Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics

Volume 15 Issue 1  DOI 10.2478/jnmlp-2021-0007

The City of Solidarity’s Diverse Legacies:

A Framework for Interpreting the Local
Memory of the 1963 Skopje Earthquake and
the Post-earthquake Urban Reconstruction
Naum Trajanovski
Graduate School for Social Research, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology,
Polish Academy of Sciences1
Abstract
On July 26, 1963, a calamitous tremor struck Skopje, the capital of the Socialist
Republic of Macedonia, the southernmost Yugoslav federal unit. The politically
nonaligned Yugoslav government immediately issued a call for help for its third-
largest city. The call was initially picked up by the Yugoslav republics, who
were then followed by more than 80 states across the globe and a high number
of international organizations, all providing help to Skopje and Skopjans
in the aftermath of the catastrophe—an episode of human solidarity many
contemporaries described as unprecedented. This paper aims to provide an
overview of commemorative activities held in Skopje from 1964 to 2020 related
to the 1963 Skopje earthquake. I aim to reconstruct both the commemorative
events and commemorative narratives about the 1963 Skopje earthquake
in Skopje as well as its major memory agents and agencies by triangulating
archival materials, media and institutional discourses, and secondary literature.
I identify and discuss three commemorative phases, 1963–81, 1981–2000, and
2001–20, and I structure the argument on the multidirectionality of the notion
of solidarity in the public domain.

Keywords
Skopje; 1963 Skopje earthquake; local memory; City of Solidarity; North
Macedonia; Yugoslavia

Introduction and Research Design

One can easily say that the reinstallation of a sign on the Old Central
Railway Station in Skopje bearing a message of condolence and solidarity by
Yugoslavia’s president-for-life Josip Broz Tito, an event titled “Solidarnosta
se vrakja doma” [The solidarity returns home], was the most notable episode

*  Naum Trajanovski, Graduate School for Social Research, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Pol-
ish Academy of Sciences, Nowy Świat 72, 00-330 Warsaw, Poland; trajanovskinaum@gmail.com.
This work was supported by the National Science Center Poland under the PRELUDIUM 17 grant
scheme, number 2019/33/N/HS3/02209.

© 2021 Trajanovski, published by Sciendo.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License.
Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 15(1)

of the 55th anniversary of the calamitous 1963 Skopje earthquake.1 The

installation reads: “Skopje was struck by an unseen catastrophe, but we will
rebuild it anew with the help of our entire community, so it will become
our pride and a symbol of brotherhood and unity, of Yugoslav and world
solidarity.” Tito gave this message on July 27, 1963, just a day after the tragic
event. Both this installation and the frozen clock of Skopje’s pre-1963 Central
Railway Station, forever stopped at 5:17 a.m., the starting time of the seismic
activities, were and still are considered to be the most prominent reminders
of the earthquake.2 The message, formerly inscribed in the façade of the Old
Central Railway Station that nowadays serves as part of the Museum of the
City of Skopje, was removed in 1999 in the wake of the first governmental
change in the state’s democratic history, as part of a major refurbishing of the
station, an act many speculated to be motivated by “ideological reasons.”3 The
removal provoked massive public reactions in the following years, articulated
best by the social media group “Tito’s message should be returned,” which
called for a renewal of the original message by loading the public discourse
with personal and familial memories of the catastrophic event.
The vignette presented above is just a small portion of the sociopolitical
tensions over the legacies of the 1963 Skopje earthquake in today’s North
Macedonia.4 On the early morning of June 26, 1963, an earthquake struck
the Macedonian capital of Skopje, destroying more than two-thirds of the
urban fabric and killing 1,070 locals. The politically nonaligned Yugoslav
government immediately issued a call for help for its third-largest city and
the erstwhile southernmost federal capital. Thе call was initially picked
up by the Yugoslav republics, who were followed by more than 80 states
across the globe and many international organizations, all providing help
to Skopje and Skopjans in the aftermath of the catastrophe – an episode
of human solidarity many contemporaries depicted as unprecedented. The

1  All the translations in the text are mine, unless otherwise indicated. The transliteration from Mace-
donian and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian to Latin alphabet is based on the standard ISO
9 system.
2  The announcement, made public during a press conference organized on July 27, 1963, drew on an
earlier telegram written by the then-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Sithu U Thant and
addressed to Tito, stressing that the “United Nations stands ready to offer every assistance within
its resources to alleviate distress caused by the calamity.” More in Tolic, “Ernest Weissmann’s World
City,” 172.
3  Vasilevska, “So izmenet font.” See also Marusic, “Macedonian Capital Restores.”
4  The state name, as well as the subsequent ethnic and national adjectives, is brought in accordance
with the 2018 Greco-Macedonian Agreement. The author uses the former constitutional name of
Republic of Macedonia when referring to the time-period from 1991 to the official ratification of the
Agreement in February 2019, as well as the erstwhile state-name Socialist Republic of Macedonia for
the time period of 1963–91, according to the official statement of the North Macedonia’s and the
Greek governments on the nonretroactive function of the new state-name.
2
 Trajanovski
The City of Solidarity’s Diverse Legacies...
emerging role of the United Nations (UN) as a systemizing agent of post-
earthquake aid and donations to Skopje was crucial to the city’s fate; the UN
endorsed the Yugoslav political decision to rebuild the city just days after
the earthquake and, in October 1963, unanimously passed a resolution to
support the Yugoslav government in the post-earthquake reconstruction of
Skopje through the UN’s Special Fund.5 The urban reconstruction was led by
a team of prominent international architects and urban planners and lasted
until the early 1980s. The Yugoslav and Macedonian authorities decided
to reimagine the Macedonian capital as a “City of solidarity,” a symbol of
cross-bloc cooperation, a strategic move “made necessary by the Cold War
context.”6 They also deemed Skopje an “Open City,” one open to domestic
and intra-federal migrations, as “a symbol of the brotherhood and unity of
our [Yugoslav] peoples and international solidarity.”7
This paper aims to provide an overview of commemorative activities occurring
in Skopje from 1964 to 2020 related to the 1963 Skopje earthquake. Drawing
upon the “sociology of events” and critical disaster studies literature, I view
natural disasters as “impact events” that shatter not only the material but
also the symbolic worlds we inhabit.8 As such, their modality is constantly
being renegotiated, and the commemorative ceremonies serve as the most
common platforms for these discursive negotiations. In a similar vein,
cultural memory literature views commemorative events as “social and
political” by definition, while the agency of change is recently being discussed
in light of the sociological actor-centered approach through concepts such
as “memory actors,” “memory entrepreneurs,” and “memory agents.”9 I will
also discuss the various commemorative activities as means of solidifying a
“commemorative narrative” which, in the words of Eviatar Zerubavel, is the
“broad storyline” that integrates the memory practices in a given temporal

