A large Macedonian flag hoisted at the Serbian-Macedonian border in Tabanovce
The national flag of the Republic of Macedonia (Macedonian: Знаме на Република Македонија) depicts a stylized yellow sun on a red field, with eight broadening rays extending from the center to the edge of the field. It was created by Prof. Miroslav Grčev and was adopted on 5 October 1995 after a one-year economic blockade imposed by Greece in order to force the Republic of Macedonia to remove the Vergina Sun, a symbol from the gravesite of the ancient Kings of Macedon from the flag, as Greece considered it a Greek symbol. The new eight-rayed sun represents "the new sun of Liberty" referred to in the national anthem of the Republic of Macedonia, Denes nad Makedonija (English: "Today over Macedonia"):
The Macedonian language is a South Slavic language spoken as a first language by around two million people, principally in North Macedonia and the Macedonian diaspora, with a smaller number of speakers throughout the transnational region of Macedonia. It is the official language of North Macedonia and a recognized minority language in parts of Albania, Romania, and Serbia.
Miroslav Grčev is a Macedonian architect, graphic designer, and caricaturist. He is known for having designed the current flag of North Macedonia and a popular proposal for a new coat of arms of North Macedonia.
Today over Macedonia, is being born the new sun of liberty. The Macedonians fight, for their own rights!
The change of the flag was at first not accepted by conservative Macedonians, nationalists, and self-proclaimed patriots. In the first years after the change, both flags were officially flown for a long time. Between 1995 and 1998, in the municipalities where then-opposition party VMRO-DPMNE ruled, only the old flag was flown from institution buildings. Popular opinion was divided about the merits of changing the flag; a survey carried out before the Assembly's vote found that a bare majority of the population, 56.33 percent, supported the adoption of a new flag. Nonetheless the Assembly voted for the new flag by an overwhelming majority, with 110 of the 115 delegates voting in favor, one voting against and four abstaining.[citation needed]
The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization – Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity, simplified as VMRO-DPMNE, is one of the two major parties in North Macedonia, the other being the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM).
Design
The flag ratio is 1:2 (height/width), with two colors:
The modern Macedonian state was proclaimed on 2 August 1944 by the Anti-Fascist Assembly of the National Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM), the state's supreme legislative and executive body until 1946. The state was originally known as Democratic Federal Macedonia[3][4] and was renamed the People's Republic of Macedonia in 1945. The flag was adopted along with the state's laws and principles during ASNOM's first plenary session in the St. Prohor Pčinjski Monastery in modern Serbia, near the Macedonian town of Kumanovo. The first version of the flag depicted a gold-edged five-pointed red star centred on a red field.
A plenary session is a session of a conference which all members of all parties are to attend. Such a session may include a broad range of content, from keynotes to panel discussions, and is not necessarily related to a specific style of presentation or deliberative process.
The Monastery of Venerable Prohor of Pčinja is an 11th-century Serbian Orthodox monastery in the deep south in Serbia, located in the village of Klenike, 30 km (19 mi) south of Vranje, near the border with North Macedonia. It is situated at the slopes of Mount Kozjak at the left side of the Pčinja River. The monastery was founded in the 11th century and is the second largest Serbian Orthodox monastery complex after Hilandar.
Serbia, officially the Republic of Serbia, is a country situated at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe in the southern Pannonian Plain and the central Balkans. The sovereign state borders Hungary to the north, Romania to the northeast, Bulgaria to the southeast, North Macedonia to the south, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to the west, and Montenegro to the southwest. The country claims a border with Albania through the disputed territory of Kosovo. Serbia's population is about seven million. Its capital, Belgrade, ranks among the oldest and largest citiеs in southeastern Europe.
