MACEDONIANS EXILED ALL THROUGHOUT THE WORLD - GREECE DECLARED THAT A MACEDONIA

MACEDONIANS EXILED ALL THROUGHOUT THE WORLD - GREECE DECLARED THAT A MACEDONIAN MINORITY DOES NOT EXIST IN GREECE

About 21,000 Macedonians lost their lives, while more than 50,000 were forcefully exiled during the Greek Civil War

The Greek Communists used the Macedonian people for their own purposes during the Greek Civil War. After the Democratic Army of Greece was defeated, the communists moved the Macedonian people out of their ancestral homes and outside the Greek borders and never made any effort to bring them back. On the contrary, the Greek communists publicly declared that no Macedonians exist in Greece, something that the Greeks had accepted as reality during the war. In other words, the Greek-Macedonian alliance between the Communist Party of Greece (CPG) and the Macedonian national liberation front (NOF) was based on a false foundation and only served Greek communist interests. The Greek communists were well aware that they could not achieve their objectives without massive Macedonian participation and support and they could not triumph over the Greek government army without the Macedonians. And so, in order to involve and enlist the Macedonian people in their war, they had to admit that the Macedonian national identity and the Macedonian language existed in Greece. On the other hand, the Macedonian people saw this alliance as their chance to realize their own national rights.

This is what Historian Andrew Rossos wrote in his book “Incompatible Alliances: the Greek Communists and the Macedonian Nationalists in the Greek Civil War 1946-1949”, “The Macedonians couldn’t think of their national liberation without a CPG victory, the only Party in Greece which recognized their existence and their national identity. At the same time the CPG couldn’t really expect a victory without direct or indirect support from its communist neighbours, especially Federal Yugoslavia, but support from Yugoslavia where the Macedonians already had their state was very difficult to come until the CPG obtained active support from the Macedonians in Greece…”

After the Greek communists recognized the existence of the Macedonian identity and the Macedonian language, they opened 87 Macedonian schools in which around 10,000 Macedonian children were enrolled. This was a great motivation for the Macedonian people to massively grab weapons in their hands and join the war. However they were never treated as equals with the Greeks. There was not a single Macedonian representative in the interim democratic government and all high ranking positions in the Democratic Army of Greece (DAG) were given to Greeks. The Greek communists made sure that no Macedonian would be given a command position despite the fact that most of the fighters who fought on the front and were killed were Macedonians. According to statistics collected by NOF in 1948, from the 25,000 soldiers that fought in DAG, 11,000 were Macedonian. That number drastically increased towards the middle of 1949 when all able Macedonian men and women were mobilized. Of the 20,000 soldiers that fought in DAG in 1949, 14,000 were Macedonian. If we consider the fact that the largest battles took place where Macedonians lived, we get a more realistic picture of the great sacrifice the Macedonian people made during the Greek Civil War.

If we now, 60 years later, analyze the situation and the relative sizes of the opponents on the front, we can easily see that the communists had no chance of ever winning the war. Its loss was predetermined in advance. At the end of the war, according to British estimates, DAG had between 20,000 and 30,000 soldiers. The Greek government army, on the other hand, was almost 10 times larger and was supported by the Americans and the British. When the war

ended the Greek Army consisted of 242,000 soldiers. On top of that the USA gave the Greek government 140 airplanes, 3,890 cannons and mine throwers, 97,000 guns and 10,000 vehicles and trucks. Together with the weapons came 250 American officers who equipped and advised the Greek military. The British were also doing their part for Greece including organizing and training their armed forces. DAG, on the other hand, lost its best ally Yugoslavia during the Inform Bureau when Tito and Stalin were having their quarrels. Yugoslavia was DAG’s main supplier of weapons and served as a base for organizing its forces and transferring its injured soldiers. Tito closed the border under pressure from the West. Because of that DAG had a constant deficiency of arms and soldiers. On top of that, CPG General Secretary Nikos Zahariadis had disagreements with DAG Commander and Chief General Markos Vafiadis over how to conduct the war.

As a result of the above, DAG lost all of the important battles that followed. In the battle of Gramos DAG had 10,500 soldiers fighting against 80,000 Greek government soldiers. This was the first time the Greek aviation used American made napalm bombs. According to British estimates, DAG lost many soldiers during that battle. Around 2,500 were killed, 3,200 were injured, 416 were captured and 635 surrendered. From the Greek government side 1,063 soldiers were killed and 3,883 were injured.

During the second largest battle that took place on Vicho, DAG was again defeated. In this battle 696 DAG soldiers were killed and 560 were captured or surrendered. The Greek Civil War ended at the end of 1949. The data for the number of soldiers killed and people who fled during the Greek Civil War varies based on different sources.

According to Liljana Panovska, 154,000 people lost their lives and around 90,000 left the country, most never came back. At the same time around 40,000 people were interned in concentration camps; 20,000 were found guilty of committing anti-government crimes of who at least 5,000 were executed. At the same time more than 700,000 people were forced out of their homes and became refugees in their own country .The number of sacrifices provided by the left side amounted to 51,000 killed and 50,000 injured. The number of

sacrificed provided by the right side 10,249 killed and 37,000 injured.

This is what Liljana Panovska said, “The impression remains that the consequences for the Macedonian people were especially tragic and very serious. As a result of their participation in the Greek Civil War, 21,000 Macedonians lost their lives, while more than 50,000 were forced out of their ancestral homes and their country. If we take that into consideration and in correlation with the fact that at that time the Macedonians represented around one-twentieth of the total population in Greece, then it becomes clear how large the scale of consequences was for the Macedonians in relation to the Greeks. Proportion wise, the Macedonian participation in DAG was massive compared to the Greek participation…”

Above and beyond this, the largest and most important battles were fought in areas mainly occupied by Macedonians. An example of this is the fact that in 1951, 46 Macedonian villages were erased from the census list because they were totally ruined. More than 15,000 Macedonians lost their Greek citizenship and their lands were confiscated. Over two thousand square kilometres of Macedonian land was confiscated.

The Greek communists showed their true faces when during the time of the Inform Bureau and after DAG was defeated, no Macedonian was allowed to return to Greece. In other words, the CPG not only abandoned the Macedonians but declared that they didn’t exist. All Macedonian liberation organizations, including NOF, were declared unfriendly. According to Petre Nakovski, the Greek communists in Poland and in the other socialist countries, where they resided as refugees, formed Party committees and each Party committee had its own special secret police. All these Party committees enforced CPG rules. This is what Nakovski said, “Any kind of Macedonian issue that surfaced was immediately cut at the root and declared unfriendly. Its protagonists, common people, common Macedonians, teachers and young people, mothers and fathers of children that died in the battles, were declared agents and spies ‘of other powers, countries and ideologies’, only because they were Macedonians…”

Soon after that, the CPG leadership declared the Macedonian language an instrument of Tito, and forbid its use in the Macedonian language schools where the Macedonian refugee children were studying in the Eastern European countries. The Macedonian language in Bulgaria was replaced. The Macedonian alphabet was also replaced with a new alphabet based on the Bulgarian and Russian alphabets.

This is what Nakovski said, “Any kind of Macedonian national and patriotic occurrence was declared anti-party, nationalist, separatist and autonomist. This anti-Macedonian battle lasted until 1954 when the CPG committees in Poland and the other eastern European countries were disbanded…”

This is what Panovka said, “On December 29, 1982 the Greek government, as part of its national reconciliation program, decided to repatriate its political refugees. Based on this decision, all political refugees (Greek by genus) from the Greek Civil War had the right to repatriate, except for those who declared themselves Macedonian. They were punished and left to live out their lives in exile…”