Few days ago, Kiro Gligorov passed away. “Grandpa Kiro” (born 1917), once an anti-fascist freedom fighter (in the WW2), one of the founders of Yugoslav Macedonia in 1944, and a tenured Yugoslav politician, has served two terms as a president of independent Macedonia (1991 – 1999), supervising its peaceful secession from the Yugoslav federation, the initial stages of post-communist transition and finally its international recognition. He was the first democratically elected president of the country. In 1995, at the height of the crisis in the region, Gligorov suffered an assassination attempt, leaving him half-blind and with a trademark scar over his eye. The case remains open to date.

In the past years, many questioned his achievements. Macedonia’s transition was marred by corruption and perpetual economic decline; and its international recognition came to a price too high, paid to its southern neighbor Greece. The peace he secured was not lasting; very soon after he left office, Macedonia saw the outbreak of an ethnic/ethnicized conflict.

Nevertheless, Gligorov’s contribution has to be measured within the context of its own era, which he adequately named “Times of Whirl” (a title of one of his memoirs). He was a peace-broker, facing the boiling resentment across the region; he was patient and down-to-earth bureaucrat in times when charismatic leaders called for wars; at the end of the day, he gave up a lot of his support by undertaking unpopular yet inevitable decisions. He headed a newly independent state with no statehood experience, a nation in the making too diverse to be unified, too burdened by history to look towards the future. Its economy needed to undergo a multi-faceted transformation – from socialism to market economy, but moreover, from a periphery in the large Yugoslav market to an independent one – in times when its main economic axis (north-south) was disabled, due to the wars and the sanctions against Milosevic’s regime in the north, and the Greek embargo over the use of Ancient Macedonian symbols (later declared unlawful). He however, did little to curb corruption and only temporary postponed armed clashes. Maybe he could have done better bargains on the international stage. We will never know if he did his best, but we can be sure he avoided the worst.

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Gligorov did things his own way. He did not handle isolated questions, but treated politics in a holistic way. He accepted his imperfection and his limitations; and he knew commitment and consistency. He never accepted pure pragmatism and was little concerned with the immediate effects of his decisions. He was ultimately a politician with a sense of what is right and wrong, adhering to his own moral code; he did not care for eventual gains and losses, but rather for maintaining values and nobility. He was a gentleman (as foreign diplomats described him); and moreover, a man of virtue.

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Gligorov ended his presidency in tears. In a dramatic TV appearance, he was lamenting over the unilateral decision by the newly elected government in 1999 to establish full bilateral relations wih Taiwan (which consequently attracted the scorn of Beijing). Very soon, Gligorov’s warnings about the apocalyptic nature of such decision came true – China’s outrage translated in only one of its handful negative votes in the UN Security Council, which ended the mandate of the UN security forces in Macedonia, whose withdrawal from the border with Kosovo undoubtedly contributed to the ethnic conflict in 2001.

In his emotionally charged address to the nation, Gligorov called for reasonable and responsible behavior – however, his request was met only by mockery and disdain by the surging nationalists. He asked not to be abandoned in his efforts to secure better future for the country, but the sad truth was that Gligorov was abandoned and alone long before his dramatic TV appearance. It only took that particular diplomatic maneuver to expose the erratic and bizarre nature of Macedonian politics, and his own helplessness.

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Gligorov was a lone wolf, one of the rare representatives of the old guard of politicians that remained in high position years after the Yugoslav break-up (one author cynically said that he almost survived the country he created, alluding to the desperate state of Macedonia’s politics today and its eventual collapse soon). Except from Gligorov and handful of others, Macedonia has since been a country of young, immature leaders and politicians, many of them having their government jobs as first full-time employment, who lacked the minimum prerequisite skills and experience to be in office. Gligorov often used to say that leaders should not be afraid to leave some of the problems and tasks for future generations; however, the unpreparedness of those generations probably had caught even himself off-guard.

Gligorov, to my knowledge remained the sole notable atheist in Macedonian politics. I don’t recall him making a religious reference in his speeches apart from congratulating religious holidays. According to his demands, he was buried without religious ceremony and paraphernalia. Paradoxically, his successor, the late Boris Trajkovski, was a Methodist pastor; all other Macedonian leaders (especially the ones from the nationalist VMRO-DPMNE) have been devout Orthodox Christians. Some of them, have invested heavily in Christianizing the country – by constructing a gigantic cross over the capital, or by subsidizing the construction of temples.

Gligorov seemed little concerned with the irrational at all – he nonchalantly handled symbolic disputes and was first and foremost, a politician devoted to progressive ideals. EU and NATO apologists want to label him as pro-Westerner for his efforts to gain international recognition (which he actually managed to do better than anyone else).

He never intended to offend or hurt anyone’s feelings; he was simply above all that.

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Historically, Gligorov was part of the cohort of communist reformers – individuals that posses all the traits that the majority of the members of the post-communist political elite desperately lacks, from humility to compassion to professionalism, to adequate training, experience and ability to acknowledge their own shortcomings. Most of the representatives of the old guard, in this sense, were politicians of virtue.

Yet, in the post-communist years, many of them have been literally ousted from the mainstream discourse – partially because of their own sense of non-belonging (one might see this as hubris or arrogance); but to the great extent due to the aggressive retaliation of the anti-communist sentiment by newcomers. Many of them have been blamed and cursed, or simply forgotten and overlooked.

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I had an invaluable opportunity to meet and interview some of living members of this group during a research project that dealt with the “old” and the “new” elite in Macedonia and Albania; and I was left speechless by some of the responses I received. I will forever remember the words of one former high-rank official, who told me something along the lines that he feels sad about today’s politicians that narrow-mindedly represent party agendas, and speak publicly on behalf of their leaders; as he described, back in the days, communists would rather go at each other passionately, debate ideas and propositions till the late hours, and openly confront each other and especially their superiors. They were strong individuals in a collectivistic society, pushing for changes, risking their own well-being (many in fact had suffered consequences for sounding their opinions), and ultimately, naively putting the promise of democracy and liberalism on the agenda. However, they failed to transmit the hype to the next generations. By many standards, these old wolves appeared to be more progressive than their heirs.

As some of themselves agree, the mistake of communist (and post-communist) reformers perhaps was going too far and too lax. It might have been the rapid, uncontrolled opening up that created the vacuum for nationalist and populist movements to emerge; that led to the demise of a generation of skilled and experienced individuals and the rise of incompetence.

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Politics of virtue is long gone (if it ever was there, when we look beyond individual exceptions? who knows.), and is being replaced by politics of immediate interests. At the end of the day, this does not necessarily has to be bad – yet for now, it seems to be counter-productive and regressive.

The demise of politics/politicians of virtue of course, is not a problem of Macedonia per se – many pseudo-democratic post-communist countries suffer from the reign of opportunists and autocrats, individuals without any reliability, populists without any sense of responsibility, driven by self-righteousness and material interests. How this topic touches upon Gorbachev’s suggestion to Putin to step down following Russia’s unrest in the aftermath of the recent elections, and how all of this resembles a danger for the leadership of China’s Communist Party, and why China couldn’t and shouldn’t pursue Western style democratic ideals, in some future piece.

For now – rest in peace Kiro Gligorov. He was a true statesman, and probably the first and the last one my country has ever seen.