BUGARSKI STAVOVI O AVNOJU I STAVOVI NJENE HISTORIOGRAFIJE O JUGOSLOVENSKOJ INTEGRACIJI 1943. GODINE
BULGARIAN VIEWS ON AVNOJ AND VIEWS OF ITS HISTORIOGRAPHY ON YUGOSLAV INTEGRATION IN 1943

Summary/Abstract: It's been a little over 80 years since the Second AVNOJ Session in 1943, the establishment of the Yugoslav federation, and just over 30 years since its dissolution in 1991. These events provide us with the conditions to make some conclusive historical judgments about those events. It is up to us to offer insights into how Bulgarian politics, and later Bulgarian historiography, viewed AVNOJ. At the outset, we must emphasize that the Bulgarian policy at the time, and later historiography, did not accept the resolutions of the Second AVNOJ Session. No one has written so far about Bulgarian historiography regarding Yugoslav integrations, including ASNOM. However, it should be pointed out that the Yugoslav republics that became part of the Yugoslav federation were not entirely satisfied with what happened at AVNOJ, raising the question of whether Bulgarian positions were influenced by the then-current Yugoslav events, or whether Bulgaria was emphasizing its own interests, independent of Yugoslaviảs and Titỏs ambitions to create the Yugoslav federation. Some works of Bulgarian historiography claim that the session was met with dissatisfaction in Bulgaria, as it allegedly grossly denied the right to self-determination of the Macedonian population in Bulgaria, which was considered Bulgarian at the time. This is why the evaluations of this session in Bulgarian historiography are what they are. Again, we need to emphasize that the Bulgarian politics of the time, and later historiography, did not accept the resolutions of the Second AVNOJ Session. The attitude towards ASNOM is somewhat different, and we will explain why this is the case. The author Mihailo Apostolski does not make this distinction and instead accuses all Bulgarian historians of fabricating arguments. It should be noted that Bulgarian policy did not express reservations about the decisions of the Second AVNOJ Session except on the issue of Macedonia, as it considered its interest to be the unification of all parts of Macedonia, but not within Yugoslavia, rather within the framework of Bulgaria. Of course, the emphasis here was on achieving Bulgarian national interests, as Macedonia was considered Bulgarian territory. One of the reasons Bulgaria sided with Germany during the war was the promise that Macedonia and other parts of the Balkans would belong to Bulgaria after the end of World War II. For these reasons, Bulgarian historiography today, when it comes to AVNOJ and its decisions, believes that the decision of Macedonia to join the federation negatively impacted the unification of Macedonia with Bulgaria, thus preventing Bulgaria from achieving major historical advantages, especially given the centuries-old cultural heritage. From this, it follows that Macedonia's participation in the Second AVNOJ Session was an attempt to prevent the idea of Macedonia joining Bulgaria and to establish it as a member of the Yugoslav federation. It is believed that the arguments of Macedonian authors regarding their physical absence from AVNOJ are insufficiently argued, and that there are indeed real, but different reasons. However, whether AVNOJ was acting behind Macedonia's back, aiming for its decisions to be made without Bulgaria and its demands, which had different views on resolving the Macedonian national question, contrary to the decisions of the Second AVNOJ Session, remains unclear. The establishment of the Fatherland Front government in Bulgaria was a significant precondition for Bulgaria's attitude towards Macedonian statehood after the First ASNOM Session. Both countries started with the intention to integrate into new European frameworks and to build goodneighborly relations while respecting the Atlantic Charter.

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