8. TO THE USSR GENERAL PROSECUTOR IN MOSCOW

8. TO THE USSR GENERAL PROSECUTOR IN MOSCOW

From the political immigrant Pavle Mihailov Rakovski, a resident of g. Alma-Ata 15, kv-l 272-а, house number 16, apartment 2.

Dear comrade General Prosecutor of the USSR,

I am Macedonian by nationality, from the Greek part of Macedonia. (We Macedonians are the southernmost Slavic people in Southeastern Europe.)

I was an active participant in the People’s Resistance against the German occupation. After that I participated in the Greek Civil War from 1946 to 1949, in the ranks of the democratic forces and fought against the reactionaries and against the Anglo-American interventionists...

Unfortunately, as we now know, the Greek Civil War ended in failure for the democratic forces in the country. Our leadership, the Communist Party of Greece leadership, which then found itself in Albania, accused me of treason. I, along with other Macedonian political workers, was arrested and handed over to the Albanian authorities. I spent over two months in jail in Tirana, being placed in strict isolation and solitary confinement. After that, on January 4, 1950, I was brought to the USSR and taken to Moscow. I remained there in solitary confinement and under interrogation (interrogated by Lieutenant-Colonel FIRSOV V.P.) for two years and five months, that is, to the end of May 1952. In accordance with Article 58, 4 and 11, the USSR Supreme Court Special Council then sentenced me to ten years in prison without personal freedom and without the right to communicate with my parents, wife or comrades. That is, without the ability to let my friends and relatives know my condition and my whereabouts. I was then sent to the

Correctional Labour Camps – ITL in Eastern Siberia to serve my sentence...

My verdict was again reviewed in December 1954, and the duration of my sentence was reduced. I was then released from prison in March 1955. After that, at my written request, my sentence was once again re-examined. As a result, in May 1956, the Military Collegium at the USSR Supreme Court annulled my previous judgments and the very case AO-238 itself was dropped “due to lack of evidence of offenses being committed”.

In other words, everything that was undertaken against me in all those years was without foundation. I was grossly slandered and humiliated at rallies, at meetings, through the radio, through the press and through all other means the CPG Central Committee had in its possession. I was under constant attack and morally and physically tormented...

But, it appears that even after I was found “not guilty” of all charges, rehabilitated and released, some Greek CPG leaders still continue to harass me. They would not allow me to join our political immigrants here. Those in the CPG Central Committee would not even allow me to return to the collective, even after I wrote to them many times and asked them for their permission. They have me isolated in Alma-Ata and have deprived me of the right to participate in the social and political life of my native nation. On top of that they have also condemned me to live in poverty. Namely, during all these years I have been here, I was not given the opportunity to earn anything more than my food (476 rubles a month). I don’t have any clothes or shoes and my apartment is completely bare...

My life has become hopeless, senseless and unworthy of living. Being here and living under these condition makes me believe that I would have been better off being dead, killed at the Gramos front in August, 1949, during the last decisive battle against the enemy. The task to take my life was entrusted to Major Hrisostomos, Commander of the Independent heavy weapon’s Battalion (“Aneksartitot Tagma”) at the Democratic Army of Greece’s 19th Division... And I must say that, for ten years now, ten years in a

row, after Hrisostomos failed to liquidate me, some of the CPG leadership have been after me and constantly attempting to harm me...

I contacted the Yugoslav Embassy in Moscow with a request to allow me to permanently move to the People’s Republic of Macedonia, a federal unit of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Soon afterwards I received the necessary Yugoslav documents. I then contacted the competent Soviet authorities here, with a written request that I be allowed to return to my homeland. This was in July 1958. I had to wait eight months for an answer and that answer was negative. The PRO UVD of the Regional Committee of the Council of Defense in Alma-Ata responded negatively to me. They refused to allow me to return to my homeland, and they refused to tell me the reason for their negative decision.

But one thing is clear:

There was no need for the Soviet authorities to isolate me before and there is no need for them to further isolate me now. The Soviet authorities should have allowed me to travel from Alma-Ata as they allowed my eight comrades and the hundreds, if not thousands, of other Macedonians who traveled to our homeland from Tashkent.

