The Ministry of Culture promoted Thursday three new books from the edition dubbed “Macedonian Ordeals”. Those include three volumes comprising the six-volume publication “Macedonia Until the 19^th Century” and the books “Tsar Samoil” and “The 1913 Bucharest Peace Treaty”. They were written by professors, historians and scholars from different generations.

The government with this project aims at interpreting the long history of Macedonia’s struggle for statehood and independence through scientifically-backed facts and arguments. Several documentaries, aired by the Macedonian National Television, are based on these historical texts.

Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski said that these editions would shed some light on persons and events in the Macedonian history, which had not been researched enough.

“Unfortunately, Macedonian history in the past was always written by someone else and never researched comprehensively. This has caused our libraries to feature historical works that were related to histories of some other countries, systems and ideologies of the past… Our rich history, our historical figures and endeavours known in this region were the subject of very little research… Fortunately, times have changed,” Gruevski stated at the book promotion.

The project “Macedonian Ordeals” is a testimony for future generations, according to Minister of Culture Elizabeta Kanceska-Milevska.

“To know your own history, it means to be aware about the processes of individual and collective coming-of-age of generations who had been born, raised and died on the Macedonian crossroads of civilizations,” Kancevska-Milevska said amongst other things.