UNDER IVESTIGATION (103) - Part 01

UNDER IVESTIGATION (103)

1. Projection...

It has been two decades since my ordeal in the USSR. I am now slowly but stubbornly collecting material, especially copies of the original Communist Party of Greece documents. I systematize, compare and analyze them. I work patiently to unearth the opportunism, that is, the Greek chauvinist anti-Macedonian policies the Greek leaders implemented against us. Last night I had a dream on two occasions:

I saw a winged young woman leap out of the depths of the earth from a volcanic orifice, a living image of Niki by the sculptor Peonios. Her white transparent robe was fluttering as she was flying. Without waving her wings, she flew and landed beside me. She had a baby in her arms...

I woke up. Then…

I saw a girl dressed in a black maxi dress and like a kite she floated in the air without moving her hands or feet, and then left my room through the wide open window and disappeared into the deep blue sky, like it was pulled by some magnetic force...

I woke up. The winged black (sadness, worry) Niki (victory, success) who had landed beside me with a baby in her hands (responsibility, worries), now left me... Of course, this was only a projection, in beautiful pictures, of what I strongly grieved and worked to achieve.

2. On the way to Moscow...

I had a similar experience on my way to Moscow, somewhere before or after Kiev, on the night of January 1 or 2, 1950, in the

Stolipinski prison wagon, when I saw (dreamt of) a large slab of white marble hovering in the open air. Doric style pillars rose from its four corners pointing high towards the sky. The rising sun shone on the marble, especially on the pillars and made them look like they were radiating their own pink light. All around it, to the distant horizon, were people, many people, an endless sea of human faces and eyes, and they all were facing the stage. These were the nations of the world.

I stood on the stage. In my hands I held a tablet similar to the one Moses held with the Ten Commandments, only this one was framed. There were two columns of writing under the glass citing the rights of the Macedonian people. I addressed the peoples of the world by reading the text with an unusually loud voice...

My own voice then woke me up...

Those nights on my way to Moscow I also experienced this:

I found myself sitting at the edge of a tall and long mountainous granite ridge. In the slab of granite below me was a cozy comfortable room - a bunker. The CPG Central Committee Politburo was sheltered there. Far down in the valley, rivers ran on both sides of the ridge and further down were low, gentle hills looking like waves. They were covered by a huge crowd of people. At one point I noticed a crack on the granite just above the bunker, a ruinous crack that was about to shatter the granite. They said I had caused that crack. They said that I had done it in front of the entire world. They said I had damaged the bunker where the Greek leaders were sheltered...

These, of course, were only dreams, projections in my own mind of the brilliant images I was experiencing when I was a prisoner. Dreams of my plans to defend the rights of our Macedonian people in the Greek state… Dreams of breaking the bunker of their “Marxism”...

With these dreams I arrived in Moscow as a prisoner late at night on January 3, 1950...

3. Cell - solitary confinement...

It was very cold outside and the snow was crunching with every step. I was very cold and uncomfortable. Every muscle in my body was shivering and shaking. A prison car was waiting about ten metres away from the train wagon I was in. They put me in it. Unexpectedly and sadly, I found myself sitting in a box. It was dark inside. My knees and back, my shoulders and elbows were touching the metallic walls on the inside of the box. There were only about ten centimetres of free space above my head. I felt closed in like a mummy in a casket. There was a rectangular hole in front of my nose to breathe. My escort gave me no consideration that I was a human being. A man in the hands of this Service was no longer a man. This is how I felt. This is how they treated me… not as a man but as a beast. The prison car began to move very slowly and slipped and slid as it went on its way. It was hellishly cold. If the trip took any longer I would have frozen to death. They would have found a real frozen mummy in the box...

Finally we arrived in Lefortovo prison. Two of them escorted me in, one in front and the other behind me. We went down several stairs. It was a long hallway with many doors on both sides. We stopped in front of one of those doors. My escort in front of me unlocked the door and opened it slowly. It was a black and heavy door probably made of oak wood. It was about ten centimetres thick reinforced with iron bars. They pushed me inside and locked the door behind me.