However, the fact remains that:

I was violently removed from my native nation and my right to participate in the social and political life of my people has been trampled.

I am sentenced to a miserable existence and to live in poverty. I am treated cruelly and constantly humiliated and there is no reason for it. I feel demoralized and my morale is going down with each passing day. I feel like a caged animal without hope…

I am no more than a mere prisoner here. My movements are limited only to the areas of the city in which I live...

I would like to also mention that my wife and daughter are also here. They came from Poland (Poland also has a large number of political immigrants from Greece) and share the same fate as me...

This is obviously an unlawful act of injustice perpetrated against me and my family. We are being punished without been given the opportunity to defend ourselves. They have not even informed us of what the charges are against us...

Comrade Prosecutor General of the USSR, I call on you to please do everything you can, in the spirit of the Soviet Constitution, the most advanced Constitution in the world, in the spirit of the Soviet legal system, to help my case. It is my right and my desire as a Macedonian to live in the People’s Republic of Macedonia, to grow old there and to bring up my children among my native Macedonian people. This is what I want... Here I feel like a tree branch that flew off its native tree as a consequence of a violent storm and is now condemned to rot without a trace of where it fell. I am deeply convinced that with your intervention, my family and I will avoid the “fate” of such a branch - the “fate” prepared by those in the CPG leadership who wish me harm... I am certain that with your help I will return to my native nation and start a full and real life, like a normal human being...

With respect, Pavle Rakovski Alma-Ata, April 13, 1959.

9. Heading for Subotitsa...

When my Yugoslav passport stamped with the Soviet visa arrived I began to prepare for my trip. In the meantime I submitted a written request to the Regional Post office to have my mail forwarded to Yugoslavia, to Vangel Aianovski’s address in Skopje.

Then I noticed that my Yugoslav visa had already expired. That worried me. I was sure this was by no accident; it was yet another blow against me. I had to stay in Alma-Ata until I got a new Yugoslav visa. I sent my passport to Moscow, to the Yugoslav Embassy, and asked them renew my visa, explaining that my visa expired because I was not issued a Soviet visa until now.

I then went back to the regional post office and explained to the person in charge that my trip was delayed and that I was waiting for my passport to arrive from Moscow. I begged him to look for it and send it to me here and not to Yugoslavia.

The post office official wrote something down in his notebook.

Ten days later, when the passport did not arrive, I went back to the post office to find out what had happened. The person I was talking to confirmed that my passport was sent to Yugoslavia. I went to see the person in charge and all he could do was apologize. He forgot to warn the officers in the second shift...

This was yet another heavy blow against me, not only because of the “inconveniences” but also because both my wife and I had quit our jobs and had no money. The money the Red Cross gave us was spent for our travel tickets. I never did get my passport back and I began to doubt everything and everyone. I did not even get a written apology from the post office in Alma-Ata. Months passed under tense uncertainty. Fortunately they hired me back at my job and I was able to make some money. Finally, our Embassy pulled me out of a difficult situation: they issued me a new Yugoslav passport...

I immediately contacted the Russian Captain who had helped me out earlier and asked her to transfer my visa to the new passport, which she did…

On February 17, 1960, I was a thousand miles away, traveling by train away from Alma-Ata. I was traveling together with my wife and now with my two children. My son was just born. We were headed for Yugoslav territory… for Subotitsa...

10. A Soviet spy...

My happiness and feeling of being secure were interrupted by the officer who took me and my family off the train.

We spent the entire day in a waiting room...

In the evening I was then placed in some kind of night train and, accompanied by one of the people from the “interior”, was escorted to Belgrade. Then, in the dimmed part of the station, they quickly transferred me to a prison car. Later they put me in a room together with my wife and children, at the militia station prison in Panchevo.

The interrogation began on the third day. I was interrogated by Kiro Sotirovski-Strogov, a representative of the SVR service from Skopje. He had a stenographer with him with a typewriter. I was interrogated every day for ten days in a row. In the end Sotirovski said to me:

“However, Pavle, we think ... we do not claim, because we don’t have any evidence, but we think that you are coming here as an agent…!”

