt to appeal to the historical heritage and emphasize continuity in the history of the Macedonians and their Church. This decision aggravated the relationship not only with Serbia, but also with Bulgaria and Greece, leading to another wave of "memorial conflict", as the new Church declared its claims to the past, which by that time Serbian, Bulgarian and Greek believers considered "their own". Nevertheless, in 2017, the Holy Synod of the MPC took steps towards a symbolic rapprochement with Bulgaria, recognizing the Bulgarian Exarchate as its "Mother Church", establishing Eucharistic communion with it, to which the Greek Orthodox Church reacted, perceiving the actions of Sofia and Skopje as unacceptable.

By the early 2020s, the policy of the elites had led to its results. Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople declared his readiness to settle the status of the MPC if the adjective "Macedonian" disappears from its name. On May 9, 2022, the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate of Constantinople recognized the Church of Macedonia under the name "Ohrid Archdiocese", which became an incentive for the resumption and intensification of dialogue with the SPC and the BOC. Therefore, on May 24 and December 13, 2022, the autocephalous status of the Macedonian Orthodox Church under the name "Ohrid Archdiocese" was recognized by the church authorities in Belgrade and Sofia. The formalization of the position of the Church, whose status has been disputed for 55 years, has not led to radical changes in the historical policy of the main participants in the dispute, which indicates the importance, relevance and necessity of analyzing the church dimension in the politics of memory.

Macedonian Church narratives in the Bulgarian politics of memory. The development of Macedonian images, limited by the history of the church question, in Bulgarian historical politics has almost always been subordinated to the logic of memorial confrontation. Denying the existence of the Macedonian identity, nation and language, the Bulgarian actors of the memory policy, of course, negatively perceived the attempts of the Macedonian authorities to create a national church on the territory of the country. The logic of confrontation predetermined not only the modes of perception and interpretation of the Macedonian church problem in the Bulgarian collective historical memory, but also influenced the behavior of agents of historical politics in public and public spaces. In particular, the Bulgarian side almost always not only had a negative attitude, but also defiantly ignored any forms of activity of the Macedonian hierarchs, if they concerned issues of historical memory.

In 2018, the BOC defiantly ignored the events related to the celebration of the 1000th anniversary of the founding of the Ohrid Archdiocese, although the head of the Macedonian Orthodox Church - the Ohrid Archdiocese, Nicholas, sent an early official invitation to the Bulgarian Patriarch Neophyte ^[2]. In response to the desire of Skopje to integrate the history of the Ohrid Archdiocese into the Macedonian memorial culture, the Bulgarian authorities organized their alternative memorial celebrations dedicated to its 1000th anniversary, since "the celebration of such an event can take place only in today's Bulgarian capital Sofia, where the Bulgarian Patriarchate is currently located, which has been the successor of the Bulgarian Patriarchate since the time of the great tsars Simeon and Peter" ^[3]. In Bulgaria, the memorial conflict between Sofia and Skopje regarding the history of the Church escalated in 2022.

The settlement of the status of the Macedonian Church took place without the participation of Bulgaria, which caused a negative reaction in the country, becoming an incentive for a new wave of historical politics. Bulgarian memory agents questioned the legitimacy of the name of the Orthodox Church in Macedonia, expressing dissatisfaction with the use of the phrase "Ohrid Archdiocese", insisting not only on the greater correctness of the term "Patriarchate of Skopje and All Northern Macedonia" ("Skopska and the Northern Macedonia Patriarchate" ^[4]) or "Church of the Republic of Northern Macedonia" ("Tsrkva in/on the Republic of Northern Macedonia" ^[5]), but also accusing Skopje of "stealing" Bulgarian historical memory ^[6].

Memorial culture, which forms Macedonian church images in Bulgaria, is politically and ideologically predetermined. In the current situation, the struggle for the right to control the past of Orthodoxy on the territory of Northern Macedonia and the formation of its image in collective memory is actually an element of the "rhetoric of the struggle for symbolic resources, to which the state seeks to reduce discussions about the historical past, reproducing the logic of a zero-sum game in which not everyone will win. Accordingly, the past itself is perceived as a large, but limited set, as a limited resource that will not be enough for everyone" ^[7]. It is this vision of the church history of Macedonia that is characteristic of the Bulgarian memorial culture, based on the symbolic integration of the Macedonian into Bulgarian historical spaces, which reduces the former to a regional version of the latter.

