Roman Empire was divided in the 4th century AD into eastern and western halves, Macedonia became part of the eastern half, which became the Byzantine Empire. By this time the population of Macedonia had been largely Christianized. Macedonia's Greek ethnic composition was overturned by the invasion of Slavic peoples into the Balkans in the 6th and 7th centuries AD. Most of the region subsequently fell under the sway of the first Bulgarian empire in the 9th century. The Bulgarians were Christianized during this period by disciples of Saints Cyril and Methodius, whose adaptation of Greek characters to a Slavonic dialect spoken in southern Macedonia eventually became the Cyrillic alphabet. For the rest of the Middle Ages parts of the region were variously ruled by the Byzantine Empire, the second Bulgarian empire, and the Serbian empire. The groundwork was thus laid for the conflicting national claims to Macedonia that emerged in the modern era.

The Greek blockade was not lifted until September 1995, when the foreign ministers of Greece and the FYROM signed an interim accord on mutual relations. The two countries confirmed their border and agreed to establish diplomatic relations. Greece pledged to lift its embargo and to consent to the FYROM’s entrance into a number of international organizations. For its part, the FYROM agreed to remove the controversial Star of Vergina from its flag and to repeal articles of its constitution that Greece found objectionable. Negotiations were to continue regarding the issue of the republic’s name.

Tito’s death in 1980 coincided with the onset of an enduring economic crisis that, by 1985, had lowered production and living standards to 1965 levels. Yugoslav Macedonia, the second poorest republic after Bosnia and Herzegovina, was among the hardest hit. Tito’s successors, leaders of republics with conflicting economic interests and national aspirations, could not agree on effective remedies. Acceptance of the institutions and eventually even the structure of Tito’s Yugoslavia declined everywhere, especially in Slovenia and Croatia. Of the six republics, Yugoslav Macedonia was the slowest to embrace the idea of changing the way Yugoslavia was constituted. Like the Slovenes and Croats, the Macedonian Slavs were resistant in the late 1980s when Serbian leader Slobodan Miloševic asserted Serbian nationalism and attempted to reassert centralized party and state control over Yugoslavia under Serb domination.