JS LS - Part 01

JS/LS

Canadian Legation - March 22nd, 1949

Belgrade, Yugoslavia No. 66

Sir,

The importance which the Yugoslav Government attach to the questions of Macedonia and a South Slav Federation, acerbated as they now are through Bulgaria's strong pro- Cominform stand and the resultant worsening of relations with Yugoslavia, was again emphasized by a full-page, six-column article by Moshe Pijade entitled "The Question of Balkan Federation" which appeared in "Borba" on March 6th. Pijade is the CPY's able theoretician whom the Cominform Journal recently called a "paltry pigmy playing the buffoon on the rostrum… clowning… and, like a jester, raving, ranting, threatening and brandishing documents…"

2. The article was mainly a resume and recapitulation of what has already been said on the subject on various other occasions, such as in the speeches by Kardelj and Rankovich reported in my dispatch No. 21 of January 29th. With bitterness and heavy sarcasm Pijade attacked the "alluring voices of friendship" in Sofia whence came a stream of propaganda in favour of a South Slav Federation coupled with reproaches against Yugoslavia for blocking its realization. Recently the proposal had been broadened and Sofia had passed to the preaching of a Balkan Federation although only yesterday such a Federation was considered too artificial and problematic to be worth mentioning. The writer said that it would not be worth his attention either were it not for the attempt to embroil "democratic" Greece in the intrigue.

3. He attempted to show that the Resolution passed at the Fifth Plenary Session of the Communist Party of Greece held at the end of January spoke against Greek chauvinism and in favour of the right of the Macedonian peoples to self- determination, but that it said nothing of a Balkan Federation or the relations of Greece with other Balkan states. However, the Bulgarian trade union paper 'Trud" interpreted the resolution as evidence of the Greek Communist Party's alignment with the views of the Bulgarian Workers' Party on

solving the Macedonian problem through the early creation of a Balkan Federation.

4. It was better for the Macedonians in Aegean Macedonia, wrote Pijade, to continue their struggle for liberation in the knowledge that the Greek Communist Party, as stated in its Resolution, would fight for Macedonia's right of self- determination after liberation, than to bother themselves at this stage about projects for union with the other two parts of Macedonia, especially when one of them, Pirin Macedonia, did not enjoy the most elementary autonomous rights in Bulgaria.

5. Pijade retraced the history and nature of the Bulgarian and Yugoslav proposals for a South Slav Federation which have already been outlined in paragraph 6 of my dispatch No.21. At first the Bulgarians wanted only some kind of pact of mutual assistance but Kardelj wrote Tito from Sofia in December 1944 to say that he had told the Bulgarians that such a pact was absolutely worthless; it would not alter the existing situation whereas what was needed was an alliance which would be interpreted by the masses in both countries as an initial step towards union. It was then agreed that a Bulgarian and a Yugoslav delegation should meet to discuss their respective drafts of an agreement for federation, and the meeting took place in January 1945.

6. The first and fifth articles of the Yugoslav draft read as follows:

"1) Democratic Federative Yugoslavia and Bulgaria are uniting themselves in a single federal state, which is henceforth to consist of seven components: Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina, with a joint People's Parliament and a joint Federal Government, and forming a single customs area."

"5) A joint Bulgarian-Yugoslav Commission with its seat in Belgrade, to be called the Commission of the South Slav Federation, is to be formed with the task of preparing a draft Constitution of the joint federal state. This Commission is to include representatives of Bulgaria and the six constituent parts of Democratic Federative

Yugoslavia which are to be designated by their respective Governments.”

7. The Bulgarian draft agreement contained the following proposals:

"1) The Government of Bulgaria and the Government of Yugoslavia declare that they are realizing the unification of the South Slavs by way of the formation of a common, federally regulated state which will be called the South Slav Federation, with a joint People's Parliament, with joint Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense and other joint institutions and ministries which will be finally established in the mutual Constitution of the Federation, which Should be drafted as the result and final realization of this treaty."

"2) The beginning of the realization of such a Federation will be achieved by setting up a special joint agency of the Federation --a Provisional Council of the South Slav Federation with its seat in Belgrade. This Council will be formed on the principle of proportional representation of both Governments."

8. The Yugoslavs rejected the Bulgarians' arguments in favour of their draft: that Bulgaria, as an independent state with its own traditions, should not be put on unequal footing with the constituent republics of Yugoslavia, but should be equal with the whole six-membered Yugoslavia. It is not difficult to see that to the Bulgarians the Yugoslav draft must have seemed inconsiderate of their feelings and ungenerous.

