FOREWORD

FOREWORD

After Macedonia was divided between Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria, as a result of the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), its territorial and national integrity was shattered, further complicating the Macedonian people’s situation. The Macedonians who were already facing danger and temptation were now facing direct threats to their national survival.

The Macedonian people in the Aegean (Greek occupied) part of Macedonia, as were the Macedonian people in the other parts of occupied Macedonia, were set apart by their national oppression and cruel economic exploitation carried out by various Greek regimes. The goal of Greek bourgeois governments was to totally assimilate or physically exterminate the Macedonian people. They did this without hesitation or care for the Macedonian identity and culture. For example, history has well documented the Greek dictatorial regime, led by the infamous General Ioannis Metaxas (1936-1940) banning the Macedonian people from speaking Macedonian, their mother tongue. Metaxas implemented policies to punish everyone, even old people who spoke no other language but Macedonian, for speaking it. He didn’t even allow old women to wail in Macedonian at the graves of their loved ones.

In an effort to expel or exterminate the indigenous Macedonian population from its homeland as soon as possible, based on the Neuilly Convention of 1919, the Greek government entered into an agreement with the Bulgarian government for a “voluntary” exchange of Macedonians from Greek occupied Macedonia with so-called Greeks who had lived in Bulgaria for a long time. A similar Convention was signed with the Turkish government in Lausanne in 1923. Using these Conventions at all costs, the Greek government sought to Hellenize the entire Macedonian population in Greek occupied Macedonia in an attempt to totally change the national composition of the terrain.

A little later, in 1926, the Greek government initiated special laws to change all toponyms, hydronyms and place names from Macedonian to Greek in all inhabited Macedonian villages, towns and cities. Using the same laws, the Greek government also changed all

Macedonian given and last names from Macedonian to Greek. The Greek government did all this in order to prove to the world that Macedonia was Greek territory and that only Greeks lived in it.

However, despite the rigorous measures the Greek government took against them, the Macedonian people remained faithful to their glorious national and revolutionary traditions and adhered to the Ilinden insurgent vow to continue the struggle for the liberation of their homeland.

The Macedonian people’s struggle to gain their national and democratic rights in Greek occupied Macedonia took place under very difficult and complex conditions. The Greek reactionary regime regarded the expression of Macedonian patriotism as a potential enemy of Greece. If the Macedonians publicly declared that they were a separate, non-Greek people, it was enough for the Greek government to accuse them of being “autonomists” and “dangerous” enemies of the Greek state to be arrested and harassed by the police, punished, sentenced to long prison terms, or even killed.

In the newly created oppressive conditions and cruel economic exploitation, the Macedonian people firmly linked their struggle with the struggle of the Greek working class. Led by the Communist Party of Greece and other progressive forces, together with the Greek working class, the Macedonian people participated resolutely and en masse in many anti-fascist demonstrations and protests. They also participated in a number of other revolutionary activities organized all over Macedonia in Macedonian villages and towns.

The role and activities of the organized Macedonian leaders and fighters came to full expression during the Second World War and the Greek Civil War. During the Second World War they fought against the German-Italian and Bulgarian fascist occupiers and the Greek reactionary regimes. They were the first initiators, founders and organizers of the Macedonian anti-fascist organizations: SNOF, NOF, NOMS and AFZH. Thanks to these organizations, a strong popular Macedonian national liberation movement was created in Aegean (Greek occupied) Macedonia.

It should be underlined that despite the inconsistency of the Greek leadership in the resistance against the Macedonian national liberation movement (SNOF’s dissolution, ELAS attacking Macedonian units, etc.), the Macedonian people participated en masse on the side of the Greek democratic forces and made many sacrifices. According to some Greek sources, about 5,000 Macedonian fighters joined the ranks of ELAS voluntarily, and over 15,000 served in the reserves. More than 20,000 Macedonian fighters served in the ranks of DAG and its auxiliary units during the Greek Civil War, of whom about 4,000 were girls and women.

Over 20,000 fighters of ELAS and DAG and active members of the CPG, SNOF and NOF lost their lives in their long struggle, led by the Greek progressive forces, in the war against the domestic reactionaries and the Anglo-American interventionists. Several hundred of these people were prominent fighters, organizers, leaders of the organizations SNOF, NOF, NOMS and AFZH, and ELAS and DAG commanders and political commissars.

However, the purpose for writing this book wasn’t to just emphasize the Macedonian people’s mass participation in the anti-fascist struggle for national and social rights, which may be the subject of a separate study, but to briefly present the life and revolutionary activities of some of the more prominent fighters and leaders of the Macedonian National Liberation Movement (NOF) who, as successors of their Ilinden ancestors, died in the period from 1945 to1949. We also wanted to present a general picture of the activities in which these people were involved during the struggle.

We will only talk about those personalities for whom we had ample information that described their involvement in the struggle.

In order to compile this book we used existing literature, information supplied to us by other fighters as well as memoirs provided by their comrades. Multiple sources of information were used in order to resolve any existing controversial issues relating to their activities. We have also discovered indirect information in our historiography about a number of personalities about whom nothing had been written and who deserved to be mentioned and remembered.

Even though, for objective reasons, this book doesn’t cover all the fighters who died in the whirlwind of the Greek Civil War, we still believe it will greatly contribute to our historiography.

I would like to dedicate this book to all the fighters from the Aegean part of Macedonia who gave their lives for the Macedonian people’s freedom and for the affirmation and protection of the Macedonian national dignity.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the reviewers Dr. Stoian Kiselinovski, Hristo Andonovski and Dr. Gligor Todorovski.

I would also cordially like to thank all those fighters and comrades who survived the war and their close relatives who provided me with their biographical information.

The author