FOOTNOTES - (CLARIFICATIONS)

FOOTNOTES - (CLARIFICATIONS)

- According to Vladimir Dedier, Tito’s diplomat and intelligence officer, Brigadier General Fitzroy Maclean was among the top intelligence officers in Britain and Europe at the time! Maclean was Churchill’s personal friend, and his achievements were superb. He is believed to be the first to find out about the secret pact between Hitler and Stalin, as well as the discovery of General Rommel’s plans and movements in North Africa. Maclean was committed to organizing contacts and allied support for Tito’s partisans. He, along with his radiographer Bill Dickins, landed by parachute in Yugoslavia in 1943. Their mission was to make contact with the Partisans. Maclean was a diplomatic officer in Moscow and had experience and knowledge of Communist ideology and action. Tito especially appreciated Maclean during the war and considered him his friend after the war. Tito gave him a house on Korchula Island. Maclean came to stay at this house often until his death in March 1996.

- On April 23, 1945, NOF (National Liberation Front) for the Macedonians in Greek occupied Macedonia was established in the CPM Central Committee premises in Skopje. The organizations AFZH and NOMS were also created during the same meeting. From their formation until the so-called “Brotherhood and Unity” between NOF and the CPG was established, NOF, AFZH and NOMS acted in accordance with CPM/CPY directives. After that the organizations were placed under CPG command. This lasted until DAG was liquidated and dissolved. After that the NOF, AFZH and NOMS leaders were interned in the Siberian camps.

- Definition of holocaust: The ritual burning of victims or victims who suffered due to being burned. This term was used to refer to the Jews who were burned in the fascist crematoriums.

- Evangelos Kofos studied at Georgetown University in the United States and graduated with a degree majoring on the “Macedonian Question”. Kofos was the architect of the so-called “name dispute” and other anti-Macedonian Greek policies. During the key years when our destiny for state recognition was being resolved, from our accession to the UN until the end of 1995, and sometime later, he

was head of the Greek Immensity of Foreign Affairs, which opened and managed the dispute. All these years he has been working on the “Macedonian Question”. In the 50’s and the period after 1991, he was trying to close the issue, once and for all. In the scheme of things, he was the architect who defined the essence of Greek policies in the dispute. He has published several books through the Institute for Balkan Studies in Solun. One of those books is: “Kofos, Evangelos, Nationalism and Communism in Macedonia, Solun: Institute of Balkan Studies, 1964.”

- The Neuilly Agreement: As a losing country in World War I, Bulgaria signed a peace treaty that lost much of its territory. Dobrudzha was given to Romania, Thrace to Greece, Strumica, Dimitrovgrad (then known as Tsaribrod) and Bosilegrad to Serbia. On the side of the Bulgarian army there were 8,750 dead soldiers and officers and 152,000 wounded, while there were 275,000 civilian casualties on its territory.

- OZNA and UDBA (Department of Public Protection - State Security Directorate), KOS (JNA Counterintelligence Sector), and SID (Yugoslav Ministry of Foreign Affairs Information and Documentation).

- Ivan Karaivanov, a Soviet agent and a Comintern instructor, was also a special intelligence officer. Immediate collaborators and instructors of General Markos Vafiadis were: Giuza Radovich, Obrad Trninich, Milo Vrbiltsa, Velimir Dotsnich, Svetislav Stoianovich and Petar Lutsich, all from KOS Serbia. Slobodan Markovich was tasked with bringing General Vafiadis back to Greece from Belgrade when needed. (See: KOS and UDBA - Secret Service Actions and Documents).

- ELAS - Members of this army were called “Andartes”, by the Greeks who were associated with the infamous anti-Macedonian fighters who committed horrible crimes against the Macedonian people during Ottoman times in the post-Ilinden period (after 1903). These Greek “Andartes”, organized and armed in Greece, were sent to Macedonia to spread Greek influence by the knife.

- On April 6, 1941, at the same time Germany launched an attack against Yugoslavia and Greece, a new master emerged in Greece with new fascist views. The Greek organization EAM (People’s Liberation Front) was formed on September 27, 1941. EAM called on the entire Greek population to resist fascism. At the same time EAM and the CPG demanded that a Greek National Liberation Army (ELAS) be created and organized. The first ELAS organized unit appeared on February 15, 1942. The first ELAS unit to appear in Macedonia was formed in Kostur Region on December 7, 1942. It consisted of 10 Macedonians, 7 Greeks and 2 Vlachs.

