Macedonian Prime Minister to Bulgarian: “Everyone descended either from monkeys or from Adam and Eve, and not from Bulgarians”

North Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev asked former Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov to explain to him the motives that prompted the regime in Sofia to “use biblical motives in the dispute over national identity.”

North Macedonian media reported this, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.

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“According to science, we all descended from monkeys, and according to faith, we all descended from Adam and Eve. How did it happen that only the Macedonians descended from the Bulgarians?” Zaev asked, opening a polemic with Borisov.

The Macedonian Prime Minister said that the issue that is causing Bulgaria to block the start of negotiations between Skopje and the EU is ridiculous, and that he is unclear about the wording that Bulgaria “accepts the reality of Macedonian identity and language” but wants to discuss “origins.” Thus, in the biblical spirit, defending their “birthright.”

At the same time, Zaev notes that a special commission consisting of historians must make a decision on all aspects of the Bulgarian-Macedonian dispute and that a solution must be found for all historical figures.

“I am not giving up the European perspective because the EU has no alternative,” Zaev added.

In fact, the current Macedonians are the western part of the Bulgarian ethnic group, which historically found itself outside the Bulgarian state. After the First Balkan War, the Bulgarian-populated territory of Vardar Macedonia, liberated from the Ottoman Empire, was assigned to Serbia (Aegean Macedonia was populated primarily by Greeks and went to Greece, Pirin Macedonia to Bulgaria), subsequently to Yugoslavia, and began to be spiritually nourished by the Serbian Orthodox Church.

The Serbian monarchy, until its actual fall at the beginning of World War II, did not abandon attempts to softly assimilate the Macedonian Bulgarians, putting forward the concept of “Bulgarized Serbs,” which, in turn, caused sharp rejection by the local population and even provoked a guerrilla war against the Yugoslav authorities.

The years of World War II can be considered the beginning of the Bulgarian-“Macedonian” confrontation, when the passionate part of the population of Vardar Macedonia, who had previously sympathized with Bulgaria, came under the banner of anti-fascist resistance, while official Sofia became an ally of the Third Reich.

The communists who came to power in Yugoslavia in 1945, in defiance of Bulgaria, which remained allies of the USSR after the conflict between Stalin and Tito, spurred the process of formation of a special Macedonian identity.

The Socialist Republic of Macedonia was created, as well as a separate Macedonian nation based on the patterns of Ukrainian and Belarusian identity in the USSR. And along with them the Macedonian language, Macedonian history, and even the “Macedonian Orthodox Church”, established with the support of atheistic authorities.

After the collapse of Yugoslavia, Greece made a claim to the newly independent Macedonia, claiming that the Slavs appeared on the territory of historical Macedonia much later than the Hellenic ancient Macedonians, and therefore do not have the right to such a name as a nation and country. Athens blocked the state's entry into the UN until Skopje adopted the name "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" and the flag with the symbol of the ancient Macedonian kings, the Virgin Star, was replaced by a flag with the image of the sun.

After the 2018 Prespa Agreement with Greece, Macedonia changed its name to “North Macedonia”, after which the path to NATO was opened for it; the country became a member of the alliance in 2020.

Now Bulgaria is blocking the process of North Macedonia's accession to the EU, demanding that the concept of the Macedonian language be abandoned, considering it a dialect of the Bulgarian language, that such iconic heroes as one of the leaders of the anti-Turkish uprising Gotse Delchev be recognized as exclusively Bulgarian heroes, and many other concessions that will inevitably lead to the collapse of the national identity of the Macedonian Slavs.