This was my cell… my solitary confinement. My cell was a square box of about two metres wide, three metres long and three metres high. Opposite the door, high up beyond the metre thick ceiling, was a very small window. The window consisted of three layers of thick yellow glass through which was incorporated a wire mesh. The window was not completely sealed. Each layer of glass was about a couple of centimetres shorter that the window on one side and the three layers were alternatively layered to allow air to flow in between them and down into the cell. It was dark inside especially when there was no sunlight outside. An electric light bulb hung from the ceiling and was lit when there was no sunlight during the day.

This is where I was going to spend about two years of my life… and get used to it. But my first impression of it was horrifying. After I was shoved into the cell I stood there about two steps away from the door. The first thing that hit me was a sharp smell of dust and a stench of old, sour filth. I looked around. On the floor in front of me, on the opposite wall under the window, I could clearly see a path worn into the floor. This is where my predecessor had paced back and forth. He turned at the sink on the left wall and stopped at the little cup substituting for a toilet next to me in the left corner. Past that the floor looked like it was covered with some kind of grey carpet. It was a thick layer of hairs and dust which had accumulated over time. There was a narrow bunk along the right wall with its legs sunk into the floor. A little further, directly in front of me, was a little wooden table with a wooden chair under it. So, here, to the right, was where I was going to eat and sleep. And here on the left, was where I was going to wash, do my business and clean my butt with my bare hands. And in between to my left and my right was a little space of a few steps where I was going to do my walking… just like my predecessor had done.

One happy circumstance was that every morning I was given a broom, a basin and a cloth. I cleaned the asphalt floor. I washed it every day, as well as the high base on the walls. In that respect, it seems that this regime was somewhat milder than the regime of my predecessor who literally lived in dirt.

4. Might is right…

I mentioned the regime. Perhaps it would not be a waste of time if I said something about that. A quarter of a century later I still remember it and bitterly resent it.

All charges against me and against the others were dropped and our sentences were annulled altogether. According to them this was because of “lack of evidence of having committed any crimes”. The verdicts were overturned and we were found innocent, that is, we were legally rehabilitated. Unfortunately everything that was done to us, the torment, the humiliations, the violence… everything that we had sacrificed… remained unresolved and hanging in the air. We were left without legal recourse. Crimes were committed against us

and there was nothing we could do because in our case “might was right”.

Sometime after midnight they would barge into my cell, three of them, and violently wake me up from a deep sleep. Then they would order me to get completely naked and stand in the corner facing the walls. They would deliberately take their time searching every spot in the cell. Perhaps today was the day that they would take me to have a bath and a change of clothing or perhaps a change of sheets, etc. I never knew and they did not want me to know anything at all of what was going to happen. I had nothing I could call my own, I only had what they gave me. But it was all the same to them as they carefully searched my cell anyway. They searched my underwear, my clothing, my socks, shoes and everything that was on the bed. In doing so, they would calmly talk to each and laugh paying absolutely no attention to me. Forgetting that I was there and pretending I did not exist… They were seasoned prison guards and did this without care. So, about an hour to an hour and a half later they would finally engage me and order me to come over, stretch my arms out, stretch my fingers open, turn over my hands, uncover my underarms, open my mouth, raise up my tongue, move my tongue to the left, move my tongue to the right, raise my lips to expose my teeth… They would look at my teeth then move to my nose and ears and look inside them like I was some kind of horse being sold in the market. Then they would order me to spread my legs wide open and they would look at my genitals from the left then from the right and then from under while talking about them among themselves... Then they would order me to turn my back, bend down and spread by butt cheeks. One would then say to the others: “maybe he is hiding something in his butt hole…?”

Then, without interrupting their conversation, they would leave me standing there buck naked and my clothes and bedding scattered all over the floor! For them, I was just an object, “material to work with”. As for me, I was trying to be humble and maintain my dignity…

They were like “Robots…!” That’s what I thought of them, and I was just an object, material with which they worked.

5. Life in solitary confinement

Now let’s put some order to this story. Let’s start from the beginning…

The interrogations began the first night immediately after I arrived. During the first year they were regular, almost every night and never during the day. They lasted five to eight hours. The interrogator had a deputy and they switched places. I sat on a little wooden stool and often my butt became numb. My entire body was frozen and ached. Before they had their break they had me escorted back to my cell. As soon as I fell asleep they were back to get me.

