Contemporary urban policies in Skopje appeared in a specific context, which was propitious for the rise of nationalism. The 1990s were synonymous with a deep economic crisis in Macedonia, directly in relation with the breakdown of Yugoslavia, the loss of the central authority’s financial and structural support, and consequent economic restructuring. Macedonian nationalism, which was previously an element of cohesion within the Federation, began to disrupt it. A subsequent dispute with Greece over the name Macedonia, which led the international community to recognise the new state only two years after the independence, under the provisional name Former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, amplified the popularity of nationalist themes among
both ethnic Macedonians and Albanians. The strained economic situation resulting from the UN-embargo and the Kosovo refugee crisis of 1999, and the very high rate of may explain the attractiveness of nationalist ideas. The social and economic differences between Macedonians and Albanians were also been a factor of destabilisation.
While Albanian claims for more autonomy and better representation within the Federation were tempered under Tito, they intensified following his death, rapidly taking a nationalist dimension. Serbian and Macedonian nationalisms responded by denouncing the ‘ethnic threat’ in Kosovo and adjacent Macedonian regions. In Macedonia, the government’s political propaganda was followed by police repression against the Albanian community. ‘Differentiation’, political lay-off and imprisonments, cultural and educational embargo, and suppression of Albanian schools accompanied with semantic restrictions, were the consequence of these policies (Iseni, 2008). The nationalist climate contributed to the ethnicisation of social relations in the 1980s and 1990s. From the 1991 ethno-national Constitution whose adoption was boycotted by the Albanian representatives to the Tetovo university crisis in 19941, the Albanians have always sought to be better recognised and represented in the republic – thus directly challenging the ethnic Macedonians’ exclusive rights to the state. Many Macedonians developed a grudge towards Albanians whom they felt still received much consideration from the state because of their minority status. The economic situation and international context also explains Macedonians’ reluctance to relinquish their constitutionally and
1 The 1994 crisis showed the struggle surrounding the creation of an Albanian university in Tetovo, fiercely opposed by the Macedonian government. The shaky compromise eventually realized only reinforced the Albanian perception of themselves as second-class citizens.
politically guaranteed preferential rights. Although the short 2001 conflict between Macedonia’s largest minority and the national government came as a shock for the international community, the claims expressed by Albanian fighters were therefore not unexpected.
The Ohrid Framework Agreement, which put an end to the conflict, enhanced the political and legal status of Albanians, while maintaining the unitary character of the state, to which the Macedonian representatives were fiercely attached. The revised Constitution still maintained the privileged status of the Macedonian Orthodox Church but mentioned other religious communities, and decentralisation was introduced. A compromise was achieved with the recognition of Albanian as a Republic’s official language at the local level. Although it came about as a function of demographics, rather than as a symbolic recognition of equal status, it concerned a highly symbolical issue: with more than 20 percent of its population Albanian, the national capital itself, Skopje, would have to introduce bilingualism. A final but still major point concerned the iconographical sphere: members of all communities were granted the right to
‘express, foster and develop their identity and community attributes, and to use their community symbols’. Local authorities were authorised to place on front of local
buildings emblems marking the identity of the majority community in the municipality. From now on, the Albanian flag could appear next to the Macedonian flag.
And yet, instead of having set the basis for a liberal nation building, the Framework Agreement has opted for a consociational model based on ethnic divisions. Lijphart (1977) developed the consociational model for societies with moderate differences and conflicts. In less peaceful situations, it may have negative effects, such as the fragmentation of a plural society into more homogeneous and self-contained elements, by ‘locking’ the individuals into specific ethnic identities. With the exclusion of other groups than the Macedonian and Albanian, the republic went from a Nation- state into a bi-ethnic state, in which ethnic identities are reified, essentialised and manipulated from above. Not only did the short conflict reveal the deep fracture of the Macedonian society, but it made sectarian ethno-nationalist attitudes common place in both the Macedonian and Albanian communities – and especially in their leaders’ discourses. Nationalist claims were expressed more openly and became more popular than ever, with the right-wing party – then in power – VMRO-DPMNE at the forefront
of the nationalistic debate. Since 2001, the VMRO-DPMNE governments2 have always openly showed their closed relations with the Orthodox Church and have constantly campaigned for the restoration of – carefully chosen – historical landmarks, to which I will return. In its manifesto for the 2008 election3, the Demo-Christian party placed traditional Christian values high in its politics of ‘cultural rebirth’, with the declared goal of reshaping the national narrative in order to preserve and nurture the national identity of ethnic Macedonians. As I will show, many elements of Skopje 2014 were also listed in the cultural rebirth section of this manifesto.
