The Macedonian Bulgarians

The Macedonian Bulgarians by Vasil Hadzi Kimov is a short political-historical brochure written during the period of Bulgarian administration in Macedonia in the Second World War. The work argues that the Slavic population of Macedonia constitutes an inseparable part of the Bulgarian nation, rejecting the existence of a distinct Macedonian nation. From its opening pages, the text frames the question of identity as a struggle against what the author presents as “artificial” or politically motivated constructions.

The central argument maintains that the idea of a Macedonian nation is a recent ideological product, linked by the author to communist and Yugoslav political movements. Kimov insists that the population of Macedonia has historically shared language, history, and revolutionary tradition with Bulgaria, presenting figures of the nineteenth-century liberation movement as part of a unified Bulgarian national narrative. The brochure repeatedly treats Macedonia as a geographical designation, not an ethnic category, and situates its claims within broader Balkan nationalist debates.

Today, the work is understood primarily as a document of Bulgarian national historiography during a period of intense political transformation. Rather than offering a balanced scholarly study, it reflects the ideological priorities of wartime nation-building and territorial legitimation. As such, the text serves as an important source for examining competing interpretations of identity in Macedonia and the ways in which history was mobilized to support state and national projects in the mid-twentieth century.