APPENDICES

APPENDICES

FACTS AND ARGUMENTS REGARDING THE CPG’S ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE MACEDONIAN PEOPLE BEFORE AND AFTER THE GREEK CIVIL WAR 1944 - 1945 AND 1945 -1960

1.

Memorandum written by a group of Macedonian activists from Kostur Region describing the CPG Greek resistance leadership’s policies and irregular attitude towards the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia.

CONFIDENTIAL

TO NOV AND PO GENERAL HEADQUARTERS, MACEDONIA.

October 18, 1944, Village Gorno Vranovtsi,

“MISTAKES, EVIL DEEDS, ANTI-PEOPLE ACTS, ANTI-MACEDONIAN ACTS… PERPETRATED BY THE GREEK PEOPLE AGAINST OUR PEOPLE IN GREEK OCCUPIED MACEDONIA DURING THE THREE YEAR ANTI-FASCIST STRUGGLE…”: (The memo went on for about 15 pages describing crimes committed against the Macedonian people.)

People’s delegation from Greek occupied Macedonia.

1. Paskal Mitrevski, lawyer, leader of the Macedonian movement in Kostur Region.

2. Mihailo Keramitdzhiev, People’s President in the Kostur Region Greek National Assembly.

3. Lambro Cholakov, worker, member of the delegation from Kostur Region.

(See: Document AM, photocopy ATSKSJ-K-1/40, from the book “Aegean Macedonia in NOV September 1944 to February 1945”. Volume 7, book 3. Translation, Editorial and Commentary by Dr. Risto Kiriazovski.)

The memorandum went on to describe many anti-Macedonian acts committed in the years 1944 and 1945. This time, as in other times, especially in the Macedonian territory occupied by Greece, Macedonians had not asked anyone for anything. It is amazing how they survived despite all the tragedies they had to endure. But one will have to wonder; if all the things mentioned in the report were happening before the Greek Civil War, then what did people expect would happen during the Greek Civil War? By the logic of things, they dove deeper into a totalitarian environment… unfortunately our analysts and mainstream historians disagree and insist that things went the other way.

The most tragic part about this is that the people who reported these atrocities to us were again victims in the Greek Civil War; because they worked flawlessly with unprecedented servitude to the CPG, and in the end they were the ones who carried out the most murderous endeavour; the permanent exiling of our children. They were the ones who, in the guise of saving them, carried out the very successful child evacuation program, an unprecedented act of cruelty against the Macedonian people.

After reading this long report I was stunned and inexplicably wondered “how could these people who wrote this report, again call on the Macedonian people to go and fight in the Greek Civil War for the CPG without any guarantees that they would not be harmed?” The people who signed the memorandum were the same people calling on the Macedonian people to fight in the Greek Civil War!

The following is part of a larger interview conducted by D. Golubovic for the magazine “Dura” in 1985. (See page 30.)

Interview:

“Thirty-three years later: WHY DID MARKOS NOT TELL ALL?

One of our official officers (Slobodan Krstich - Ucho) remembers the events that excited the world.

How did the clash come about, what did Markos misrepresent? etc. But the most interesting question is: Were there any other reasons, besides the obvious ones, why the Greek people’s liberation movement collapsed?

What was the game around the Macedonian people?

Initially the Greek rebel movement was concentrated in Aegean Macedonia because traditionally this was a troubled region. At the same time the Aegean Macedonians might have thought that by participating in this war they would accomplish their own goals – re-unite Macedonia. But, instead of taking advantage of the positive momentum and extending the rebellion to all of Greece, the CPG leadership confined itself to Aegean Macedonia because of its proximity to the Yugoslav border. In addition to that, the CPG pursued a completely wrong policy towards advancing Macedonian personnel in the military and in the political ranks. The highest rank any Macedonian was allowed to advance in the military was commander of a detachment. The CPG justified this by claiming that these Macedonians had no military experience. Adding to that was the steady manipulation of top Macedonian officials causing friction between them and pitting them against one other.”

3.

Nikos Zahariadis and what he said:

3/1. During the XII CPG Central Committee Plenary session, held on June 25-27, 1945, in his political speech, Zahariadis said:

“...We are against any change in the 1939 boundaries by use of force no matter where that force comes from. The only democratic principle we recognize is the principle of self-determination of peoples. This principle applies to the Dodecanese, Cyprus and North Epirus. At the same time, we strive to implement another democratic principle for the national minorities, the principle of equality and respect. That principle should also apply to the Macedonian

minority, to regulate our relations with the northern Balkan republics in a friendly manner...” (See: “Rizospastis”, July 17, 1945.)

3/2. Speaking about DAG’s defeat at the 13th Conference in 1950, Nikos Zahariadis, Secretary General of the CPG Central Committee and President of the DAG Military Council, said: “If we had known Tito’s position before the armed conflict was started, we would have thought differently about taking up arms and fighting in the Greek Civil War.”

3/3 Zahariadis said: “NOF was created by Tito and Kolishevski... Its founding and managing core was made up of Tito’s agents the likes of Mitrevski Keramitdzhiev, Gotse, Rakovski and others, with the sole purpose of advancing the interests of Belgrade’s leaders in Aegean Macedonia... Yes, they used the Slavo-Macedonian question to realize their own nationalist plans - to incorporate Aegean Macedonia...” Zahariadis wrote this down and had it adopted by the CPG’s special consultation committee. This was also reviewed and accepted by the CPG Central Committee Politburo. This is how the Greek side looked at and understood things. (See: TO KKE 1918-1952, p. 271, and also quotes in Pavle Rakovski’s book 2000/347.)

* * *

In other words if we understand Zahariadis correctly we should believe that Tito was to blame for Zahariadis’s blunders: “If I was informed then as I am informed today about Tito, this would not have happened to me.”

These were the parting words of a powerful revolutionary and mythical leader, the top strategist of the Greek revolution, in the aftermath of the Greek Civil War.

And with these words, lie after lie, Zahariadis gave us a one way ticket out of our ancestral lands and sent us to oblivion. These are the facts… this is the historical truth… this is the darkest curtain of our fate…

I believe that the exiled Macedonians uprooted from Greek occupied Macedonia, at some point or another, realized that all ideologies such as Nazism, Fascism and Bolshevism were created by ambitious people who were thought to be concerned for the good of humanity. For example Lenin created a system which eventually destroyed him. Power in the hands of only one person is always a real source of danger. But no other country had a government like the Provisional Democratic Government of Greece, in other words the CPG, which was so cruel to its people that it abandoned its own defenders, the DAG fighters, allowing the Greek government to exile them for over half a century and keeping silent about their fate…

4.