- ELAS consisted of about 70,000 fighters spread all throughout Greece. On July 16, 1943, the ELAS leadership and Colonel Eddie Meyers, head of the English military mission in Greece, signed an agreement subordinating ELAS to English command for the Middle East. On February 12, 1945 the Varkiza Agreement was signed by which the CPG practically handed power over to the Greek government in exile.

- The Macedonian organization SNOF (Slavo-Macedonian National Liberation Front) was established in October 1943 in the village Osnichani, Kostur Region, by the secretaries of the CPG District Committee for Western Macedonia Hristos Kalfas-Andreas and the secretary of the District Committee Periklis, as well as the secretary of the CPG District Committee for Kozheni Region Thanasis Kartsounis. All this was done with the intention of disrupting and attracting the “Macedonian Committees”, with the conviction that Macedonian organizations had already been established. SNOF was allowed to recruit only a small number of Macedonians for a short period of time, but under ELAS command. Unfortunately SNOF and its SNOV (Slavo-Macedonian National Liberation Army) military units were disbanded on September 26, 1944, with the signing of the Kaserta Agreement between the CPG, EAM, and ELAS on one side and the Greek government in exile headed by Georgios Papandreou and the British Headquarters for the Middle East, on the other. This agreement practically and definitely sealed the fate of the left forces in Greece and the fate of the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia.

- When the Party newspaper “Laiki Foni” published Bakerdzis’s infamous interview it told the world that the work done was done for the “Bulgarophone Helenes”, referring to the Macedonians. Then, when ELAS Commander General Stefanos Sarafis wrote his famous book “O ELAS” (1946, 331), he referred to the Macedonians as “Slavophone Helenes”. There is one more thing to know: Greece, after the Balkan Wars, with its Neuilly Agreement of November 27, 1919, concluded with Bulgaria, and with its 1923 Lausanne Agreement concluded with Turkey, through the so-called mandatory population exchanges, deposited many Turkish Christian colonists and settlers on Macedonian soil. As a result the Macedonian people began to lose their ethnic-territorial status in Greek occupied Macedonia. The issue of the settlers and colonists deposited in Greek occupied Macedonia however was never discussed during World War II, when the leaders of ELAS, EAM and the CPG signed an Agreement in Lebanon on July 16, 1943, the Kaserta Agreement on September 26, 1944, and the Varkiza Agreement on February 12, 1945 with English Colonel Eddie Meyers to secure and protect Greece’s territorial integrity with its pre-war borders. So, if the CPG and the CPY knew about this then why involve the Macedonian people in the impossible attempt to re-unite Macedonia? In other words the CPY and CPG knew ahead of time that they were committing yet another fraud against the Macedonian people. They knowingly threw us into chaos so that we could be driven out of our homeland. All these demagogues who coined the slogan “United Macedonia” were well aware that they were lying to us and using us. At the same time they told the world the Macedonian question had to be dealt with because it was a threat to peace in the Balkans. But to us Macedonians, they were saying that we had undisputed historic rights to our fatherland and that life made no sense without an identity, which is all true, but they lied to us to get involved so that we would sacrifice ourselves for foreign interests. According to the CPG bi-weekly newspaper “KOMER” No. 16, published in August 1943: “…there is no national interference in Greek Macedonia... The Slavic and Turkish speaking populations are displaced by convention, and the Greek population gathered from all the countries in the Balkans and Asia Minor were placed in Greek Macedonia... which has become as Greek as any area of Greece proper!” (p. 331)

- Naum Peiov was born in 1919 in the village Gabresh in Kostur Region. He was a member of the CPG before World War II. In 1939 he was arrested by the Greek police. He joined NOF in 1941. He was commander of the Macedonian partisan detachment “Lazo Trpovski”. He was a member of the SNOF District Committee for Kostur Region. He led the group of fighters who left the ELAS military ranks and moved to the Republic of Macedonia in May 1944. He was deputy commander of the First Aegean Brigade. After the war he occupied various senior political and state positions in the Republic of Macedonia.

