THE COMMUNISTS WERE CONSTANTLY DIVIDING THE MACEDONIAN PEOPLE

THE COMMUNISTS WERE CONSTANTLY DIVIDING THE MACEDONIAN PEOPLE

Aleksandar Popovski protected CPG General Secretary Zahariadis and the DAG generals in Tashkent

During the Greek Civil War Aleksandar Popovski, from the village Dolno Kotur, joined the youth resistance movement because he believed that the Macedonian people could obtain their rights in Greece through struggle. This is what Popovski said, “When I was a child my grandfather taught me to love Macedonia. He had four brothers and all of them were revolutionaries. One was a revolutionary leader…” Popovski was 17 years old when he joined the Partisans and was deployed in an elite youth squad which participated in all sorts of battles.

Popovski continued, “The Greek authorities arrested my father in 1946 and wanted to execute him by firing squad. But before they could he escaped from prison and fled across the Greek border into Yugoslavia. Because of that the Greeks came after me and my mother. I was arrested and tied up. They tortured me for three days to tell them if my father had guns and where he had hidden them. They threatened to execute me by firing squad, throw me out of a window, etc. if I didn’t tell them. I was only 14 years old at the time. In March 1947, when I first joined the Partisans I was assigned to courier duty and starting March 1948 I fought with a gun in my hands…”

Popovski participated in one of the largest and longest lasting battles in Gramos. It started on July 17 and ended on August 21. This is what Popovski said, “A lot of blood was shed in that battle. There were cases when one and the same hill was lost and recaptured five times. In the end only four out of thirty soldiers from my youth squad survived. We were all Macedonian, only the officers were Greek. On August 21st when the entire Partisan force fighting on that mountain was surrounded from all sides, it was my elite youth squad that broke through the encirclement on one of the hills. This allowed DAG to retreat and regroup on Mount Vicho and 74 days later fought another epic battle…”

Young Aleksandar Popovski was seriously injured on September 24 which had consequences for him to this day. He can’t hear well and can’t see from one eye. After he was treated in Albania he went back and fought in Giorgi Peikov’s squad. Giorgi Peikov was a legendary Macedonian fighter who could not get a higher rank than captain because he was Macedonian. This is what Popovski said, “No matter how smart or good we were, we Macedonians could only achieve low ranks. The higher ranks were given to the Greeks. Even though we fought together with them they always put us down. To insult us they usually called us ‘Bulgarians’ in a derogatory way…”

This is what Popovski said about the Lerin battle, “We waited a very long time for our orders to attack. In the meantime we allowed the Greek government to take its positions all around the city. In the end around 700 people were killed. We survived a great catastrophe because we were betrayed. We had 5,000 Partisans and the Greeks had 20,000 soldiers who caught us in an ambush. I remember that day well. It was my 17th birthday. We Macedonians demonstrated great heroism and fought with heart and soul. Then when we heard Nikos Zahariadis, CPG General Secretary, say, ‘We will not only give the Macedonians their autonomy but we will also give them the right to self-determination…’ At that moment I should have realized that Zahariadis wanted to exterminate us all because with those words, we were set on fire. We began to fiercely attack our opponent’s positions and were being killed en masse…”

Popovski was a great fighter and his name often appeared in the left wing newspapers. As a result he was hated by the opposition, including the Greek government army which wanted him in its hands by any means possible. Being unable to find him the Greek authorities arrested his mother and sentenced her to 17 years in prison. Then one day the Greek government army received information that Popovski had been killed in battle. To confirm that the Greek government authorities consulted with his second cousin

who had fought for the Greek government army. His second cousin told the authorities that he was convinced that Aleksandar had been murdered and with that information the cousin went to the prison to persuade the authorities to release his mother, and they did. Unfortunately his mother now believed that Aleksandar was dead. When he came back from Russia nine years later, his mother could not believe that her own son stood before her. His father didn’t recognize him either. They both said that it was not him. He was someone else...

