Problems of Macedonian Orthodox Church Status in Modern Policy of the Historical Memory of the Republic of North Macedonia

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.

Modern states cannot do without such an important symbolic resource as historical politics in the reproduction of political and ethnic identity. In historiography, a single definition of the concept of "historical politics" has not been proposed. There is a compromise among researchers, according to which the latter is understood as "a set of techniques and methods by which the political forces in power, using the administrative and financial resources of the state, seek to establish certain interpretations of historical events as dominant" ^[1]. By the 2020s, historical or memory politics had become a universal means of politically and ideologically motivated manipulation of the facts of the past in order to maintain certain forms of identity and loyalty to the elites in power. Historical policy is universal, its various elements are applied in most countries of the world.

In a number of States, the manipulation of elites in the field of history has been institutionalized, which has led to the creation of specialized memory institutions. Historical politics is not identical to academic historiography. The main participants in the memory policy are specialized institutions (if they are created by the authorities), public activists and the media, which form and reproduce in public spaces those images of the past, understood in the categories of "national history", which correspond to the current ideological agenda of the ruling groups.

Modern North Macedonia is no exception. The political elites of the republic, since gaining independence in 1991, have been actively using the symbolic resource of history, manipulating collective memory to form its ordered canon as the basis of memorial culture necessary for the functioning of the Macedonian national and political identity. The memory policy in Northern Macedonia, as in other countries, is characterized by significant thematic heterogeneity.

At different times, various aspects of the history of relations with Bulgaria and Greece, the problem of the status of Macedonians as a separate nation and the Macedonian language could become objects of ideologically motivated manipulations, which caused the memorial Macedonian-Bulgarian and Macedonian-Greek "wars of memory". Among the aspects of the past that contributed to the reproduction and functioning of the confrontational model of historical memory, a special place is occupied by the history of the Macedonian Church, which only on May 24, 2022 settled the issues of its status, being recognized by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which did not suit all parties involved in solving the Macedonian church issue.

The Macedonian Church problem: historical and political background. The Macedonian Church question is a set of problems and contradictions related to the status of the Church in the territory of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. In 1966, the faithful of Macedonia, with the support of the authorities of the republic, asked the Serbian Orthodox Church to submit an autocephalous status, to which they were refused. In response to this, the authorities and loyal clergy initiated the holding of a Church-People's Council in Ohrid in July 1967.

The acute phase in the development of the issue began on July 19, 1967, when the Orthodox Church, geographically connected with SR Macedonia as part of the SFRY, proclaimed autocephaly ^[2]. In response to this, the next Council of the Serbian Orthodox Church declared the new Church schismatic. The reaction on the part of the authorities of the SR of Macedonia was the institutionalization of the Macedonian Orthodox Church, for which a seminary was created in 1967, and a theological faculty in 1977. The issue of the status of the Church became more acute after Macedonia gained independence. If Serbia could not accept the MPC due to canonical contradictions, then the Bulgarian-Macedonian conflict was burdened not only by ecclesiastical and organizational (until 1944, the territories of Macedonia were part of the Skopje-Veles and Ohrid-Bitola dioceses of the BOC), but also by political contradictions related to the status of the Macedonian language and identity.

Throughout the 1990s and early 2020s, the Church issue related to the status of the Church in Macedonia has acquired an international character. 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, which caused opposition from the authorities of Serbia and the SPC, since at that time there were several parishes operating on the territory of independent Macedonia, which They did not obey Skopje, but they were under the jurisdiction of Belgrade. Realizing its weakness in the international arena, 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". In the context of the church confrontation, the authorities of Skopje in the second half of the 2010s took a number of conciliatory steps designed to improve relations with other Orthodox Churches.  It was within the framework of such a peacemaking line in 2017 that the Holy Synod of the MPC tried to symbolically get closer to 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.

In 2018, the Macedonian authorities stepped up measures towards the recognition of the Macedonian Church by holding a number of commemorative events, including "The 1000th anniversary of the Ohrid Archdiocese", "The 60th anniversary of the restoration of the Ohrid Archdiocese represented by the Macedonian Orthodox Church", "75 years since the Priestly Assembly in Izdeglavye", "200 years since the birth Metropolitan Parthenius of Zografsky", "1155 years since the Moravian mission of the Holy Brothers Cyril and Methodius" ^[3], which indicated the transformation of the memory of the past into an important resource for political mobilization and legitimization of elite decisions. Such events were in fact an attempt by Skopje to declare that a stable national Church of its own has developed on the territory of Northern Macedonia, integrated into the preservation and reproduction of Macedonian identity and collective memory.

By the beginning of the 2020s, the policy of the elites led to its results, which was preceded by the rapprochement of Skopje with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who expressed 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, did not lead to radical changes in the historical policy of the main participants in the dispute, actualizing the importance and significance of the church dimension in the memory policy of modern Northern Macedonia.

