CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER ONE

1. Let us go in order

I was brought into this world by ordinary honest villagers. This took place in one of the Lerin Region villages called Dolno Kleshtina. While growing up I started my life as a cow herder. In our rural setting no one could have imagined or predicted that I would spend more than ten years of my life in prison as a political prisoner in the Soviet Union.

I have been a communist since I became politically aware. It seemed so natural to me like I was a born to be a communist. I became a member of OKNE (Communist Youth of Greece) and everything was fine. I was involved in many discussions about starting a revolution in the future and was waiting for conditions to “mature”.

And that too happened. When the fascist occupation took place national revolutions began to flourish in the neighbouring nations (Greece, Serbia, Albania, and Bulgaria). By then the Macedonian people’s national revolution also broke out and became unstoppable.

Destiny wanted me to be in the forefront of all of it but I ran into a problem. The CPG top leadership accused me of being “an agent of the international reactionaries”. As a result, I, along with most of the Macedonian revolutionary leaders of the Macedonian national liberation movement, was arrested.

I can only speculate as to why we found ourselves in the Moscow prisons (Lefortovski, then Butirski), and then in Siberia and Kazakhstan. Had we remained in Zahariadis’s hands we all would have been dead a long time ago. This is a good reason for me to write about it and to objectively tell my side of the story.

But, as time moves along things change and new information comes out. It appears that things were not the way they seemed at the time and the Yugoslav Communists, for whom we supposedly worked, did not turn out to be “international reactionaries”. After we served our sentences and were legally rehabilitated by the USSR Supreme

Court Military Collegium, we moved to Yugoslavia, that is, to the Socialist Republic of Macedonia.

But let us take things in order...

2. It all started for me here

- After the fascists broke the Greek front line in Albania I returned home to Lerin (my parents left our village in 1926 and moved to Lerin). I had a good ten day rest. On April 26, 1941, a government was formed in Athens. It was headed by General Cholakoglu and, along with the police apparatus, was put in the service of the occupiers.

We had to make a living. The education workers returned to their jobs and I was able to do the same… go to Subotsko through Voden...

I had always been attracted to the city Voden with its natural beauty. Voden is located on a huge rocky terrace and water from Lake Ohrid runs through it. The waterfalls are beautiful. They emit billions of tiny bubbles that sparkle in the sun as they float in the air. There are always rainbows, here and there under the clear sky, that appear and then fade away and disappear. One can see the lush greenery of the fields below the city through the bluish translucent haze. There are orchards, vineyards and fig and cherry trees everywhere.

After finishing my education at the Solun Pedagogical Academy, I applied for a teaching job in Voden or Voden Region and was accepted. I arrived at my place of work on January 10, 1939. I was appointed headmaster of the school in Tsakoni - Bizhova Maala, located about three kilometres from the suburban district of Subotsko (or Ardea in Greek).

I should have reported there now.

Tsakoni (or Hrisa in Greek) is a rich Macedonian village connected to the Subotsko municipality and is considered an integral part of the town. This, of course, was an arbitrary act of the municipal fathers

who were paid big incomes without having to invest anything in the village. In common terms they were “robbing” it...

I began here in this Macedonian village in Meglen Borough (Karadzova) and in time I found myself a political prisoner in the Beria Siberian camps...

3. Embargo on news

- Meglen Borough is geographically located away from the main communication and transportation lines and the only source of news we received here during the fascist occupation was what the ELAS and EAM Party press printed. Their pages were always full of news about the Greek people’s liberation struggle all throughout Greece, as well as events in the distant fronts in the East, the West, and in Africa.

That, of course, was very good.

But there was no news in Meglen Borough (Karadzova) about development in the Macedonian anti-fascist national liberation movement in the neighbouring regions such as Lerin and Kostur. There was a strange embargo placed on the news from those regions. And there could be no mistake about what that meant.

The very moment I found out about this, was the moment that marked the end of my romantic, naïve belief in the infallibility of the Party and its leadership… in the infallibility of their “collective mind”, and beyond that, in their principles...