5  An extensive account of the UN’s involvement in post-1963 Skopje can be found in the book Skopje
Resurgent: The Story of a United Nations Special Fund Town Planning Project, a 400-page study pub-
lished in 1970, authored by Derek Senior, a British freelance expert on town planning and a former
member of the Royal Commission on Local Government in England, and the so-called Yellow books,
a set of 22 reports of the UN-coordinated activities in Skopje published in Macedonian, Serbo-Croa-
tian, and English in the mid and late 1960s. More on the “Yellow books” in Lozanovska and Martek,
“Skopje Resurgent.”
6  Tolic, “The Skopje Urban Plan,” 40.
7  City of Skopje Archive (CSA), Skopje: Dnevni Jugoslovenski Operativno-Informativni Bilten o Obnovi i
Izgradnju, Sociološki aspekti novog generalnog urbanističkog plana Skopja, 29 May 1964, 1-6.
8  For the “impact event” concept, see Fuchs, “After the Dresden Bombing.” For the “sociology of
events,” see Wagner-Pacifici, What Is an Event? and Berezin, “Events as Templates of Possibility,” For
an overview of emerging cultural memory and disaster literature, see Ullberg, “Forgetting Flooding”
and Drost, “Collapse Makes Memory.”
9  For an overview of the actor-centered approach in memory studies, see Gensburger, “National Policy,
Global Memory,” and Kubik and Bernhard, “A Theory of the Politics of Memory.”
3
Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 15(1)

scope.10 Therefore, I aim to reconstruct both the commemorative events and

commemorative narratives of the 1963 Skopje earthquake as well as its major
memory agents and agencies by triangulating archival materials, media and
institutional discourses, and secondary literature. I identify and discuss three
commemorative phases, 1963–81, 1981–2000, and 2001–20, and I structure
the argument on the “multidirectionality” of the notion of solidarity in the
public domain.11

Commemorating the 1963 Skopje Earthquake and the Post-Earthquake

Urban Reconstruction
Envisioning Solidarity (1963–1981)
Parallel to the preparations for the urban reconstruction project, the Yugoslav
authorities immediately endorsed the international support the city of Skopje
received after the earthquake. On a central level, it was certainly Tito who
most exploited “the political power of a symbol he himself had created that
guaranteed Skopje a future.”12 The main platforms for communicating the
Yugoslav narrative of post-earthquake Skopje as a symbol of international
solidarity included the already established networks of the Nonaligned
Movement (of which Yugoslavia was a founding member), the UN (of
which, again, Yugoslavia was a founding member and an original signatory
of the UN Charter at the UN Conference on International Organizations),
and the reinvented relations with the Eastern Bloc in the wake of Stalin’s
death.13 Ernest Weissmann, an architect of Croat origins and UN officer
on the Economic and Social Council, was especially significant in these
regards. Weismann was one of the key figures entrusted by both the Yugoslav
government and the UN to steer the Skopje reconstruction process. Like the
UN, he pushed for reestablishing Skopje as an epitome of a city that promotes
peace, understanding, and collaboration in the midst of the Cold War. All of
the above actors drew the critical context of this multileveled, cross-sectorial,

10  See Zerubavel, “Time Maps” and “Calendars and History.”

11  Multidirectionality of memory is understood in line with Michael Rothberg’s take on the Holocaust
memory in the age of decolonization, as the “interaction of different historical memories” in the “mal-
leable discursive space in which groups do not simply articulate established positions but actually
come into being though their dialogical interactions with others.” More in Rothberg, “Multidirec-
tional Memory.”
12  Tolic, “Ernest Weissmann’s World City.”
13  More in Spaskovska, “Constructing the ‘City of International Solidarity.’” See also Mirchevska and
Jancheva, “Pomoshch’ Sovetskogo Soiuza.”
4
 Trajanovski
The City of Solidarity’s Diverse Legacies...
and transnational endeavor.14 In turn, the immediate post-earthquake support
to Skopje became a reference point for humanitarian interventions in the late
1960s and early 1970s.15
As major memory agents in the local constellation, the local Skopje authorities
were initially focused on promoting intra-Yugoslav solidarity in the aftermath
of the earthquake; in late June, for instance, the Skopje City Council praised
an initiative establishing a monument to the city’s “brotherhood and unity.”16
However, daily bulletins reporting on urban reconstruction made it obvious
prior to the first anniversary of July 26, 1964, that this primarily domestic-
oriented slogan insufficiently depicted international support to the city. The
set of activities that took place on July 26, 1964, to a large extent shaped
the coordinates of annual earthquake commemorations for the upcoming
two decades: a discursive linkage between commemorating the deceased and
praising post-earthquake support to the city. The first aspect was related to
the physical site of the Butel Cemetery in Skopje. In mid-July 1964, the city
council had already issued a draft invoice to the Skopje reconstruction special
fund for the arrangement of the graves of the deceased.17 A commemorative
assembly of the Skopje City Council passed a special resolution on July
26, 1964, that elevated the site to a higher level of institutional protection
by listing the Alley of the Victims of the Skopje Earthquake as a Spomen
groblje [memorial cemetery].18 The council held several meetings dedicated to
the necropolis from June to December 1964, while its definite scenery was
finalized in 1965 with the installation of Georgi Gruin’s monument “26 July,”
a massive béton brut edifice typical of the Yugoslav memorial architecture and
sculpture of the day, at the memorial site.19
The other set of commemorative activities held in July 1964 was designed
to honor the international presence in the city in the tragedy’s wake. In the
words of Blagoj Popov, the then-equivalent of a Skopje city mayor, issued on

14  According to Tolic, Weissmann, an “unconditional” internationalist, mediated the process where
“planning and politics were to act synergistically in order to rebuild the destroyed Macedonian capi-
tal, making it a symbol of international cooperation; in other words, a world city.” More in Tolic,
“Ernest Weissmann’s World City,” 196.
15  For a comparative take, see Capotescu, “Migrants into Humanitarians.”
16  CSA, Skopje: Dnevni jugoslovenski operativno-informativni bilten o obnovi i izgradnju, Održana je
prva sednica odbora za proslavu 20-godišnjice oslobodjenja Skopja, 28 June 1964, 2-4.
17  CSA, Skopje: Dnevni jugoslovenski operativno-informativni bilten o obnovi i izgradnju, Potrebna sred-
stva za uredjenje groblja poginulih od zemljotresa u Skopju, 16 June 1964, 5.
18  CSA, Skopje: Dnevni jugoslovenski operativno-informativni bilten o obnovi i izgradnju, Sa svečene
sednice gradskog sobranja Grada Skopja, 28 July 1964, 2-4.
19  For an overview of the Yugoslav memorial architecture of the day, see Horvatinčić, “Memorial
Architecture.”
5
Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 15(1)

the occasion of the international premiere of Veljko Bulajić’s Skoplje ’63 at the
1964 Cannes Film Festival: “Skopje’s earthquake was not just a mere tragedy,
[but] something much more than that.”20 This reasoning would translate into
an official endorsement of the role of Tito, the UN’s General Secretary, and
the “Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, all the groups and individuals
from abroad” in Skopje’s reconstruction at the commemorative assembly
on July 26, 1964. Thus as of 1964, the annual commemoration of the 1963
earthquake evolved into a platform for awarding the various stakeholders
active in the urban reconstruction and promoting the benchmarks of the
reconstruction project. At the 1965 commemoration, for instance, a UN-
organized international jury announced the winners of the design contest
for Skopje’s central area, while the city council recognized approximately
150 organizations from all around the globe. This agenda would last up until
the end of this commemorative period: major commemorative event in 1978
was the inauguration of the Treska Lake Complex in Skopje; in 1980, the
inauguration of the new building of the Institute of Earthquake Engineering
and Engineering Seismology; and in 1981, the new object of Skopje’s
Transportation Center.
Halfway through the completion of the urban reconstruction project, the
Yugoslav authorities established July 26 as a Dan solidarnosti [solidarity day],
an initiative publicized in the early 1970s and made official in October 1973,
thus further exploiting the symbolic capital of the solidarity trope to reinvent
the state’s disaster management politics. Dwelling on the “positive example
of Skopje” and the 1969 Banja Luka earthquake, the legal project envisioned
a special Fond solidarnosti [Solidarity Fund] that would account for up to
0.2% of the annual state budget with the single aim of supporting the post-
natural-disaster recovery of the Yugoslav regions. The city of Skopje backed
the initiative by acting as its informal capital and a “symbol of the strongly
manifested solidarity.”21 The legal project also envisioned a so-called Solidarity
Week with a fixed annual starting date of July 26 as a federal fundraising
platform for auctioning solidarity-related memorabilia, such as special postage
stamps. Therefore, as of 1973, the Skopje-based commemorations of the 1963
earthquake have often been portrayed as segments of the federal Solidarity
Week in the Macedonian media. In 1976, the July 26 commemorations
took place just days after disastrous flooding in the neighboring town of
Kumanovo and an earthquake in Tolomin, Slovenia, two events that set the