I often paced for hours. A couple of steps forward than a couple of steps back, over and over again. I would sit down for a short while and then start pacing again. I was constantly thinking. I tried to stay optimistic. I had to endure. I tried hard not to let my inner peace be disturbed. My strength was in my tranquility and inner peace. As a preventative measure I often plunged to work compiling a collection of short stories about the national liberation movement, one story, then a second story, then a third story... constantly working out the details. I needed to write them down and for that I needed a pencil and paper which they would not give me, so I thought, but I didn’t know for sure. They may have given them to me but I didn’t want to reveal to them even the slightest of my weaknesses or needs. To make it easier for me to remember my stories I used rhythm following the folk verse: “Eleno, Mome, Eleno!” I narrated a short story using several thousand such short verses. But it was hard…! They did not allow sleeping during the day but there were days when my need for sleep was insurmountable. They did not even allow me to lean on anything… not even on the coffee table. There was no sleep at all, not even a nap during the day. But I slept! I slept while standing. With my legs spread apart I leaned against the cold wall below the window. I sheltered myself from the cold wall with my hands. During the days when the electric light was off, because the sun was shining or the snow was causing a glare, it was difficult to see inside the cell from the outside and the guards in the corridors could not tell if I had my eyes open or closed. They looked through the spy hole in the door and all they could see was me standing up. One day I dreamt that I was staring at my own grave in a cemetery.

The coffin shone with a mosaic of colours and stood about half a metre high. The coffin lid lay close by. That too was shining with a mosaic of colours. My grave had not yet been dug. The spot was all grassy and green, which made me very happy...

I even experienced difficulties with “trivialities”. At one point during my solitary confinement the guards ordered me to sleep with my face and arms exposed at all times. I had to sleep on my back facing the window on the ceiling with my arms out of the covers. I had to endure the cold air flowing inside and down on me. I could not sleep on my side, especially facing the wall, and when I did turn in my sleep, the guard rudely woke me up...

It was winter, my first winter. The weather was mostly cold and dreary. There was hardly any light coming down from the tiny windows above. The electric lamp was on around the clock. It was strange how unbearable silence can be. There was absolutely no sound, no voice or whisper. You felt like you were not in a normal world anymore, you felt like you were isolated somewhere in the depths of the earth. I listened to the silence. It sounded like some kind of distorted noise in the distance. It was probably my own blood flow that I was hearing. I felt nostalgic for the sky. Oh, if I could only see a piece of the sky in the day and a star at night! I often thought of asking Firsov, my interrogator, to move me to another cell. But I did not think it would be right to let him know my weakness. I thought about it for two or three weeks. In the end, I decided to keep quiet.

There were days (only in the day, never at night) when I thought something amazing was going to happen. The air would tremble with strong sound waves. It sounded like some huge machines were working somewhere nearby, or more correctly underground, under the building. It felt like the floor, the walls… the entire cell was vibrating and shaking. I would yell at the top of my voice but the sound would get lost. I could not even hear my own voice. Then I would start singing. I would sing the few colourful and cheerful songs I knew. It made me feel better… Finally I would get my chance to do all the yelling I wanted...

6. “Darkness…”

Something like this happened to me.

That particular night was very cold. I dreamt that I was slowly walking down a Skopje street. At one point, I turned and looked back. I saw members of the CPG Central Committee coming out from a side street. They were there for a meeting which they had just finished. Everybody, except for three men, went the other way. The three men came my way and followed me. The man in the middle pulled out a gun and aimed it at me. He shot at me at precisely the moment when I turned. He hit me under my right shoulder. I thought: “Surely he must have pierced my right lung, but it is not fatal!” (I was familiar with the Gorky case. He shot himself in the chest and pierced his lungs, but did not die).

My dream was stunningly clear and very realistic. In fact, it was an accurate picture of what really happened to me. Namely, the Greek leaders did exactly this to me - they shot me in the back.

Then, in the morning, like every other morning, my guard loudly barked the word “padiom!” I jumped out of the bed, to the floor and to the washbasin on the wall. I began washing. My head felt unusually heavy. It felt like it was in a clamp and it was tightening. My head was about to explode. I spit blood. It looked like pink wine. I thought to myself: “Damn, I am really wounded…!”

After I washed my face I stood up… I saw darkness before my eyes...

