“A Patriotic Act for Macedonia”: The Mnemohistory of Commemorations of Mara Buneva in Skopje (2001-2018)

Abstract

Almost every year since 2001, on 13 January, a commemorative plaque dedicated to Mara Buneva is mounted and, on several occasions, demolished in the centre of Skopje. Buneva (1902-1928), who was affiliated with the rightist interwar Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (Vnatrešna Makedonska Revolucionerna Organizacija, VMRO), is famous for her assassination of Velimir Prelić (1883-1928), a high-ranking representative of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (Kingdom SHS) on the territory of today’s North Macedonia, as well as her immediate suicide at the crime-scene. The present paper aims to trace the so-called mnemohistory of commemorations of Mara Buneva in Skopje by triangulating the historical and media discourses and political rhetoric over the commemorative events from 2001 to 2018. I argue that the discursive shift over Mara Buneva, as well as over the commemorations themselves, occurred after a set of groupist claims over a particular memory site.

Keywords

• north macedonia
• bulgaria
• mara buneva
• mnemohistory
• commemorations