4. The move

- Vasilis was a stunningly sluggish fat man. He was an ELAS reserves instructor at the Party District Committee in Voden. Because they were having difficulties in the Ostrovo regional centre and in Ostrovo Region, Vasilis sent me a directive ordering me to leave Meglen Borough and the ELAS reserve unit there and go to Ostrovo Region.

The ELAS reserve unit that I was part of had successfully participated in the dislodgement of the Quisling Greek gendarmerie in Meglen Region. So, according to Vasilis’s directive, I was ordered to create, organize and lead an ELAS reserve unit. This move was supposed to be a kind of recognition for me. I was to go there as a commander of an ELAS reserve battalion… which had to be created… and eventually act in that region.

It was a very cold November in 1943...

By coincidence or by luck I made it there… Ostrovo Region was the crossroads of a highway and a number of railway lines that connected Lerin with Voden and Solun. There were many people traveling from Kostur and Lerin to Solun through Ostrovo Region. On top of that people from Voden Region, especially fisherman with small private fishing boats, traveled through Ostrovo Lake and were in constant contact with the Lerin Region villages on the opposite side of the lake. They brought their fish to the market in the town Sorovich through the remote villages.

The first time I heard about the existence of a Macedonian political antifascist organization called SNOF, existing in Lerin and Kostur Region, was from these people here...

5. A meeting with the elders

- About three months after my arrival in Ostrovo, during one of my meetings with some Macedonian village elders, the old people there decided to speak to me more openly. They told me the following:

- We the Macedonians have fought more than one time side by side with the Greeks, as Greeks, under the Greek name and flag. We lost many lives in vain. We fought for other people’s interests and for other people’s freedom. We had no other alternative or choice because we were mobilized by force. Now it’s not like that. Now it’s on a voluntary basis. Well, as you can see, our Macedonian fighters don’t want to fight as Greeks in the ranks of EAM and ELAS under the Greek name and flag. The Communists have promised us that “after a victory”, we Macedonians will get our freedom as a minority. But, as you know, we can’t surrender out lives and our

blood for free without guarantees. Now let us remind you of the kind of communists you work with. Have a good look at our teacher Gusiopoulos, a Greek communist responsible for the EAM party line here in this region. When the dictator Metaxas was in power Gusiopoulos never missed an opportunity, a weekend or a holiday, to summon the villagers together by force to join him to celebrate and hear him speak about how good the fascist regime was. But now it’s a sin to speak about that. Ask yourself what kind of communist can be a former fascist be…?? We the Macedonians in this region know Gusiopoulos too well and we cannot trust him. We also don’t trust his leaders and all those above him. For example, why did he not allow SNOF, the Macedonian organization, to expand here in our villages…? Are we here in this region different from the Macedonians in Lerin and Kostur Regions? Why couldn’t we and shouldn’t we have fought on our own behalf, in the ranks of the Macedonian organization, as Macedonians…?

These elders were not only intelligent and wise but also impressed me with their logic, reasoning and very important questions. At the same time I did not want to convince them of the theories and tactics of the revolution we were leading because, first of all, I was not completely convinced that this was what we were doing. I believed, as a Macedonian, it was my natural right to organize and fight for my own freedom. This right I believed should have been accepted as a tactical question of our revolution. It was well-known to me that a person had the right to organize, develop and affirm the struggle for one’s own freedom.

This was the primarily principled question and the legitimate right of a subjugated people in the world in general.

Recognition and freedom cannot be won without a strong development and broad affirmation of the struggle and sacrifices made therein. A revolution that is not decisively consistent with a democratically inclined people is not healthy and treachery is smoldering within it...

Instead of saying something to reassure the elders, that I was doing the right thing, I kept quiet. I guess the elders “figured me out” and were satisfied. I asked for an experienced rower to transfer me to the

opposite shore of the lake so that I could visit the village Pateli in Lerin Region. That job was given to Pando Georgievski, a young fisherman from the village Ostrovo, who after rowing for several hours delivered me to Pateli where I immediately came into contact with the SNOF activists... (Pando Georgievski is now an economist and works in a bank in Skopje).