- In essence two organizations were formed: SNOF for Kostur Region, formed in October 1943, and SNOF (formed by EAM as Tempo proposed) to fight together with ELAS and thus win over the Kostur Region “Macedonian Committee”. The organization was strictly controlled by EAM and ELAS (i.e. Greek leaders). Another SNOF was formed in Lerin Region, in November 1943, in the village Belkamen. The CPG however made sure that, on one hand SNOF would look like a Macedonian organization working for all the Macedonians in Greek occupied Macedonia, and on the other it made sure it did not operate outside of EAM. It should also be noted that in January 1944 the CPG allowed the formation of a military Slavo-Macedonian National Liberation Army (SNOV) under the direct leadership of EAM and ELAS. Later, it was precisely these units that formed the “Aegean Brigade”, which transferred from ELAS to Tito’s Army in Yugoslavia. It was from these people that, on April 23, 1945, the CPM/CPY formed NOF, AFZH and NOMS in Skopje.

- Tsvetko Uzunovski-Abas was responsible for OZNA. In the summer of 1945, during a CPM Central Committee Plenum a proposal was put forth for him to take a frontal view of a group of people who had strayed from the CPM’s correct path and were causing factionalism in the party. Included in the group were Metodia Andonov-Chento, Venko Markovski, Mihailo Apostolski, Kiro Gligorov, Lazar Sokolov, Petre Piruze and Blagoi Hadzi Panzov, all assisted by Dimitar Vlahov.

- My long-term aim here is to figure out who coaxed the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia, after Macedonia

was partitioned in 1913, to abandon their many centuries-old traditional values in their ethnic space and fall under the stroke of total genocide.

- On March 21, 1945, following Miha Marinko’s recommendation, the Yugoslav state party leadership at its CPY Central Committee Politburo Session voted for the construction of socialism in Macedonia. Tito concluded the meeting by saying that Mihailovism had not taken root in Macedonia. Mihailov lived with the bourgeoisie but also with the peasantry. He also said that the party needed to be popularized. Its work needed to be identified. Macedonia needed to maintain and persist with its own forces. Chento should be criticized by the party and Vlahov should be rooted out. The problem with those people needs to be carefully resolved... Macedonia has not yet given anything to this war and we will need to ask for more for rebuilding the country... Soon afterwards the CPM Central Committee Plenum was held. (See: Tsvetko Uzunov-Abas’s stance.)

- On November 18, 1944, the First Aegean Brigade was formed in Bitola from the fighters of the two battalions that left Greek occupied Macedonia. On December 28, 1944, the brigade was deployed in Western Macedonia: Kichevo, Gostivar and Tetovo. The brigade was tasked with fighting Dzhemo and Nefail’s Albanian Balist gangs which had been formed during the Italian-German occupation. By special order under No. 236 (strictly confidential), Marshal Tito, on April 2, 1945, disbanded the First Aegean Brigade.

- After Macedonia was partitioned in 1913 and up until World War II, as Macedonians began to immigrate to Australia, America, and Canada, new Macedonian communities began to spring up. In Greek occupied Macedonia in the meantime, especially during the Greek Civil War (1945 - 1949), more than 20,000 Macedonians pledged their lives to Macedonia. On top of that many were sent to prisons in the Greek island camps all throughout Greece, and many others found refuge in East European countries: USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and East Germany creating more immigrant Macedonian communities but never forgetting their homeland Macedonia, always wishing they could return and be with their families there. Macedonians began to return

to Macedonia after Yugoslav-Soviet relations began to improve. At this point these Macedonians, as political emigrants began to go to the Republic of Macedonia. The first institution they met there was the Idrizovo Prison. Namely, they were interrogated in the prison to determine whether the people returning to their homeland were Yugoslav-oriented, or USSR-oriented and to which Macedonian faction they belonged. But in the years that followed, that was not important... Like all others, I came back to Macedonia because I am Macedonian… but UDBA had its own rules.

