So what’s with all the statues…..?


We arrive in Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia at the end of a very long journey from Los Angeles via Istanbul. We’re based in a hotel on the city’s main square and once we step out come face-to-face with the central area’s unusual architecture and its impressive number of statues. In the years 2008-2014, the country’s right of centre government and Skopje’s mayor decided on a beautification project to tone down or eliminate the “brutalist” architecture of the Yugoslav Communist era and erect statues that celebrated the country’s pre-WWII history.


The popular belief (or joke!) is that Skopje’s mayor went on a tour of European cities and decided to copy the best of what he saw. Hence the new neoclassical and baroque building facades…..

…….a bridge copied from Prague……

…….and a triumphal arch from Paris among others.

Lack of funds (so we’re told!) prevented an intended “Skopje Eye” copied from London!  Local wags have nicknamed Skopje “the Las Vegas of the Balkans” in a nod to the architecture of some of the hotels on the Strip!!


But this is our favourite statue

The statue in the foreground is of the Greek (?Macedonian😂) god, Prometheus. The statue initially was naked. Local women objected to a statue of a naked man (ironically, the location of the statue is Women Warrior Park!) and the sculptor was obliged to add “underwear”. So incensed was the sculptor that he added a small crying face on the right side of the added garment!!


The country formerly known as…..



It would be an understatement to describe the history of North Macedonia as chequered and complex! The country in more or less its current form came into being in 1991 with the collapse of Yugoslavia, of which “Macedonia” had been one of the six constituent countries and two provinces. In my ignorance, I had always assumed that “Macedonia” was historically Greek. Since 1991, Greece had objected to the new country calling itself Macedonia, insisting that the name implied that it had designs on the area of northern Greece which the Greeks call…...Macedonia. Until 2019, the new country was officially known as the “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” or “FYR Macedonia” for short! In 2019, Greece and the new country finally agreed on the name “North Macedonia” with all sorts of conditions including that North Macedonia make no claims to be the heirs to historic Macedonia, including but not limited to Alexander the Great…..who “of course” is Greek and not Macedonian!!

The agreement which was internationally recognized allowed North Macedonia to formally become a member of the United Nations and the 30th member of NATO.


The 20th Century…..one war after another


For many centuries from around the 3rd Century AD, much of what is now North Macedonia was a key part of the Roman Empire and straddled a major trade route between Rome and Byzantium (present day Istanbul). This ended with the rise of the Ottoman Empire in the 14th Century and the region remained under Ottoman rule until the empire disintegrated in the early 20th century. What followed were two Balkan Wars, two World Wars, the scourge of Nazism and the rise and fall of the Soviet Union and communism. Through the Balkan Wars and until the period of Soviet communist domination beginning with the end of the Second World War, it was neighbouring Bulgaria that had the biggest impact on North Macedonia. The Macedonian language is very similar to Bulgarian and even to this day, Macedonia still uses the Cyrillic alphabet. Bulgaria sided with the Nazis and it was the Bulgarians who rounded up almost all of the region’s Jewish population on March 11th, 1943 and shipped them off to Treblinka.


Today, North Macedonia has a population of around 2 million almost half of whom live in or around the capital, Skopje. Around 60% are orthodox Christian and 30% Moslem (many of whom are ethnically Albanian). We’re told that there are only around 100 Jewish people remaining all of who live in Skopje.


Now it’s all about Bulgaria


We have a fascinating series of meetings* in Skopje at which we hear about the challenges North Macedonia faces having got over the name dispute hurdle. The country’s number one objective now is to join the European Union of which it has been a candidate since 2005. Until the name agreement, it was Greece that would have used its veto. Now it’s Bulgaria which is pushing North Macedonia to change its constitution to specifically mention the country’s tiny Bulgarian minority - numbering around 3500. The majority of North Macedonia’s population are either ethnic Macedonians, mostly Orthodox Christians belonging to the Macedonian branch of the Orthodox Church or Albanian Muslims. Some minorities are specifically mentioned in the constitution, a tiny Jewish minority numbering around 100 for instance and the current government is willing to hold a national referendum to add additional groups, including ethnic Bulgarians. The main opposition party, right of centre with populist leanings and likely to form the next government is against this change, preferring instead to just refer to Macedonians as being all inclusive. Until some resolution is negotiated, Bulgaria will continue to block North Macedonia’s accession to the EU.

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*Skopje meetings

  • President of North Macedonia, Stevo Pendarovski who took time out of his re-election campaign and whatever affairs of state he has to deal with! Pendarovski is just at the end of his first 5 year term and hoping for a second term. He’s favoured to be one of the two candidates who’ll make it through the first round of voting later in April, but is considered to be the underdog in the second round in early May. Most of the power in the country rests with Parliament and the Prime Minister who’s elected by Parliament. The President’s role is somewhat ceremonial but he is C-in-C of the armed forces, has to sign off or not on parliamentary legislation and has a major say in international relations

  • Goce Karajanov, National Security & Foreign Policy Advisor. Mr Karajanov was Ambassador to Russia from 2015-2019


  • Ambassador Vasko Naumovski, former deputy prime minister and Ambassador to the US
  • Vasko Popetreveski - a TV journalist who has a weekly interview show and a weekly investigative “magazine” show
  • A briefing and cocktail reception at the US Embassy hosted by Eric Meyer, Deputy Chief of Mission & acting Charge d’Affair (the Ambassador is out of the country)

  • Svetozar Janevski, Macedonia’s richest man and head of a large financial conglomerate with a finger in multiple pies, not least the country’s dominant winery who hosted an amazing banquet prepared by just one of his numerous cordon bleu chefs accompanied by very large quantities of some of his finest wines