9. The boundaries of Macedonia, according to the Yugoslav draft agreement, were to be finally settled by Bulgaria seding to Macedonia territory acquired under the 1913 Peace Treaty (Pirin Macedonia was accorded to Bulgaria under the Treaty of Bucharest after the Second Balkan War) and by Yugoslavia seding to Bulgaria territory acquired as a result of the Peace Settlement of 1919 (under the Treaty of Neuilly Bulgaria lost Tsaribrod and some territory in the Strumica valley to Yugoslavia).

10. Pijade charged that the Bulgarian leaders lacked sincerity and that their plans ignored Macedonia’s equality and the Macedonian peoples’ right to self-determination. He repeatedly castigated them

for their "Greater Bulgarian" chauvinism, which he named as the real reason which prevented the union of Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. Although, he wrote, it went against the Leninist conception of a nation's right to self- determination for Yugoslavia and Bulgaria to negotiate a solution of the relations between Pirin Macedonia and the Macedonian People's Republic as a pre-condition for South Slav Federation, the Yugoslav Government had been prepared to do this in order to help obtain practical results. Nothing came of the agreement however because the Anglo-Americans prevented Bulgaria from signing treaties with any countries.

11. If the Bulgarians are serious in their advocation of Federation they should, in Pijade's view, first give Pirin Macedonia the same freedom and cultural, territorial and political autonomy as the Macedonian People's Republic enjoys in Yugoslavia. When this had been done the two Macedonian republics could negotiate directly with each other. Then the Macedonian Republic, within an eventual South Slav Federation in which it would be equal with Bulgaria, Serbia and the other constituent republics, would be free for all time from the menace of Bulgarian chauvinism and Bulgarian designs to transform the Macedonians into part of the Bulgarian nation. In the meantime, Pijade concluded, the Bulgarian campaign for Federation and for an independent Macedonia within a Balkan Federation was, in present circumstances, not a progressive step but part and parcel of the Cominform attack on the building of socialism in Yugoslavia.

12. Writing early in the War Professor Hugh Seton-Watson, whose knowledge of the Balkans is practically unrivalled, was of the opinion that:

“The real Macedonian Problem is the problem of Yugoslavia Macedonia. Here neither Serbian nor Bulgarian rule has benefited the people. The people of Yugoslav Macedonia are in fact neither Serbs nor Bulgarians, and they have had reason to dislike almost equally the dictatorial nationalist centralism of Belgrade and the dictatorial centralist nationalism of Sofia. Probably the only method which offers any promise of a satisfactory solution is that of regional autonomy within a federal Yugoslavia. This would mean that the administration, school system and economic life of Macedonia would be conducted by Macedonians, men born and bred in the

province; that the State authorities would officially recognize that the Macedonians are neither Serbs nor Bulgars, but a separate branch of the South Slavs; and that in all matters affecting State policy the Macedonians would accept the authority of the Central Government.

The Macedonian Problem is essentially an internal problem of Yugoslavia. If the relation between Macedonians and Serbs can be cleared in the manner described above, then minor territorial questions, such as Florina or Petrich, can be settled with little difficulty between the Governments of Yugoslavia, Greece and Bulgaria.

The Macedonian problem cannot be solved independently of the Balkan problem as a whole. Everything depends on the type of regimes that prevail in the Balkan States after the war. If the old nationalist claims are supreme, then Macedonia will again be a cause of international rivalries.”

13. Up to a point, and admittedly more on paper than in practice, the Tito regime has taken all the steps recommended by Prof. Seton-Watson. As I pointed out in paragraph 21 of my dispatch No. 13 of January 18th these measures, are fresh memories of Bulgarian behaviour when in occupation of Macedonia during the war, may have brought about a considerable reduction in Macedonian antipathy to the Yugoslav state.

14. But the territorial questions remain unsolved and have indeed become hopelessly entangled with rival nationalist claims, the problems arising out of the Yugoslav-Cominform dispute, the Macedonian policies of the Royal Greek Government and the Greek Communist Party, and last but not least, the Soviet Union's veiled and enigmatic Macedonian policy. And thus the Macedonian Problem remains and festers, for, in the words quoted above, it "cannot be solved independently of the Balkan Problem as a whole"

15. I am sending copies of this dispatch to Athens, London, Prague, Warsaw and Moscow. I have the honour to be, Sir, Your obedient servant, (can’t make out the signature), Minister JAM: aw

Canadian Mounted Police - Ottawa, December 4th, 1946

Sir:

Information has reached this department that there have been appeals for Macedonian relief by a Fund in which Toncho Naibenoff, Domiter Nicholoff and Nano Petcoff are associated and that monies to the amount of $ 15,000 have been collected for the purchase of relief supplies.