* * *

- The “Macedonian Committee” - On March 5, 1943 the first “Macedonian Committee “armed military unit was formed in Kostur Region, Greek occupied Macedonia. They quickly appeared in 54 villages and their number jumped to 9,850 fighters. The “Macedonian Committee” was formed to defend the Macedonian people from armed Greek nationalist gangs, who in 1943 dispersed leaflets with frightening slogans against the Macedonians. On October 20, 1943, the CPG formed SNOF (Slavo-Macedonian People’s Liberation Front) with the aim of destroying the “Macedonian Committee” and its armed rebels. After the “Macedonian Committees” was destroyed in April 1944, the CPG dissolved SNOF and its armed formations of SNOV and forced the Macedonian fighterss to join ELAS. In protest and because of the harsh treatment they were getting from the Greeks, many separated from ELAS and joined the partisan units in Tito’s army in the Republic of Macedonia.

- Nikos Zahariadis was born on April 27, 1903 in Odrin (Adrianopolis), Eastern Thrace. His father was employed as an expert in the French-based Rezi Tobacco Trading Company based in Constantinople. Nikos Zahariadis lived in Skopje during 1911and 1912, in the settlement “Ibni Pajko”, where his father worked in the office of the company Rezi. Zahariadis went to school in Skopje. In 1913 he moved to Solun. In 1922 and 1923, as a naval worker, he traveled to the Soviet Union where he joined the CPSU. In 1924, with the exchange of population between Turkey and Greece, the Zahariadis family moved to Greece. In 1924 he attended KUTVE, the famous Communist University of Eastern Europe in Moscow.

Nikos Zahariadis was the leader of the Greek Communist Movement and general secretary of the CPG from 1936 to 1956. Zahariadis persistently used the CPG as his own cult and trusted in the absolute correctness of the CPS and Stalin, a fact which he himself acknowledged. He ran the communist movement in Greece to the ground and caused the Macedonian people a lot of damage. He committed suicide in jail in 1973 in the town Sorgun in Siberia.

- As a consequence of the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) the August 10, 1913, Treaty of Bucharest was signed. This Treaty ended the Balkan Wars and was later sanctioned by the Neuilly Peace Treaty signed on November 27. 1919 and by the Treaty of Sevres signed on August 10, 1920, thus making Macedonia’s division between Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and later Albania, which received Dolna Prespa and Golo Brdo, permanent. Greece received 34,356 sq. k or 51% of Macedonia’s ethnic-historical territory; Serbia 25,713 sq. k. or 39%; Bulgaria 6.798 sq. k. or 9.5% and Albania 0.5% of the Macedonian - historical territory. (See under A / Neuilly Peace Agreement and under B / Lausanne Peace Agreement.)

- With support from the left political forces, primarily the communist movement, an agreement was reached in 1924 to create VMRO (United) for all parts of Macedonia. The Declaration and the Manifesto were issued in April and May 1924 respectively. The following was part of its program: “VMRO (United), as a true revolutionary force will fight for the liberation of all divided parts of Macedonia striving to create a fully autonomous (independent) political unit within Macedonia’s natural ethnographic and geographical boundaries…” At the Balkan Communist Organization (BCO) 6th Conference, recognized by the COMINTERN in March 1924, the Bulgarian proposal for the creation of a “United and Independent Macedonia” was formally accepted within a “Balkan Federation”. The Comintern accepted the BCO decision at its 5th World Congress in May 1924. (CPG representatives at these congresses, as well as CPY representatives were forced to accept this resolution, in order not to be accused of being disruptive to the international Communist movement.) During the CPY 3rd Congress, held in Vienna in June 1926, the COMINTERN decision to create an “Independent Macedonian State” was adopted and this position was confirmed by the CPY at its 4th Congress held in October 1928.

- Leading Macedonian activists, condemned by the CPG, were accepted by the CPM/CPY. With support from the CPM/CPY a Political Committee for Aegean (Greek occupied) Macedonia was established in October, 1944. The first Macedonian Aegean Brigade was formed in November, 1944. After that NOF, AFZH and NOMS were formed in April 1945, whose military-political activities soon became a central feature of the time in that part of Macedonia.