Flag of the People's Republic / Socialist Republic of Macedonia (1946–1992)
Between December 1946 and September 1991, the Socialist Republic of Macedonia (known as the People's Republic of Macedonia until 1963) was one of the six constituent republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It was the only Yugoslav republic not to use the Pan-Slavic colours on its flag. Macedonia instead adopted an amended version of its previous flag, depicting a gold-edged five-pointed red star in the canton against a red field in a design similar to the flags of the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China. This flag was adopted on 31 December 1946 under Article 4 of the Constitution of the People's Republic of Macedonia[5] and remained in use until well after Macedonia's independence from Yugoslavia in September 1991, due to lack of agreement about what should replace it.[citation needed]
The Socialist Republic of Macedonia was one of the six constituent countries of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and a socialist nation state of the Macedonians. After the transition of the political system to parliamentary democracy in 1990, the Republic changed its official name to Republic of Macedonia in 1991, and with the beginning of the breakup of Yugoslavia, it declared itself an independent country on 8 September 1991.
A country is a region that is identified as a distinct entity in political geography. A country may be an independent sovereign state or part of a larger state, as a non-sovereign or formerly sovereign political division, or a geographic region associated with sets of previously independent or differently associated people with distinct political characteristics. Regardless of the physical geography, in the modern internationally accepted legal definition as defined by the League of Nations in 1937 and reaffirmed by the United Nations in 1945, a resident of a country is subject to the independent exercise of legal jurisdiction. There is no hard and fast definition of what regions are countries and which are not.
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was a country located in central and Southeastern Europe that existed from its foundation in the aftermath of World War II until its dissolution in 1992 amid the Yugoslav Wars. Covering an area of 255,804 km², the SFRY was bordered by the Adriatic Sea and Italy to the west, Austria and Hungary to the north, Bulgaria and Romania to the east, and Albania and Greece to the south.
The flag of the Republic of Macedonia between 1992 and 1995, bearing the Vergina Sun
In 1991, Todor Petrov, president of the ultra-nationalist organization World Macedonian Congress, designated and proposed the Vergina Sun[6] as the national symbol of the Republic of Macedonia. On 11 August 1992, the newly independent Republic of Macedonia adopted the new flag to replace the old Communist "red star" insignia. The flag depicted the "Vergina Sun" symbol, a stylised yellow sun centred on a red field with eight main and eight secondary rays emanating from the sun, tapering to a point. This ancient symbol was named after the Greek town where it had been discovered in archaeological excavations of the ancient Macedonian city of Aigai.
Todor Petrov is a Macedonian nationalist political activist. He is president of the World Macedonian Congress (WMC). Petrov is a councilor in the electorate of Gazi Baba.
The World Macedonian Congress is a non-formal parliament of the ethnic Macedonians. It consider itself as an organization fighting and demanding for more human rights to ethnic Macedonians on an international level, but is seen as an ultranationalist organization by independent researchers and media. It is officially registered as a non-governmental organization based in the Republic of North Macedonia. The organization was registered during the fall of communism, on 15 September 1990 by Todor Petrov, who is also the president of the organization. Closely related to the World Macedonian Congress are certain Macedonian organizations in the neighboring countries of North Macedonia from whom with larger importance, the Macedonian Party in Albania, the OMO Ilinden in Bulgaria, and the Democratic Party of the Macedonians in Kosovo founded by the organization’s member Ismail Boyda.
The Vergina Sun, also known as the Star of Vergina, Vergina Star, Macedonian Star or Argead Star, is a rayed solar symbol appearing in ancient Greek art of the period between the 6th and 2nd centuries BC. The Vergina Sun proper has sixteen triangular rays, while comparable symbols of the same period variously have sixteen, twelve, eight or (rarely) six rays.
The Vergina Sun was regarded by Greece as a symbol of continuity between ancient Macedonia and modern Greek culture, and in particular as a symbol of the Argead dynasty of Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great. From the late 1970s it had also been adopted by many both in Greece and the then Socialist Republic of Macedonia to symbolise historical connections with ancient Macedonia and had been paraded in demonstrations by Greeks and ethnic Macedonians at home and abroad.[7]
The Argead dynasty was an ancient Macedonian royal house of Dorian Greek provenance. They were the founders and the ruling dynasty of the kingdom of Macedon from about 700 to 310 BC.
