PREFACE

PREFACE

The Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia became involved in two conflicts during the “terrible decade” from 1939 to 1949. They first became entangled in World War II and later in the Greek Civil War hoping to gain their independence from the Greek yoke or at least gain their human rights as Macedonians inside Greece. In the end they gained nothing and lost everything.

Very little to nothing has been written in the international forum about the Macedonians in Greece and their involvement in these conflicts. Macedonians who lived and still live inside and outside of Greece, to this day, are afraid to speak of the terrible ordeals they went through during the “terrible decade” for fear of repercussions from the Greek authorities, for fear of being humiliated or just because it is too painful for them to remember. To this day it is taboo in Greece to speak of the dreaded so-called Greek Civil War.

The Macedonian people in Greece it seems have been ignored by all sides. Yugoslavia has ignored them because, we are told, it did not want to ruin its good relations with Greece and with the West. Greece on the other hand, to this day claims that Macedonians simply don’t exist and wants to erase them from history. Bulgaria, even though it has a large Macedonian immigrant population from Greece, has yet to admit that the Macedonian people are a distinct ethnic group. Bulgaria to this day still insists that the Macedonians are Bulgarians. Even outside of the Balkan territory, people have said nothing and are content with saying nothing about the Macedonians living in Greece. So in reality no one really cares about the Macedonians in Greece and as a result very little to nothing is known about them, especially in the international scene. “Indeed, the Macedonians in Greece are hardly ever mentioned in scholarly literature and have been virtually forgotten as a people and as a national minority.” (Andrew Rossos)

This is most unfortunate not only because of the Macedonian contribution to the struggle against Fascism and Nazism, but also because as distinct people with their own language and culture, the Macedonians living in Greece deserve to be recognized.

This story is about events that took place during the terrible decade and the deception perpetrated by the Greek elite and by their patrons the English and Americans as well as the Russians who used every means possible to fool the Macedonian people to fight and die for their interests. This story is about the Macedonian human factor and what it endured and about its struggles for equality and human rights. It is a story that will reveal how the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia were treated by the Greek authorities and by the Great Powers, particularly by England, Russia and the United States during the terrible decade.

This book will show the actions taken over time by the various players and the effects they had on the Macedonian people. The information compiled is derived from various sources that include the Macedonian point of view, the Greek point of view and the views of some high level English, American and Russian diplomats.

During these conflicts Greeks on the political right as well as on the political left have accused the Macedonian people of being autonomists, separatists, communists and even of being foreign agents. But as we will see, none of these accusations are true; the only things Macedonians were guilty of was that they struggled for equality and human rights and for the right to create their own independent Macedonian state as promised by the Atlantic Charter and by other international conventions.

But despite all promises, both during World War II and during the Greek Civil War, that the Macedonians would get what they earned by fighting against the fascists… they got nothing. And as we will show, they lost everything… just because the Greeks and England wanted them out of Greek occupied Macedonia.

All through the war years the Greek leadership was divided into two camps; the Democrats leaning towards the political left and the Royalists and Republicans leaning towards the political right. Unfortunately both sides had the same idea for the Macedonians; get rid of them at any cost.

This book will analyze the ways and means by which this was done with assistance from the English and the Americans.

After Greece was occupied by Germany, Italy and Bulgaria, the Communist Party of Greece (CPG) was the first organization to organize a resistance movement against the occupiers. The Macedonian people joined this movement because historically the CPG, at least in theory, supported the idea of equality and human rights for the Macedonian people. But as it turned out, this support was only a ploy to get the Macedonians involved in the struggle on their side.

“It (CPG) was the only political party in Greece to recognize the Macedonian national identity and to have a public policy on the Macedonian national question. Against considerable opposition, the Third Extraordinary Congress of the KKE (CPG), meeting from November 26 to December 3, 1924, endorsed the Comintern line: support for a united Macedonian state in a future Balkan communist federation. This position was in basic accord with the demands of Macedonian activists and patriots, but it was extremely unpopular among the Greeks. The inauguration of the Popular Front line by the Comintern gave the Greek Communist Party the opportunity to replace it. Its Sixth Congress, in December 1935, adopted a new policy supporting equality for all national minorities in Greece, including the Macedonian; this remained its official stand until early l949.” (Andrew Rossos)

Between 1912 when Macedonia was invaded, occupied, partitioned and annexed by Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria, and 1939, when World War Two started, the Macedonian people had been separated by artificially imposed borders, exiled from their ancestral homes, robbed, humiliated, tortured, murdered, jailed, had their lands and properties confiscated, names changed, toponyms renamed, prohibited from speaking their language and made to feel like outsiders in their own ancestral homes.

In addition to exiling tens of thousands of Macedonians, including Muslim Macedonians, the Greek State, during the 1920’s imported over a million Christian Turkish colonists and settlers from Asia Minor and other parts of Turkey, and settled over six-hundred thousand on Macedonian lands.

There are some people, especially the Greeks, who to this day believe that the Macedonians in Greek occupied Macedonia were communists and fought either for communist ideology or for other foreign interests attempting to break up Greek territories and hand them over to Yugoslavia, Bulgaria or even the Soviet Union. None of this however is true. The Macedonians were not the architects of any of the conflicts that took place in Greek occupied Macedonia between 1912 and 1949. The only reason the Macedonians even paid attention to the communists, as we said earlier, was because the communists were the only group of people to offer them what they wanted the most, freedom, human rights, the right to call themselves Macedonian, the right to speak their Macedonian language and the right to unite their Macedonia.