The purpose and objectives of the article. The author focuses on the ecclesiastical aspects of the memory policy in modern Northern Macedonia. The purpose of the article is to analyze church changes in historical Macedonian politics, and among the tasks is to study the use of church history in modern "memory wars", analyze the role of Church history in the development and functioning of Macedonian memorial culture, identify prospects for further use of church narratives in memory politics as an effective symbolic mobilization resource. 

The Ecclesiastical dimension of memory politics in Northern Macedonia. Macedonian historical policy in its ecclesiastical dimension has been carried out for a long time with the active participation of the state. Such activity of the authorities was the result of their awareness that the construction of statehood should be combined not only with the promotion of ethnic, political and civil, but also religious identity. The latter was of particular importance, since the history of Orthodoxy on the Macedonian territory was integrated by historical traditions and memorial cultures of Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece into their own national narratives, which automatically turned the history of the Church into a space of "memory wars". The latter in historiography, as a rule, is understood as "conflicts of particular identities and historical memories of various kinds of "imaginary communities"" ^{[4, p. 68]}.

The collapse of the SFRY and the change in the status of Macedonia, which gained independent statehood, led to "large-scale changes in the symbolic inventory" ^{[5, p. 155]}, which made the history of the Church an actual and effective resource of memory policy in confrontation with alternative memorial cultures of neighbors. The confrontational model of the functioning of the images of Macedonian church history was promoted by the position of the Macedonian elites, who insisted on the recognition by other Orthodox Churches of the "centuries-old existence" of the Macedonian Church ^[6] and "the continuity that our historical Church has with the ancient Ohrid Archdiocese" ^[7], which was actually an attempt to institutionalize the division of Church history between various national collective memories.

The desire to separate the Macedonian memory from the religious experience of its neighbors, however, did not prevent the political elites of Macedonia from holding that it was "the Ohrid Archdiocese that was an important determining factor in the history of the church, in the history of Christianity in these areas, since ... Christianity on the territory of geographical Macedonia was first brought, spread and preached by the Holy Apostle Paul" ^[8]. In this context, representatives of the elites actually integrate the past as one of the mobilization resources among the methods they use to consolidate and reproduce memorial culture.

History, as the American cultural anthropologist Jonathan Friedman believes, is "a representation of the past, closely related to the development of identity at the moment" ^{[9, p. 195]}, as evidenced by the experience of the Macedonian Church as an agent of historical policy, actually forming its own layer of memory, integrated into memorial culture at the national level. Therefore, the history of Orthodoxy in the politics of memory of Northern Macedonia is interpreted through the prism of ethnicity, and a significant part of the authors are inclined to synthesize Orthodox Christianity with the ideas of nationalism, believing that "Christianity has become part of the Macedonian Slavic culture, part of Macedonian being" ^{[10, p. 39]}.

Representatives of the elites of Northern Macedonia in their official discourse actively promote the instrumentalization of historical memory and its integration into the mechanisms of functioning and reproduction of identity. The Minister of Culture, Bisera Kostadinovska-Stoychevska, stressed in 2022 that Macedonia historically had "its own faith and its own church," which "are not abolished and are not introduced by decree." Therefore, in the official memorial culture, the Macedonian identity is perceived as primordial, since the Macedonians "preserved our church, restored the Ohrid Archdiocese in the image of the Macedonian Orthodox Church, generation after generation protected and preserved the Macedonian identity with primordial love." Within the framework of this perception of memory, the history of the church is integrated into broader contexts of identity, which is read as exclusively Macedonian: "there is nothing in our past to be ashamed of, so we should not turn away from it. Our language, our music, our paintings, our books, our dances, our houses, and our cuisine are all identical. And the fact that we are Macedonians is an identity, an identity that we inherit, and it depends on us whether we will carry it in our hearts" ^[11].

Moreover, the concepts of "Ohrid Archdiocese" and "Macedonian Orthodox Church" in the memorial culture of Northern Macedonia appear as synonymous, and the modern Church itself is positioned as the only legitimate heir of the medieval Archdiocese ^[12], which, in general, correlates with the dominance of nationalism as a universal language of narrative construction. That is why, according to M.V. Belov, "the nationalist revision has become a watershed between large groups of researchers, experts and public intellectuals" ^{[13, p. 72]} involved in the conduct of historical politics. Within the framework of a similar model of memorial policy implemented by Skopje in relation to church history, the facts of the past, interpreted in accordance with the ideological conjuncture, are "used to legitimize the state, to fight for equality with other peoples" ^{[14, p. 470]}, which in the case of Northern Macedonia for a long time was burdened by the non-recognition of its right to own their own national church.