Such sentiments among Bulgarian activists of historical politics are stimulated by the statements of the head of the Macedonian Orthodox Church – the Archdiocese of Ohrid that "our church is as Macedonian as Ohrid ... recognition of the indisputable fact of the reality of Macedonian church independence is of great importance not only for us, but for the whole Orthodoxy ... our people live in the rhythm of Orthodoxy ... Macedonian the land can be called the land of the Church and the land of the Cross... we are the heirs of the famous Ohrid Archdiocese and therefore there is no problem for us in using this name" ^[8]. A consistent anti-Macedonian position in the conflict of memories is also taken by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, which in fact openly participates in historical politics, insisting that "recognition of the Macedonian Church is unacceptable for us"Metropolitan of Ohrid”... If the name “Ohrid Archdiocese” is assigned to the Macedonian Church, it will be very bad for us. This will deprive us of a huge part of our church history and our legal personality."^[9] Ethnocentrism dominates the Bulgarian memory policy.

The use of the term "Ohrid Archdiocese" is perceived painfully and is understood as "a knife in the back of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, for which the Ohrid Archdiocese is part of the historical and spiritual space, as well as the oldest Bulgarian church institution" ^[10]. If in a significant part of European nationalisms "history is objectively written as a certain concept of the self, which is based on a radical separation from any other identity" ^[11], then the Bulgarian case of the development of memory politics does not correlate with such a universal logic. The memorial culture of Bulgarian society in relation to the church history of Macedonia in particular and everything that relates to this region as a whole is based not on particularism and the separation of identities, but, on the contrary, on the consistent integration of the "Macedonian" into the Bulgarian historical memory project.

Thus, the development of Macedonian church narratives with the Bulgarian memorial culture actualizes the situation of the multiplicity of historical memories as "multilevel information systems, the structure of which includes not only the phenomenon of individual memory, but also the structures of supra-individual memory" ^[12], represented by the participation of the Church in the formation of collective memory. In this context, the statement that "the Archdiocese of Ohrid was a foreign church organization and belonged to Byzantium, it was not part of the Bulgarian state and did not maintain ties with the Bulgarian kingdom" ^[13] sounds marginal within the framework of Bulgarian memorial culture. Other Bulgarian actors of the memory policy interpret this fact differently, believing that "the Ohrid Archdiocese was created at the beginning of the XI century by Emperor Basil II in order to be able to unite the Bulgarian lands that were already under the rule of Byzantium… he created a church that is not entirely canonical, as it was created by the decision of the secular authorities" ^[14].

Based on this "illegality" in the modern Bulgarian memorial culture, the Ohrid Archdiocese is recognized as illegitimate by historians and other agents of the memory policy, who have felt their importance in modern society. The strengthening of such actors in the formation and development of collective historical memory indicates the correctness of the assumption of the Austrian Slavist R. Lindner, who believes that "the great times of historiography come during the collapse of empires" ^[15]. In general, Sofia, taking advantage of the disintegration of the SFRY. she perceives relations with Skopje through the prism of the "memory wars", since there is a consensus in Bulgarian society that "the construction of the so-called "Macedonian identity" is at the expense of Bulgarian history" ^[16].

If the modern Macedonian identity itself is perceived as "a source of internal tension and potential schizophrenia" ^[17], then Skopje's attempts to institutionalize its own Church stimulate "memory wars". The general tone of the media involved in the implementation of the memory policy in Bulgaria regarding the transformation of the status of the Macedonian Church was extremely skeptical, and uncertainty about the legitimacy of emphasizing the continuity between the Ohrid Archdiocese and the modern Church became a common place ^[18]. This logic of the development of historical politics in Bulgaria is connected with the traditionally significant role of nationalism in Bulgarian society.