The Macedonian people began to look towards the communists when the Communist International (Comintern) offered them concessions. After part of Macedonia was annexed by Greece the Comintern felt that it was obliged to consider concessions like offering the Macedonian people in Greece autonomy and the right to self-determination or at least recognize the Macedonian nation with full rights and privileges. The Comintern saw the Macedonian people as a potentially strong ally that could be persuaded to rally for the communist cause. This was opposite to earlier considerations made by the monarchist families in Europe and the Western Great Powers whose aims were to “partition” Macedonia and “assimilate” the Macedonian people into the nations which annexed Macedonian territories.

It is important to understand that the Macedonian territories and people were “divided” with the blessing of the European monarchies and the Great Powers. The annexation of territories was expected but the “total assimilation” of the Macedonian nation into three and later four different parts was not only unexpected but unprecedented. Not even Gotse Delchev predicted that. This was done to destroy the Macedonian nation and erase it from history. The Comintern, on the other hand, offered an alternative and the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia took it. Unfortunately the Greek communists had different ideas for them.

Also, under Comintern pressure the Greek communists admitted that Macedonians lived in Greek occupied Macedonia and agreed to give them rights. Unfortunately those rights never materialized because the Greek communists, as we shall see, had other plans for the Macedonians. Their aim was to get rid of them once and for all because they posed a threat to their country. We must remember that Macedonia rightfully belongs to the Macedonian people and not to the Greek people. Greece acquired Greek occupied Macedonia by act of war and against the wishes of the Macedonian people. Deep down every Greek, be it fascist, royalist, republican, capitalist or communist, knows that. As a result every Greek faction since Greece acquired Macedonian territories has made every effort to ensure that the Macedonia Greece stole is not taken back by the Macedonian people. The Greeks will do anything in the name of protecting Greek and western interests, even commit genocide. What is even more bizarre about this Greek obsession is that they found England to be a willing partner in this.

As history has shown, the vast majority of Greeks, including many Greek communists, have done nothing for the Macedonian people that did not fit with their own interests. Only when the Greeks needed Macedonian help did they offer the Macedonians “special consideration”. Then, when they no longer needed them the special considerations were taken away. When the anti-Macedonian Greek political right, royalists and republicans needed the Greek people to rally behind them against the Macedonians, the Greek communists made it possible by offering the Macedonian people anti-Greek concessions. They offered the Macedonian people education in the Macedonian language or the right to break away from Greece, which angered many Greeks thus prompting them to act against the Macedonians. In other words, even the good things the Greek communists did for the Macedonian people were done to hurt them. The Macedonian people were simply pawns in a long Greek game.

So the most important question to ask at this point is were the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia sacrificed for the sake of a “revolution” or because of some “perpetrated fraud”? Was the so-called Greek Civil War a “spontaneous” or a “planned” war to eradicate the communists and to get rid of the Macedonians? Because, as we will show, the top Communist Party of Greece

leadership made every effort to control this war so that the Macedonians could not win and so that the communists would lose. To make sure the Macedonians did not win, the CPG made sure no Macedonians entered top political or military positions. In fact the top CPG political and military positions were occupied by the likes of Nikos Zahariadis and Markos Vafiadis, both Turkish colonists from Asia Minor who had the most to lose if the Macedonians won. Also, every time the Macedonians tried to build and strengthen their own political or military forces, the CPG stepped in and stopped them. The only time the Macedonians were allowed to lift up their heads was when the Greek communists needed them to make more sacrifices.

There are many other questions that we will ask and attempt to answer. For example: Why were Macedonian organizations created in Yugoslavia and sent to Greek occupied Macedonia to prepare for war, at a point in time when all wars had ended and the world was divided into spheres of influence? Why were Macedonians told to go to Greek occupied Macedonia and fight to re-unite Macedonia at a time when the iron curtain was down and ran through Macedonia dividing Greek occupied Macedonia from the other parts of Macedonia?

The architects of the “Greek Civil War” were well-aware that re-uniting Macedonia at this point in time was impossible and very dangerous. The United States of America and England were against re-uniting Macedonia and such an attempt was suicidal. The United States of America and England were prepared to start World War III to keep Greece intact and under their influence. Both Tito, the leader of communist Yugoslavia, and Stalin, the leader of the communist Soviet Union, knew that! So why then did they push the Macedonian people into a suicidal war? Both Tito and Stalin knew that Stalin had given Greece to England at Yalta, so why push the Macedonian people into a war that they knew would destroy them?

To answer these questions we need to look at the outcome of this so-called Greek Civil War. England, the United States, the Western world in general and the Greek political right wanted to destroy the communists in Greece while England and every Greek of every faction wanted to get rid of the Macedonians from Greece. The

Macedonian people were standing in the way of Greek and Western interests in Greece so a situation needed to be created to remove them. In other words the Macedonian people were put in a situation where they had to fight and die or permanently leave their homeland. This is exactly what happened in the end and this falls exactly in line with England’s and Greece’s long-term objectives. Both England and Greece wanted to get rid of the Macedonians from Greece and have a Macedonia without Macedonians! In the end, the Greek communists made that possible.

Another hard question to ask is did the Macedonian leaders and people in general in Greek occupied Macedonia know what was happening to them during the terrible decade? Did they know that they were being played in order to serve foreign interests? Did they know that they were headed for genocide?

This basically was the situation that the Macedonian people found themselves in during WW II and the Greek Civil War.

Here Stojan Kochov, author of this book, takes a critical view and addresses most of the issues covered in the preface, especially the issue of the Macedonian leadership’s role in the Greek Civil War.

Risto Stefov