About a year ago an application for registration under the War Charities Act by a Macedonian Group in Toronto was received by this Department whereby funds would be raised for the relief of Macedonians in Yugoslavia.

We explained that the policy of the Department allowed only one registered fund for each country and that, in this connection, the registered organization to deal or to become affiliated with for relief to Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav Relief Fund.

As a result of our suggestion the committee in question informed us they did not care to co-operate with the registered Fund mentioned and that they would rather stop fund-raising activities for the benefit of the Macedonian people.

We have since tried to contact the above mentioned gentlemen and to advise them that if the $ 15,000 in question had been raised for relief to Macedonians in Yugoslavia or elsewhere, such fund-raising activities should not have been carried out without registration under the War Charities Act. We have, however, been unsuccessful in contacting the parties involved and would be most grateful if your Department could conduct an investigation in this connection.

The foreign exchange control board have passed on information to us in connection with the Macedonian groups in Toronto, which reads as follows:

a) Mr. Iedro Hristoff applied for a change of status and to transfer money out of Canada. He declared assets of $ 4,000.00 in his bank account and was given permission to transfer this money. When he

bought his Canadian draft he presented four $ 1,000 bills, leaving his bank account untouched.

b) These $ 1,000 bills were traced and found to come from a bank account in Toronto of $15,000 held by three persons mentioned in the opening…

…persons claiming to be journalists;

Edward Yardas Maxim Bielie George Metesac Have raised to transfer $ 2,500, $ 3,500 and $ 3,500 reportedly to take to Europe, for travel expenses on behalf of their employers;

Edinas Publishing Co. Zvesti Publishing Co. League of Canadian Croatians Srpski Glasnik.

Me. Yardas' request was approved and he bought his draft with a cheque for $1,500 and with a $1,000 bill, which was traced to the account mentioned in paragraph (b).

Dr. Kaye of the Naturalization Branch, Secretary of State Department, gave further information on the activities of the Macedonian group in Toronto. It appears from the Bulgarian language newspaper in Toronto that there have been appeals for a fund for Macedonian relief of which the Treasurer was Mr. Toncho Naibenoff and associated with him were Mr. Spaso Michailoff and Mr. Nano Petcoff. On October 11th it was announced in the Bulgarian paper that the fund had collected # 15,295.

I also understand that further information concerning Andro Christoff, Nicholas Kiriakopolos and Andro Palmeroff is available in your file No. D 945-3-E 353.

It would therefore appear from these facts that monies which have been collected from persons or persons of Macedonian and

Bulgarian origin in Toronto, ostensibly for relief purposes, are being misused.

The Foreign Exchange Control Board has been keeping a close watch on all Macedonian applications for transfer of funds abroad and, in this connection, the last information we have from that Department is that a contract with Iedro Hristoff, Pencho Penchoff, Anton Tsvetcoff and Lambro Luticoff concerning the sale of “The New Times Publishing Company” of 386 Ontario Street, Toronto, for the sum of $1.00 was duly conveyed on the 26th November, 1946. Obviously some other consideration but the one dollar involved has been understood in completing this transaction. In this respect our understanding is that Hristoff's Bank Account is the pivoting feature of the deal. .

As previously stated, if the $15,000 referred to has been raise, for war charity purposes such collection has been made without the benefit of registration. Further, the funds so collected, whether under registration or not, should not be used for purposes other than those for which they were raised, and, of immediate importance, the Committee responsible is required to have prepared an audited statement showing all receipts and disbursements since the beginning of…

Canadian Postal Censorship - Ottawa Ontario

C. 33 March 24, 1941

“Narodna Volya” (People’s will) 5856 Chene Street, Detroit, Michigan. U.S.A.

February 21, 1941 Bulgarian

The lease-lend bill is pure Fascism, reads the leading article

The standard Oil is supplying both opponents in the European conflict: England directly, Germany and Italy by way of Spain. England having appropriated the merchant marine of all the countries overrun by Hitler has a higher tonnage at the present time than ever before. It is quite inaccurate to say that England needs ships as, with the 10,000,000 tons of so called “Allied Shipping”, she now commends 45% of the world’s aggregate merchant fleets. The lease-land bill is leading the U.S.A. into war. The working class wants neither war nor Fascism and must, therefore, oppose the measures which will drag us into both with all means at her disposal.

