Skopje, 5:16 am. Still sleeping while the sun is rising behind the mountain, Marija is dreaming peacefully, enjoying her sleep before the last day of work this week. She won’t be able to do it: at 5:17, she’s brutally awakened by a terrible blast that sounds like it’s coming from hell. The nightmare is replacing the dream: on the 26th of July 1963, the capital of what was at this time the Socialist Republic of Macedonia as a part of Yugoslavia, was hit by a terrible earthquake that would wipe out 80% of its surface. While Macedonian citizens and Yugoslavian authorities were organizing emergency rescuing and housing for the thousands of injured and homeless citizens, the first images of the catastrophe spread across the world, starting an unprecedented campaign of solidarity beyond nations and borders.

Although Skopje’s earthquake is far from the first disaster in the world, the context of the Sixties gave birth to something really different. First, the coverage of the earthquake had a worldwide audience thanks to the new technical means: television was growing as the dominant media, which spread images of the destruction in every home in Western countries (recalling the destruction from WWII that wasn’t that long ago). Second, Yugoslavia had a Non-Aligned policy, avoiding taking a side in the Cold War. That made the reconstruction a consensual project: both the West and East blocs of the US-Soviet Cold War would help this country – also to prevent it from being pushed toward one bloc instead of the other. Tito’s Yugoslavia also had a non-negligible industry and would invest a lot to rebuild Skopje the sooner the better: 4/5 of the emergency housing material would be produced in other federated republics. Therefore, Marija and her people finally came out safe from this: neighbors, from the city, the state, the federation and the whole world were actually taking care of them.

A few months later, considering the huge struggle of Yugoslav federal and local authorities to restore normal living conditions to Skopje citizens, UN representatives from 35 different countries would make the Organization adopt the resolution 1882. It was aiming to support the reconstruction effort by creating an international board of experts to supervise it and a fund to finance big architectural projects meant to resist further seismic activity. In addition,  the UN launched the well-known international competition won by Kenzo Tange’s architectural team for the Skopje Urban Plan. That would lead to revolutionary projects of brutalism and metabolism, which were the mainstream trends in architecture in the sixties. As the Japanese architects were probably the most qualified to deal with anti-earthquake buildings (due to high seismic activity in Japan), Polish architects were also of great use due to their expertise in the reconstruction of Poland after the war. But Macedonian and Yugoslav architects were also highly mobilized among their colleagues from Greece, Great Britain, Switzerland, Netherlands…

“The spirit of international solidarity demonstrated in the aftermath of the Skopje earthquake transformed the reconstruction effort into a symbol of friendship and brotherhood among peoples” – UN resolution 1882

But this official UN support was possible because of the high solidarity that started even before the resolution. States, but also NGOs, a new kind of international actor gaining capability through the years took part in the humanitarian aid. Red Cross, of course, among other religious organizations, as well as more specific actors such as Save the Children, or the Disasters Emergency Committee that was specially created in the UK for Skopje, as well as other organizations that would organize charity events, concerts or donations to help the city rising from its ashes. In total, almost 80 different countries involved themselves without waiting for international decisions, making the UN acknowledge this spirit they are talking about in their resolution. In conclusion, there’s nothing I could add but the words of the UN Development Program Director in Macedonia for the 60^th anniversary of Skopje’s earthquake, keeping in mind the growing Climate Change crisis:

“We are very proud of the role UNDP played in the process of rebuilding Skopje to a more resilient city in the aftermath of the earthquake (…). The multilateralism and international solidarity demonstrated in the aftermath of the Skopje earthquake in 1963 is something that can inspire us to act today.”

– Armen Grigoryan, UNDP Resident Representative in Macedonia

Youen Le Bris

Sources:

UN archives, UNDP website : https://www.undp.org/north-macedonia/blog/solidarity

Skopje’s 1963 Quake: From Ruins to Modernist Resurrection, on spomenikdatabase.org

Spaskovska, L, “Constructing the “City of international solidarity”: Non-aligned internationalism, the United Nations and visions of development, modernism and solidarity, 1955-1975”, Journal of World History, 25 March 2019