I regained consciousness in the prison hospital. They took me to the x-ray room. They took x-rays. They took an x-ray of the spot on my back where I dreamt I was shot. They then gave me a huge injection of something in my lower back. I felt horrible and was in pain for an entire week. The next day they sent me back to my cell. I felt a strange pressure under my right shoulder. It felt like a metal finger pushing its way out from the inside. This sensation lasted for about two years. And ever since then, for many years, at first more often and later less often, the spot was very itchy and felt like a healing wound. I can feel it even now.

After that I was allowed to cover my shoulders, that is, to put my arms under the covers...

7. Calmness, patience…

I was firmly resolved to endure my ordeal and submit to the humiliation and the plight associated with me being a prisoner in solitary confinement. When I thought of Piade and Cholakovich serving in a bourgeois prison with a table full of books and with the sun shining on them… and being able to translate Marx’s book “Capital”…, I saw that I, one hundred times less of a “beast” than them, in a socialist prison was subjected by a regime that was one hundred times more severe. And yet…! Had we remained in Zahariadis’s hands we would have been liquidated a long time ago. But no such thing will happen to us here. So one day, whenever it is, I will have my freedom. Then...! Yes. I already said this… Then I will undertake a systematic disclosure of the Greek leadership’s anti-Macedonian policy and fight to defend the rights of our people in the Greek state. By doing so, I would shatter their undeniable authority and damage the bunker of their “Marxism”.

I contribute my consistent mood of calmness of my spirit and my patience to my deep conviction that the slander perpetrated by the Greek leadership against me and against the Macedonian people, one day will crumble and be washed away. In the spring they began to give me Russian fiction books to read. They gave me one or two small books every week. They also began to take me for a 15-minute walk, alone, of course. The yard was divided into smaller plots fenced with well-mated thick planks, three to four metres high. I walked in circles in one of those plots keeping my hands behind my back. The guard watched me from above from a balcony path made of planks. I was not allowed to stop walking. One time I saw an airplane flying through the sky leaving behind an exhaust trail. This was my first time. Then, without even being aware, I stopped and curiously watched the airplane fly. The guard screamed at me. These prison guards are funny people… They only speak… You only hear them and realize that they have a voice when you break the rules. I tried several times to speak with them, to ask them something. They did not react at all. They were like robots doing only what they were programmed to do…

It was certainly a great relief to have books to read and to walk outside. Recognizing two or three Russian words in a sentence that were similar to Macedonian helped me understand the meaning of more words. It was sluggish but interesting. I was constantly enriching my vocabulary with Russian words. In time reading became easier and I was glad to read Gorki, Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Leo and Alexey Tolstoy, Turgeniev, etc.

About two years later I was transferred to the Butir Prison. My cell there was spatial in comparison to my last cell. The cell had two beds. Past the beds the cell wall was tiled and had a real window. It looked more like a bright double room than a cell. There was no washbasin or toilet inside the cell. Every morning and evening I was led down a long hallway to the end of the building for those things. They also brought the German Kurt Nast here. He was President Pick’s personal driver. Things were much better now. At least I had someone to talk to. He knew a little Russian. Three months later they moved him. I remained alone until June 1952, when I was moved to East Siberia...

8. Slandering...

Here is something about the content and course of my interrogations.

As I mentioned earlier, my interrogations began the first night I arrived. Lieutenant Colonel Firsov was assisted by a captain who was a Russian Greek (and who spoke Greek). I was showered with questions such as the following:

Which officer, from which foreign intelligence, recruited you…?

What tasks were you given…?

Which of them did you complete, and which did you not complete…?

Why did you not execute the last tasks…?

I felt the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. I was very surprised and confused. I did not expect that. These charges felt like heavy physical blows to my head. My blood was boiling and rising to my head. My neck, ears and face felt like they were on fire and burning.

After I calmed down a bit I asked for an explanation as to why I was asked this particular kind of question and how did they relate to the struggle against the imperialists in the West in which I was involved. I said to him that I had already signed such a statement, and with your help, because I didn’t know any other officers from any other intelligence service...

The interrogator looked surprised and thought for a moment. He then said that he was only asking these kinds of questions to get to the truth... I immediately felt relieved. I was feeling much better now. I answered all his questions but none of them had anything to do with the truth. Nothing like that had ever happened to me...

