CHAPTER TEN - Part 02

“The Congress believes that the views of those comrades who are proposing that we abandon the idea of ‘a unique and independent Macedonia...’ are wrong. The principle for free self-determination before secession of the oppressed nations should be loudly expressed in the Party slogans and in the Party line on national issues. Keeping silent about the idea of ‘an independent Macedonia’, etc., during the last parliamentary election, this Congress deems improper. This Congress would like to underline the need for intensified international propaganda that identifies this struggle as a struggle against the nationalist and chauvinist propaganda of the bourgeoisie...” (CPG, official texts, Volume 2, p. 208.)

Yet again empty words…

After strongly verbally emphasizing its support for the national minorities in Greece during the 3rd Congress, the CPG did nothing practical. There was absolutely no work done to recognize the rights of the Macedonian people. The CPG stayed as far away from the Macedonian people’s struggle as possible while they were fighting for their survival. It could, for example, have helped the Macedonian people organize a broad Macedonian revolutionary organization. It could have helped the Macedonian people develop a Macedonian revolutionary press, which would have undoubtedly promoted and affirmed the struggle of the Macedonian people as a struggle for their human and democratic rights. But the CPG did not do any of those things. The Party leaders remained blind and deaf to the drama that was playing against the Macedonian people in the northern part of Greece (in Greek occupied Macedonia).

With no one to oppose them, the bourgeois reactionary authorities persistently, systematically and quietly continued with their “cleansing” activities, eliminating the most resistant and revolutionary elements among the Macedonian people. Arrests, imprisonments, internment in the desolate Aegean Islands, confiscation of property, exiling… All these were common practices perpetrated by the Greek authorities against the Macedonian people.

Of course, not all of those people who were doing this had a reason to do so. One of those people who had no reason to hide and torment the Macedonian people was Colonel Lamush, a top French official in the League of Nations. As we mentioned earlier, while in Geneva in 1928, Lamush publicly accused Greece of trying to deprive the Macedonian people of their language, culture, national sense, etc… He also highlighted the fact that the so-called “voluntary exchange of populations” negotiated between Greece and Bulgaria, was turned into a violent eviction of Macedonians by Greece...

10. Comintern intervention

This negative attitude taken by the Greek leaders against the Macedonian people in the Aegean (Greek occupied) part of Macedonia, and regarding the Macedonian national question in general, naturally, did not go unnoticed by circles in the Comintern.

This and the fact that the CPG was infiltrated by its enemy… (Chronicle of the struggle, p. 27), left the Comintern Executive Council with no other choice but to intervene.

Let us now have another look at the famous Comintern document mentioned earlier, entitled “Appeal to the members of the CPG”, published by “Rizospastis” on November 1, 1931, regarding the national question in Greece:

“The CPG has stayed away from the revolutionary struggle carried out by the people who are mostly suppressed by the Greeks. The CPG failed to take the situation into its own hands, stabilize it and implement organizational measures. The CPG failed to take advantage of the great sympathy enjoyed by the communist movement among the repressed nationalities (Macedonians, Turks, Albanians, Jews) - a fact that helped the reactionaries in their endeavours to isolate and alienate the Communists from the masses and terrorize the revolutionaries from the oppressed nations... Not including the Macedonians in the Party program and keeping silent on the issue of recognizing the democratic rights of the disadvantaged Macedonians during the 1926 parliamentary elections, cannot be dismissed as a simple delay in the struggle waiting for more favourable times. The CPG must, without delay, lead the struggle against national oppression and for the right to freedom and self-determination and secession from Greece… The CPG must lead the struggle against the national oppression of the Macedonians... etc...” (The CPG in its forty years of struggling. p. 307.)

The old CPG leadership was removed and a new one, headed by Nikos Zahariadis, was appointed. But, as we have seen, anti-Macedonian sentiments still remained ingrained in the CPG and in fact got worsE and took a criminal form...