This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.
Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems. Please send reports of such problems to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.
TO an outsider, it is hard to fathom how countries can quarrel over a name -- not over ideology or territorial aggression, but a name. Yet that is precisely what Greece and Macedonia are doing. They disagree intensely over whether Macedonia, which seceded from Yugoslavia at the outset of its turmoil in 1991, can call itself "Macedonia."
You've stolen our heritage, say the Greeks, referring back a couple of millenniums to the time of Alexander the Great. Indeed, there was an Alexander, but he was King of Macedonia, the modern Macedonians note.
The temptation is to dismiss the feud as farcical. Unfortunately, it is no trivial matter, certainly not for diplomats trying to contain the Balkan conflict.
Macedonia's stability is undermined by a Greek economic embargo, which is contributing to shortages and higher prices for everything from consumer goods to oil. Twice before in this century, the geographic region known as Macedonia has been a cause of wars. And should the Balkan war spread beyond Bosnia and Croatia now, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Albania and Turkey might all be drawn in again.
To prevent such an explosion and deter the territorial ambitions of President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, who has not recognized Macedonia -- he considers it part of southern Serbia -- the United Nations has a peacekeeping force in Macedonia. Underscoring its concerns, Washington has contributed 500 troops. At the same time, however, Macedonia is kept in a precarious position, because, out of deference to Greece, Washington has not established full diplomatic relations with Macedonia.
Continue reading the main storyStirred in with the external threats from Serbia and Greece is the ethnic conflict within Macedonia between the Government and the country's Albanians, who make up about a quarter of the population of 2.2 million people, and who are campaigning for greater political and cultural autonomy.
Of all the destabilizing factors, the quarrel over the name should be easy to resolve.
Even though there was a Macedonian kingdom 2,500 years ago, Slavs and Bulgars moved into the region in the 5th and 7th centuries, and a Macedonian nationalism did not arise until the end of the last century. A discrete Macedonian state did not exist until the 1940's, when Tito created an autonomous Republic of Macedonia as part of Communist Yugoslavia, which still left a Macedonian province in northern Greece and a sliver of Macedonia in Bulgaria.
Even when Yugoslavia began to collapse in the late 1980's, the majority of Macedonians weren't clamoring for independence, preferring to remain part of a federal Yugoslavia. When that entity ceased to be viable, with the secession of Slovenia and Croatia, Macedonia declared its independence. Having been called the Republic of Macedonia for 50 years, it seemed reasonable to continue with that name.
For some Macedonians, there are other reasons.
"If I am not Macedonian, what am I?" asked 37-year-old Gordana Stosic, director of Macedonia's largest independent television station, overlooking the fact that the Albanians consider themselves Albanians, not Macedonians. Even for those without strong nationalist feelings, the name has come to symbolize resistance and survival against the Greeks. That will make a compromise name -- like "New Macedonia" -- even harder for Macedonians to accept. Greece has said that it will not accept that name either, nor any name with "Macedonia" in it.
Hail Alexander
For the Greeks, the name is theirs because Alexander the Great is theirs. Never mind that back then the Macedonians were not considered Greeks, that indeed the Greeks viewed them as barbarians -- meaning, literally, that they didn't speak Greek. That was before Alexander displayed his skills as a general and by the age of 30 -- after subduing rebellious Greek states -- had established an empire of some 2 million square miles, from the Adriatic to the Hindu Kush. After a couple of thousand years, Alexander is firmly established in the pantheon of Greek heroes.
More than a million Greeks demonstrated in the streets two years ago against the Macedonians' use of the name, a reflection of the political consequences for any Greek government that suggests compromise. A Greek journalist, Takis Machis, knows what it means to suggest conciliation. After writing two years ago that perhaps the Government's position on Macedonia was wrong, he was branded a traitor, and people offered to beat him up in the streets.
The 47-year-old Mr. Machis stepped into the fray again recently when he interviewed the historian Eric Hobsbawnon the subject. Mr. Hobsbawn, one of the leading scholars on nations and nationalism, said Greece did not exist as a nation in antiquity, that the Greek nation-state was a modern invention. He added that Greece had no exclusive claim to "Macedonia" because ancient Macedonia had not been part of a Greek state. These views, published in a Greek newspaper in late March, have generated hundreds of angry letters. Mr. Machis said that one reason several callers condemned him for giving space to Mr. Hobsbawn was because Mr. Hobsbawn is Jewish.
Not all of the Greek inflexibility over the name is rooted in antiquity and culture. During Greece's civil war, from 1946 to 1949, Greek Macedonia was the Communist stronghold, and Tito had plans for a broader Communist Macedonia that included at least the part of the region that now lies in Greece.
Tito and communism may be dead, but there are plenty of strident Macedonian nationalists who believe that all Macedonians, including those in the Greek province of Macedonia, should live in one state. Greece fears, with reason, that recognizing a "Macedonia" will stir these irredentist embers.
If Athens had had its druthers, Macedonia would have remained part of Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia. Like the Greeks, the Serbs are Orthodox Christians, and Athens has been generally sympathetic to the Serbs, who they see as the bulwark against Islam in Europe. In this era of nationalist conflict in which emotion seems to prevail over reason, the Greek position is easier to understand.
An article last Sunday about the dispute between Greece and the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia over its use of the name Macedonia misspelled the surname of a British historian who has written that Greece has no claim on the name. He is Eric Hobsbawm, not Hobsbawn.