Months passed. The interrogator stubbornly tried to get me to confess… He applied various interrogative techniques. He started from afar, covered every angle while tightening the interrogation in hopes of “cornering” me in his hunt. One time he brought a Greek book. The Greek leaders published many such books. His Greek assistant opened it in front of me while making sure I did not see the title on the cover. He pointed to a page inside and read a paragraph that said when I was attending “Didaskalioto” (Teacher’s school), I was an agent of the Asfalia (Greek Security Service) and that I denounced the Didaskalisti (School teachers) before my time. In another place in the book he showed me something which I then read myself. It said that I was a senior official in the Metaxas semi-fascist youth organization EON, and I that was a falangarhist (phalangist)…!

So, according to them I was a former agent of the Asfalia and a fascist…!

I defended myself vigorously by telling them that the “real events” that took place were far different from the fictional ones in these books and that these events took place at certain locations and at

certain times. The truth is that I did not study at the “Didaskalio” and I was never a member of EON. These were fabrications. They showed me what was said in the book but it was by no chance that they “failed” to show me when and where I was a “phalangarhist” or when and where I was studying in the “Didaskalio”. The Party as well as everyone who knew me, of course, knew that these things were not true. Obviously this was done to defame me. The publishers of this party edition used the book erroneously to defame me. Allow me to explain: There was a man named Georgi Rakovski from our native village. He was loyal to the Greek cause. He was admitted to the National Boarding School in Lerin and was educated at the Greek state’s expense at the “Didaskalioto”. He wanted to become a Greek teacher. He was a falangarhist and possibly an agent of the Asfalia. The author of the book, probably a Didaskalist from Georgi’s past who was not happy with Georgi, was talking about Georgi Rakovski. In any case, what I am trying to say here is that the ex-Didaskalist was talking about Georgi Rakovski and not about me. He did not even know me. But the Greeks who wanted to defame me did not care about that and probably neglected to tell the interrogator that the book was talking about another Rakovski. So, I ended up being accused of what another person had done…!

9. Pressure tactics

I suffered the most from statements made by two individuals from our group. They were Mitrevski and Vera. Mitrevski told the interrogators that I was an OZNA official and that I was recruiting agents and sending them to the field to do undercover work against the CPG and DAG. He claimed that, as secretary of the political committee, I had recruited agents and sent them into the field to damage the CPG and DAG. Vera claimed that while she and I were passing through Skopje to go Bulgaria as members of a delegation headed by me, I visited Keramidzhiev and gave him spy material. She said she saw this personally.

Firsov pierced my soul trying to get me to confess about these things. It was not easy for him either. He spent countless nights interrogating me over and over again about the same thing. When he failed to get what he wanted from me through ordinary interrogative tricks, he began to use specific pressure tactics. First he arranged to

have an acoustic session of physical torture. He had someone in the next room behind closed doors scream in agony presumably from being physically tortured. As for me, I calmly listened and tried to find the right elements to act out my horrors. At one point, while nodding his head pointing towards next door, Firsov said:

“Do you want something similar to that to happen to you…?”

I calmly said: “I would not be surprised. The moment I sit on this chair, I have to be prepared for everything...” I then calmly sat down and said: “It all depends on you!”

Nothing like that happened to me, but I don’t think I owe it to Firsov. It would appear that from my reaction, he concluded that I was not intimidated by physical torture, so he moved on to different pressure tactics. He began to work on my dignity and nerves. First he ordered searches of my cell like the ones I described earlier, in hopes of humiliating and intimidating me. He then had the guards issue me a cloth and a bucket and lead me to clean the prison Turkish-style toilets. He did this for three days to see what effect it would have on me. The most unbearable part about this, of course, was the lack of sleep on my part. I was not allowed sleep during the day and I spent most of my nights standing against the wall or cleaning toilets. And for the short moments I was allowed to sleep I had to face the door. So when the guard, looking through the spy hole, noticed that I had my eyes closed he would make a terribly loud metallic sound in front of my cell door that would violently waken me. It felt like a sharp needle had penetrated into my brain. I would jump off my bed. At first I was wondering what that was…? What had happened…? After that I would sit on the bed for a long time and wait… but nothing would happen… There would be absolute silence. Then I would lie down again and moments after I fell asleep “bang” another terribly sharp sound. I wondered what the hell it could be. What did it mean…?! I then focused my eyes on the spy hole. I could make out a shadow standing behind the door, probably spying on me. Oh well, what was I to do? There would be no sleep for me this night. So I would lie down and stare at the ceiling. I would then sense the guard adjusting his legs to make himself more comfortable. If I paid careful attention I could hear the creaking of his boots as he adjusted his feet. I would then