20  CSA, Skopje: Dnevni jugoslovenski operativno-informativni bilten o obnovi i izgradnju, Pres-konferen-
cija u gradskom sobranju, 14 May 1964, 2. See, as well, Stanoevski, “Festivalot.”
21  More in Arsov, “Glasam za solidarnosta.”
6
 Trajanovski
The City of Solidarity’s Diverse Legacies...
commemorative tone back in Skopje by increasing emphasis on the Yugoslav
solidarity. In a similar vein, the catastrophic 1979 earthquake in Montenegro
shifted the commemorative focus in Skopje from the 1963 tragedy to
the post-earthquake solidarity in Skopje and the Yugoslav solidarity with
Montenegrins.
A major illustration of the celebratory and “prospectivist” tones in the
commemorations of the 1963 Skopje earthquake during the first two post-
earthquake decades is the festival titled Sredbi na solidarnosta [Solidarity
meetings], or SM.22 On May 18, 1964, a Skopje City Council decree officially
established the SM as an annual, week-long festival of noncompetitive
cultural and sportive events to take place in Skopje from July 26 to August
2. The festival’s end date was chosen on purpose by the organizational
committee because August 2 was also the date of the Orthodox Christian
holiday honoring St. Elijah, as well as the most prominent national holiday
in post-war Macedonia: Republic Day, or Ilinden.23 Each SM was organized
by a special institutional body, the Organizational Committee of SM, which
counted 22 board members overseeing the work of nine subcommittees.24 The
Organizational Committee also published an annual, multilingual summary
of the festival, which listed all events and participants and provided a brief
history of the city of Skopje and reports from the President of the Board and
the Organizational Committee. As per Skopje’s City Council, the SM had a
threefold goal: to perform (or “manifest anew”) international solidarity for the
city of Skopje, to promote Yugoslav sports and culture, and, finally, to show
that “even though the city was struck by a deadly elementary force, it aims and
aspires to live and conduct its everyday activities throughout these difficult
conditions.”25 Even though the organizers were not always able to provide
suitable lodging because of Skopje’s situation on the ground, the number of
participants in the sportive and cultural events has yet to be matched even

22  I use the notion of prospectivism and prospectives in memory studies in line with Kubik and Ber-
nhard, who define the “mnemonic prospectives” as those agents “whose actions are justified not by
anchoring them in the past, but by prospects of a ‘better’ future.” More in Kubik and Bernhard, “A
Theory of the Politics of Memory,” 15.
23  Elsewhere I argued that the 1960s and the 1970s were also focal in the construction of the com-
memorative ritualogy of Ilinden in post-war Macedonia. See Trajanovski, “The Three Memory Re-
gimes.”
24  The SM importance within the local governance can be also illustrated with the first draft of the
President of the SM Board, Strate Arsovski, a well-established sportive worker, member of the first
post-war Union of the Sport Federations of Macedonia (1945) and a director of the erstwhile Institute
of sport (1954-1957); and its Vice-President, Emanuel Mane Čučkov, a prominent Macedonian post-
war politician, Minister for Macedonian in the Provisional Government of the Democratic Federal
Yugoslavia and member of the first Macedonian Parliament. More in “Trieset godini fizička kultura.”
25  More in CSA, Skopje: Dnevni jugoslovenski operativno-informativni bilten o obnovi i izgradnju, Vesti,
28 July 1964.
7
Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 15(1)

today: the first SM counted 1,509 participants in the sport segment alone,
comprising 618 Yugoslavs, 147 locals, and 529 foreigners, as well as 32 media
teams with over 215 members. The program was expanded the next year,
not only to host a higher number of participants, but also to include three
exhibitions and activities on “four major sites and several smaller ones.”26
Revising Solidarity (1981–2000)
If the late 1960s and 1970s in Skopje were marked by rapid urban buildup, the
1980s and 1990s were marked by the official halt of the reconstruction project,
the deterioration of the interethnic relations in the city and the dissolution of
Yugoslavia. Coming as a shock to the consumerist culture nurtured by the
Yugoslav authorities, the late 1970s economic crisis resulted in inflation that
rose to 75% per annum, while the living standards in Yugoslavia fell by 34%
from 1979 to 1984.27 The economic crisis also translated into termination of
the state funding of Fond za obnova i izgradba na Skopje [Fund for Renewal
and Reconstruction of Skopje], the major state-body overseeing the funding
and responsible for Skopje’s post-earthquake reconstruction, while the
subsequent Operative Program ceased to exist in 1982. Moreover, the Socialist
Republic of Macedonia was one of the Yugoslav federal units that was hit
hardest by the economic turn of events. The 1980s, in the words of Jančeva
and Litovski, saw the “culmination of [the state’s] economic backwardness,”
with average salaries in Macedonia 30.6% lower than the Yugoslav average in
1986.28 In parallel, interethnic tensions in Macedonia reached a boil as of the
early 1980s. Slobodan Milošević’s rise to power and the 1981 riots in Kosovo
were followed by Albanian riots in Macedonia which, in turn, provoked harsh
responses by the state authorities throughout the course of the 1980s: the
closure of more than 25 high schools in predominantly Albanian-populated
settlements in Macedonia, prohibition of the usage of Albanian names in
public spaces or giving Albanian names to newborn children.29 The rationale
behind these measures was the allegedly emerging “Albanian nationalism and
irredentism” in the state.30
Notwithstanding, international solidarity as established in the first
commemorative phase remained a dominant discursive frame for
commemorating the 1963 Skopje earthquake after the reinstallation of Lazar
26  More in CSA, Skopje: Informativen bilten, Sostanok na organizacioniot komitet na “Sredbata na
solidarnosta,” 31 May 1965, 7-9; CSA, Skopje: Informativen bilten, Pred održuvanjeto na “Sredbata na
solidarnosta,” 5 July 1965, 15.
27  See Jović, “Yugoslavia.”
28  Jančeva and Litovski, “Macedonia and Macedonians in Yugoslavia.”
29  For an overview, see Brunnbauer, “Fertility, Families and Ethnic Conflict.”
30  Dimova, “Macedonian and Albanian Intellectuals.”
8
 Trajanovski
The City of Solidarity’s Diverse Legacies...
Koliševski and his pro-centralization team in power in socialist Macedonia
in the late 1970s and, especially, after Tito’s death in 1981. However, the
situation on the ground provided space for altering public narratives about the
earthquake and post-earthquake reconstruction. The official inauguration of
the Transportation Center is illustrative of the general tone that marked the
commemorations of the 1980s. The media event of the day was attended by
the “highest members” of the establishment and a relatively large crowd of, as
depicted by the media, “thousands of people.”31 The crowd was “impatiently”
waiting for the arrival of the first-ever train at the new station, one of the
“largest” and “most modern” in the region, from the city of Niš, Serbia,
which showed up 30 minutes late.32 The newspaper accounts also noted that
the train operator was given a fresh bouquet of flowers and, in the margins,
marked that the station was open to the public even though not completely
finished; almost 3,000 of the 10,000 square meter total projected area of the
station was yet to be completed, as were five out of the ten train platforms.
One possible reason for this might have been the authorities’ awareness of the
nearing end of the reconstruction program, which prompted them to rush
to finalize capital undertakings designed in the post-earthquake years. The
increased focus on the capital objects, in turn, shifted the agenda away from
the “softer” events related to the earthquake; the SM, for instance, ceased
to exist in its initial format after its ninth edition in 1973, even though it
translated to a different set of festivals and activities, while instead the city lost
interest in organizing large-scale international events and the hosting of the
20th Chess Olympiad in 1972, the IFC Canoe Slalom World Championship
in 1975, and the 1981 World Wrestling Championship.33
I identify two commemorative trajectories of the 1980s and 1990s: one molded
around the progress made during the two decades post-earthquake, and the
other consisting of various attempts to cast the same period in a different
light. The first trajectory was predominantly promoted by the establishment
and had Yugoslav solidarity and especially Tito as the agents most accountable
for Skopje’s post-earthquake breakthrough. The 1983 commemoration of the
1963 Skopje earthquake, its 20th anniversary, is particularly interesting in
these regards: the major commemorative ceremony organized by the Skopje

