Twenty Years after Independence: Activities of the Government, the Citizens, and the Diaspora of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (The FYROM) for the Appropriation and Possession of the Name “Macedonia”

Photo credit: Marcus A. Templar

The FYROM’s purpose is to have the new state recognized as Macedonia, including the “Macedonian” ethnicity and heritage and achieve the goals set in 1893 by the terrorist organization Internal Macedonian-Thracian Revolutionary Organization (VMRO). From its establishment more than 100 years ago, VMRO’s goal has always been the incorporation of the geographic Macedonia as portrayed in the map of a Bulgarian cartographer, Vasil Kŭnchov (pronounced Kanchov or Kanchev in Bulgarian), in order to serve the political strategic goals of Bulgaria that were modified by the VMRO  in the beginning of the 20th century. The map was ethnically distorted so that “the validity of Kanchev’s [Kanchov] concept of Macedonia as a geographical region depends upon the criteria used to measure regional affinities.”

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