1.2 Skopje 2014
It is under these circumstances that the Municipality of Centre, supported by the central government, presented a new project for the city centre in February 2010, in the form of a short film entitled Skopje 2014.4 Architecture is never used more than in periods of crisis (Dovey, 1999), and Skopje is here a good example. About half a century after the last urban plan, the city centre was to be totally reshaped. The film shows a project consisting of the reconstruction of the core central space of Skopje around the famous Macedonia Square. Central to this is the edification of neoclassical and baroque buildings and monuments that the political party in power, the VMRO-DPMNE, had placed high on its agenda for a ‘cultural rebirth’ of the Republic. From Alexander the Great to Tsar Samuil, (via the Orthodox Church and the ethnic Macedonian ‘defenders’ of the 2001 conflict) the ‘heroes’ of the new national Pantheon are present in the form of statues.
According to the first version of the project, more than 20 buildings were planned, including cultural institutions (including the National Theatre, the Museum of Archaeology, the Macedonian Philharmonic Orchestral Hall and the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle) and government buildings (notably the Criminal Court Building, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Financial Police Building, the New City Hall and the ‘Old’ City Hall). New bridges would be added, and existing ones renovated. The project also included plans to transform the façades of existing buildings in the city centre, the most famous (and controversial) being the Government building. About forty monuments were initially planned, including figures
2 From 1998 to 2002, and since 2006.
3 Programme for Rebirth of VMRO-DPMNE 2008-2012 (Програма за преродба на ВМРО-ДПМНЕ) 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iybmt-iLysU
from Justinian I to Goce Delčev, but their number and variety constantly increased from February 2010 onwards. As the project nears completion, the centre of the city has been dramatically reshaped in terms of a highly specific nationalist representation of space.
Most of the architects and designers of the buildings, monuments and statues have not been selected through national or international competitions, but were directly appointed by the government. In certain cases, competitions were organised, but were often criticised by other architects and activist groups for the limited room of manoeuvre left to the candidate projects and for a lack of fairness in selecting winners. Most of the people engaged in Skopje 2014 have been local Macedonian architects and artists, who were not particularly renowned before the start of the project. Some work came from abroad, such as that of Valentina Stevanovska, a Macedonian sculptor and author of Skopje’s most famous statues, the fountains of Alexander the Great and of Philip of Macedon, which were cast in an Italian foundry.
A huge amount of money was put into the project and, receiving extensive media coverage, it rapidly gained popularity among ethnic Macedonians. While the government initially announced Skopje 2014 as a €80-million project, this figure has been questioned by many experts.5 The total sum spent remains a mystery, especially since the project itself has often been updated and new components have been added. While the main opposition party, the SDSM, claims that Skopje 2014 costs more than €350 million, other sources refer to a sum of between €500 million and €1 billion.6 For the first time since the beginning of the project, the government presented in April 2013 an official financial report revealing the fees paid to the sculptors7. The creator of some of the main statues of Skopje 2014 – such as Alexander the Great or Philip of Macedon and his wife – earned a €2.9 million salary. According to the government8, the total cost for the project so far is €208 million – again, an estimate widely criticised. A report9 published by the Government Public Procurements Bureau mentioned an almost equal share in spending money between the ministry of Culture, the municipality of Centre
5 Balkan Insight, ‘Secret Contracts hide Cost of Skopje Makeover’, 14/09/2012,
http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/secret-contracts-hide-cost-of-skopje-makeover [accessed: 02/11/12].
6 Balkan Insight, ‘Skopje 2014: The new face of Macedonia’, 07/06/13,
http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/gallery/skopje-2014 [accessed: 02/09/13]. 7 Balkan Insight, ‘Sculptors Earn Fortunes From Revamp of Skopje’, 26/04/2013,
http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/skopje-revamp-has-made-sculptors-millionaires [accessed: 01/05/2013].
8 Balkan Insight, ‘Macedonia Sets Skopje Revamp Cost at €208m’, 23/04/2013,
http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/government-skopje-revamp-weighs-e2%C3%A58-million
[accessed: 25/04/2013]. 9 Ibid.
and the procurement bureau. However, a clarification of these costs may be expected soon, since the newly elected mayor of Skopje’s municipality of Centre10, SDSM member Andrej Zernovski, an opponent and stark critic of the project, ordered in May 2013 a moratorium on all construction work and financial transactions linked with Skopje 2014. He also pledged an investigation into how the public funds have been spent, accusing the government and former mayor of money laundering11.
Nevertheless, these attempts might not be enough to stop the project. A report submitted by the municipal review commission tasked with probing the finances of the revamp was immediately dismissed by the government. Not only did the commission blame the previous mayor for having ignored the law and carried out projects that were not under his jurisdiction, it also accused the central government for having encouraged illegal conduct. The commission indicated that financial crimes often took place in the way statues and buildings were commissioned (with cases of statues planned to be cast in marble ending up being cast in cheaper bronze, even though the municipality paid for the marble).12
Having presented a brief review of the financial machinations surrounding the project, I will now identify and conceptualise the main themes evident in its design. Skopje 2014 has four main components: first, it is exclusive; second, it defines what is normal and distinguishes it from what is abnormal; third, it seeks to purify space through the erection of a collective psyche; fourth, it both controls space and uses space to control.