31  Adžigogova, “Železnički čardak.”

32  Adžigogova, “Moderni i funkcionalni rešenija.”
33  Several of those Skopje-based events are still ongoing: such as “Zlaten gong” – an annual boxing
tournament, active as of 1969; “Zlatno slavejče” – the first Macedonian children’s music festival, ac-
tive as of 1971; “Majski operski večeri” – an annual opera festival, active as of 1972; “Svetska galerija
na karikaturi” – exhibiting the work of numerous international caricaturists as of 1972; “Skopsko
kulturno leto” – a summer program of cultural events, active as of 1979; and “Skopje džez festival” – a
renowned jazz festival, active as of 1981.
9
Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 15(1)

City Council took place a day before July 26, was attended by 840 domestic
and foreign guests, and was principally reported to be a meeting wherein
the delegates decided to rename the Youth Sports Center in Skopje as Park
na solidarnosta [Park of Solidarity] and to select the members of Skopje’s
official delegation to Tito’s grave in Belgrade.34 Furthermore, the Macedonian
media outlets of the 1980s were particularly focused on providing qualitative
overviews of the benchmarks achieved by the urban reconstruction: carefully
counting not only the new edifices and urbanized neighborhoods, but also
the kilometers of water supply, sewage, and postal and electrical networks—a
discourse often accompanied by a visual narration of the new edifices
juxtaposed with photographs from the earthquake’s immediate aftermath.
The most significant alteration in the mid-1980s’ commemorative trajectory
was the emergence of a public discourse that collocated pre-earthquake
Skopje—its architectural and urban features, everyday life, and cultural
history—to the end results of the post-earthquake reconstruction. This
discourse made room for an alternative narration of the city’s reconstruction,
one that did not emphasize the major benchmarks of the post-earthquake
buildout and thus avoid the predominantly celebratory commemorative tone
in public and media discourse. This tendency gained even more traction after
the revision of Skopje’s general urban plan in 1985 and changes to the post-
earthquake planning model. The research project on Skopje’s “constructing
legacies,” sponsored by the Skopje City Council in the 1980s, illustrates the
involvement of state institutions. The project’s authors were critical of the
“modernist and functionalist” planning and called for a reconsideration of
the “traditional city and the constructing legacies.”35 This discourse evolved
over the next decade and was picked up by other formal and informal actors
besides the state. Therefore, the Yugoslav dissolution and the Macedonian
independence at the turn of the decade do not present a particular juncture
in the commemorative domains of the 1963 Skopje earthquake. Moreover,
the departure from the “brotherhood and unity” ideology further facilitated
the process of re-narrating the history of post-earthquake solidarity in Skopje.
The 1993 commemoration of July 26, its 40th anniversary, best illustrates
the two aforementioned trajectories. The daily newspaper Večer covered the
event by presenting two complementary stories on the front page, featuring
the authors of two recently published books on Skopje: Kole Jordanovski and
Blagoja Ilievski-Marko. Both authors criticized various aspects of the post-
earthquake urban planning policies in the city; Jordanovski, an architect

34  More in “Sekjavanje na katastrofata.”

35  Arsovski, “Urbanite formi.”
10
 Trajanovski
The City of Solidarity’s Diverse Legacies...
himself and former director of Direkcija za obnova i izgradba na Skopje
[Management of the renewal and reconstruction of Skopje], highlighted
three “problematic” points of the urban reconstruction (the “uncontrolled
mechanical influx” to Skopje; the failure to bridge the economic, social, and
cultural gaps in the city; and the “hasty decisions” to demolish the capital
objects in the city center). Ilievski-Marko weighted in that “he himself, as
well as his peers” could not accept the new image of Skopje. On a separate
note, the commemorative event with the highest attendance that year was
the “Nezaborav na ‘63” [Never to be forgotten ‘63] festival, organized by
the Red Cross of Macedonia and the radio station Kanal 2000. The event
took place at the Treska Lake Complex, one of the urban reconstruction’s last
capital projects, and was attended by more than 1,000 citizens. The festival
featured “a short demonstration of a water rescue operation and a swimming
competition.” The event was also promoted as a token of solidarity in the
midst of the Yugoslav wars, with the blood donation drive benefiting Bosnian-
Herzegovinian refugees in the state.36
Besides at the 1993 event, however, there were no structured commemorative
narratives in the 1990s regarding the earthquake and post-earthquake
reconstruction. The scarce media references to the earthquake frequently
exposed the ontological insecurity of the Macedonian citizens and their
general disappointment with their immediate sociopolitical realities.
Vladislav Karanfilski, a journalist and an author, argued that “since we live
in irregularly difficult times,” the city of Skopje should be declared “a city of
international solidarity, an open and peaceful city” to “further protect the
city from eventual ground attacks and air raids.”37 A brief account in a 1993
issue of the major newspaper Nova Makedonija listed several of the festivals
that succeeded the SM before the conclusion: “the thread of solidarity, which
connected all the participants, does not exist anymore. Simply—it got lost
in the time.” The frequent media stories on the threat of another eventual
earthquake in Skopje can be also read in this vein, as the tone of these stories
was surprisingly pacifying and under-dramatized: one less trouble to worry
about during the annual day of the “tragedy that should never repeat.”38
Moreover, it is important to note that both Večer and Nova Makedonija,
the two dominant newspapers, rarely featured the 1963 Skopje earthquake
on their cover pages during the 1990s, a tendency that, in the course of the
1990s, appeared to be a prevailing one rather than a simple exception.