He did not say whose agent. And there was no need. From the questions that he asked me in the ten days, everything was clear to me. We understood each other perfectly...

I genuinely accepted my new struggle. You must accept life as it is. I was expecting something like this… I am sure Mitrevski had something to do with it… In his great concern that I not be accepted as the “new leader” of the Aegean Macedonians, he, while still in Alma-Ata, quickly sent letters to disseminate my supposed “treachery” everywhere. They even had my wife convinced to give up on me while she was still in Poland, and she almost did. They told the Yugoslav authorities that I did not agree with the proposed solution to the Macedonian Question, as was currently practiced in Federal Yugoslavia, and that is why I did not come with them to Skopje when they left. They even accused me of being a Zahariadis supporter and supported Zahariadis’s solution to the Macedonian question in the Greek state. I was accused of saying that the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia had no connections with the Macedonian people in the People’s Republic of Macedonia and that they should eternally remain and be added to the Greek people so that they are assimilated and disappeared to the last one...

In that spirit, with the exception of Hadzhiianevski and Iurukova, they all made such accusations in the letters they sent out about me, which I indirectly found out from Sotirovski’s questions. And that was not the end of it. From Sotirovski’s questions I became aware of yet another aspect of my “betrayal”, that is, I also found out what Mitrevski and company were saying to the authorities in Skopje.

As a result I was charged with being a Soviet agent when I arrived in Skopje…!

It was a precisely calculated blow, conceived and performed on the basis of speculation that relied mainly on certain differences and disagreements between the Soviet and Yugoslav leaderships. Here again they expressed concern that the Skopje leadership should not accept me as the “new leader” of the Aegean immigrants in the field. This, obviously, would have reflected badly on all of those who abandoned the field and fled to Skopje.

Besides that, the “new leader” would reorganize the staff and even replace the old staff with new people. By doing this the “new leader” would inevitably take the old staff from the limelight and send them to the background. The old staff then, just like that, would lose its importance in a single movement. In that respect I was a REAL DANGER to their future as leaders... Not that Mitrevski and the others were any good at their jobs… They were considered important only because they held high positions in the Organization and for that reason their word carried some weight. But I was clean, and that was my advantage over them - they had to lie to get there. What made me bitter was the fact that my ex-comrades deliberately twisted the truth and conscientiously betrayed me by lying about my absence when they arrived in Skopje.

Let me also say that I was not only a potential danger to their ambitions and future interests, but with my attitude, on top of that, I was prepared to inform all our people that these “leaders” dropped the ball on thousands of our fighters and political refugees and left them behind. Instead of staying and sharing their fate, they simply rushed to get a cushy position in Skopje...

I told them that right to their faces. What they did I call “desertion” and I said that in the presence of Poplazarov. After our “rehabilitation” in the USSR we all felt like winners. Like some kind of heroes… My actions unfortunately were spoiling their mood... But then what I did after that and the position I took may have been tactically wrong. I was challenging everything and very vocal about it with a tone of irony. Even my friend Poplazarov from camp 0-25 began to hate me. I saw the same hatred in the eyes of the others. They were planning to come home with an aura of heroes, but my actions tarnished the glare out of their aura. Almost all of them were hostile to me... and silent! The question that was put before them was:

“Why did Rakovski return to the fighters, and they did not…?”

How does one answer that…? They had no choice. They had to act as they did before. They blackened me in order for themselves to look clean - to be accepted, and for me to be rejected. It was the only way to neutralize the problem. They correctly calculated that:

“The same lie told by all of them will act as the truth...”

11. The letter...

At the end of my interrogation Kiro Sotirovski surprised me with his questions about a letter that I took to the Kazakh Interior Ministry. That happened about five years before that and I had forgotten about the letter. I could not now, at the beginning of 1972, after twelve years have passed, precisely say what I told Sotirovski but I have been thinking about it since then. I tried hard to remember. It was not only Sotirovski’s questions that forced me to do this but also the way I was treated about it in Skopje. I was tormented by it...

