The endless bickering over Macedonia’s name merely distracts from a far greater need.
SKOPJE | Josip Broz Tito calendars hang on office walls, memorabilia of the old Yugoslav leader clutter plywood shelves of Skopje’s bazaars, and on one of the capital’s busiest streets, the Broz Cafe is bustling on a warm October afternoon. The fading letters of the marshal’s “unity and brotherhood” speech that mark the international outpouring of help after the 1963 Skopje earthquake fill one crumbling wall of the former railway station – now the site of a museum and Tito memorabilia shop.
If there is Tito nostalgia in Macedonia, it may be more than fondness for an era when there were jobs and the Balkans were unified (never mind the political repression). “He respected our identity,” said one aging Skopje shopkeeper selling replicas of wartime memorabilia of the anti-Nazi partisan movement that Tito led. “He would never allow this shame to go on.”
| Playtime's over, boys. |
That “shame” is Greece’s opposition to Macedonia’s name. In one of the most intractable disputes resulting from the implosion of Yugoslavia, the Greeks insist that their tiny neighbor rebrand itself, fearing that “Republic of Macedonia” implies territorial ambitions on its northern region of Macedonia.
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