6. Letter to the District Committee

- I came back from Pateli a different man.

Until that time I followed the Party line even though sometimes it appeared to be anti-Macedonian. Now I began to fight for a consistent application of the Party line especially towards “full equality for minorities” particularly for the Macedonians.

And as the struggle heightened and became fiercer, the Macedonian people began to make gains... so we thought… The Party, under the slogan of the same equality for minorities as the Greeks, allowed the Macedonians to organize themselves in their own national organizations and develop their own struggle for their own freedom the same as the Greek people.

However, the top CPG Party leadership limited this right. The limit was set at creating SNOF for Lerin and Kostur Regions only. They did that behind the scenes and very quietly. And, of course, no explanation was given. But we all know that it was part of their oppression, discrimination and suppression policy.

Being full of bitterness, I thought: “They don’t want the name Macedonia and the Macedonian people being mentioned in the other region of Macedonia…!”

These were acts of desperation… of fear of losing Macedonia…. They wanted to save Macedonia from the Macedonians...

The fact that the CPG did everything in its power to suppress and prevent a Macedonian revolutionary anti-fascist liberation struggle, instead of developing and affirming it, definitely qualified as an anti-Macedonian and anti-Party act, which was the policy of the

Greek bourgeoisie. This policy was now being carried out through the CPG.

That’s when I wrote a letter to the Voden Party District Committee asking the Committee to invite the Macedonian population from Voden Region to join the struggle in the ranks of EAM and ELAS and nothing should be done to prevent the people from joining. This is what I wrote which was wrong and unrealistic, because the CPG was not going to depart from its current and historic position and neither were the Macedonian people. The Greeks have been committing genocide against the Macedonian people for decades and that had ruined every shred of sympathy and attachment the Macedonian people had to the Greek state and the Greek nation. This could not have been ignored and it would have been hopeless and a sin to ignore it.

Above all, EAM and ELAS were organizations belonging to the oppressing nation, with purely Greek national programs, which ignored the Macedonian people and their democratic rights. With what would you be able to attract them…?

This, of course, at a minimum, could be achieved if we had one Macedonia wide Macedonian organization, under the auspices of the Party which would then formulate the basic requirements such as elementary human and national rights for the Macedonians within the Greek state, which could then inspire the Macedonian population to actively participate in a joint national liberation struggle rather than stand aside in passive anticipation. This, of course, could be done here if the CPG were to take a radical turn and expand SNOF in our District (Voden Region).

Unfortunately, as I continued to work on this I did not take into consideration all the elements and factors that go into drafting the Party policy on this issue and, possibly, I made mistakes. If I made mistakes I would have liked to know… to be told that I made mistakes…

I gave my letter to my superior who at the time was Alekos Mitsakis, ELAS District Committee secretary of the ELAS reserve line.

But the District Committee decided to keep silent on the issue. Well, SNOF was not expanded in Voden Region… and that, I guess, told that I was wrong...

7. In Lerin

- One March day in 1944, Ostrovo was drowning in a flood of SS (German) personnel. The yards and the threshing floors were filled with military trucks. Moving openly through the village I came upon on the yard of one of the houses at the end of the village. The Germans had doubled their guards around the village. I had a regular identity card under the name Haisafis Stefanos, a Greek from the village Fufa. But I did not want to risk it so I went to see Giani Avgulata.

Giani was an immigrant from Turkey but was not home. According to his grandmother who was at home, he had run off to hide somewhere.

In a sad tone of voice the old woman said to me: “Run away, my dear… go hide. They told us that they are gathering all the people at the village square to make sure they are locals…

A couple of SS soldiers showed up in the yard and began to talk to me in German. They were pointing at the bars on the staircase. I understood.

“Got mit unts, kom, kom!” (God is with us, come, come) I said to them and that was about all the German words I knew.

They laughed and the two followed me. We ran into two older Macedonian women on the way and I noticed that they were biting their lips while staring at me. I said hello to them to reassure them that everything was okay. I showed the Germans the store where they sold bars. It was located near the railway station.

They thanked me and left.