deliberately close my eyes but there would be no sharp and loud sound. And then would hope that perhaps there would be no more of those sharp loud sounds. I hoped so and if there was one, I hoped it would not startle me. I would slowly relax and fall asleep. But as soon as I fell asleep “bang” another sound would be made, this time even louder. This would go on all night long. They would not leave me alone until morning and would only allow me five, fifteen, thirty minutes of sleep in total before my wake up call. I had no choice but to get up because they kept watch over me all day long. Then in the evening, the cycle would begin all over again. Clearly, this was Firsov’s work to break me down...

On the fourth day I was taken to a doctor who carefully checked my heart. After that the torment was renewed during the evening. The next day my heart was checked again. Tormented by night and disturbed by day… that was my routine. My life was getting unbearable. How the hell was a person expected to move on? I was terribly disturbed. I had survived crisis situations several times… but not like this one. For a while I felt like I was going to “explode”. I felt the need to wildly attack the door and swear and yell like a madman. But I knew it would be madness so I found the strength to stay calm. The ninth day was the last time they checked my heart and allowed me to sleep all night. The next day passed peacefully. Then, during the night they took me for questioning. Firsov sat silently for a long time browsing over the notes from the previous interrogations. When he was done he asked:

“How are you? How are you feeling…?” He was hoping that I was going to break down.

“I am feeling fine, normal, thank you…!” I lied.

“What is normal…?” he asked.

I smiled reluctantly, and said:

“Well, like being in jail... under investigation…!”

And so he continued with his questions.

As an OZNA official, what rank did you have…?

What people, by name and surname, did you send to the field to undermine the work…?

What kind of tasks did you give them to perform…?

I stood my ground and firmly defended myself. I kept telling him, this is pure fabrication…!

10. Cabbage soup

A three month period followed without interrogations but with a new kind of torture - bad food. The food they gave me was terribly uniform and weak. Breakfast consisted of “shchi” (boiled sour cabbage soup). For lunch and dinner I was given “shchi”. This went on for a month. “Shchi”, “shchi”, “shchi” and nothing but “shchi” three times a day every day…

I was firmly resolved to... survive this. I was prepared to physically maintain myself as much as possible. Things got harder with time but I held on for a second month. My body was saturated with cabbage and it began to refuse it. Sometime in the middle of the third month, just smelling it from afar caused me to vomit. I returned the portions of “shchi” untouched. I only ate bread. It went like that for a week. At the end of the third month, three of them came to visit me one night. A senior lieutenant, a corporal and a soldier (guard).

“Why do you refuse, and return the food…? Are you on a hunger strike…?” I was asked.

“No,” I replied. “I eat what I can. I am pumped up full of cabbage from the top of my head to the bottom of my heels. My blood has turned into cabbage sauce. My breath, my body and my soul stink of rotten cabbage…!”

They laughed and left.

Shortly afterwards two of them took me to interrogation. Firsov showered me with questions:

From when until when were you secretary of the political committee…?

Who are the people you sent into the field and what were their specific tasks?

What specific spying material did you surrender to Keramidzhiev in Skopje…?

I calmly and firmly refused to answer his questions telling him that all this was just pure fiction, and that I had no way of knowing who concocted it and why... Lately I began to dream the same dream which I had dreamt a long time ago, when the interrogations first began. I dreamt that I stood alone in the middle of a church, a basilica, which had a ceiling painted like the sky with stars. There was a black crack curving along the ceiling above me extending along the wall down to the floor. But the crack on the wall was not really any crack. It was a tunnel in which a huge dragon crept. I could clearly see how its powerful body moved slowly...

The church symbolized the prison. The dragon above my head symbolized the lurking danger. This was my situation. My dream was a picturesque projection of my understanding of my situation... Yes, Firsov was persistent and dangerous. But to admit to things that were not true was not what I had in mind. It would be stupid and hopeless.

In the end I came face to face with the two from our Group. I had two “gripes” with Mitrevski and one with Vera. And here we found out who was lying... Since then, my interrogator left me alone to get some sleep and my food situation improved...