Popovski was sure that the Greek communists were not honest with the Macedonians and the Macedonian struggle. This is what Popovski said, “While we were fighting and even later I trusted them. But in 1988 Florakis, CPG General Secretary, publicly said in Solun that the Macedonian Question did not exist for the Communist Party of Greece and that anyone who supported such a question was an enemy of the Greek people. After that I was certain that we were sacrificed for other people’s interests...”

Aleksandar Popovski spent several years in Tashkent with a gun in his hands protecting the CPG leaders and the DAG generals who left Greece after DAG was defeated. This is what Popovski said, “We were all armed when we were there. Their slogan was, ‘We have guns and we are ready to fight when our fatherland calls…” Popovski spent 9 years in Tashkent where he educated himself at the military academy.

Popovski continued, “My family was in four different countries. My mother with one of my sisters stayed in Greece. After the war, my father’s brother took my other sister with him to Australia. My father and my younger sister went to Leskovac. Then when Greece began to allow Macedonians to leave Greece willingly and move out of the country, provided they signed a document promising that they would never come back, my mother and father found each other and in 1954 went to live in the Republic of Macedonia. They settled in Bistritsa. One of my sisters still lives in Belgrade. Later my younger sister left Leskovac and went to live in Australia. In 1988, 40 years later, I caught up with my oldest sister Katerina. She invited me to her wedding. Our meeting was both happy and sad. I was able to hold my tears but I wasn’t when I watched the video tape of our

meeting. I cried like a small child…” Popovski, as a leader of the Association of the People from the Aegean part of Macedonia, was instrumental in organizing the well known Bitola meetings in Trnovo.

Popovski’s wife Vasilka was also a Partisan and she too believed in the struggle in which they participated. But now she feels very sad and has painful emotions every time she talks about those days. When she talks about her experiences she feels like she is pouring salt on an open wound. This is what Vasilka said, “I was only 16 years old when I was recruited by the Partisans. I was wounded twice in battle. Both times I was sent to Albania to be treated. My father, my brother and my father’s brother were Partisans. We were two sisters and three brothers in my family. My two younger brothers and my sister were evacuated with the refugee children. Only my mother and I remained at home. Later we were transferred to a camp in Albania. Then the communists came and suggested we join the Partisans. All of us who were 16 years or older signed up voluntarily. I wasn’t even 16 then but I signed up anyway. My mother tried to stop me but I didn’t listen to her. We all participated in the battles on Mount Gramos. We fought heroically for days, we were hungry and thirsty but we survived because we believed we could win…”

After her last injury Valiska was sent to the hospital in Elbasan and from there to the USSR. She was sent to school in the USSR. This is what Vasilka said, “It was October 15, 1949 when we left Albania on a cargo ship and were illegally sent to the Soviet Union. We were loaded on the lower floors. Wheat and corn was loaded on the upper floors. That was a very difficult trip. A big storm caught us in the Black Sea and many of us got seasick. We were welcomed in Batumi with baskets of food. Then we bathed and were given a change of clothing. They also took us to a cinema…”

After the Partisans rested, they were loaded on a train and, after crossing several deserts, arrived in the eastern part of the USSR. From there they were taken over the Caspian Sea to their final destination, Bekovac, Uzbekistan. This is what Vasilka said, “We continued to live like soldiers. I had no idea where my family was and they had no idea where I was. The only thing I knew was that

my father was in Yugoslavia. I received his first letter in 1953. Through the Red Cross, I later found out that my two brothers and my sister were in a children’s home in Czechoslovakia and my mother and my father’s brother’s wife were in Hungary. My oldest brother Giorgi, whom I saw only once, had died. None of us knew where he was buried. We didn’t even know that he was dead. We had no confirmation that he was dead. We hoped for a long time that he was alive. It took us 10 years to find each other in different parts of the world…”

We asked Vasilka if she and Aleksandar were in love when they met as Partisans. This is what she said, “No, we were only children then, our love was born in Bekovac. I didn’t want to marry him because I wanted to finish my studies. I was studying at the Music Academy but Aleksandar was persistent. Our daughter was born in Bekovac and we named her Mirka in honour of our national hero Mirka Ginova...”