- Ordered by the CPM Central Committee, Paskal Mitrevski, acting secretary of the Political Committee for the Macedonians in Greek occupied Macedonia, left for Belgrade in early February 1945 to attend a three-month political party training organized by the CPY Central Committee.*

- Karaivanov was Tito’s special intelligence officer, an agent of the Soviet NKVD and an instructor of the Comintern. Pero Simich in his book “Tito - Secret of the Century” for the Macedonian edition TOPER, Skopje, 2009, on page 240, wrote: Ivan Karaivanov-Shpiner was elected by the CPY Central Committee at its Fifth Congress. Three years earlier, this Bulgarian extremist had not received the post he expected from the Communist government in Sofia, and Tito urged him to pursue his political ambitions in Yugoslavia.

“He left the train station in Belgrade and went straight to his residence in Dedinie:

- “Have you proved that our party is loyal to the revolution and the Comintern?” asked Walter.

- And more than it should! - replied Karaivanov.”

- Tito gave Karaivanov a villa in Dedinie, elected him to the CPY Central Committee and helped him become an MP in the Federal Assembly of Yugoslavia. He proclaimed him a “hero of socialist work”, whom the CPY leaderships labeled “a revolutionary whose word is his bond”.

- General Markos Vafiadis’s most immediate collaborators and instructors were: Giuza Radovich, Obrad Trninich, Misho Vrbitsa, Velimir Dotsnich, Svetislav Stoianovich and Petar Lutsich, all from KOS Serbia *.

- According to the CPG, the Truman doctrine was a means of subjugating Greece to American interests. The then CPG believed that the US involvement in Greece would serve as a bridgehead against interference from the Balkan people’s republics and the Soviet Union. On June 20, 1947, a Greek-American doctrine agreement was signed. The agreement provided for the strengthening of terror through implementing a plan for mass arrests, such as those of June 9-10, 1947 and others.

- In the spring of 1947, NOF, AFZH and NOMS achieved major political and organizational successes with 16,349 members in their ranks. More than six thousand Macedonian men and women fought in DAG’s ranks as regular soldiers. A free partisan territory was created in Greek occupied Macedonia and was turned into a workshop where the entire Macedonian population, young and old, worked voluntarily to meet DAG’s needs.

- There was a farewell gathering held in Shtip for the 150 young people forcibly taken from Yugoslavia and sent to Greece to embrace their death in the Greek Civil War, just because they were born in Greek occupied Macedonia. According to an article published in “Nova Makedonija” on May 29, 1994, this abduction of Macedonians was done openly and without concern. And as Comrade Michos, the person responsible for this proudly put it: “...I came to Skopje and in four months I sent hundreds of DAG fighters….” Sent them where, on their way to their freedom, to paying the “national debt” or to leave their bones in Gramos?

- There is a bust of General James A. Van Fleet in the city Kostur. As head of the US military mission in Greece, he used the Greek government army successfully and managed to end the Greek Civil War. General Markos Vafiadis was a communist and a tobacco worker. He became member of the CPG in 1928. He became member of the CPG Central Committee in 1942 as well as Second Secretary of the CPG Bureau for Macedonia, and Commissar of the

ELAS Divisions Group in Greek occupied Macedonia. He was military commander and president of the Provisional Democratic Government of Greece during the Greek Civil War. On September 15, 1948, the CPG Central Committee Politburo, in a resolution declared that Markos Vafiadis, as commissar of the ELAS Divisions Group in Macedonia, followed a chauvinistic policy towards the Slavo-Macedonian fighters... (“Neos Cosmos” August 1950. “Ten Years of Struggle” p. 470.)

- At a session of the Ilinden Presidency established on Zahariadis’s initiative, held on June 4, 1956, Colonel Pando Vaina, head of the organization, in his report on the persecution of Macedonians by CPG officials said: “...When DAG was active in combat and subsequent to its defeat, Zahariadis pursued a policy of defaming and persecuting a good portion of the Slavo-Macedonian cadres and other people. For no reason at all he was quick to label them “agents of the enemy”. In 1948 and 1949 and even later, many Slavo-Macedonians were arrested, and some liquidated based on false allegations... (Am, F-21/1600.)

- On February 21, 1947, the British Government informed the US Government that, as of March 31, 1947, due to economic difficulties, it could no longer assist Greece. The US government had estimated that if it failed to meet its UK obligations to Greece, it would face greater consequences in the future. To prevent that from happening, US President Truman announced his doctrine known as the Truman Doctrine. He granted Greece $ 300 million to protect the Athens regime from the communists.