Before the Explosion in the Balkans

The eyes of the world are on the Balkan Peninsula which may soon become a theater of war. English maneuvers have caused disturbances in Rumania. Italian reverses on all fronts have compelled Hitler to come to the rescue and threaten Greece with invasion unless the latter signs a separate peace with Hitler. Mussolini has held frantic consultations with Franco and the head of the French Fascist Republic, Petain. But Franco has pleaded Spanish exhaustion, and the opposition to the various bourgeois factions in France is strong enough to compel Petain to the utmost caution. So that passage of Nazi and Italian troops over French and Spanish territories to North Africa is for the time being at 1east not likely.

The United States hold the key to the situation and here opinion is divided. The mass of the people want peace and preservation of the rights of the workers, but reactionary leaders and Wall Street are all out for war. They have given the President dictatorial powers and they are pushing the lease-lend bill through. This bill means war -war in the Balkans, war for America.

Yugoslavia and Bulgaria Threatened with War

England is trying to engage part of the German forces in the Balkans in order to relieve the pressure on the British Isles. She has severed diplomatic relations with Rumania and is waiting to do the same with Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. She can then bomb Rumanian oil fields and Bulgarian towns. Hitler, it is said, has promised Salonika to Yugoslavia; Agach and Kavala to Bulgaria, if they let his troops through to Greece. There are 600,000 soldiers in Thrace. The Balkans are once again facing the horrors of destruction.

The Bulgarian Government has Betrayed the People

The Bulgarian Government has conspired with the German Nazis against the Bulgarian people. The Filoff Government and Tsar Boris are embarking upon the same course as the Rumanian traitors who provoked anti-Semitic pogroms in order to hide national opposition to Fascism and German occupation.

In order to justify this flagrant act of treason, Filoff gives the excuse that Bulgaria has been told by Moscow she must not count on help from the U.S.S.R. -Local Bulgarian papers in America, namely, the NARODEN GLAS, have repeated this lie.

The Bulgarian Government never intended to oppose German invasion and never took any measures to prevent it. Tsar Boris and Premier Filoff are Hitler’s best Fifth Columnists in Bulgaria -they have bargained away the life and the independence of the people. How could Soviet Russia help to save a country from Hitler, when the leaders of that country have already sold it to Hitler! The U. S. S. R. would be falling right into the famous Munich trap laid by British Imperialists at the time and still waiting to be sprung: a war with Hitler.

The Bulgarian people know that the U.S.S.R. is their friend but the Bulgarian bourgeoisie is afraid of that friendship and prefers to conspire with imperialists, be they German or British, against the best interests of the country. The Bulgarian ruling classes are betraying the Fatherland because they fear the Bulgarian people. The Bulgarian Government never asked for Russian help -they avoided it. Tsar Boris sold the country to Hitler for 30 pieces of silver just as Tsar Ferdinand sold it to the Kaiser, in his day, against the wishes and better judgment of the nation. The Bulgarian people are keeping count of these treasons and the day is not far oft when the traitors will be brought before a people's Court. When that day comes, the Hitlers, the Churchills and the Roosevelts will not be able to save themselves either. The people will win in the end, after the imperialist forces and their puppets at the helm of the Balkan States have plunged the Balkan fields and dales into a murderous war -the day of reckoning will come. The Balkan workers and peasants will suffer and die, but enough of them will survive to put an end to imperialism forever.

Central Intelligence Group - Washington D.C. - June i3, 1947

Country: Greece/Canada Subject: Letters from Macedonian Autonomists in Canada Date of Info: 3 April i947 Evaluation: F-6

1. The letters in paragraphs 2 and 3 below were written by George Grouios (or Grouev), a resident of Canada. He went to Canada from his native village, Alonia, near Florina, in Northwestern Greece. He is Secretary General of the Slavo-Macedonian Organization in Canada, which is seeking the federation of Greek Macedonia with Yugoslavia. An important point brought out in one letter is the fact that during the spring of 1947 a considerable number of Slavo-Macedonians are preparing to go from Canada to fight as Comitaji (mountain bandits) against Greece.