This is a reconstruction of what I remember:

Vera and I were released from prison on March 26, 1955. We were serving our sentences in the Russian city Potma. After that everyone else was released within one month with Urania Iurukova being released last. While I was still in the prison yard, in front of the main gate, that is, before I left the prison camp, a Yugoslav gave me a

letter and asked me to put it in a mail box as soon as I got there… wherever I was going... Without thinking, given the excitement of the moment of stepping out of the camp’s gate, I took the letter. It was a nothing thing for me to do and I would be doing the man a service and make him happy in the process. But then when I got to Alma-Ata and I remembered the letter, I thought: “Who was this man who gave me the letter?” The Potma Camp was the last stage from where prisoners are released. The regime is very liberal there. Men and women live together. Correspondence with the outside world was allowed, clearly, not without censorship. Why did this man want to avoid censorship…? And most of all, I saw that the man was not afraid of the guards and, almost publicly, in the busiest place in front of the main gate, handed me the letter. And on top of that the guards checked me, took two of my notebooks that I was carrying with me, and released me without finding the letter. I began to think that this may be some kind of setup which could complicate my situation and place me in a dangerous position…?

I spoke about it with Vera and Mitrevski. I think it was the first or the second day after we arrived in Alma-Ata, that is, before we arrived at the court house. Mitrevski said do whatever you want. In other words my problem had nothing to do with him. Vera was of the same opinion and said you decide what you want to do.

I figured I could do one of three things: Destroy the letter, put it in a mailbox, or give it to the authorities in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

I decided to give it to the authorities. I was almost convinced that it was from them and it would be best to visit the Ministry of Internal Affairs and hand it over to them. That’s what I thought. I visited the Ministry and handed it over to them. I also told them how the letter found its way into my hands...

Days passed and I heard nothing. In other words everything was okay...

Then, suddenly, when we all had forgotten about it, I received an invitation by mail to visit the Ministry of Internal Affairs... We all wondered what it could be? When I arrived at the Ministry they

asked me to explain my experience with the letter in writing... I was left alone in a two-door office to write it. In the corridor adjacent to this office was the office of the department chief. According to our travel tickets from the Potma camp, Vera and I came directly here from the railway station, as soon as we arrived in Alma-Ata. The chief’s office also had a door leading to the corridor.

As soon as I started to write, the chief’s door opened and I saw Fotev, Poplazarov and Cholakov go in. They were escorted in immediately and the door was closed behind them. That was all...

Unfortunately, this simple and unique case for which I was personally summoned to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, my ex-comrades consciously turned into yet another one of my “secret visits” to the Ministry of the Interior, thus turning me into a Soviet agent.

But the worst thing about this is something else, something that no one had asked. What, in general, or even specifically, did I do as a “Soviet agent”...?

Yes, Sotirovski said. “We have no evidence…!”

Yet, at the same time, they treated me here like there are no dilemmas and just like I was some kind of agent…

They correctly calculated. The lie perpetrated by all of them would act as the truth...

The one sharp and unavoidable question I can’t get out of my mind, however, is:

“How and why did the three (Fotev, Poplazarov and Cholakov) find themselves in the Ministry of the Interior and talking to the Chief of the Department, of all people?”

Why did they do that in secret and behind my back?

Why did they leave the office door, where I was placed to write the statement, open?

Mitrevski and Vera publicly and openly accused my of being a Yugoslav agent in Moscow who allegedly worked undercover against the CPG and DAG, and these other three (Fotev, Poplazarov and Cholakov) here, in Alma-Ata, secretly went to the chief, or perhaps he invited them, and then, suddenly, they appeared in front of me at precisely the moment when I was writing my statement. Was this so that they could catch me in the act and then declare that I was there writing one of my “regular reports” to the Ministry? Was this a setup to be caught by Mitrevski’s group doing my “deed” as a Soviet agent…?

But, why did Mitrevski needed me to be seen as a Soviet agent?