I stuck around and paced along the station platform. I don’t remember how I got there. I was deep in my thoughts and was worried. But I felt no fear in my heart. That was a good sign, I thought. No matter how strange this may sound, it really proved to be a good sign.

All good rail cars and locomotives were confiscated by the occupiers. The people were left with only one old locomotive and several worn-out cars. The train traveled only once a week. On Friday it left Solun and an hour later, during the night, it arrived in Lerin. Then, on Saturday it left Lerin and returned back to Solun. And so on...

After pacing a while, I heard a train whistle. The train was coming to Voden. It was Friday and the train was traveling from Solun to Lerin. It pulled into the station. A large number of passengers descended from the cars and ran out to fill their bottles with clean lake water. I decided to join them and got on the train with them. The station master, a Macedonian, gave me a train ticket. The uncertainty did not last long. The train slowly moved off...

This is how I found myself at home in Lerin… for the last time. The next day I left again. Who would have known that I would never come back? Thirty years have passed since then...

8. The CPG Central Committee 10th Plenum and SNOF

- The CPG was always a Greek national party and always acted that way in relation to the Macedonians. It was an expressive bearer of Greek state interests in Macedonia. During its CPG 10th Plenum, held in January 1944, the CPG declared that it was fighting not only for the liberation and territorial integrity of the Greek state, but also for “securing strategic borders.” (The CPG in its forty years of struggling, 1918-1958, CPG Central Committee edition 1958, p. 504.)

This of course can be explained and even justified one way or another. Obviously the last part (securing strategic borders) was a request for widening the Greek state borders by appropriating new territories. In other words, in addition to holding onto the Greek

(occupied) part of Macedonia, the CPG was struggling to occupy and annex other parts of Macedonia. Establishing SNOF in Lerin and Kostur Regions, under these circumstances, was just an extravagant maneuver… a tactical deviation with an obvious dual purpose:

a) Prevent the spread of Bulgarian influence and the enlargement of the autonomist movement, through which the Bulgarians, with German blessings, seriously jeopardized the “Greek positions and interests” here, and

b) Relieve the pressure put on by the Macedonian national liberation movement. In other words, allow the Macedonian movement to slowly begin and ultimately suffocate it before it grew too big. The CPG had experience with the latter.

Namely, the CPG founded VMRO (United) in 1934 in order to remove external pressures coming from the Comintern and from the Balkan Communist Federation. The CPG basically created an impotent organization that not only satisfied its external requirements but left nothing behind to mark its existence. VMRO (United) was created as a hoax. It was a fraudulent, stillborn, and imaginary organization. It was never activated and had no statute. It had no program or political line. It did not have its own seal or its own voice. It had no political activities. For all practical purposes the organization did not exist... And that is exactly what the CPG wanted and had experience with.

The CPG later tried to use this experience with SNOF. It was by no accident that SNOF was restricted to only Lerin and Kostur regions. But this time it did not work because circumstances were different. This time the pressure did not come from the outside and from above, but from the inside… from the Macedonian people… Instead of being a formal and imaginary organization, SNOF rapidly developed into a dynamic people’s revolutionary organization. When SNOF appeared the Macedonian national liberation movement began to strengthen and organize into a true revolutionary movement.

This naturally created a tense and charged atmosphere causing growing nervousness among the CPG leadership. And, according to the logic of things, the CPG started an open attack against SNOF calling for its dissolution...

9 The politics of ignoring

This response (attack against SNOF) did not begin or end with the 10th Plenum. Immediately after the “August 4th Regime” capitulated and disintegrated, a number of senior Party officials, by some means, were released from prison. Then, at their meeting in June 1941, known as the CPG Central Committee 6th Plenum, they announced: “The Communist Party of Greece calls on all the Greek people, on all its parties and organizations (as well as the bourgeois parties and organizations - P. R.) to join the national front and fight against the fascist occupation... for their national liberation... etc.” (CPG from 1931 to 1952, basic documents, the CPG Central Committee edition, 1952, p. 105.)