2. The following letter is written to Nikolaos Tsetos, a resident of Alonia:

“Dear Cousin Nikolaos,

Many greetings from me, your cousin George Grouios. Also give my greetings to Vasiliki and to all the rest. I am well so far. I am going to America (i .e., U.S.A. ) , and I decided to take this opportunity to write you a few words. I am indeed very well, but I am distressed because I hear much that is not good news. They are now writing news even worse than before, namely that there are many Comitaji. In the spring, Nikolaos, the situation will be far worse. They are preparing to go there from America and from Canada by the thousands to fight as Comitaji against your mangey-bald old nanny-goat (meaning Greece), and until we get what belongs to us you will not have liberty there. Tell my godfather Panos Tantsef: “Be a little better to my boy, or Panos, you will have the same experience as Antonis Standisis” (the President of the village of Alonia who was carried off by the bandits, and his fate is still unknown). Cousin Nikolaos, don't think that the world is asleep. Everything which happens there happens because of our men. Therefore tell my boy to snap out of it, because there will be nobody to protect him. Tell the same thing to Panos Tantsef. I tell you that

letters come here from Monastir, and they write us who is harming our people. Give many greetings to all who ask about me… I am expecting much news from you and for you to write me what everybody in the village is doing.

With fraternal greetings Yours cousin, G. Grouios”

3. Elias Lalos, also a resident of Alonia, is the recipient of another letter written by Grouios:

“Dear Elias Lalos,

I received your letter some time ago, but… we learned from the newspapers that the Andartes have taken Antonis Standis, but we do not know how far this is true. I am anxiously awaiting your answer on this point. Liberty will not be slow in coming; everything that the People demand will come about. You there know nothing of what is going on. We know. Thousands of telegrams are sent from here to the Peace Conference demanding that Macedonia remain independent with Salonia as its capital, and this will happen in a short time. Pay attention to my words. This only you need to know: you and the others demand the just rights of our people. You are Macedonians and not Greeks. Demand just this by telegrams from there.

Yours friend, George Grouios”

4. Although the letters are not dated, probably written in February or March 1947.

Extract from the Dispatch from His Majesty’s Consul in Skopje

March 27, 1949

……..The Yugoslav communist Party's entire Macedonian policy is based on the assumption that they can carry in the teeth of fierce opposition from most Bulgars and some Serbs their thesis of a distinct Macedonian language and national tradition. The Party is therefore particularly committed to support advanced research in the little explored subjects of Macedonian national history and philology. Such studies have, of course, had little chance until recently of getting very far, owing to ferocious opposition from Greeks, Bulgars or Serbs, and as a result there are really no trained specialists in this field. The discovery that at Skopje University very few students are showing any interest in Slavonic Philology or the Macedonian language, and that during the recent end-of-term examinations they showed themselves much keener on the Serbian language and Yugoslav literature, is therefore a good deal more significant than might appeal at first sight. One or two other minor incidents that I have observed would appear to suggest that some Macedonians, at least in Skopje, may prefer to read in Serbian, rather than Macedonian, when they get the chance. Add to this the fact that a large number of the students here are showing very little interest in their compulsory Russian studies, or at any rate are scoring deplorably bad marks at Russian in their examinations, and it will be seen that Crvenkovski has a lot to think about in his new post.

The apparent lack of interest among certain sections of the intelligentsia in the "Macedonian National Tradition", so essential to party ideology here, is no doubt also reflected in the “indiscipline” and “passivity” of the Macedonian writers and poets referred to earlier in this dispatch. It is a fact that, to judge from Dimitar Nitrev's speech, various brands of “decadence” (meaning, apparently, a failure to express oneself unequivocally as on the side of the Yugoslav Communist Party or, at the very least, to be interested in individual, rather than in mass emotions, and thus, by implication, "apolitical") is a far commoner offence here, and certainly very much graver, than any inadequacy in form or style.

Some clue to the degree to which the “Macedonian National Tradition” has captured people’s imaginations here may also be afforded by the long series of free public lectures given in Skopje recently by Dimitar Vlahov. At the beginning of the series, when Vlahov was speaking on the early history of the Macedonian Revolutionary Movement, his audiences were quite large -perhaps 500 or more -but a very high proportion of them appeared to be elderly people such as may have had some personal experience of the period he was describing. As the series progressed, however, not even Vlahov's considerable reputation, as the “Grand Old Man” of the Macedonian movement was able to compensate for the impossible dullness of his lectures. When I looked in one minute before he was due to begin the lecture entitled "The successes of the Macedonian People’s Republic" there were precisely three people sitting there, and another half-dozen or so huddled around the stove at the back of the hall -although in fairness it should be said that Vlahov tended to begin his lectures later than the advertised time, and it has been a habit for people to return.