Skopje 2014 is ethno-nationally exclusivist. For its detractors, it simply denies the contribution of minority communities to Macedonian history and their existence as a constituent component of the Republic. Because, among others, the project includes
10 While the VMRO-DPMNE won the 2013 municipal elections in most localities, it lost Centre, home of the controversial revamp and a key bastion of the ruling party. After annulling the SDSM candidate’s initial victory, the Macedonian administration ordered a re-run, sparking the resignation of Isamedin Limani, the head of the institution, who accused his colleagues of yielding to political pressure. Despite of the tense atmosphere and manifold irregularities noted by NGO observers, the SDSM won with over 3,000 votes, placing an opponent of the ruling party at the head of one of the country’s most important municipalities.
11 Balkan Insight, ‘New mayor Halts Governement’s ‘Skopje 2014’ Revamp’, 25/04/2013,
http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/new-mayor-pulls-brake-on-skopje-2%C3%A5aa4 [accessed: 02/05/2013)
12 Balkan Insight, ‘Probe Claims Skopje 2014 Project Broke Law’, 13/08/2013,
http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/probe-of-skopje-2014-revamp-reveals-foul-play [accessed: 19/08/2013)
only very few statues of non-Macedonian figures, and is mainly planned and financed by the Macedonian government, it exemplifies what Bollens (1998a, 1998b; 2002) calls a partisan strategy. I will use this concept to analyse how ambitious ethno-national entrepreneurs use urban planning as a way to assert their ideology – the result being an increasingly dividing city.
Authorities often use architecture and planning to remove potential threats and promote a normative conception of urban society, but in order for normality to be defined, abnormality must be defined first. Difference has to be framed, and, as a result, erased or expelled, for the contours of self-definition to be drawn and kept secure. In urban space, this means building walls. Yet, walls are only a first (visible and material) step in this enterprise, which, above all, means establishing boundaries and minimizing the threat of deviance to mainstream values and identity. In order to explore this process in the context of Skopje 2014, I will draw in the next chapter on Foucault’s idea of planning as an assemblage for ensuring the allocation of inhabitants in the city, directing their moves and programming their interrelations.
These politics are also characterised by their attempt to create ‘pure space’. By removing socialist marks from urban space, erecting only Macedonian statues, using marble and ‘noble’ material, marking space with religious symbols and hiding the Ottoman old town from view, I suggest that Skopje 2014’s ethno-national leaders aim at constructing what Sibley (2005:86) calls a ‘pure’ or ‘purified’ space. While Sibley does not propose a definition of such space, the latter term designates a place where the presence of what is considered ‘dirty’ or ‘dangerous’ by a community is removed and excluded from it. The notion of ‘purity’ involves a moral and subjective judgement on what is good or bad. Separating is part of the process of purification: it is a means by which pollution is avoided. Sibley’s psychoanalytical perspective on purity and exclusion enables me to link the materiality of physical walls and barriers with psychodynamic processes. As I will show, Skopje 2014 is characteristic of such an attempt of ‘purification’. It aims at symbolically and spatially materialising a boundary between the ‘self’ and the ‘Other’ through a series of cultural representations. Material borders are erected in order to draw and enforce moral distinctions in the collective psyche. Macedonian ethno-national identity is defined and essentialised by the bricks and stones of Skopje 2014 and, at the same time, defended against unstable, ‘deviant’ and potentially contagious threats – non-Macedonian minorities.
Finally, this enterprise is also one of control. In a just a few years, Skopje’s central space has changed dramatically (figure 19) and has become a way for political leaders to exercise their power over urban inhabitants. While drawing on Foucault and Sibley, I will also use Lefebvre’s (1974:26) view of the city as a social product shaped by political and ideological systems that use space as a ‘means of control, and hence of domination, of power’. In these terms, Skopje 2014 is an attempt to replace lived space – the space of its users – by conceived space, which furthermore involves establishing centre-periphery relations. In these, the centre is embodied by the ethnic Macedonian state which seeks to assert its own representation of space and identity over urban society, and attempts to do so by expelling and erasing all marginal elements that do not fit with its ‘vision’ and might resist its enterprise. Urban planning is here led by the wish to efface ambiguities and contradictions on which Skopje has been constructed, in order to become a ‘whole’ – an antique, European, Christian and bourgeois city that it has actually never been.
This also implies a rewriting of history. I will next examine how Skopje 2014 does not only erect walls but also constructs and even invents a past. I will then analyse how the construction of a collective psyche in relation to a new Macedonian imagined community is based on two main pillars: the army and religion.