36  Ivanova, “Grad na polovina pat.”

37  Karanfilski, “Simbol na solidarnosta.”
38  Angelovska, “Da ne se povtori!”
11
Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 15(1)

Finally, as of 1998 and the first-ever democratic change of government in

Macedonia, the legacies of the 1963 Skopje earthquake became the subject
of political contestations on a local level. The removal of Tito’s statement
described in this paper’s introduction is more than illustrative in these regards.
Prior to the removal of the words, the newly appointed, VMRO-DPMNE-
backed director of the Museum (a position within the spoils system), Ǵorgji
Čulakovski, removed a permanent exhibition dedicated to the participation of
Skopje, Skopjans, and the Skopje region in the People’s Liberation War (1941–
45), the founding and state-building event of the Second Yugoslavia. Asked
to comment on the purportedly illegal removal of the words, Čulakovski
initially stressed that the rationale was “purely aesthetic.”39 Notwithstanding,
Čulakovski backpedaled twice in the coming years, stating in 2002 that Tito’s
account was “not as relevant” and that the words were placed “illegally.”40
The removal provoked a reaction from the erstwhile Mayor of Skopje, Risto
Penov (in office 1996–2004), who stressed that he was received “numerous
complaints by revolted citizens” over Čulakovski’s “self-proclaimed” decision
and that he would try to bring back the exhibition as they were “letters of
solidarity, no matter who proclaimed them.”41 Even though the removal’s case
lost momentum after 2002, political tension over the 1963 Skopje earthquake
would escalate in the coming decades.
Revisiting Solidarity (2001–2020)
The building interethnic cleavages in post-Yugoslav Macedonia culminated
in 2001, in a seven-month armed conflict between the Macedonian
forces and the ethnic-Albanian radicals. The conflict thus set the tone
of the commemorations of the 1963 earthquake in the early 2000s. The
2001 commemoration took place in the midst of the intensified efforts to
reach a ceasefire under the banner of “Solidarity day,” while the 2002
commemoration included several commemorative activities that linked
post-earthquake solidarity to post-conflict peacebuilding. It is important to
mention that the morning ceremony of visiting the Butel Cemetery in Skopje
remained a constant feature of the annual commemorations throughout the
years, although the media did not always report on this event. The 2003
commemoration, however, neatly exposed the further development of the two
commemorative narratives from the 1980s and 1990s into the 2000s. The
Skopje City Council’s main commemorative event was an awards ceremony
at which eight locals received accolades for their “special engagement” in the

39  Ravanovska Tulbevska, “Simnata Titovata poraka.”

40  “Na gradot mu gi odzemaa najgolemite bukvi.”
41  Ravanovska Tulbevska, “Penov kje se obide da ja vrati porakata.”
12
 Trajanovski
The City of Solidarity’s Diverse Legacies...
post-earthquake reconstruction of the city: among them, former city mayors;
heads of relevant institutions that helped coordinate the reconstruction, all
of whom held office in the mid-1960s and throughout the 1970s; as well as
some notable citizens of Skopje. At the awards ceremony, Penov praised the
engagement of the awardees by stating that “what we are currently working
in the city is just a drop in the ocean compared to what those people [the
awardees] did.”42 Moreover, Dragoljub Stratev, the former mayor and one
of the awardees, made another link between the post-earthquake and post-
conflict atmospheres, claiming that “solidarity is what [Macedonians] need
the most in these times.”43
The second trajectory was molded around the reinterpretations of the nostalgic
discourse for pre-1963 Skopje. This discourse was primarily directed at the
urban planning activities in the 1980s (revising some of the post-earthquake
urban planning decisions such as the city council’s sponsored project). Yet in
the early 2000s it was reinvented as a tool for approaching immediate urban
issues, and again in the late 2000s and the early 2010s as a focal point of
the political tension over the of the Skopje city center outlook. For example,
the 2003 commemoration and the discourse about pre-1963 Skopje almost
exclusively concerned the pressing issues of sanitation, air pollution, and
uncontrolled construction activities. One typical visual media strategy of
the day was juxtaposing photographs from pre-earthquake Skopje with ones
featuring various illegal objects in the very same spots. In addition, the July
26, 2003, issue of Nova Makedonija featured three texts that relegitimized
similar worldviews: a long, one-page recollection of the pre-1963 life of the
Skopjan youth with a rather suggestive ending—“and then came July 26
and nothing ever was the same”44 —and an interview with the writer Lazar
M. Drakul, who was sincere in his evaluation that “[e]ven though I live in a
modern Skopje now, I no longer feel the spirit of the old Skopje.”45 Last, it was
Penov himself who provided an additional layer to this nostalgic narrative in
a lengthy interview on the occasion of the earthquake anniversary. In it, he
claimed that the post-earthquake reconstruction was fast-paced and precise,
yet, assessing that “it was a bad momentum [to be] hit by a catastrophe in a
period when the modernist tendency was dominating the global architecture;

42  Lazoroski, “Progodni plaketi.”

43  Stavrev, “I vo ovie vreminja.”
44  Kalajdžiski, “Te sakam, Skopje.”
45  Tanevski, “Herojot na denot.”
13
Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 15(1)

when the old, practically, had no value and, maybe, the negligence over the
old [Skopje] architecture was too harsh.” 46
The period from 2004 to 2007 was marked by a larger presence of personal
and expert accounts of the earthquake and post-earthquake reconstruction
legacies in the media. The various orientations towards these two formative
events from the recent history of Skopje demonstrated that the two dominant
commemorative narratives of the day—the one focused on the solidarity
and the urban buildup, and the other based on the nostalgic discourse for
pre-1963 Skopje—were more distant than they were at the commemorative
events. Already in 2004, when asked if they had the chance to revive one pre-
1963 urban activity, several randomly interviewed citizens would have chosen
to “return” the “old Skopje korzo [promenade]”—a tradition of evening
socializing, which ceased to exist after the earthquake. Post-1963 Skopje
was depicted as a place that did not foster socialization among its citizens, a
feature apparently inherent to the town before 1963.47 The lengthiest overview
of the commemorative year of 2007 summed up the series of events with the
statement: “[t]oday, Skopje is a pretty, modern city, but also a city that has
lost its strand with the past.”48 This juxtaposition of pre- and post-earthquake
Skopje was not as significant for the expert community, however. A 2005
debate, featured in the daily newspaper Vreme, revealed that the architectural
guild agreed that the present-day urban politics failed to build on the premises
of the urban planning of the 1960s and 1970s.49
The critical juncture in the commemorations of the 1963 Skopje earthquake
and the urban politics in the Macedonian capital city came after the Greek
veto for full NATO membership status for Macedonia in 2008 and the
electoral win of VMRO-DPMNE-backed Koce Trajanovski in the 2009
local elections. The memory politics of the second VMRO-DPMNE-led
government are well discussed in scholarship; the key term here is the “Skopje
2014 project,” a term endorsing the 137 memorial objects erected in the
city as of 2010 and the corresponding memorializing undertakings across
the state. Although the scholarly emphasis was primarily on the partisan
reinterpretation of the ancient past and the Greco-Macedonian quarrel over
the state name of Macedonia, this set of memory policies also triggered
radical shifts in public perception of recent social and political Macedonian