If as these events appear to suggest, the (not very numerous) intellectuals here are not over-impressed by the new Macedonian Idea, what then is their attitude? Some (I should say not very many) are plainly pro-Bulgarian on principle. Most of the students and young people, although probably more interested in their technical studies than in their Macedonian traditions, are, I should say, supporters to a greater or less degree of the present Yugoslav Government in the same way as are most other young Yugoslavs. As Macedonians, they are likely to be far less worried by any submergence of "Western Values" than are their fellow students, say, in Zagreb and Ljubljana. At the same time the Yugoslav Communist Party, by putting an end to the almost colonial policy in Macedonia of successive pre-war Belgrade governments, has at one stroke eliminated the greatest single curse of Vardar Macedonia, and released a good deal of latent energy hitherto suppressed. The Party can also claim, convincingly, that Yugoslavia has done a lot more to liquidate the economic backwardness of Vardar Macedonia in the last three years than Bulgaria is ever likely to do for Pirin. Finally, the Bulgarian Occupation was not a particularly pleasant affair, and the memory of it probably still works as a fairly effective discouragement to pro-Bulgarian sympathies.

On the other hand, there is evidently fairly widespread support for a Macedonian autonomist movement - largely, I should say, among older people, though certainly also in certain sections of the youth. As a spokesman of the Yugoslav security service said at the Macedonian Party Congress what opposition groups there have been have consisted "almost entirely of Mihailovists". It is a commonly held view that the Mihailovists, or IMRO, are really only advocating autonomy as a prelude for incorporation in Bulgaria when the time is ripe. The fact that they seem quite happy to talk the Bulgarian language lends credence to this view, and certainly one of the main tenets of Yugoslav propaganda is that the policies of the Bulgarian Communist Party and of the Mihailovists is virtually indistinguishable. I am inclined to believe, however, that this is an over - simplification, and that there is a body of opinion which seeks a united, independent Macedonia as an ultimate object in itself -quite possibly within some larger federation, perhaps, as is alleged here, under Anglo-American protection, but probably not under the protection of the Kremlin. Evidence in support of this view comes from Lazo Mojsov’s book, mentioned earlier in this dispatch. Mojsov gives, for the first time, more details of the "Skopje intellectuals" who had been mentioned earlier as criticizing the Manifesto put out by the partisan Headquarters for Macedonia at the end of 1943. These, critics, who appear to have been supporters of the Partisans, were apparently professional politicians with no very great regular following, but their views are interesting none the less. They argued that there could be no final settlement of the Macedonian question within Yugoslavia, as the very name of Yugoslavia was for Macedonians a symbol of slavery; that the future of Vardar Macedonia could not be decided without reference to the other two parts of Macedonia as well; that the first aim of the Macedonian Partisans must be clearly stated as being a United Macedonia, and a joint Macedonian military command must therefore be established with a view to placing the Macedonian Question fairly and squarely “in the diplomatic arena”. Other criticisms put forward by these people were that the Partisan Headquarters were “not competent” to issue any “Manifesto” in the name of the Macedonian People; that they, the “intellectual leaders”, should be consulted more frequently and entrusted with diplomatic missions, etc.; that there was no need publicly to criticize Ckatrov

and other "fascists", as they were completely discredited anyway; that for General Mijalce (or Mise) Apostolski to sign himself "Mihajlo""smelt of Serbdom" , and so on.

Various extracts from Tito’s letters quoted by Mojsov make it clear that he was worried by autonomist tendencies on the fringes of the Partisan movement in Macedonia. No doubt they were a good deal harder to deal with than plain “Greater Bulgarianism”. It seems clear that Metodi Andonov- Cento, the Macedonian nationalist politician who eventually became President of the Presidium of the Antifascist Council of National Liberation of Macedonia, must have been one of these “autonomists”. He must also have been a figure of some standing in Macedonia, otherwise he would scarcely have been given the appointment. This may also explain why the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has proved so eager to sing Andonov's praises since their hands were freed by the Cominform Resolution. Andonov, of course, tried to escape to Greece with the object of laying, proposals for an independent Macedonia before the Paris Peace Conference, and since that attempt (as on several occasions before the war) he has been inside a Yugoslav gaol.