Philip II of Macedon was the king (basileus) of the kingdom of Macedon from 359 BC until his assassination in 336 BC. He was a member of the Argead dynasty of Macedonian kings, the third son of King Amyntas III of Macedon, and father of Alexander the Great and Philip III. The rise of Macedon, its conquest and political consolidation of most of Classical Greece during the reign of Philip II was achieved in part by his reformation of the Ancient Macedonian army, establishing the Macedonian phalanx that proved critical in securing victories on the battlefield. After defeating the Greek city-states of Athens and Thebes at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC, Philip II led the effort to establish a federation of Greek states known as the League of Corinth, with him as the elected hegemon and commander-in-chief of Greece for a planned invasion of the Achaemenid Empire of Persia. However, his assassination by a royal bodyguard, Pausanias of Orestis, led to the immediate succession of his son Alexander, who would go on to invade the Achaemenid Empire in his father's stead.
Alexander III of Macedon, commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king (basileus) of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon and a member of the Argead dynasty. He was born in Pella in 356 BC and succeeded his father Philip II to the throne at the age of 20. He spent most of his ruling years on an unprecedented military campaign through Asia and northeast Africa, and by the age of thirty he had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world, stretching from Greece to northwestern India. He was undefeated in battle and is widely considered one of history's most successful military commanders.
The flag, the new state's constitution and its name all became the focus of a dispute between the two countries, during which Greece imposed an economic blockade on the Republic from February 1994. In July 1995, Greece lodged a request with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) for exclusive trademark protection to the Vergina Sun. [8]
Greek objections also prevented the flag from being flown at the United Nations Headquarters building in New York City. The blockade was lifted in October 1995 when an agreement was reached to change the flag, modify the constitution and resolve the naming dispute through United Nations-sponsored negotiations.[9]
Flag proposals
Before the current state flag was officially adopted, the following flags were proposed in 1995:[10]
↑ Hamilakis, Yiannis (2009). The Nation and its Ruins: Antiquity, Archaeology, and National Imagination in Greece. Oxford University Press. p.131. ISBN0199572909. From the late 1970s onwards, and as the dispute over Macedonia intensified, this motif became extremely popular, almost to the point of becoming an unofficial national crest and symbol, in both Greece and the Yugoslav Republic. Countless commercial adverts, logos, shopfronts, T-shirts, pins, medals, and posters, were carrying it, along with its official endorsement in a 100-drachma Greek coin with the head of Alexander on one face and the ‘sun’ on the other, on postage stamps, and on official campaign posters distributed throughout Greece and abroad.
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The foreign relations of North Macedonia since its independence in 1991 have been characterized by the country's efforts to gain membership in international organizations such as NATO and the European Union and to gain international recognition under its constitutional name, overshadowed by a long-standing, dead-locked dispute with neighboring Greece. Greek objections to the country's name have led to it being admitted to the United Nations and several other international fora only under the provisional designation Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
Kiro Gligorov ; May 3, 1917 – January 1, 2012) was the first President of the Republic of Macedonia, serving from 1991 to 1999. He held various high positions in the political establishment of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, including as Secretary of State for Finance in the Federal Executive Council, a member of the Yugoslav Presidency, as well as President of the Assembly of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from May 15, 1974 to May 15, 1978.
A solar symbol is a symbol representing the Sun.
Common solar symbols include circles with or without rays, crosses or spirals.
In religious iconography, personifications of the Sun or solar attributes are indicated by means of a halo or a radiate crown.
The use of the name "Macedonia" was disputed between the Southeast European countries of Greece and North Macedonia. Pertinent to its background is an early 20th-century multifaceted dispute and armed conflict that formed part of the background to the Balkan Wars. The specific naming dispute, although an existing issue in Yugoslav–Greek relations since World War II, was reignited after the breakup of Yugoslavia and the newly gained independence of the former Socialist Republic of Macedonia in 1991. Since then, it was an ongoing issue in bilateral and international relations until it was settled with the Prespa agreement in June 2018, the subsequent ratification by the Macedonian and Greek parliaments in late 2018 and early 2019, and the official renaming of Macedonia to North Macedonia in February 2019.
