Македонското прашање и балканското единство

The Macedonian Question and Balkan Unity (Plovdiv, 1938) is Kosta Lambrev’s brisk, pre-war pamphlet arguing that the Macedonian Question can only be solved through a Balkan federation. Written on the eve of WWII, it frames Macedonia’s fate as inseparable from the region’s political and economic interdependence, not a parochial dispute.

The booklet sketches the history of the Macedonian liberation struggle and insists the issue is at once Balkan and European, shaped by great-power rivalries and neighboring national projects. Lambrev criticizes chauvinist policies that partitioned and assimilated Macedonians and calls for recognition of a distinct Macedonian people with rights to cultural and political self-determination, within a cooperative Balkan framework rather than competing nation-states.

As a voice aligned with the federalist current around IMRO (United), Lambrev’s text blends anti-imperialist analysis with a program of regional solidarity: only shared institutions and mutual guarantees, he argues, can secure Macedonian emancipation and durable peace among Balkan peoples. The result is a compact manifesto whose themes, federalism, equality among nations, and rejection of hegemonies, anticipate later debates about Macedonia and the Balkans.