- On February 12, 1945, the Varkiza Agreement was signed between the leadership of the CPG and EAM resistance movement on the one hand and the Plastiras government and British General Scobie on the other. With this Agreement EAM and ELAS handed over 70,000 ELAS fighters to the English. As early as July 16, 1943, the ELAS leadership and English military Chief of Staff Colonel Eddie Meyers signed an agreement subordinating ELAS’s command to the English in the Middle East, virtually handing over power to the political right. That is how ELAS came to its end.

- The British government deployed a number of forces in Greece before and during the Greek Civil War. It deployed around 80,000 personnel and a large number of motor vehicles, tanks and cannons in Solun. At Seres Airport, about 12 km from Solun, it deployed about 200 British fighter planes and 60 bombers.

- For more information on the chronology of the Greek Civil War see the literature listed at the end of the book.

- Shatorov, Metodia - Sharlo (Prilep 1897 - Bulgaria, September 1944). He immigrated to Bulgaria at the end of World War I. He became member of CPB in 1920. In 1929 he immigrated to the USSR. From the spring of 1940 to September 1941 he was secretary of the CPY Political Committee for Macedonia. He advocated for the formation of an independent Macedonian state with the re-unification of all of Macedonia, emphasizing the Macedonian national individuality. Shatorov was removed from his post as secretary (at Tito’s behest) after resolving the dispute between the CPY and the BRP - via the Comintern, for his Political Committee affiliation to Macedonia vs to Yugoslavia or Bulgaria.

- Rebellion in Skopje Fortress and in Shtip: On Sunday January 7, 1945, during the morning of Orthodox Christmas, after the National Youth of Macedonia held its Second Congress in the Officer’s hall in Skopje Square, hundreds of armed soldiers left the fortress and crossed into Skopje via the Stone Bridge. Carrying banners they shouted: “We don’t want Srem we want Solun” and “Not Berlin but Solun”. OZNA was immediately dispatched and started arresting them. *

- Giorgi Dimitrov, the great revolutionary to ever live, led the Comintern and Bulgaria. Giorgi Dimitrov, whose name is found in all the world encyclopedias, comes from a Macedonian family. He was head of the Communist International in Moscow, and in the post-war years became president and first person of the Bulgarian state.

- The figure is increasingly specific and acceptable, according to a UNSCOB report of August 1949 (A / 935, p. 16) confirming: “In the period of 1948, about 25,000 Greek children were displaced from

Greece and settled in the territories of Greece’s Northern Neighbours and other socialist countries.” In January 1950, a representative of the Greek Red Cross reported that: “…the total number of Greek children who received asylum in the countries north of Greece as of January 1950, was 28,296.” At the same time, he also gave a summary analysis of the total number of children and to which countries they are sent: “Albania: 2,000, Bulgaria: 2,600, Hungary: 3,000, Poland: 3,000, Romania: 3,801, Czechoslovakia: 2,235, Yugoslavia: 11,600.” (UNSCOB Report A / 1307, 1950, p. 23.)

- In his book on the exiling of children, Thanasis Mitsopoulos said: “There were more than 25,000 children. According to Vasilis Bardzhotas, 25,000 children were moved. According to the Athens government that number was 28,000.”

- My note: indeed the CPG kept its promise to the world and fought back after the war, but only for the “Greek by birth” children. Since then, a half a century later, only the cry of Macedonian parents can be heard and the words of children asking: Why has the CPG failed to bring back the Macedonians? Why did they forget the thousands of them, their fathers and mothers who left their bones in Gramos fighting only for their (CPG) interests!?

- The DAG Partisan newspaper “Exormisi” came out every fifteen days. It was edited and printed on Gramos Mountain.

- Aleksandar Rankovich, nicknamed Marko, was born on November 28, 1909, in the area of Obrenovats, Serbia. He was the creator of KOS and UDBA and architect of their victims.