46  Lazoroski and Grombanovski, “Trendot na modernistički objekti.”

47  Ilikj, “Sè ušte čekame.”
48  “41 godina od katastrofalniot zemjotres.”
49  “Dobivme mnogu povekje,”
14
 Trajanovski
The City of Solidarity’s Diverse Legacies...
history and, subsequently, the urban history of Skopje.50 The memory politics
in Skopje were heretofore identified as a direct and “nationalistic” response to
the post-earthquake reconstruction (aimed, inter alia, at reconstructing some
of the most representative objects of pre-1963 Skopje), but also as a general
mistreatment of the objects and institutions associated with the Yugoslav
Macedonian past.51 The link between the emerging public discourse on pre-
1963 Skopje as of the 1980s and VMRO-DPMNE urban politics in Skopje
in the early 2000s, however, was not discussed in the relevant literature;
yet, it does appear to be an important aspect of the partisan endorsement,
interpretation, and policing of memory narrative as an official memory
agenda. A fresh look at the earthquake commemorations of the late 2000s
and early 2010s provides a neat illustration of this process.
On the eve of the 2009 local elections, the media publicized Trajanovski’s
initiative to restart the clock on the old Skopje Central Railway Station’s
façade, the one that was “frozen” at 5:17 a.m. on July 26, 1963, and stayed in
that position ever since, an idea he got during a “recent visit to Paris” when he
saw some of the Parisian clock towers and public clocks.52 The idea, however,
was not received as enthusiastically by the relevant experts and authorities;
Katerina Blaževska, a prominent columnist, even suggested Trajanovski
“buy himself a MP3 player if he wants to listen to music.”53 The initiative
never saw the light of day. Post-earthquake solidarity was also invoked in
2010 in the context of the “Skopje 2014.” A longer article in the newspaper
Dnevnik, for instance, criticized the selection of historical events and figures
as their authors did not predict a “monument to the solidarity” in the city.54
The debate over the 1963 Skopje earthquake escalated anew in June 2012
when the local authorities proposed a change of the names of 31 city streets,
most of them bearing names related to the post-earthquake reconstruction.
The oppositional camp even staged a protest against the changes at the city
council that ended up being insufficient to stop the assembly. The Skopje
earthquake and the post-earthquake reconstruction would ever since that
point create heated controversy among the public: in 2013, for instance, the
opposition social democrats criticized the VMRO-DPMNE’s Prime Minister

50  For an overview, see Trajanovski, “’Skopje 2014’ Reappraised.”

51  See Stefoska and Stojanov, “A tale in stone and bronze” and Matiolli, “Regimes of Aesthetics”
and “Unchanging boundaries” for the first argument; see Mijalkovic and Urbanek, “Skopje,” Kulić,
“Building the Socialist Balkans,” and Janev, “Burdensome past” for the second argument.
52  Naumovska, “Skopje da bide Skopje.”
53  Blaževska, “Koce da se resetira.”
54  “’Skopje 2014’ nema ni blagodaram za 1963.”
15
Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 15(1)

and President for their failure to attend the ceremony on the 50th anniversary
of the earthquake.
The year of 2013 is also marked by the government’s decision to refurbish
the façade of the Gradski trgovski centar [City trade center] (GTC), a
paradigmatic object of the post-earthquake urban reconstruction, and by
the social mobilization against this decision. The transethnic front named
Go sakam GTC [I love GTC] thus managed to establish a communicative
platform for articulating public claims for commons and eventually led to the
protection of the center’s original outlook. In parallel, Skopje’s local museums
and contemporary arts strove to rethink the legacy of the post-earthquake
reconstruction as early as the late 2000s. Already, in 2009, the Museum of
the City of Skopje organized an exhibition entitled “Solidarity” dedicated
to the federal and international help toward the city’s reconstruction. This
topic reappeared in 2010 and 2011 as an exhibition dedicated to the SM. In
the following years, the Museum dealt mainly with foreign receptions of the
Skopje earthquake, such as, inter alia, the film chronicles of the movie Skopje
‘63 (2014). In 2018, the Museum held an exhibition on the Yugoslav youth
brigades and their help in the post-earthquake reconstruction of Skopje.
Moreover, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje held a temporary
exhibition in 2014 titled “Solidarity: An Unfinished Project?” as a discourse
aimed at better understanding its institutional history as well as the notion of
solidarity and its reasoning within contemporary society. The reinvention of
the 1963 Skopje earthquake and the post-earthquake reconstruction got an
additional partisan endorsement in the campaigns for the 2017 local elections.
The Social Democrat Petre Šilegov promised to reinstall Tito’s message if
elected, an operation concluded in 2018 after fierce public debate over the font
of the letters. In 2018, 2019, and 2021, the Skopje City Council under Šilegov
restored the original names of several city streets that had been changed to
reference post-earthquake solidarity and set the annual commemorations of
the 1963 Skopje earthquake high on the agenda of the local government.

Concluding Remarks
The 1963 Skopje earthquake and the post-earthquake solidarity are unarguably
two formative events in the recent urban history of North Macedonia’s capital
city. As such, they were both used as vehicles by various actors and agencies
to promote political and ideological slogans, a process best observed when
looking at the annual commemorations of the earthquake. Herein, I identified
three commemorative phases. The first (1964–81) went hand in hand with the
rapid urban buildup; its major commemorative highlight was the discursive

16
 Trajanovski
The City of Solidarity’s Diverse Legacies...
linkage of commemorating the earthquake’s deceased and post-earthquake
solidarity. This discursive link was unchallenged in the first commemorative
phase period and, as such, shaped the commemorative practices and activities
of the upcoming decades. The second commemorative period (1981–2000)
was marked by the halt of the reconstruction project, the economic crisis in
Yugoslavia, and the deterioration of the interethnic relations in the city. All
these events contributed to a particular revision of the discourse about the
post-earthquake solidarity in Skopje; international solidarity was still praised
in the local public, yet the post-earthquake urban project was reassessed from
several standpoints. The most prominent narrative, whose criticism of the
project in the 1980s and 1990s was molded around nostalgic discourse for pre-
1963 Skopje—its everyday life and cultural and social history—as a safe place
against the background of rising interethnic conflict and urban issues. This
discourse would be also be drawn on as an argument in the political arena by
the rightist VMRO-DPMNE further materializing it as a rationale for the
“Skopje 2014 project.” These developments, alongside the social mobilizations
and heated public debates over the legacies of the 1963 Skopje earthquake
and, especially, of the post-earthquake reconstruction marked the third
commemorative period (2001-20). Almost 60 years after these two events,
one can conclude that the earthquake and post-earthquake reconstruction
legacies function as floating signifiers in the public domain, with many formal
and informal actors using their discursive potentials to portray their agendas.

Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Zoja Bogdanovska for her tremendous help with the
archival research at the Museum of the City of Skopje and the insights on the
museal history of the 1963 Skopje earthquake in North Macedonia. I also owe
a debt of gratitude to the participants of the panel sessions and the organizers
of the “Memory of the Communist Past” conference (Bratislava, online,
October 2020) and the sixth Doctoral workshop “Cooperation, Exchange
and Solidarity in Europe 1945–1990” (Pula, online, September 2020), where
parts of this paper were presented. I would also like to thank Keith Horechka
for reading the final draft of this paper. Notwithstanding, any shortcomings
are solely my responsibility.

