Historical revisionism / negationism in the Balkans

Historical revisionism is the attempt to change commonly held ideas about the past. In its legitimate form (see historical revisionism) it is the reexamination of historical facts, with an eye towards updating historical narratives with newly discovered, more accurate, or less biased information, acknowledging that history of an event, as it has been traditionally told, may not be entirely accurate.

Historical revisionism can be used as a label to describe the views of self-taught historians who publish articles that deliberately misrepresent and manipulate historical evidence. This usage has occurred because some authors who publish articles that deliberately misrepresent and manipulate historical evidence (such as David Irving, a proponent of Holocaust denial), have called themselves "historical revisionists.

Examples of historical revisionism in Balkans are the Macedonism and Albanianism.

MACEDONISM is the political idea prevalent in the FYROM advocates revising history in order to project an ethnic group that formed in the 20th century - ethnic Macedonians - in the context of the 19th century and even in the middle ages. For example, Bulgarian Tsar Samuil is denied the Bulgarian nature of his kingdom, despite overwhelming evidence supporting it, and is defined as a "Slavic" or "Macedonian" king. Further attempts are made to deny the Hellenic nature of the ancient kingdom of Macedon and to seek connections between present day ethnic Macedonians and the Ancient Macedonians.Fundamentally, history knows that the "Macedonianism" of Vardar Province's slavophone inhabitants and Albanians is exclusively based on the role played by external factors of paramount importance when in the early 1940s they were transformed into "Macedonians" for political reasons by communist dictators (Tito, Stalin, and Dimitrov) and infamous communist organizations (Comintern and the Balkan Communist Federation).'" In reality, it was not even a self-ascription or ascription by others and assignment of a cause, but a dictatorial order, a forceful conversion that preceded the FYROM Slavs' self-ascription as "Macedonians," resulting in an unorthodox and scandalous creation of a new artificial ethnicity in a manner similar to Byelorussia's formation by Lenin and Stalin.

As Danforth pointed out..........

"Given the common nationalist view of the immutability of identity, conversion from one identity to another [by ascription by others] is bound to raise serious questions of authenticity and legitimacy"

and

"It is possible precisely because Greeks and Macedonians are not born, they are made. National identities, in other words, are not biologically given, they are socially constructed"

That is what happened to the Slavs of the People's Republic of Macedonia. They were not born ethnic Macedonians, their Macedonian ethnicity was constructed by the state in 1943-1945. In contrast, the Greek Macedonians, whose forebears always lived in Hellenic Macedonia, always spoke Greek, were not made Macedonians by a totalitarian communist system.......they were born Macedonians.

What characteristics (historical, cultural, genetic, linguistic, or anthropological) does the FYROM population possess- besides inhabiting a section of the former Vardar Province - to be described by communists first, by anthropologists later, as "Macedonian"?

Why did the Slav "Macedonians" describe themselves as Bulgarians from 1870 to 1943 -and many do so today - waiting for almost seventy-five years to be transformed into "Macedonians" by the dictatorial powers of a communist state.

The second one is the so-call ALBANIANISM.

Albanianism as the state ideology was brought to its ultimatelimits during the rule of Enver Hodza, when there was a strong instigation from Tirana of separatist tendencies in Kosovo. The only period when this ideology was not a state one was the time between the two world wars, when the civic parties were in power. In Tirana today there is a strong political factor which is strongly opposed the official politics towards Kosovo. The opposition in Kosovo and Metohija region, gathered around Adem Demadji, is of the view that Ibrahim Rugova and his Democratic Alliance of Kosovo offering false optimism regarding the realization of the Albanian demand, while Democratic Alliance of Kosovo, they say, is transforming itself into a party fighting for a nonexistent power.

As the Albanians said"The religion of Albanians is Albanianism."