As you can see there is not a single word mentioned about the Macedonian people’s national liberation struggle in this announcement even though it was made during a critical time in history. This very important resolution, adopted to set the conditions of the struggle, has completely ignored the Macedonian people, especially the idea of Macedonians fighting side by side with Greeks.

This policy of completely ignoring the Macedonian people, that is, ignoring the Macedonian national question in the Greek state, should have been resolved there and then. This was, above all, a matter of recognizing and granting the Macedonian people their elementary human and national rights. This issue should not have been ignored or left to be resolved after the national liberation war.

Proof of this policy, of the CPG ignoring the Macedonian National Question, can be found in the documents from the 7th plenum, and in the EAM and ELAS program documents. In other words, the Macedonian people are not mentioned in any of them. There are no democratic rights and freedoms for the Macedonians mentioned or implemented in the “new Greece”. But there is more to it than that.

Publicly and officially the CPG always treated the Macedonian people as “Slavophone Greeks”. Here is what Rizospastis wrote on June 20, 1943: “After the exchange of populations, Macedonia is as Greek as Attica Region in Athens!” In his famous book entitled “ELAS”, ELAS Supreme Commander General Sarafis wrote that the 28th ELAS Brigade was composed of “Slavophone Greeks”. (p. 331.) He did this without a trace of hesitation as if it this was an accepted fact. He did this with a classic Phariseism, as if it were true as was done by the greats. He said that when he did his tour in the village Perivoli in Kostur Region, he inspected the Second Battalion of the 28th ELAS Brigade and found it to be composed of “Slavophone Greeks”. This, however, was the Lerin and Kostur Macedonian Battalion, led by Ilia Dimovski Gotse, a Macedonian from the village Statitsa.

There is also the case of General Bakirdzhis, Commander of the ELAS Group in Macedonia, who, in an interview with the Party newspaper “Laiki Foni”, said that the Macedonians were “Bugarophone Greeks”. (Collection: Aegean Macedonia in the national liberation war, AM 1971, p. 523, document number 191.)

However, the CPG wishes and plans were one thing, but the Macedonian reality proved to be something completely different...

10. Bulgarian fascist activities

The Bulgarian Fascists arrived here with the arrival of Hitler’s Germans in 1941. Hitler promised to give them Eastern Macedonia and so they occupied it and joined it with “mother Bulgaria”. At the same time they sent their representatives and agents, the likes of Andom Kalchev, lieutenant of Bulgarian security, to Central and Western Macedonia.

As allies of “Great Germany”, the Bulgarians made great efforts to show themselves worthy. Their merit was a paradox: the black forces of the worst reactionaries in our epoch - the German Nazis, appeared in this part of Macedonia as liberators. Thousands of Macedonians, trapped in the Greek prisons and the dry islands of the Aegean Sea, were released. The CPG saw an open opportunity here and took it. It managed to convince the Germans that these prisoners

were in prison because they were Bulgarians. Twenty seven Party activists were released... These activists were jailed by the Greek Asphalia (security service) and then handed over to the Gestapo to have them killed because they were supposedly dangerous communists. After the German invasion and occupation the Macedonian language was no longer banned and the Macedonian people were allowed to speak it without fear of persecution. In fact all persecutions against the Macedonian people had stopped altogether. The Macedonian youth, especially in the villages, took advantage of this freedom and celebrated every evening and especially every Sunday like they were holidays. The villages came alive with Macedonian folk lyrics, instrumental music, folk dances and various other traditional Macedonian activities...

These Greek crimes and genocide against the Macedonian people were skillfully exploited by the Bulgarian fascists who strove to attract the Macedonian people, beckoning them to come to the German fascist side. The Bulgarian fascists worked wholeheartedly to serve the Germans by arming the Macedonian villages and putting them in their service. At the same time they made every effort, but very carefully of course, to get the greatest benefit for themselves. With the call to fight “for a proud autonomous Macedonia” under the protection of “mother Bulgaria”, that is within Bulgaria’s framework, they managed to attract a significant part of the Macedonian villagers. But, as is well-known, the fear created by the Greek genocides and the deep aspiration for freedom is what truly attracted the Macedonian people… But, nonetheless, the Bulgarians tried to use this to their advantage...