Bibliography
A1. 2002. “41 godina od katastrofalniot zemjotres vo Skopje” [41 years from the catastrophic
earthquake in Skopje]. A1, July 26, 2002.
Adžigogova, Vera V. 1981. “Moderni i funkcionalni rešenija” [Modern and functional solu-
tions]. Večer, July 30, 1981.
17
Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 15(1)

———. 1981. “Železnički čardak za vekovi” [A rooftop for the railway for always]. Večer,
July 28, 1981.
Ajdinski, Ljupčo et al. 1976. Skopje: 30 godini sloboden razvoj [30 years of free development].
Skopje: Makedonska kniga.
Angelovska, Biljana. 1992. “Da ne se povtori!” [Never to repeat again!] Večer, July 25–26,
1992.
Antevska, Ana. 2020. “Esma, Živko Popovski, Slavko Janevski, Blaže Koneski, Ǵorgi Kolozov
i Buštur ḱe dobijat ulici vo Skopje” [Esma, Živko Popovski, Slavko Janevski, Blaže Koneski,
Ǵorgi Kolozov i Buštur to be given street names in Skopje]. Sakam da kažam, June 29, 2020.
Arsov, Dragi. 1973. “Glasam za solidarnosta” [I vote for solidarity]. Nova Makedonija, July
23, 1973.
Arsovski, Tihomir. 1988. “Urbanite formi na skopskiot prostor” [Urban forms of the Skopje
area]. Treta Programa Radio Skopje 34 (1988): 253–271.
Berezin, Mabel. 2017. “Events as Templates of Possibility: An Analytic Typology of Political
Facts.” In The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology, edited by Jeffrey C. Alexander et al.,
613–35. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bogdanovska, Zoja. 2013. 78 spomeni od albumot na eden prijatel na Skopje: Po povod 50 godi-
ni od katastrofalniot zemjotres vo Skopje na 26 juli 1963 [78 memories from the album of one
Skopje’s friend: On the occassion of the 50th anniversary of the catastrophic earthquake in
Skopje on 26 July 1963] Skopje: Muzej na grad Skopje, 2013.
———. 2018. Od bratstvo i edinstvo ’63 do Skopje ‘63: O-ruk za Skopje [From brotherhood
and unity ’63 to Skopje ’63: Hurray for Skopje]. Skopje: Muzej na grad Skopje, 2018.
———. 2012. Prviot novinarski izveštaj od razurnatoto Skopje od 26 juli 1963: Posveteno na
Jovan Popovski, hroničarot i sonuvačot na Skopje (1916–2012) [First journalistic report from
the torn city of Skopje from 26 July 1963: Dedicated to Jovan Popovski, the chronicler and
the dreamer of Skopje (1916-2012)]. Skopje: Muzej na grad Skopje, 2012.
———. 2014. Skopje ’63: Filmska hronika na edno vreme [Skopje ’63: A film chronicle of a
time long gone]. Skopje: Muzej na grad Skopje, 2014.
———. 2013. Skopje, 26 juli 1963. 50 godini od katastrofalniot zemjotres vo Skopje [Skopje, 26
July 1963. 50 years from the catastrophic earthquake]. Skopje: Muzej na grad Skopje, 2013.
———. 2009. Solidarnost [Solidarity]. Skopje: Muzej na grad Skopje, 2009.
———. 2011. Sredba na solidarnosta 1964–1973 [Solidarity Meetings 1964-1973]. Skopje:
Muzej na grad Skopje, 2011.
———. 2010. Vo znak na prijatelstvo - oživeani spomeni [In the name of a friendship – reani-
mated memories]. Skopje: Muzej na grad Skopje, 2010.
Brunnbauer, Ulf. 2004. “Fertility, Families and Ethnic Conflict: Macedonians and Albanians
in the Republic of Macedonia, 1944–2002.” Nationalities Papers 32, no. 3 (2004): 565–98.
Blaževska, Katerina. 2009. Koce da se resetira. Dnevnik, March 6, 2009.
Capotescu, Cristian. 2020. “Migrants into Humanitarians: Ethnic Solidarity and Private
Aid-Giving during Romania’s Historic Flood of 1970.” East European Politics and Societies
and Cultures 20, no. 10 (June): 1–20.

18
 Trajanovski
The City of Solidarity’s Diverse Legacies...
Cvitković, Sabina, and Mihael Kline. 2017. “Skopje: Rebranding the Capital City through
Architecture and Monuments to Remake the Nation Brand.” Sociologija i prostor 55, no. 1
(May): 33–53.
Dimova, Nevena. 2011. “Macedonian and Albanian Intellectuals and the National Idea(s) in
Socialist Macedonia.” History of Communism in Europe no. 2: 227–55.
Dnevnik. 2010. “‘Skopje 2014’ nema ni blagodaram za 1963” [“Skopje 2014” does not recog-
nize 1963]. Dnevnik, July 26, 2010.
Drost, Alexander. 2019. “Collapse Makes Memory: An Introduction.” In Collapse of Memory
– Memory of Collapse: Narrating Past, Presence and Future about Periods of Crisis, edited by
Alexander Drost et al., 6–26. Köln: Böhlau.
Fokus. 2017. “Šilegov pottiknat od zemjotresot vo Meksiko vetuva deka Skopje povtorno kje
bide grad na solidarnosta” [Šilegov, motivated by the earthquake in Mexico, promises that
Skopje will again be the City of Solidarity]. Fokus, September 21, 2017. URL: https://fokus.
mk/shilegov-pottiknat-od-zemjotresot-vo-meksiko-vetuva-deka-skopje-povtorno-ke-bide-
grad-na-solidarnosta/.
Fuchs, Anne. 2012. After the Dresden Bombing: Pathways of Memory, 1945 to the Present. Lon-
don: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gensburger, Sarah. 2016. National Policy, Global Memory: The Commemoration of the “Righ-
teous” from Jerusalem to Paris, 1942–2007. New York: Berghahn.
Horvatinčić, Sanja. 2018. “Memorial Architecture and Sculpture in Socialist Yugoslavia.” In
Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1980, edited by Vladimir Kulić
and Martino Stierli, 104–11. New York: The Museum of Modern Art.
Ilikj, Biljana. 2004. “Sè ušte čekame da nikne gradot ubav” [We are still waiting for the city
to blossom]. Dnevnik, July 27, 2004.
Ivanova, Marijana. 1993. “Grad na polovina pat” [A city stuck in the middle]. Večer, July
24–25, 1993.
Jančeva, Ljubica, and Aleksandar Litovski. 2017. “Macedonia and Macedonians in Yugosla-
via: In search for identity.” In Yugoslavia from a Historical Perspective, edited by Latinka
Perović et al., 163–85. Belgrade: Helsinski Committee for Human Rights in Serbia.
Janev, Goran. 2017. “Burdensome Past: Challenging the Socialist Heritage in Macedonia.”
Journal of Croatian Studies 29 (2017): 149–70.
Jović, Dejan. 2009. Yugoslavia: A State that Withered Away. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue Uni-
versity Press.
Kalajdžiski, Nikola T. 2003. “Te sakam, Skopje” [I love you, Skopje]. Nova Makedonija, July
26–27, 2003.
Karanfilski, Vladislav. 1991. “Simbol na solidarnosta” [A symbol of solidarity]. Večer, July 26,
1991.
Kubik, Jan, and Michael Bernhard. 2014. “A Theory of the Politics of Memory.” In Twenty
Years After Communism: The Politics of Memory and Commemoration, edited by Jan Kubik
and Michael Bernhard, 7–37. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kulić, Vladimir. 2017. “Building the Socialist Balkans: Architecture in the Global Networks
of the Cold War.” Southeast Europe 41, no. 2 (June): 95–111.

