Multi-national iconographies in Macedonia

The authority of Marshall Tito and his newly crafted iconography of `brotherhood and unity' temporarily marginalized the ethnic deographies of the peoples in the Yugoslav Federation. In the 1990s this Yugoslavia was run over by time. The Republic of Macedonia was among the newly emerging states. In Macedonia the multi-ethnic mosaic was complicated by the confusion of old and new iconographic impulses. In 2001 the Macedonian crisis developed as a result of the spread of the new regional Albanian identity spread by the domino effect to the areas with mixed population in the Balkans after the events in Kosovo. Differences between Macedonians and Albanians are analyzed in terms of family structure, religion and ethnic and national affiliation. The politics based on these cleavages and their ensuing, contested iconographies are set out.