11. To Eastern Siberia

Two years and eight months have passed since the day I was arrested on October 2, 1949, by the Greek leaders and locked up in the Bureli detention camp in Albania. I spent the first three months

in solitary confinement in Tirana. And with the exception of being with Kurt Nast, the German prisoner for three months, I spent the rest of my time in solitary confinement in Moscow. The interrogations were formally completed on May 30, 1952. That day, and yes it was during the day, they took me to an office. The Greek captain in the Ministry of Internal Affairs offered to translate the verdict and the other documents for me but I asked if I could read them myself. It appears that some “Special advisory” group at the USSR Supreme Court had convicted me (while I was pacing back and forth in my cell) to ten years forced labour without any personal freedom, to be served at the Correctional Labor Camps - ITL. This was done on the basis of Article 58, items 4 and 11 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code. I was found guilty of having links to the international reactionaries and guilty of organizing activities in their favour.

I was very angry and strongly disappointed. I had a completely different notion of Justice, believing that this was the Judiciary of the most humane society, the socialist society, in which a person was valued the most.

I was convicted without a trial…

The right to be acquainted with the indictment… the right to know who had testified against me and what they had said… the right to defend myself alone or with the help of an attorney… the right to raise objections to irregularities… all of these rights were taken away from me. I did not have any rights… or opportunities. Even the “Holy Inquisition” offered more to their captives. Why was this happening today…? At the time none of this was clear to me, especially how I could have violated the Russian Federation Criminal Code in the Greek part of my homeland while fighting against my mortal enemy and the enemy of our nation, the Greek chauvinists that belonged to the political right…

In mid-June 1952, they sent me from Moscow to Eastern Siberia to serve my sentence...

I lay there in a solitary confinement cell on board a train listening to the smooth steel wheels clinking over the rail joints. Above my

head, in the corridor behind the bars, stood a special armed guard assigned to me. I had a special armed guard in Moscow. He would pace two steps away, come back and peep through the spy hole. This one did not move at all. He just stood there holding his machine gun against his stomach. He looked menacing… I had no idea what was waiting for me… We will see... It was probably another attempt at psychological terror. It was a cold-blooded and obvious attack on my inner peace… Attempts of this kind were psychological harassment. I was the only one who did not know what was going to happen to me… All will be revealed in time…

We had a rest in Novosibirsk. I had a bath and change of underwear. I met Lazo Poplazarov for the first time since we were arrested here in the prison bath. He looked at me with his eyes wide open and said he never imagined that I could survive my ordeal let alone come out so muscular...

I looked at him curiously... Clearly my body was swollen and not with muscles so I pressed one of my fingers into my chest causing a depression which took a long time to return and straighten out.

We stayed here a couple of days and then continued on our way East. Our prison wagon was attached to the end of a freight train and we slowly-slowly moved along...

One night while traveling on the Trans-Siberian train, I dreamt that I was looking up high on a heap of holy white bones belonging to Macedonians… belonging to the fighters who died for Macedonia. A large number of them were resting on a marble scene at the top of a tall hill fully exposed to sunlight. Their reflective glow shined back looking like a glowing goddess, a lovely pink girl symbolizing Macedonian Freedom. Beside her stood History (an image of the goddesses), looking at her daughter, admiring her motherly. Then I heard her say:

“Daughter you are strong and beautiful, and you belong to the future…!”

To her left she was holding Macedonian Freedom by her hand, helping her stand up. Beside her was an older sister called

Democracy, a very beautiful woman, better known as Balkan Democracy (because she was born in the Balkans). And below them stood democratic Mankind who watched this scene with interest and lively sympathy...

This was a brilliant and lively picture. I often marvel at the mechanism in man that has the ability to do this. This beautiful image I dreamt was only a reflection of my understanding of historical events. It was my conviction that History, in creating the multinational Yugoslav state, in creating in it a strong communist party incapable of “persistent sin” over the Macedonian national question, and within all this creating a centre and a guarantee for Macedonian Freedom, has created the conditions so that Macedonian Freedom can be resolved and can endure!

Balkan Democracy, the older sister, had nothing to do with that Democracy that was born in ancient Athens, in the Athenian society of slaveholders, and which then was used by the bourgeoisie in this world. This was a different kind of Democracy, an unprecedented popular and widespread Democracy that was born from the struggles of the fraternity and rebelliousness of the Yugoslav people and grew and strengthened within the National Liberation Committees, the AVNOJ Sittings and the Constitution of New Yugoslavia...