Lazo Mojsov, of course, argues (or rather states categorically again and again -it cannot be called argument) that these Macedonian autonomists were really “tools of Bulgarian Chauvinism”. If that were so, then it would of course be easier for Mojsov to discredit them in the eyes of the public. But his “arguments” are not convincing, and clearly beg the question. There seems to be no doubt that IMRO, if it plaid its cards carefully, could count on the support of most politically conscious anti-communists among the Macedonian intelligentsia, in addition to the more-or- less fascist following it has always had -in present circumstances there would appear to be no other alternative to communism, whether Titoist or Stalinesque. It is certainly a fact that autonomist bands were active in both Vardar and Aegean Macedonia during the war, and at least in Vardar Macedonia for a considerable time after the war, until they were dispersed by Yugoslav security troops. It is scarcely likely that the ideas for which they stood in 1945 have been so easily disposed of.

But IMRO has often been described with some justice as mainly an affair of the bourgeois intelligentsia, with little mass support. The same is probably true today, and autonomist tendencies are likely to be limited to certain groups of Macedonian intellectuals (not a very numerous body, in any case). The state of opinion among workers and peasants is altogether a different matter. My impression is that the Macedonian workers' main feeling is one of dissatisfaction with living conditions as they are at present -they are certainly very bad -and that they are a good deal more interested in their standard of life than in ideological or national disputes. Town workers here suffer more than those elsewhere as a result of the inevitable, but none the less frightening inefficiency of Management in their People's Republic, which can be observed at its worst in the State commercial network. As a result, housewives here have had to put up with a good deal more in the way of queuing and shortages than elsewhere, and the free market-prices of essential food are painfully higher than they are only a few kilometers away in Serbia (particularly in Kosmet).

"It was better than when the Bulgarians were here” is a typical comment, but it is not a political judgment; in fact, most people know well enough the rations in the Bulgarian People’s Republic are appreciably worst than they are here. “Yes, we suppose things will get better – but WHEN?” probably best expresses the resigned attitude of most town worker.

While housewives struggle to make ends meet, many of their husbands have to work in extremely bad conditions, and workers are constantly leaving their jobs in the (slender) hope of finding something better. This again seems to be very largely due to inefficiency and thoughtlessness, resulting once more, to some extent, from Macedonian inexperience in management and administration. In the once British-owned chrome mines at Radusa, to take one fairly typical example, workers have been standing all day in several inches of water although it is said that gum-boots are in fact available if someone will only do something about it. One thing is certain, and that is that in general (although a few branches do manage to assist their members to some extent, as for instance in getting them extra rations and firewood) the Trade Unions are of almost no help at all in improving working conditions. It is scarcely

likely that the scandals revealed in the recent purge of the Trade Union leadership will do much to increase their reputation.

Nevertheless, there are, signs that the living conditions of ordinary workers will improve this year, and I should say that most of them would give their more-or-less willing support to the present authorities unless somebody else can offer them, convincingly, a standard of life dramatically better than the one they suffer at present. It seems very unlikely that advocates of union with Bulgaria could hope to make such an offer. Whether Macedonian autonomists could make their proposals more attractive with an offer of Anglo-American spam and circuses is another matter. I should be inclined to think it extremely doubtful. Probably, apart from other factors, very few of the thousands of Greek Macedonian refugees here are likely to be good propagandists for Anglo-American support.

Opinion among the peasants (the great majority of Macedonians, of course) is a different matter again. As I have reported on an earlier occasion, many (if not most) of the country districts of Vardar Macedonia are so backward that it is difficult to conceive of any but a few individuals having any sort of coherent political opinion at all. But Bulgarian (and perhaps more particularly Albanian) occupation was certainly no pleasant business for the Macedonian peasants, and I should say that by the end of the war the Partisans were regarded genuinely as liberators in many country districts where the peasants neither knew nor cared anything about communism. Macedonia possesses an unusually high proportion of really poor peasants, and many (particularly among the Albanians in the south-west, it appears) were either without land or hopelessly in debt. For these people -a very numerous class -the Agrarian Reform came as a godsend, and subsequent resistance to the idea of Producer Cooperatives was far less than in districts with a higher proportion of richer peasants.

