Comment by A_D_E_P_T | Hacker News Reader

Comment by A_D_E_P_T | Hacker News Reader

Interesting to see this on the front page. I was in Skopje just a couple of weeks ago.

As the article notes, a lot of it was destroyed in an earthquake in the 1960s, so the government seized upon the opportunity to rebuild several major landmarks (like the main post office) in the then-fashionable raw concrete brutalist style.

That said, most of the post-60s residential blocs are not identifiably "brutalist" -- it's not Belgrade -- they're just bland and basically built as functionalist housing in the unloved "Khrushchyovka" style.

But that's not the interesting part. What's interesting is that since ~2010 the government has embarked on a "nation building" (and explicitly anti-Albanian) project with gaudy neoclassical buildings that are often likened to Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. Kitsch. See, e.g., the fake galleon and its background: https://ibb.co/LTGwYZs

Much ink has been spilled on this matter.

> https://rs.boell.org/en/2021/01/29/neoliberal-manipulation-s...

Thing is, though, it looks good and Skopje is a very fun town to spend time in. The old market is great, the people are nice, and the much-criticized neoclassical buildings give the city a vibe that's both extraordinary (there are very few places like it) and coherent (the entire city is done up in just a small handful of architectural styles.)

I find it odd to brand it as "explicitly anti-Albanian" when the very article that was linked says

> With the end of the "Skopje 2014" project, not only the Macedonian nationalist hungry spirit was fed. Its counterpart, Albanian nationalism, got its part of the city to ill-treat, so the neighbouring Skanderbeg Square was turned into a nationalist showcase for another actor of the Macedonian ethnocratic elite.

But overall agree that it's over-the-top kitsch.

Call me unsophisticated but the building in that picture is beautiful. It won't win any awards, but the place as a whole is very pleasing to the eye.

It's all very superficial. When you get up close to it, you can see it's not built very well. And if you just walk a block or two away, it gets significantly more dirty and grungy.

I wouldn't be surprised if 20-30 years from now, it's all crumbling.

It’s already decaying, tiles coming loose, glues coming undone, grime building up. And yeah, up close everything looks cheap, like it was built to be a temporary movie set.

(Talking strictly about the neoclassical stuff.)

Anti-Albanian? Do you mean anti-Greek? There are tensions between Slavic Macedonians and some irredentist Albanians, but the big Alexander the Great appropriation project is explicitly an attempt to stick it to the Greeks for defining the word "Macedonian" differently.

Nah... See, thing is, there aren't a lot of Greeks in N.Macedonia -- but there's a huge Albanian minority, ~25% across the nation and presumably much more in Skopje. The "old city," not a ten minute walk from where that photo was taken, is practically a Muslim quarter, full of mosques. It feels more like Istanbul than Athens.

The Skopje 2014 project is, in a way, an attempt at forging a national identity that's equal parts Slavic and neo-Ancient-Macedonian -- and the Albainans, feeling left out, have protested quite loudly about it. More on that here: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/soeu-2018-003...

Also on the Wiki page:

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skopje_2014

> "Sam Vaknin, a former adviser to Nikola Gruevski, has stated that the project is not anti-Greek or anti-Bulgarian, but anti-Albanian. In an interview, he said "Antiquisation has a double goal, which is to marginalise the Albanians and create an identity that will not allow Albanians to become Macedonians.""

All very interesting, I think. It's a nation that's trying to find itself, trying to build up a coherent national identity in real time.

As for the Greek thing, it's totally obvious that Ancient Macedonia is within the borders of modern Greece. Philip's palace at Aigai is a ~4 hour drive from Skopje, and indeed south of Thessaloniki. So the N.Macedonian position re: Alexander the Great is a little bit farcical. But I suppose they could say that they are inheritors, of sorts, to the Roman Province of Macedonia...

Vaknin has quite a colorful history himself.

The project of Skopje 2014 was actually a big money embezzlement scheme for the regime back then which was borderline dictatorship and mafia. The top dogs actually squeezed the whole government budget for themselves getting contracts and tenders, and because there was not any more money left to embezzle they came up with Skopje 2014 and got a 1-2 billion euro loan from european countries in order to build it. The project was to renovate and build the city centre in baroque style, and create massive monuments from people all the way back from Ancient Macedonia, to more modern revolutionaries from 19th-20th century. This was in line with their nationalist and right wing rhetoric. Saying that is anti-albanian because the albanians have protested actually doesnt mean much, because political parties there usually illegally pay people to attend protests to further their own agendas. The political parties in Macedonia are actually segregated by ethnicity, with 2 big ethnically macedonian parties and 2-3 smaller albanian parties. One party cannot achieve majority to form a government, and back then the leading party called VMRO DPMNE, which started the Skopje 2014 project, actually had a coallition with the leading albanian party called DUI. This project was voted on by both parties, which achieved legal majority in the parliament and was approved. Not to say there wasn't massive corruption, but definitely not antialbanian, since the leading albanian party approved the project. In addition, despite 20% of the population being albanian, it doesn't mean that the country and its history and culture is albanian. Half of the albanians living in macedonia at the moment immigrated in the 90s because of the kosovo war.

And regarding the ancient borders of macedonia being currently in greece, after the Ottoman empire collapsed borders were drawn in the region as a result of war, not as a result of ethnicity. Thessaloniki before WW1 a quarter of the population was slavic speaking bulgarians and macedonians, a quarter jewish, the rest was greek and turkish. There were pogroms against macedonians both in bulgaria and greece, all the way from around early 20th century to around WW2, and it stopped when the current borders were drawn because of the Yugoslav partisans. In fact, in the first balkan war, bulgaria could've occupied and kept thessaloniki if their army arrived a day earlier, but they were beat only by a few hours by the greek army led by the king, because the ottoman general decided to surrender the city and not fight. Not only that, but macedonia as an independent country was first theorized (not sure if its the right word) by macedonian and bulgarian revolutionaries that were operating in thessaloniki, with the goal of getting rid of the ottoman occupation. So, the current borders dont mean much. Macedonia was actually divided in 3 and stopped existing in one of the balkan wars, because all the neighbouring countries got a slice of it. Luckily Tito and the yugoslav partisans won, and hence the borders are now what they were post WW2. If the axis had won WW2, the current Macedonia would've likely been a bulgarian province right now, joining the western side of bulgaria which is also called macedonia (pirin macedonia).

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