The promotion of just such a narrative indicates the tendency of elites to perceive identity outside the principles of historicism, which allows them to manipulate the facts of the past, projecting Macedonian identity onto those groups that did not possess it. Within the framework of the modern Macedonian memory policy, "history is objectively written as a certain concept of the self, which is based on a radical separation from any other identity" ^{[15, p. 42]}. In the Macedonian situation, it is Greece and Bulgaria that have the status of Other identities potentially claiming the medieval Orthodox historical heritage and its integration into their own memorial cultures.

In this context, the memory policy in Northern Macedonia is subordinated to the logic of particularism and the separation of its own memorial project from similar practices and constructs of neighbors. The narrative about the Macedonian Church as the "successor of the ancient Ohrid Archdiocese" ^[16] in the memorial culture of Northern Macedonia has undergone universalization and has become virtually a common place. At the same time, Economy Minister Kreshnik Bekteshi stressed that the recognition of the Macedonian Church means not only the recognition of multiple memorial experiences, but also indicates the possibility of achieving "good neighborliness and progress in the Balkans" ^[17], burdened by different and competing readings of the past on the part of the elites.

The position of the authorities of Northern Macedonia, who actively participated in the settlement of the status of the Church, initiating a change of its name, led to a memorial conflict with Bulgaria, as the Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church questions the legitimacy of the modern name of the Macedonian Church, insisting that "the successor of the Ohrid Archdiocese is the Bulgarian Patriarchate" ^[18]. This position of Sofia did not suit Skopje, where local participants in historical politics use the universal logic of the development of nationalism, "artificially imposing the modern ethnicity of ancient times" ^{[19, p. 20]}. In this situation, the political elites of Macedonia, represented by the state authorities, actually found themselves involved in the processes of constructing images of the past, which they imagined in the national coordinate system.

Macedonian elites have become actors in the politics of memory. On May 24, 2022, Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski stated in his speech in connection with the settlement of the status of the Church the importance of its role in the development of national historical memory, emphasizing that a "great historical day" had come in the history of Macedonians. Appealing to the legacy of the "holy brothers Cyril and Methodius", whose images were constructed in the Macedonian coordinate system, D. Kovachevsky pointed out the importance of obtaining autocephaly, which was perceived as recognition of "equality with others and recognition of its heritage in the spiritual greatness of the ancient Ohrid Archdiocese" ^[20].

In general, at the initiative of the elites, the perception of the Ohrid Archdiocese as "an authentic part of the Macedonian identity" ^[21] has been established, which is consistently attributed to the church history in the region as a whole. Such a logic of the development of memorial culture in Northern Macedonia emphasizes that "modern political and ideological battles can be won by emphasizing certain and silencing other moments of history" ^{[22, p. 532]}, which is openly used by agents of memory politics in Skopje, resolutely actualizing the "Macedonian" and just as persistently ignoring the "Bulgarian" and "Greek" in the medieval history of Orthodoxy within the borders of modern Northern Macedonia.

As for Cyril and Methodius, they, on the one hand, in the Macedonian memorial culture are subjected to consistent Macedonization, being imagined as heralds of the subsequent development of the Macedonian language ^[23], and the Macedonians as a nation are positioned as keepers of the heritage of the "all-Slavic enlighteners" ^[24]. On the other hand, the appeal to their heritage and the honoring of saints in public spaces has become a systemic element of Macedonian memorial culture ^[25], becoming one of the civil rituals and invented political traditions. In such a situation, historical memory "helps in creating a common past and the idea of unity, which is especially important in new societies that are still developing a political community" ^{[26, p. 426]}, which needs not only political, but also religious legitimation by conducting continuity between modern and medieval Churches.

In modern memorial politics, at the official level, the reading of the history of the Church through the prism of ethnicity dominates, while critical interpretations based on the idea that "the name of the Church never expresses ethnicity" ^[27] are actually ignored and marginalized. In addition, the official memorial canon actively promotes and reproduces the narrative that representatives of the Church historically associated with the territory of Macedonia participated in the "creation and affirmation of the identity of the Macedonian people" ^[28].

Within the framework of this perception of history, the struggle for the creation of the Macedonian Church, according to the elites, is quite legitimate, since "the great historical processes of formation and definition of nations, when Orthodox Christian peoples formed autocephalous national churches" ^[29], which began in the 19th century, proceeded unevenly, which put the Macedonians in an unequal position compared to the Serbs, Bulgarians and Greeks. Based on the dominant ethnic paradigm in Macedonian historical politics, the Macedonian mass media, as participants in the memory policy, at the end of 2022 welcomed the decision of the Patriarch of Constantinople to use the Macedonian language to congratulate the faithful ^[30].