The Macedonian Communist Party, compared with the parties in the rest of Yugoslavia, had comparatively little influence in the towns, where the Bulgarians were naturally able to develop far more effective anti-communist (or at any rate anti-Yugoslav -communist) propaganda than German or Italian occupiers elsewhere. The Macedonian Partisans, therefore, were based almost exclusively on

the villages, and it seems clear that the Macedonian Communist Party is well aware of the source of most of its strongest and most effective potential support nowadays. The Party appears to consist of a not very large group of intellectuals who in earlier days might have been Macedonian nationalists, a group (again, I should say, not large) of Macedonian workers who for one reason or another were less influenced by anti-Serb opinion than their fellows, plus the usual admixture of flamboyant “1941 Partisans” and warriors, together with an unusually high proportion of time-servers with rather murky records. The latter, although they do no occupy the highest positions, are obviously the most unstable element in present circumstances. The Party is both young and (except as regards Partisan warfare) very inexperienced. As pressure on it becomes stronger (and the leaders are obviously very nervous about the possible effects of Bulgarian propaganda, especially since it increased in vehemence at the beginning of the year), the Party is trying to consolidate its position in the most promising (and, in Macedonia, the most decisive) sector; namely, in the villages.

In my opinion, the Party is likely to be successful in its policy, given time. There is to be ideological work on a very big scale where pre-conceived political notions are few; the party's wartime record is mostly in its favour; loyal peasants of the more influential kind are to be admitted as members of the Party with little or no regard to the purity of their Marxist-Leninist ideology (if indeed they understand it at all). In this way, the Party will build up a firm basis of influential villagers committed to its support. Many of them will undoubtedly be (already are) opportunists and yes- men, but the policy in general is likely to be effective.

The main weapon in this drive for increased support in the countryside is of course the extension of the Producer Cooperatives. On this issue (as I have suggested earlier in this dispatch) Kolisevski, who, as a worker born and bred, probably takes a less novel view of the social category from which a communist party should draw its main support, appears to have been over-ruled. There is no doubt that Macedonia, compared with the rest of Yugoslavia, offers very favourable conditions for the establishment of Producer Cooperatives with the minimum of peasant opposition. It is, after all, the home of "pecalbarstvo" -the system under which

the men of a village unable to support its inhabitants would go abroad to earn their living, and send their savings home. In the case of the mountain village of Galicnik, near Debar (and others too) the entire male population used to go abroad to work as crafts men or yoghurt makers, and returned once a year in July for about a fortnight (or every other year, if they had been to America). The month of July was thus filled with celebrations and weddings, and the newlywed husbands would look forward to seeing their three-months-old children the following July. Such a way of life was extremely picturesque for foreign visitors, but not very satisfactory for the villagers themselves. Now, Galicnik has a very large and flourishing cooperative engaged in stock-breeding and carpet-making. It has libraries, electric light, a cinema. I am told by a man who has just spent a few months there teaching the carpet makers the secret of wool-dyeing that the women and young people are delighted with the new arrangements, although some of the older men who had got used to the idea of going "on pecalba" every year are still inclined to hanker after foreign parts. The case of Galicnik, of course, is so startling that it can scarcely be called typical. I believe, for example, that government loans to this particular cooperative have been unusually large. Nevertheless, it does serve to illustrate the fact that the cooperative idea is likely to become increasingly popular in the very large number of poor, backward and barren villages of Macedonia.

It is therefore clear that if "the population of Bulgaria is to be increased from 7 million to 10 million" (as has apparently been said in Sofia), it will not be as the result of a popular rising in Vardar Macedonia in the foreseeable future. Propagandists here have not much difficulty in disposing of Greater Bulgarian Chauvinism. They can point to the fact that there is not likely to be any autonomy for Macedonians inside Bulgaria -and some sort of autonomy would certainly be demanded even by Macedonians who might not press their claim to a language of their own distinct from Bulgarian. The "Kolisevski clique" can even make a convincing enough counter-claim for the inclusion of Pirin in the Macedonian people's Republic. Neskovic, at the Macedonian party Congress, strongly denied that Yugoslavia had ever claimed Pirin except as part of a general settlement in an eventual South Slav Federation. This seems, if not an actual misstatement, to be at least misleading. Mojsov's book

makes it quite clear that at one stage the union of Pirin and Vardar Macedonia within Yugoslavia and without regard to an ultimate South Slav Federation was agreed to in principle by the Bulgarian Communist Party, though without enthusiasm. They are scarcely likely to have agreed to this unless the Yugoslavs had been pressing them very strongly (and unless, one might perhaps add, they had had instructions from Moscow in this sense).