"Sorosoids": as women, Quirs and Soros became weapons of authoritarian propaganda in Macedonia

The book of anthropologist Fabio Matthioli “Dark Finance” is based on a long -term field study in one of the construction companies of Skopier. Through the stories of workers, managers and officials, the author shows how Macedonia experienced the economic crisis after 2008. Dear projects and accumulating debts not only did not bring the promised prosperity, but also supported authoritarian authorities. Together with the publishing house “New Literary Review”, we publish a chapter in which the author tells how the struggle with the “Sorosoids”, feminism and Western grants became part of the authoritarian policy and promoting traditional values.

In the mid-2000s, organizations for the protection of women's rights with the support of international funds, including USAID and Unwomen, put pressure on the Macedonia government so that it took measures against gender inequality in the Macedonian society. Rejoicing the possibility of imagining himself in the image of a neoliberal champion of meritocracy, [the ruling party] of the vmro-dpmne adopted anti-discrimination laws and developed state strategies that included measures taking into account gender issues. This led to a sharp increase in the number of women in politics. The share of women elected to parliament increased from less than 8 % from 1990 to 2006 to more than 34 % in 2024, some of them occupied prominent posts in the near circle of the [Prime Minister of Nikola] Gruevsky. Gradually, more and more women began to occupy leading positions in private companies, and this growing visibility of women made their contribution to public life more obvious and, paradoxically, pose a threat.

These positive changes, very small to be significant, nevertheless served as an argument for the ideology of the VMR-DPMNE regime. In her speeches addressed to destitute men from the working class, the VMRO-DPMNE exaggerated the achievements of women, calling them "a wave of emancipation that came from Western countries", which jeopardizes the customs and family of Macedonia. In the 2015 Gruevsky speech, this clash took the civilizational scale and presented an epic struggle between the traditional gender values ​​of the “real” Macedonians and the Quird, the feminine influence of the “little Macedonians” and their foreign allies.

The gender paranoia of the VMR-DPMN was guilty of depriving male workers primarily on international actors, a visual illustration of which is a campaign against George Soros, the Hungarian-American financier of Jewish origin, known for his scale projects and philanthropic activities. Ironically, he was criticized by both left and right for financing “open” market societies and participation in democratic processes. In the propaganda of the Soros and Sorosoid (I) regime (literally, the followers of Soros) became the offensive concepts used in the description of the lack of rights that the male workers suffered to shift the guilt for the deterioration of the economic and social status of the Macedonian workers to the ongoing process of quirreling society. Having become a label for everyone who criticizes the government, the word Sorosoid used the gender alarm of male workers to drown out the voices of the disagreements and put them in the threat of the Macedonian nation And her patriarchal order.

At the construction sites, fears of the Quirr and female influence found a response among the workers - “blue collar”, which was fed with experience in economic marginalization. As the company increasingly increased financial debts, it became increasingly difficult to find meaning in its meaningless working everyday life, justify their work to managers or even to their families. Getting payment with constant delays, the workers felt that they were addictive to an existential black hole and they could not cope with the role of breadwinners, husbands and fathers. They lost their reputation daily, while the company seemed to shift its interests towards the departments of urbanism or architectural design, where most employees were women

The fact that workers [construction company] Construx felt this economic shift as a crisis of masculinity is easily explained. While building platforms stood on the spot, in the offices of Construx designers, activities were in full swing to the rhythmic knock of heels and female voices. In the offices in the center of Skopier, most new transactions were, additional capital was involved and new project competitions were announced. There, women-sales managers of Construx convinced young couples or pensioners to invest their savings or wait a few more months before suing the company for disrupting the deadlines- the giant work on managing emotions and relations that employees of the administrative, legal and financial departments were engaged in order to keep the company's mownstrators.

The Blue Collars Construx were indignant at the fact that they were out of work. But they were especially worried about how the destruction of the male hierarchy of the company destabilized the position of the construction site in an imaginary masculine order of the construction world. If the company goes to the bottom, they reasoned, then the director as a patriarch was obliged to inform them of this as a man - men, which has more than once happened in their post -socialist adventures. However, from the very beginning of the delays in the salaries of the Construx director, they hid-they barricaded in their offices or covered themselves with administrative excuses. Under these conditions, the “blue collars” complained that even the cleaners and assistants of the administration who worked at the company's offices knew more about the future than they - the same pederi (Quirre) approach, in which the financial debt seemed to undermine the gender foundation of their company.

If the workers attributed the company's crisis on the influence of Quir and Women, then Natalia and Veronica, the office manager of Construx, had another explanation. According to these two women, administrative and management positions in Construx really occupied more women than before. But not because of this, the company violated its promise for male mutual respect. Women, including Natalya and Veronica, were deeply interested in maintaining the male principle in workers and largely shared with the workers a post-socialist vision of construction as a sphere, where men dominate-so that they often fenced the husbands of the immoral and difficulties caused by economic troubles. Therefore, the problem was not that women had more power than in the past, but in that

that women in power were structurally limited in the ability to help workers. Due to financial difficulties in Construx, the ability of Natalia and Veronica to make decisions were increasingly limited to male managers. So they turned out to be in a deadlock situation when, caring for the dignity of workers, they came against the desires of directors and at the same time threatened their own financial future.

Since November, the circle of duties of Veronica has expanded. She answered telephone calls, directed guests and customers, satisfied the fleeting whims of the mustachioed: she came first and left the last, forced to run between state institutions, clients and suppliers with whom the mustachioed did not want to come into contact. Like most women in senior positions, Veronica had access to the most important information about the financial situation of the company, which she had either transmitted to the workers directly, or organizing communication with the director. However, with increased illiquibility, her communication became the subject of close attention. Exalted when something went wrong, and fearing for her work, Veronika pulled away from the workers and became the goat of the scapegoat for the silent position of the male directors.

Financialization required women, such as Veronica and Natalya, to reassess the post -socialist “cultural norms and agreements on social obligations”, which defined them as heads of the workplace in the center of which are men. Their situation was similar to a trap: care for the family forced to take less to workers - and women, such as Veronica and Natalya, often overwhelmed guilty. Natalia saw how her workers suffer, more and more burning against each other while their male world collapses around them. And yet, if she told them that she knew or suspects, she could be fired, and she could not allow this.

Most Construx employees, like Natalia, had to take care of unemployed husbands or sick relatives. Having no opportunity to quit or form the company's policy, they constantly experienced remorse for their silence-the silence imposed by him by the directors of the male precisely because of the growing influence of women on the finances of the company. Sometimes they returned from the office of [the boss] of the mustachioed, where they had just discussed new plans for obtaining external contracts that could save other investments of the company, with red eyes and slightly lubricated makeup - traces of tears, shame and anger, which were breaking through their stoic smiles.