OCR
Visualization of Policies of Cultural Memory Construction In the course of the Second World War and in the context of establishing Bulgarian administrative authorities in Vardar and Aegean Macedonia, new paintings describing King Samuel’s victories (and also those of other medieval Bulgarian rulers) appeared; for example the painting of Boris Angelushev King Samuel Defeats the Byzantines at the Gates of Trajan (1941) and the painting of Evgenii Poptoshev King Samuel Defeats the Troops of Byzantine Emperor Basil II at the Gates of Trajan (1942) (Fig. 3). In times of war victories and partial accomplishment of the Bulgarian ideal for national unity it is no surprise that the artists resorted to the theme of King Samuel’s most famous victory (the Battle of the Gates of Trajan). The battle is also known as Byzantium’s biggest defeat during the reign of Emperor Basil I. This fact refers to the events of the Second World War (the period between 1941 and 1944) when Bulgaria and Greece were enemies as members of the two belligerent powers (the Axis and the Allies). Understandably, the theme of the tragic Battle of Kleidion and King Samuel’s blinded warriors continued to be of no interest for the painters (Moutafov 2014: 17-18). Policies of Cultural Memory Construction and Their Visualization: 1944-1950 As early as the years before the Second World War, on the territory of former Yugoslavia, the so-called Yugo-Macedonism,° which clearly discriminates between Bulgarian and Macedonian ethnicity, on the one hand, and between Macedonian ° ‘The emergence of the so-called Macedonian question—that is the question of the belonging of the territory, population, and historical heritage of the geographic region of Macedonia during and after the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in the late 19° and early 20" century—laid the beginnings of the formation of different types of Macedonian identities or forms of Macedonism. The process became particularly tangible after the wars of 1912-1918 and the establishment of a border between different parts of the Macedonia region. Various clearly expressed diachronic forms and stages of Macedonism began to emerge and develop. In fact, they represented different levels of awareness of the population in the geographic region of Macedonia in relation to its specificity and distinction compared to the neighbouring Balkan countries and people. In the years before World War II on the territory of former Yugoslavia began the development of Yugo-Macedonism. It stuck to the policy of Comintern for creating a world proletarian state and laid the stress on the common cause in the struggle for freedom and social justice in which national specifics were not of primary significance. At the same time however, although as a secondary idea, this type of Macedonism clearly discriminated between Macedonian and Bulgarian ethnicity, on the one hand, and Macedonian and Serbian ethnicity, on the other hand. During the 1940s and 1950s the Bulgarian authorities pursued a policy of purposeful dissemination of Yugo-Macedonism in the territory of Pirin Macedonia. This was the process of the so-called Macedonisation of the population in Pirin Macedonia. Studies in “Macedonian language” and the “history of the Macedonian people” were introduced in the Bulgarian schools in the region and the population was forced to declare “Macedonian nationality” in the censuses. This policy of socialist Bulgaria was part of the preparations for the annexation of Pirin Macedonia to Yugoslavia and the subsequent formation of the Yugoslavian-Bulgarian federation. In the 1960s, as a result of the split between Tito and Stalin, Yugo-Macedonism began to shake off the communist doctrinality and the ideology of Marxism-Leninism. Thus, the civil (non-communist) Macedonism gradually began to develop in Yugoslavia. In this type of Macedonism the idea of ethnic and national differentiation of the Macedonian population came to the fore. For more information on the different forms of Macedonism and Macedonian nationalism, see Gruev 2011 and Maxwell 2007. 575