19
Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 15(1)

Lazoroski, Vitomir and Dimitar Grombanovski. 2003. “Trendot na modernistički objekti

po zemjotresot ja potisna starata arhitektura na Skopje” [The trend of building modernist
edifices ]. Nova Makedonija, July 26–27, 2003.
Lazoroski, Vitomir. 2003. “Prigodni plaketi za spasitelite i obnovitelite na gradot” [Adequate
plaques for the rescuers and restorers of the city]. Nova Makedonija, July 26–27, 2003.
Lozanovska, Mirjana, and Igor Martek. 2019. “Skopje Resurgent: the international confu-
sions of post-earthquake planning, 1963–1967.” Planning Perspectives 34, no. 3 (2019):
497–513.
Makfaks. 2010. “Skopje Grad na Solidarnosta” [Skopje the City of Solidarity]. Makfaks, May
24, 2010. ULR: https://makfax.com.mk/makedonija/108343/.
Marusic, Sinisa Jakov. 2018. “Macedonian Capital Restores Tito’s Message for Quake An-
niversary.” BalkanInsight, July 16, 2018. URL: https://balkaninsight.com/2018/07/16/
macedonian-capital-brings-back-tito-s-solidarity-message-07-13-2018/.
Mattioli, Fabio. 2014. “Regimes of Aesthetics: Competing Performances Surrounding the
Skopje 2014 Plan.” In Mirroring Europe: Ideas of Europe and Europeanization in Balkan
Societies, edited by Tanja Petrović, 64–87. Leiden: Brill, 2014.
———. 2014. “Unchanging boundaries: the reconstruction of Skopje and the politics of
heritage.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 20, no. 6 (August): 599–615.
Mijalkovic, Milan, and Katharina Urbanek. 2011. Skopje - The World’s Bastard: Architecture of
the Divided City. Klagenfurt: Wieser.
Mirchevska, Katerina and Ljubica Jancheva. 2013. “Pomoshch’ Sovetskogo Soiuza v voss-
tanovlenii Skop’e posle zemletriaseniia v 1963 g” [The Soviet Union’s aid in the reconstruc-
tion of Skopje in the wake of the 1963 earthquake]. In Rossiia (SSSR) i Makedoniia: Istoriia,
politika, kul’tura 1944–1991, edited by K.V. Nikiforov et al., 113–120. Moskva: RAN.
Naumovska, Sanja. 2009. “Skopje da bide Skopje” [Skopje to be Skopje]. Utrinski vesnik, July
25, 2009.
Nova Makedonija. 1993. “Sredbi na solidarnosta” [Solidarity Meetings]. Nova Makedonija,
July 26, 1993.
Ravanovska Tulbevska, Rumena. 1999. “Penov kje se obide da ja vrati porakata od Starata
železnička stanica” [Penov will try to restore the words depicting the message from the Old
Railway Stations]. Večer, July 28, 1999.
———. 1999. Simnata Titovata poraka od Starata železnička stanica [Tito’s messages re-
moved from the Old Railway Station]. Večer, July 27, 1999.
Rothberg, Michael. 2009. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of
Decolonization. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Senior, Derek. 1970. Skopje Resurgent: The Story of a United Nations Special Fund Town Plan-
ning Project. New York: United Nations.
Spaskovska, Ljubica. 2019. “Constructing the ‘City of International Solidarity’: Nonaligned
Internationalism, the United Nations and Visions of Development, Modernism and Soli-
darity, 1955–1975.” Journal of World History 31, no. 1 (March): 137–63.
Stanoevski, Cvetan. 1964. “Festivalot otvoren so filmot Skopje ‘63” [The festival opened with
the film Skopje ‘63]. Večer, July 28, 1964.

20
 Trajanovski
The City of Solidarity’s Diverse Legacies...
Stavrev, Dragoljub. 2003. “I vo ovie vreminja ni treba solidarnosta” [We also need solidarity
in these times]. Večer, July 26–27, 2003.
Stefoska, Irena, and Darko Stojanov. 2017. “A Tale in Stone and Bronze: Old/New Strategies
for Political Mobilization in the Republic of Macedonia.” Nationalities Papers 45, no. 3
(May): 356–69.
Tanevski, Sašo. 2003. “Herojot na denot so golemo srce” [The hero of the day with a big
heart]. Nova Makedonija, July 26–27, 2003.
Tolic, Ines. 2017. “Ernest Weissmann’s ‘World City’: The Reconstruction of Skopje within the
Cold War Context.” Southeastern Europe 41, no. 2 (June): 171–99.
———. 2019. “The Skopje Urban Plan Project and Doxiadis Associates.” In The Future as
a Project: Doxiadis in Skopje, edited by Kostas Amygdalou et al., 38–49. Athens: Hellenic
Institute of Architecture.
Trajanovski, Naum. 2020. “‘Skopje 2014’ Reappraised: Debating a Memory Project in North
Macedonia.” In Europeanisation and Memory Politics in the Western Balkans, edited by Ana
Milošević and Tamara Trošt, 151–76. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
———. 2020. “The Three Memory Regimes of Ilinden Commemorations (2001–2018): A
Prolegomenon to the Study of the Official Memory in North Macedonia.” Southeastern
Europe 44, no. 1 (March): 28–52.
Trieset godini fizička kultura i sport vo Socijalistička Republika Makedonija [Thirty years of
physical culture and sport in Socialist Republic of Macedonia]. 1976. Skopje: Sojuz na
pedagozi za fizička kultura na Makedonija.
Trpčevski, Nikola. 1964. “Sredbi na solidarnosta vo sliki” [Photos of the Solidarity Meetings].
Večer, August 6, 1964.
Trpenoska, Biljana. 1993. “Vo 5,17 isčezna dušata na gradot” [The soul of the city got lost at
5,17]. Večer, July 24–25, 1993.
Ullberg, Susann Baez. 2017. “Forgetting Flooding? Post-disaster Livelihood and Embedded
Remembrance in Suburban Santa Fe, Argentina.” Nature and Culture 12, no. 1 (March):
27–45.
Vasilevska, Ana. 2018. “So izmenet font, no ista sodržina bukvite od porakata na solidar-
nosta se vratija na staroto mesto” [The message of solidarity restored at the old spot with
a different font, but with the same content]. Makfax, July 20, 2018. URL: https://makfax.
com.mk/kultura/%d0%b2%d0%b8%d0%b4%d0%b5%d0%be%d0%b8%d0%bd%d1
%82%d0%b5%d1%80%d0%b2%d1%98%d1%83-%d1%81%d0%be-%d0%b8%d0%
b7%d0%bc%d0%b5%d0%bd%d0%b5%d1%82-%d1%84%d0%be%d0%bd%d1%82-
%d0%bd%d0%be-%d0%b8%d1%81%d1%82%d0%b0/.
Večer. 2002. “Na gradot mu gi odzemaa najgolemite bukvi” [The city got riped from its great-
est letters]. Večer, July 29, 2002.
———. 1983. “Sekjavanje na katastrofata” [Remembering the catastrophe]. Večer, July 25,
1983.
Véron, Ophélie. 2016. “Contesting the Divided City: Arts of Resistance in Skopje.” Antipode
48, no. 5 (November): 1441–61.

21
Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 15(1)

———. 2017. “Challenging Neoliberal Nationalism in Urban Space: Transgressive Practices

and Spaces in Skopje.” In Identity, Justice and Resistance in the Neoliberal City, edited by
Gülçin Erdi and Yıldırım Şentürk, 117–42. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Vreme. 2007. “Dobivme mnogu povekje otkolku što zagubivme” [We got much more than
what we lost]. Vreme, July 27, 2007.
Wagner-Pacifici, Robin. 2017. What Is an Event? Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Zerubavel, Eviatar. 2003. Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past. Chi-
cago: Chicago University Press.
———. 2013. “Calendars and History: A Comparative Study of the Social Organization
of National Memory”. In States of Memory: Continuities, Conflicts, and Transformations in
National Retrospection, edited by Jeffrey K. Olick, 315–37. Durham: Duke University Press.

22