Commenting on the excessive fascination of Eastern European and Balkan elites with the national idea, the Ukrainian historian Ya. Grytsak states that in such societies "the predominance of the national paradigm can only be compared with the dominance of the positivist paradigm of Leopold Ranke" ^{[19, p. 436]}. It is this model of perception of the past that turns out to be relevant and in demand not only in academic historiography, but to a greater extent in the politics of memory as an area more prone to ideologization. For example, N. Ovcharov openly uses a confrontational model of memory politics, arguing that "the so-called Macedonian Orthodox Church is as evil as the Macedonian language" ^[20].

If, according to the German historian Yu. Scherrer, "the nature of pluralistic societies presupposes the formation of different and even contradictory interpretations of the past in them" ^{[21, p. 90]}, then the policy of Bulgaria's memory, on the contrary, is based on the homogenization of memorial culture, its functioning in an exclusively Bulgarian coordinate system. In addition, B. Tsekov, commenting on the use of the name "Ohrid Archdiocese" by the Macedonian side, points to its illegitimacy, since "according to historical sources, Ohrid is part of the history and legal personality of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church" ^[22]. The dominance of just such a model of historical narrative in the Bulgarian memorial culture does not correlate with the assumption of a number of Russian historians that "as the country's power strengthens, the tendency towards a nationalistic reading of historical events is gaining strength" ^{[23, p. 65]}. The experience of the development of the Bulgarian memory policy indicates that nationalist interpretations can prevail even without the growth of the real political weight of the country.

The change in the status of the Church in Macedonia became an incentive for a more active discussion of Macedonian problems in Bulgaria, in connection with which the historian S. Tashev pointed out the need and importance of Sofia developing its own memory policy in relation to Macedonia ^[24]. S. Tashev's concern has become an expression of phobias that are characteristic of collective memory in Bulgaria, in which the Macedonian history is perceived as part of the Bulgarian one. The irritation of the Bulgarian actors of historical politics was caused by the fact that North Macedonia, Serbia and the Patriarchate of Constantinople ignored the perception of Macedonia in the Bulgarian-centered coordinate system. According to the Bulgarian memorial canon, not only there is neither a Macedonian nation nor a Macedonian language, but there cannot be a separate Macedonian Church, since its territories were subordinated to the Bulgarian Patriarchate until 1944, and the creation of Macedonian statehood and later the Church as part of the SFRY is perceived as an intentional anti-Bulgarian act.

In 2022, journalist G. Blagoev proposed an expanded understanding of this aspect of national memory, stating that "the young Macedonian church was created as anti-Serbian, and the Tito authorities very quickly turned it into an instrument of anti-Bulgarianism" ^[25]. Bulgarian memorial culture is characterized by a tendency to reproduce ethnocentric versions of memory, which distinguishes it from the transformation of collective ideas about the past in Western Europe, where "the works of historians written with a focus on National Socialist ideology or in the paradigm of historical materialism, as a rule, lost their significance immediately after the establishment of democracy and quickly turned into anachronism" ^{[26, p. 186]}.

As for the Bulgarian model of historical memory, nationalism has not become an archaic vestige, but has retained its feathering significance in the formation of images of the past. In the Bulgarian policy of remembrance regarding the history of Orthodoxy in Macedonia, not only recognition of its Bulgarian character, but also interpretation of the creation of its own Macedonian Church in the SFRY as a manifestation of Belgrade's anti-Bulgarian policy has become a common place ^[27]. According to the Bulgarian side, it would be more correct to call the church the "Orthodox Church of the Republic of North Macedonia" ^[28], which would deprive it of claims to the historical and cultural heritage of the Ohrid Archdiocese, perceived as a component of exclusively Bulgarian collective historical and religious experience, since only the modern Bulgarian Church, according to activists of the memory policy in Bulgaria, can claim succession to the Ohrid heritage.