- Germanos Karavangelis was born in 1866 in the village Stipsi on the island Lesbos. He graduated from the University of Munich with great success and his desire was to devote himself to education as a professor of theology, but at the request of the Greek government in 1900 he was appointed Metropolitan of the Kostur Diocese. In a short time after that Karavangelis created a whole network of priests, teachers and others all throughout the Kostur villages. He used bribes, golden liras, to bribe his way and get what he wanted. In his memoirs, he described in detail his actions and cruel methods

he used working with Pavlos Melas in Helenizing the Macedonians. Pavlos Melas, chief and organizer of the Greek Andart detachments, appeared in Macedonia in 1901.

- SLAVO-MACEDONIANS?! Did we Macedonians by our own will or by the will of the CPG, agree to call ourselves “Slavo-Macedonians”? Why did we agree to this tribal attribute valid for identifying Slav Macedonians only? Did the Greek Communists do this intentionally to incorporate this identity into the historical documentation of the Greek Civil War and we simply accepted it? Who are these “Slavo-Macedonians” and why had we never heard of them before?

- On June 30, 1948, the CPG Central Committee Politburo adopted the Informburo Resolution and the CPG Central Committee adopted it during its Fourth Plenum, held on July 28 and 29, 1948.

- On June 16, 1949, the AFZH Executive Board of the Macedonian women from Greek occupied Macedonia adopted a resolution to activate Macedonian women in defense of the Vicho front line.

- So, the question is: Does this first person of NOF, about which historiography says that it was a military and political factor in the Greek Civil War, do this out of ignorance? That cannot be because he, Pavle Rakovski, was the first person to form the SNOF organization in Kostur Region (October 20, 1943), but was also the first NOF man in Skopje (April 23, 1945).

- The Yalta Conference lasted from February 4 to 11, 1945. It was attended by the leaders of Great Britain (Churchill), the USSR (Stalin) and the United States (Roosevelt), accompanied by their foreign ministers.

- According to some western diplomats the beginning of the Macedonian question dates back to 1870, when Russia forced the Ottoman Empire to allow the formation of a separate Bulgarian Orthodox Church, the Exarchate, which placed control over parts of the Macedonian Ottoman province. Others argue that the issue dates back to 1878, when the Berlin Congress revised the San Stefano Treaty that Russia imposed on the Ottomans after the Russian-

Ottoman War. By the Treaty of San Stefano Bulgaria gained the borders that fulfilled the Bulgarian national dream – much of Macedonia including the Republic of Macedonia including Vranie, Kostur Region, Lerin Region, Ostrovo Region and a small part of the Aegean Sea west of Solun were given to Bulgaria. At the Congress of Berlin, Russia withdrew from the Treaty of San Stefano, thus returning Macedonia back to the Ottomans. (See “ELINIKOS VORAS”, August 3, 1978.)

- The Cold War: Many historians dealing with the recent history of Europe and with the world have concluded that the meeting of the “Big Three” held from July 17 to August 5, 1945 in the town Potsdam near Berlin, in Selienkof Palace, was basically useless except for one historically relevant consequence - the opening of the so-called Cold War. Since then the allies in the anti-Hitler coalition, Britain (Winston Churchill), the United States (Harry Truman) and the Soviet Union (with the USSR’s self-proclaimed Jozif Visarionovich Stalin), who made the ultimate effort to defeat the German fascists, opened the stage for our more recent history that would later be called the Cold War.

- The Iron Curtain: It was at the Potsdam Conference during which Winston Churchill coined the term “Iron Curtain” which marked the division of Europe into areas of interest.

- The Soviet Union policy towards the Macedonian Question was in line with the USSR’s global policy and strategy in general, and Greece in particular. Stalin used the Macedonian Question, in response to the attitudes of the English, Americans, and Greeks and instigated the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia to create problems in Greece as was done in other countries affected by World War II. During World War II, the Communist parties in the countries that divided Macedonia strongly adhered to the declarative principle of the Great Powers for unchanged borders. One should also know that: Stalin made the decision to dissolve the Comintern, which formally recognized the right of every Communist party to be autonomous. In other words Stalin was in support of the thesis: “One State, One Party”. When Stalin and the leaders of the other Great Powers met in Moscow in October 1944, and decided on the division of spheres of influence, Stalin was in favour of borders in

the Balkans remaining unchanged. This should be an answer to all of us who saw salvation in Russia. It was a great blow and shows how we lost our chance to be spiritually united. Our nation was left without a strategy for the spiritual survival in our ethnic space in the Balkans.