In such a situation, the ethnization, that is, the Macedonization, of the history of Christianity in the modern politics of the memory of Macedonia becomes simply inevitable. Such a mutation in memorial culture was the result of the fact that most societies like the Macedonian one experienced the processes of "sovereignization, and then nationalization of history" ^{[31, p. 24]}. In particular, regarding Kliment Ohridski, the official memorial culture emphasizes that it was he who became "the founder of Macedonian spirituality and the patron of the Macedonian Orthodox Church" ^[32]. Moreover, the emergence of a de facto national Church was interpreted as the institutionalization of the "genuine Macedonian identity" in the field of Orthodoxy, and belonging to the Macedonian Church is perceived as a manifestation of national consolidation ^[33].

The elites of Northern Macedonia understand that such an identity, which also has religious grounds, needs "its" national saints. A step in this direction was the canonization of Kirill Peychinovich ^[34], which caused misunderstanding on the part of Bulgarian church and secular nationalist figures, since the latter perceive the "new" Macedonian saint as a Bulgarian Church figure and politician. The canonization of Joachim Krkovsky was accompanied by similar mutual claims ^[35]. Such a model of the functioning of memorial culture rigidly integrates the history of the church into the history of Macedonian nationalism, which, according to representatives of the elites, became "the realization of a centuries-old desire for their own and independent state, within which the people of Macedonia after World War II encouraged the creation of the Macedonian Orthodox Church, which called for spiritual ties with its original mother - the Ohrid Archdiocese" ^[36].

Such a policy of elite memory is based not only on emphasizing the role of the Church in preserving identity, but also in promoting greater visualization of the position of Orthodox hierarchs ^[37] on issues of historical memory and collective identity in public and public spaces. Based on this logic, the idea of the Macedonian elites that Macedonia as an independent state needs its own national Church has become a common place in memorial culture ^[38].  The visualization of the Church in the public space of Northern Macedonia is enhanced when the authorities organize joint events dedicated to the return of icons that were previously exported to the territory of the country ^[39], which is positioned as the materialization of cultural and historical heritage, perceived as an important component of the memorial canon. In turn, the Church reacts to this position of the authorities, not only declaring loyalty to it, but also actively engaging in the policy of memory, pointing out the importance of the values of nationalism based on "love for the Motherland, history, culture, language, sacred and folk heritage of our ancestors" ^[40].

Conclusions. Summing up the article, a number of factors should be taken into account that determine the main vectors and trajectories of the development and functioning of the church problem in the historical politics of Macedonia.

Church narratives play an important role in the memorial policy of Macedonia, since the creation of the Macedonian Church and the protection of its independent status have become elements of the process of national and state building of Macedonia. In the 20th century, before the collapse of Yugoslavia, the Macedonian church issue played a secondary role in memorial culture, since national and political problems related to ethnic and civil nationalism seemed to the Macedonian elites more important in defending their own interests. The breakup of Yugoslavia and the emergence of an independent Macedonia led not only to the internationalization of the Church Macedonian issue, but also turned church history into an important element of memorial culture and memory policy.

Therefore, the political elites of Macedonia in the 1990s began to pay special attention to the religious problem, perceiving religion as part of the Macedonian national culture and identity. In this situation, both academic historiography and intellectuals involved in the processes of reproducing collective memory in public and public spaces have made efforts to nationalize and Macedonize the history of Orthodoxy in that part of the Balkan Peninsula that became independent Macedonia in 1991. As a result, the Macedonian church issue led to symbolic memorial conflicts and "wars of remembrance" with Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece.

If in the case of Serbia, the memorial conflict had almost exclusively a formal status and concerned issues of the institutionalization of the church and its position among other Orthodox local churches, then in the case of the conflict of memories with the Greeks and Bulgarians, church history was burdened by the influence of ethnic and political nationalism. In the Bulgarian-Macedonian memorial conflict, the situation worsened due to the fact that until 1944, the territories of Macedonia were not only organizationally subordinate to the Bulgarian Church, but were also perceived by Bulgarian intellectuals as an integral part of the Bulgarian cultural and political space.

Therefore, Bulgarian society was not ready to recognize the independence of Macedonia not only ethnically, but also in church terms. As for the memorial conflict with Greece, it was burdened by phobias and fears of Athens that Macedonia would hypothetically be able to claim the Greek territories of the same name. In general, the development of church narratives in Macedonian memory politics was entirely subordinated to the solution of political issues related to the establishment and development of independent Macedonian statehood. In this case, church narratives played a secondary auxiliary role, being used simultaneously with other myths that were reproduced within the framework of historical politics and, as a result, replicated in the memorial culture of Macedonian society.

In general, the relatively peaceful resolution of the Macedonian church conflict in 2022 temporarily weakened the severity of the memorial contradictions of Macedonian society with neighboring states, which does not exclude the possibility of further growth of confrontation and its resumption, since historical memory in the Balkans is developing as a symbolic resource that is regularly used by elites to solve ideological problems.