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Ready to Explode

A new documentary looks at troubled Macedonia

By Broos Campbell

I have a Greek friend who gets wiggy every time someone mentions the Macedonians. "That's a Greek name," she says. "They've got no right to it." She's sane on almost any subject but that. The people who live there are Macedonians; why their using the name should instigate bloodlust, I don't know. What I do know is the same thing every outsider who's ever wandered into the Balkan problem eventually learns: It's best to keep out of it.

Macedonia--the formerly Yugoslavian republic, not the historic region that straddles northeastern Greece and southwestern Bulgaria, as well as what used to be southern Yugoslavia--is a worrisome part of a worrisome corner of the world, as documentarian and San Jose State University sociology professor Bob Gliner points out in What About Macedonia?

The U.N. had 1,100 troops there as of last April, 550 of them U.S. soldiers. Macedonia is a powder keg, as the saying goes, in a roomful of powder kegs, and the neighbors like to play with matches. World War I began in this room, and it isn't inconceivable that World War III will start here too.

Macedonia has fallen on tough times since independence. It's hard to find work now that privatization--i.e., capitalism--has replaced socialism. The film introduces us to a couple of entrepreneurs, but mostly we meet complainers. Not whiners, not bellyachers, but complainers nonetheless. Perhaps they do have a great many legitimate complaints, but we don't get a chance to find out why they are unable to help themselves, or even what we can do to help them help themselves. There's little context here.

If everyone's unemployed, why are manufacturers and distributors filling up Macedonian shops with Western goods? Why bother shipping if no one's buying? Yet they are shipping; it stands to reason that someone is buying.

Part of the Macedonian problem is its boycott of Serbia and the Greek boycott of Macedonia. Macedonia used to manufacture weapons for Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries. But they don't sell weapons to the Serbs anymore, and the closing of the Greek border cuts off access to the harbor at Thessaloniki, conveniently downstream from Skopje, Macedonia's capital and principal city. The dispute with Serbia is obvious on its face--Macedonia is trying to distance itself from the regional tough guy--but I'm still waiting to find out why anyone else has a problem with Macedonia.

The Macedonians seem like nice people. They don't want war, they say--but who does? The kids like rock & roll--but what kids don't? Archbishop Mihail says that "the soul of the Macedonian nation is the Macedonian [Orthodox] Church"--but what cleric worth his psalter wouldn't say that?

The documentary comes up with a few insights, but it's appropriately titled: Well, what about Macedonia?

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What About Macedonia? airs Monday at 10pm on KTEH (Channel 54) as part of video i, KTEH's outlet for independent video projects.


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