11. CPG slogans and “program” for the Macedonian national liberation struggle

The Macedonian people, particularly the Macedonian communists, from this part of Macedonia (Greek occupied Macedonia) were faced with considerable difficulties in fighting against the spread of German and Bulgarian influence. The CPG, with its negative policy towards the Macedonian people, had disarmed them politically. Except for the CPG’s wishy-washy abstract and powerless slogan “full equality for minorities”, they had nothing…

In order to combat this Bulgarian fascist intrusion and to respond to the pressure put on by the Macedonian national liberation movement, led by the Macedonian communists, the CPG leadership was forced to re-think the existence of the Macedonian people in this part (Greek occupied) of Macedonia. After a long silence the CPG, in 1942, decided to say something about the Macedonians in Greece. It did this twice, the first time in January 1942, during its CPG Central Committee 8th Plenum, and the second time in December 1942, during a CPG Pan-Greek Conference. After a long silence, the CPG finally said something officially about the problems the “Slavo-Macedonians” were facing in their liberation struggle. This is what the CPG said:

“According to the Resolution adopted during the 8th Plenum, our Party needs to develop activities to educate the national minorities, especially the ‘Slavophone Macedonians’, to not be distracted by the Greek bourgeoisie oppression against them and by the current demagogy of the occupiers, and especially by Bulgarian imperialism and chauvinism – Hitler and Mussolini’s satellites. The national minorities should unite their struggles with the Greek, Serbian and Bulgarian people’s national liberation struggles, and fight against the gangster fascist yoke. They should fight for the victory of the Soviet Union and for the victory of all enslaved nations, because only that victory is a guarantee for their national and social liberation…” (Fourteen years of CPG struggle, p. 147.)

This is what was said at the CPG Pan-Greek Conference:

“Our Party is struggling for full equality for the national minorities and needs to make every effort to enlighten them on the danger of being used by the fascist axis… The national minorities should be organized on the basis of a common fraternal anti-fascist struggle with the Greek people. The struggle for victory by the Soviet Union and its allies is a guarantee for freedom and fraternal life for all nations...” (Ibid., p. 185.)

The following was written in the article “The Macedonian national question through the Politics of the CPG”, published by INI in Skopje in 1968 in the magazine “Glasnik”, number 3:

These slogans and... Party program were implemented in such a way that the Party activists in Macedonia made every effort to convince the Macedonian people to not only not demand more than “full equality”, but also that they should not expect “full equality” to “manifest itself into anything under today’s conditions…” Namely, they were told that there was no need for the Macedonian people to be organized en masse in their own national liberation organization, whose role was to carry out political work (agitation and propaganda) in Macedonia including organizing the armed struggle of the Macedonian people and creating a Macedonian revolutionary army (Macedonian units) within the framework of ELAS. The activists tried to convince the people that the Party, in its own program, would emphasize the Macedonian people’s basic national requirements, their revolutionary struggle and the like.

On top of that the Party activists demanded that the Macedonian people fight against the occupiers in the ranks of the Greek National Liberation Front - EAM, and in the ranks of the Greek People’s Liberation Army – ELAS. Unfortunately EAM and ELAS had nothing in their program documents about the Macedonian people and their democratic rights in new Greece. And, most importantly, the Party activists demanded that the Macedonian people not make any general demands on EAM and ELAS.

In fact this means that the Greeks, by their well-known tactics, were camouflaging the Macedonians with Greek national colours and the Macedonian struggle, coupled with the Greek struggle, remained not only non-affirmed but also invisible.

And that was not all.

The essence of this policy, under these circumstances, was far more ill-fated for the Macedonian people than one could have imagined. Namely, EAM, ELAS and PEEA (Political Commission for National Liberation) in their program documents did not actually ignore the Macedonian people, but treated them as Greek people...

12. The National Council of the People’s Democratic Greece proclaimed...

As is well-known, PEEA convened and chaired the first (and only) National Council of the People’s Democratic Greece Session somewhere in the free territory, which took place on May 14-27, 1944. Among the Acts adopted was the following: