Fyrom: Searching for a Name, and Problems with the Expropriation of History

Known as Paionia in antiquity, Vardarska Banovina from 1929 through 1944, and the Socialist Republic of Macedonia in Josip Broz Tito's time, this small Yugoslav province seceded from Yugoslavia to become the "Republic of Macedonia." Accepted by the United Nations as the "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" (FYROM), it revealed its irredentist aspirations and a furious wave of hatred against Greece (which owns 75 percent of King Philip's Macedonia). Claiming that its Slavic inhabitants are "Macedonians," FYROM's ultranationalist administration is determined to continue stirring political, demographic, and territorial problems, paying Greece back for its financial generosity with a constant barrage of anti-Hellenic propaganda, provocations in the media and on the Internet, and distortions of history. It also struggles to establish kinship between ancient Macedonians and the FYROM Slavs while discrediting Macedonian Hellenism, and to apprehend the Macedonian patrimony all the way back to the fifth century BC. If it desires to succeed in its ongoing misguided journey to integration with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union, FYROM must abandon the mentality of the communist past, which had produced hostile irredentist dogma. George C. Papavizas is a retired research scientist of the US Department of Agricultures Agricultural Research Service. He is the author of (2002) and (2006). Parts of this article were published by the , 24 February 2009 and 1 August 2009. The views expressed in this article are personal.