“The Macedonian problem and Bulgaria” is the title of the secret archives collection of the Bulgarian republic between the period of 1950 and 1967, which is dedicated to the political formation of the country in relation to Macedonia. The research of the book is a joint development of “Archives” agency of the Government of Bulgaria and the Center for Macedonian Researches in Thessaloniki. The book is published in Greek and soon, it will be published also in Bulgarian. The presentation was done personally by the Greek foreign minister Dora Bakoyanni in the presence of her father Konstantinos Mitsotakis, former Prime Minister of Greece and current honorable chairman of New Democracy.

21 documents – protocols from plenums of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP), reports, decisions of the managing directors of BCP, letters, declarations, and manifests – all dedicated to the Bulgarian politics in relation to Macedonia. All those become public for the first time and at that in Greek. “By going through the archives we concluded that Bulgarian politics in relation to the Macedonian problem has formed depending on the relationship tides between Belgrade and Moscow. When the relationship was good, Bulgaria was forced to sacrifice its national interests, to force its own citizens to call themselves Macedonian. On the other hand, when the relationship between Tito and Stalin was cooler, Sofia gains self-confidence to defend its national interests,” comments Spiridon Sfetas, who has been researching the Bulgarian archives and has been translating them in Greek.

This “tides” type of politics continued until the moment when Todor Zhivkov comes to the Bulgarian political scene. Spiridon Sfetas describes Zhivkov as an “uneducated but extremely smart villager.” It was Zhivkov who was the first one to understand that Bulgarian politics in relation to the Macedonian country should not be influenced by the relationship between Yugoslavia and the USSR. In his report in front of the BCP plenum on March 11 and 12, 1963, he outlines the principals, which Bulgaria needs to defend when it comes down to Skopje:

-       The Macedonian country exists and this is a fact.

-       As a historic community, the Macedonian nation never existed.

-       We cannot agree that there is a Macedonian minority in Bulgaria.