Yugoslavia Until the
Balkan Wars the majority of the Slav population of all three parts of the wider
region of Macedonia had Bulgarian identity. In 1913, the region of present-day Republic of North Macedonia became a part of the
Kingdom of Serbia, thus becoming
Southern Serbia. During
World War I and
World War II, when most regions of Macedonia were annexed by Bulgaria, a
pro-Bulgarian sentiment still existed among the Slavic majority. However, harsh treatment by occupying Bulgarian troops reduced significantly the pro-Bulgarian orientation of the Macedonian Slavs. After the end of World War II, the creation of
People's Republic of Macedonia and the codification of a new
Macedonian language, a process of
ethnogenesis started and a distinct national Macedonian
identity was inaugurated into an established system. The new
Yugoslav authorities began a policy of removing of any Bulgarian influence, making North Macedonia a connecting link for the establishment of new
Balkan Communist Federation and creating a distinct
Slavic consciousness that would inspire identification with Yugoslavia. The authorities took also repressive measures that would overcome the pro-Bulgarian feelings of the population, such as the
Bloody Christmas in 1945. Per political scientist Mirjana Maleska, in North Macedonia the
Bulgarophobia increased almost to the level of state ideology during the communist period, influenced partly by past hardships that Macedonians experienced as a result of certain nationalist and chauvinistic circles in Bulgaria, but a great part of these anti-Bulgarian sentiments were result from the need to distinguish between the Bulgarian and the Macedonian nations. The Yugoslav communist authorities suppressed the pro-Bulgarian sentiments among most of the population. Bulgarian sources claim that in early 1945, around 100,000
Bulgarophiles were imprisoned and over 1,260 were allegedly killed due to this
Law. However, some Bulgarian researchers have questioned these figures, noting that the assertion that these individuals were persecuted and killed solely on account of their Bulgarian national consciousness is deceptive. In the period between 1945 and 1991, when North Macedonia was part of Yugoslavia, there was also migration of Bulgarian population from
SR Serbia to the SR Macedonia. The number of these migrants is unofficially estimated at 20,000.
The Fall of Communism to Present-Day By the time the then-Republic of Macedonia proclaimed its independence those who continued to look to Bulgaria were very few. In the period after 1991 ca. 100,000 citizens of North Macedonia have acquired Bulgarian citizenship (which represents 10% of the self-declared ethnic Macedonians in the country in the 2021 population census), almost all of them acquired by descent and always on 1st position by acquired citizenship per country. On 11 December 2020 at the Parliament, the Minister of Justice of Bulgaria Desislava Ahladova reported that from 1 January 2010 to 22 October 2020, 77,829 files have been opened for the acquisition of Bulgarian citizenship by citizens of North Macedonia, 77,762 of them based on declared Bulgarian origin. Macedonian citizens are starting to take out Bulgarian passports due to the fact that Bulgaria is becoming a member of the European Union, and with that, the only prospect for Macedonian citizens is to be able to work and live in European countries where there are greater conditions for prosperity. There were 37 ethnic Bulgarians born in North Macedonia who lived in the United States of America in 2015. In 2021, Bulgarian President
Rumen Radev claimed that some 120,000 Macedonian citizens held
Bulgarian passports and insisted on putting them into North Macedonia's constitution, which lists the Albanian, Serbian, Bosniak, Turkish, Romani peoples, as well as the other peoples inhabiting the country. A total of 169 people in North Macedonia voted in the
2023 Bulgarian parliamentary election. ==Politics==