Bulgarian actors of historical politics are in solidarity in their vision of changing the status of the Macedonian Church, perceiving it as an attempt to encroach on the historical memory of Bulgaria. In this regard, B. Tsekov points out that the settlement of relations between Belgrade and Skopje, on the one hand, and the decision of Constantinople, on the other, actually "give impetus to the claims of Skopje and Belgrade to the historical identity of the Ohrid Archdiocese" ^[22], perceived in Bulgaria as a component of exclusively Bulgarian collective memory. On the demarche of the BOC and the Bulgarian mass media, as active participants in historical politics. In December 2022, the Macedonian media involved in the memorial conflict actively reacted, stating that Sofia had made such a decision on the instructions of Moscow, which was the result of a visit to Bulgaria by the head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Anthony of Volokolamsk ^[29].

Sofia's position in Skopje is perceived as stemming from the Bulgarian memory policy, which, according to her Macedonian critics and opponents, is based solely on nationalism. Commenting on Sofia's disagreement on the history of the church in collective memory, the Macedonian side emphasizes that it is a vivid example of the "Balkan mentality" based on the following logic: "Why should we help ourselves when we can hurt ourselves. Why should we go forward together when we can stand shoulder to shoulder in the darkness of the past. We're stuck in a story that maybe we didn't deserve."^[30] Thus, the model of Bulgaria's memorial culture based on the denial of Macedonian identity, including in the history of the Church, is perceived in Northern Macedonia as counterproductive. At the same time, the simultaneous and parallel implementation of Bulgarian and Macedonian political projects based on their own versions of historical memory and related memorial culture, including issues of church history, leads to the implementation of a confrontational model of relations between two different memories.

Conclusions. Summing up the article, a number of factors should be taken into account, which determine the main vectors and trajectories of the development and functioning of the Macedonian church problem in the historical policy of Bulgaria.

Macedonian church narratives in Bulgarian historical politics and memorial culture as a whole are integrated into a broader complex of Macedonian images that are perceived, imagined, invented and constructed inclusive in the Bulgarian-centered coordinate system. Thus, Macedonian history, including the history of the Church, is understood within the framework of Bulgarian historical policy as a private, local and regional case of the historical collective experience of Bulgaria, which contributes to the perception by activists of the historical policies of Bulgarians as a divided nation. Therefore, just as Macedonians as a nation and the Macedonian language are perceived by Bulgarian nationalist-oriented intellectuals and political activists as incorrect local versions of Bulgarian identity, so church history is perceived as a local or regional case of Bulgarian church history, burdened by the political influence of both Belgrade and Skopje.

In this case, the Bulgarian memorial culture is based on the denial of an independent status and the non–recognition of a separate historical experience of Macedonia, including in the field of religious church history. Therefore, the Bulgarian policy of memory in the construction of Macedonian images in general and church images in particular is associated with the development of Bulgarian ethnic nationalism, which tends to reduce Macedonian identity to a secondary local variant of Bulgarian identity. Therefore, the alternative memorial culture of modern Northern Macedonia is perceived as a form of counter-memory, which activists of historical politics in Bulgaria prefer to fight, denying the independent status of Macedonians as a nation and not recognizing the existence of a separate Macedonian language, perceiving the latter as one of the dialects of Bulgarian.

In this version of collective memory, all these stereotypes are projected onto the ecclesiastical layer of Macedonian history. Thus, the use of Macedonian church narratives in Bulgarian historical politics is likely to continue in the future. As for the settlement of the Macedonian church issue and the institutionalization of the new status of the Macedonian Church, which was forced to change its name, this will contribute to a certain easing of contradictions in the memorial sphere, but the potential for the development of a compromise culture of memory should not be exaggerated. Therefore, it is not possible to exclude further deepening of the memorial conflict between the Bulgarian and Macedonian identity on issues related to the status of Macedonians and the Macedonian language. 

 It is not possible to exclude that Sofia will again take advantage of the mobilization potential of religiosity and begin to use church narratives more actively, starting to appeal to the fact that the modern Macedonian Church is illegal, according to Bulgarian nationalists, an entity, since it was created due to the rejection in 1944 of territories that in modern Bulgaria are perceived not only as historically, but also canonically related to the Bulgarian Church territories. In general, we can assume that the further use of church narratives in the Bulgarian memory policy will continue, but, unlike the politically and nationalistically labeled aspects (Macedonians as a nation/non-nation, the status of language, etc.), their use will play a secondary role and be subordinate and situational in nature.