The most obvious reason why Mitrevski and company needed me to be seen as a Soviet agent was so that they could defame and “expose” me. This had to be done by all of them so that they would look clean and be accepted as heroes in Skopje and I would be rejected as a traitor. Mitrevski and Vera, in particular, used me to cover up their own “mistakes” that they had made during the interrogations in Moscow against Yugoslavia. By pointing me out, they were doing their patriotic duty for Yugoslavia, i.e. for the People’s Republic of Macedonia. But why was the Soviet Ministry of the Interior helping them in this regard…? Was all this connected with the fact that I was violently detained in Alma-Ata all those years and not allowed return to Yugoslavia? I believe their aim was to smear me enough in Skopje to a point where the Yugoslav authorities would be convinced of my guilt. They wanted to prove to Skopje that I did not want to return because I was a compromised Soviet agent, which would undoubtedly once again confirm my “betrayal” and, at the same time, their “purity” and patriotic sentiments especially to my prosecutors? What benefits could the Soviet authorities have gained from this? Only the devil knows for sure…

At one point the Russian captain who was helping me asked me: “Why don’t you apply for a Soviet citizenship, why don’t you want live in the USSR…?”

I said to her: “I can’t reconcile myself with the kind of life I live here...” She then immediately said: “By receiving a Soviet citizenship your life will be completely changed and you will have many opportunities for your personal prosperity…”

I then calmly and quietly said: “My place is with my native people...”

Perhaps with all of this they really wanted me to stay in the USSR…?

Perhaps...

It was the way it was but the fact remains that both Mitrevski and Vera told the Moscow authorities that I was a Yugoslav agent working against the CPG and DAG while they took an anti-Yugoslav position. Then, in Skopje they accused me of being a Soviet agent who worked against Yugoslavia while they took an anti-USSR position. The most characteristic thing about all this is that they lied in both cases... Forgive me for saying this but I am not the painter of their portrait here. They have done that on their own… It’s a self-portrait...

At the end of this passage allow me to say that, with the accusations made against me, Mitrevski and company achieved what the Greek leaders aspired - to prevent me from participating in the social and political life of our people - to prevent me from telling the truth about the CPG’s “real” policies towards the Macedonian national liberation movement and other Macedonian issues in general. At the moment I am removed from everything and my writing is being rejected... Someone always intervenes and finds a way to refuse my articles. (102) This is how it is, at least for now...

2. Tuberculosis...

After reading this a friend of mine said:

“Enough with your disputes with Mitrevski! They are becoming boring. Write about something else. Write about the hardships of our people, how they were oppressed from every direction, how they

found the strength to grab weapons and fight... and so on. Write about that…!”

This is how it is in life. There is nothing without risk. People need to understand... I have no intention of chasing the wind by arguing with Mitrevski and company. They no longer interest me. At one point in our lives we were the leaders of the Macedonian national liberation movement (NOF) in Greek occupied Macedonia. While threading events, especially those which looked like bickering, I was just attempting to describe the state of affairs in our leadership. I was attempting to describe the “tuberculosis” that the NOF organism and the Macedonian armed uprising in that part of Macedonia had contracted. This is actually an old and well-known disease that re-occurs in Macedonian uprisings. The desires, personal interests, careers, adventures and unhealthy ambitions of suspect individuals are always skillfully exploited by the enemy and by external factors to break the inner front of the Macedonian people. The Supremacists and supporters of the Greek “Megali Idea” (Greater Greece) were one such factor. Kotsopoulos and, in general, all the “opoulose’s” in Greek occupied Macedonia, as well the “oviche’s” in Serbian occupied Macedonia, were nothing more than Supremacist Greeks and Serbians...

There is no doubt that external factors made use of these sick ambitions and personal interests in the NOF leadership in Greek occupied Macedonia. They used them to weaken and destroy the unity in the ranks of NOF and the Macedonian armed uprising. They also used them to blur and conceal the historic truth about this struggle; by acting dishonestly and without respect for the Macedonian people and against the many Macedonian fighters who laid down their lives for this struggle...

The events about which I spoke here may sound like “quarrels” but only because they took place in unusual settings when we were investigated and imprisoned. But they are nothing new. They are characteristic symptoms that reveal and illuminate the NATURE of the chronic bad state of affairs in the NOF leadership. That is why I have exposed them here...

What specifically happened to me in Skopje is another story. I am not even sure if I should be talking about it at all.

Skopje, 1972.