The flag of Macedonia represents a Vergina Sun with 16 rays in the centre of a blue field. This flag, as well as the Vergina Sun, is commonly used as an unofficial symbol of the Greek region of Macedonia and its subdivisions. It is also used by organisations of the Greek Macedonian diaspora, such as the Pan-Macedonian Association chapters of the United States and Australia, as well as numerous commercial enterprises and private citizens.
Socialist heraldry, also called communist heraldry, consists of emblems in a style typically adopted by communist states and filled with communist symbolism. Although commonly called coats of arms, most such devices are not actually coats of arms in the traditional heraldic sense and should therefore, in a strict sense, not be called arms at all. Many communist governments purposely diverged from the traditional forms of European heraldry in order to distance themselves from the monarchies that they usually replaced, with actual coats of arms being seen as symbols of the monarchs.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to North Macedonia:
North Macedonia's accession to the European Union (EU) has been on the current agenda for future enlargement of the EU since 2005, when it became as a candidate for accession, but it has not yet entered into accession negotiations. It submitted its membership application in 2004, thirteen years after its independence from Yugoslavia. As of September 2018, it was one of five candidate countries, together with Albania, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey, after the latest round of enlargement that brought membership to Croatia. Accession to the EU has been defined as the highest strategic priority for the country's government.
A representation of the sun is used as a heraldic charge. The most usual form, often called sun in splendour or in his glory, consists of a round disc with the features of a human face surrounded by twelve or sixteen rays alternating wavy and straight. The alternating straight and wavy rays are often said to represent the light and heat of the sun respectively.
North Macedonia, officially the Republic of North Macedonia, is a country in the Balkan Peninsula in Southeast Europe. It is one of the successor states of the former Yugoslavia, from which it declared independence in September 1991 under the name Republic of Macedonia.
After the independence of North Macedonia from Yugoslavia, the country made some changes in the national symbols. The flag was changed two times and today's flag includes an eight ray sun on a red background, while the coat of arms from the Socialist Republic of Macedonia stayed the same except the red star was removed.
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The national emblem of North Macedonia depicts two curved garlands of sheaves of wheat, tobacco leaves and opium poppy fruits, tied by a ribbon decorated with embroidery of traditional Macedonian folk motifs. In the centre of the ovoid frame are depicted a mountain, a lake and a sunrise. The features of the national coat of arms contain a rising sun which symbolizes freedom, the Šar Mountains with its peak named Ljuboten or Mount Korab and the river Vardar, with Lake Ohrid. The emblem also contains opium poppy fruits; this poppy was brought to North Macedonia by the Ottoman Empire in the first half of the 19th century. Until 16 November 2009, the emblem also depicted a socialistic five-pointed star in the top. The national parliament adopted the proposal to remove this element with 80 votes in favor and 18 against. The emblem that included the red star had been in use since 1946, shortly after the republic became part of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY).
The emblem of Yugoslavia featured six torches, surrounded by wheat with a red star at its top, and burning together in one flame; this represented the brotherhood and unity of the six federal republics forming Yugoslavia: Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Montenegro, and Macedonia. The date imprinted was 29 November 1943, the day the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ) met in Jajce on its second meeting and formed the basis for post-war organisation of the country, establishing a federal republic. This day was celebrated as Republic Day after the establishment of the republic. The emblem of Yugoslavia, along with those of its constituent republics, are an example of socialist heraldry.
The Prespa agreement, also known as the Prespes agreement, Prespa accord or Treaty of Prespa, is an agreement reached on 12 June 2018 between Greece and North Macedonia, under the United Nations' auspices, resolving a long-standing dispute over the latter's name.
