46

The article deals with the development of communist Bulgaria?s policy on the Macedonian question and with the polemics between this country and Titoist Yugoslavia over the same question. Between 1944 and 1948, the two states negotiated, under Stalin?s auspices, the establishment of a big South-Slavic federation, including Bulgaria. The Bulgarian communist regime attempted to impose Macedonian national identity in the only part of geographical Macedonia that belonged to it, the region of Pirin. The Tito-Stalin break in 1948 stopped this policy and led to the progressive restoration of traditional Bulgarian nationalism by Sofia authorities. As of the 1960s, Todor ?ivkov?s regime launched a nationalist policy negating the existence of a Macedonian nation and claiming the Bulgarian historical character of Macedonia. This policy brought about a series of controversies with Yugoslavia about Macedonia?s history, the local Slavic language as well as the human rights of people in Bulgaria regarding themselves as Macedonians.