religious term, in opposition to Greek, and the language began to be standardized on the basis of the Bulgarian center of literacy. Intellectuals from the Macedonian center of literacy felt that their dialects were being excluded from the literary Bulgarian language. By the time the Bulgarian state gained independence in 1878, the population of Macedonia and Bulgaria was subjected to conflicting claims from the Serbian, Bulgarian, and Greek states and churches, which provided education, and a distinct Macedonian national identity was written about in print. By 1903, a separate Macedonian identity and language is solidified in the works of Krste Petkov Misirkov, who advocates for a distinct Macedonian literary language. Bulgarian views In 1946 Elections for a constituent assembly in October gave the Communists a majority. The new authorities officially recognized Macedonian, but it lasted only until the Tito–Stalin split in 1948. However, from 1948 to 1963 some Bulgarian linguists still continued to recognize Macedonian as a separate Slavic language. The first big "language scandal" between Bulgaria and Macedonia happened in November 1966 when the president of the Bulgarian Association of Writers Georgi Dzagarov refused to sign an agreement for friendship and cooperation that was prepared in both Bulgarian and Macedonian. In 1993 the Bulgarian government refused to sign the first bilateral agreement with the Republic of Macedonia because the Macedonian language was mentioned in the agreement in the last clause: "This agreement is written and signed in Bulgarian and Macedonian". That started a dispute that was resolved in February 1999 when the governments of Bulgaria and Macedonia signed a Joint Declaration where in the last paragraph both governments signed the declaration in: "Bulgarian according to the constitution of Bulgaria and in Macedonian according to the constitution of Macedonia." The denial to recognize Macedonian though persisted in Bulgarian society, so in August 2017 both governments signed another Agreement for Friendship with a clause that mentions the Macedonian language again. In the Bulgarian society there still exists a perception that Bulgaria did not and does not recognize Macedonian as a distinct language. Although Bulgaria was the first country to recognize the independence of the Republic of Macedonia, most of its academics, as well as the general public, regard the language spoken there as a form of Bulgarian. However, after years of diplomatic impasse caused by an academic dispute, in 1999 the government in Sofia solved the problem with the Macedonian language