Serbia – an Oponent or an ally of Independent Macedonia (1991‑2013)?

Abstract

The relations between Serbia and Macedonia in the period from the disintegration of SFR of Yugoslavia (1991) to 2013 became the subject of the proposed considerations. They are targeted at searching for an answer to the question in the title about the character of the attitude of Serbia towards its southern neighbour during the last twenty years. As an introduction the issues regarding the previous stage of the relations between Serbia and Macedonia, i.e. with the Yugoslavian period (since 1943), were briefly mentioned. Through decades, within the Yugoslavian order, the links between Serbia and Macedonia were so close that only the links that the biggest of the republics of former Yugoslavia had with its smallest member, i.e. Montenegro, seemed to be closer. The situation changed rapidly when in 1991 Macedonia decided to declare sovereignty and following the precursors of the defragmentation of SFRY – Slovenia and Croatia, it started to shape its political and economic being without ties to Yugoslavia, at that time cut and stuck in the chaos and on the verge of gory conflicts. Although, from the point of view of Belgrade, Macedonia was never officially considered an enemy, and the regime of Milosevic was mainly interested in those republics of the former SFRY, which territories were numerously inhabited by Serbs (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro), in the relations between Serbia and Macedonia cooled off and the Serbian radicals (the political camp of V. Šešelj) for some time called for “dealing with” Macedonia. On the threshold of the independence of Macedonia, it turned out that the main problems which this weak country will have to tackle in the relations with the outside world, will not be connected with Serbia but other neighbours (in the text the conflicted relations between Macedonia and Greece are mentioned, as well as the tensions between Macedonia and Albania inside Macedonia together with the background presence of the issue of Kosovo; the relation between Macedonia and Bulgaria were skipped). In the 90s of the 20th century as well as in the first 13 years of the current century, the relations between Serbia and Macedonia underwent interesting transformations. They evolved from quite hostile to fairly friendly, although occasionally various political, economic and even religious problems put a shadow on them. Especially important moments, which squeezed stigma on the transforming relation between Yugoslavia/Serbia and Macedonia, were the events happening in Kosovo and northern and western Macedonia at the turn of the 21st century, the centre of which was the Albanians. The changes on top of authorities of both countries, happening during the 20 years of censorship in 1991‑2011, were also of vital importance. The interpolitical transformations of both post‑Yugoslavian countries contributed to the gradual development of their, at first frozen, relations (in the text they are analysed since the visit of Kiro Gligorov in Belgrade in 1995 and the official establishment of diplomatic relations by Macedonia and Yugoslavia, comprised of Serbia and Montenegro in 1996 to the elections in Serbia in 2011, when the president of Serbia became T. Nikolić and the prime minister I. Dačić – the first once connected with V. Šešelj, the latter with S. Milošević – who paradoxically turned out to be an advocate of the rapprochement between Serbia and Macedonia, which was expressed by inter‑governmental connections in 2013). Another issue, pointed out in the article, is the presence in the bilateral relations between Macedonia and Serbia the problem of integration of both countries and the whole west Balkan macro region with the EU, significant since the democratization of Serbia (autumn 2000). The submitted sketch is closed with an optimistic evaluation of the present conditions and perspectives of the relations between Serbia and Macedonia. It is worth underlining that they did not deteriorate when the coalition of the nationalistic party (SNS) with the socialistic (SPS) came to power in Belgrade, although some analysts predicted – wrongly as it turned out – that this kind of reconfiguration of the political scene in Serbia would not provide the relation between Serbia and Macedonia with new, positive impulses, but only difficult challenges and trials, if not dramatic crises.