I was more curious than worried when we arrived in Eastern Siberia, and like the saying goes “a lie has short legs and can’t go very far”. I was sure that I would not be a prisoner for the many years I was sent here to serve...

Skopje, 1976.

I took the night train from Belgrade and arrived in Skopje on March 1, 1960. It was early morning and the platform was empty. A few people from the Security Services were there waiting for me… I could see it in their eyes that they were not there to help me. With the coach wagon overloaded with my family and baggage I headed for the only address I knew – to my friend Vangel Aianovski-Oche. He, unfortunately, did not welcome me as his former superior and as an old friend. In the afternoon when I wanted to take a walk through the streets of Skopje he did not come with me. He sent one of his

“agitators” to accompany me. But, no matter what, that night I was his guest. The next day I moved to a hotel.

We had not seen each other since May 1949 when I was passing through Skopje returning from Prague through Sofia. This was and remains to be my last direct contact with him. The reason for this was, with passing time I found out many unsettling things about him. He had gained power and began to intimidate the activists from Voden Region and in general all the people from Greek occupied Macedonia. He even forced Georgi Iakata-Gushi, who with his military unit provided support for the withdrawal of the ELAS Voden Macedonian Battalion to Yugoslavia, to go back to Greek occupied Macedonia. He did and died there. He sent old Communists, like Kiro Kachev, and others, to jail and had them tortured... Through all this a disturbing thought kept circling through my mind: “Aianovski can have you killed over the telephone…!”

I know of many instances from my comrades from Voden Region who did not submit their memoirs to INI (Institute of National History) because they were afraid of Aianovski. And it would appear that their fears were justified. Aianovski never once missed an opportunity to take revenge. I don’t have to go far to prove this. One time I was personally asked by the editorial board of the magazine “Istoria” to write a critique on Aianovski’s book “Aegean Storms”. In it Aianovski had written things about many events and people. But I did a critique only on those events in which I directly had participated. Aianovski did not like what I said and as a result he took revenge on me by making sure that I was deprived of my pension supplement… His argument was that I did not earn it therefore I did not deserve it. He did more than that. He also made sure Urania Rakovska was also deprived of her pension supplement. Urania was elected regular member of the NOF Central Council both at the 1st and 2nd Congress. At the 1st AFZH Congress she was elected member of the Executive Council. As member of the KOEM managerial active she was editor-in-chief of the AFZH newspaper “Nova Makedonka”. Before that she was AFZH Secretary in Lerin District.

A friend of mine who caught me writing these lines said:

“It’s dangerous to write things like about Aianovski... Aren’t you afraid of him…?”

In retrospect I should have been afraid. But this is how I am. I did many things knowing they were dangerous. And it was by no accident that I ended up a prisoner in Stalin’s camps in Siberia. After that Aianovski allowed himself to fall so low that he began to perform his official duties like they were his private work...

When I told Urania Iurukova, an AFZH activist who had achieved much in her life, what was happening to me and my wife, she was amazed that Aianovski would deny me and my wife our pension supplements but would approve of giving a hefty supplement to Nuli Raleva…

Urania then said: “Both the Aianovski and Paiov families are receiving their full pension supplements and you and Urania have been refused! Why are you keeping silent about it…? Why aren’t you complaining…? Go to the Central Committee President… the Executive Council President… the Union of Fighters... Tell them what’s happening... Start demanding…!”

“I can’t…” I said to Urania. “It’s about money and... I am ashamed to ask... To bother them...”

My wife, my two children and I, lived in a single room with three beds for over three years. I didn’t pay rent, of course. Both my wife and I were unemployed. As aid I received 20,000 dinars a month. We lived hard lives full of uncertainty. I tried to meet with Lazo (Kolishevski) but without success. Sometime earlier he had embraced and kissed me while escorting me out of his office. Now he didn’t even want to see me. I got the message… I should expect nothing from my visits to state halls and party buildings. I was written off… I was disloyal to them... “We don’t make claims because we don’t have evidence… but we think you are here as an agent…!” This is what the SVR representative told me in Panchevo. I had to wait for the time to change… when telling the truth would benefit me… And in that sense, eight years later, I visited the same SVR representative who this time received me kindly...

I looked him in the eye and said: “Do you still think that I came back with my wife and children as an agent?!” He laughed and said:

“Well, Pavle…! We are not children…?!”