PROTEST AND PLEA

PROTEST AND PLEA

From Pavle Rakovski (Resenska 6 / 1-4, Skopje).

I would like to remind you that the NOF Founding Bureau for Aegean Macedonia was constituted on April 23, 1945, here in Skopje, in the CPM (SKM) Central Committee premises. Up until NOF was placed under the leadership of the CPG, that is during the year and a half after it was founded, its founders, the five members

of the founding bureau, met regularly and received assignments here in the premises of the Central Committee. Fortunately or unfortunately, as it happened, I was one of those five members who laid NOF’s foundation…

This year will be the 40th year since NOF was founded in the Macedonian territories under Greece, for which preparations are being made to celebrate its anniversary. Radio Skopje was broadcasting a special show yesterday in which prominent former NOF activists participated...

It is well-known that the members of the NOF Founding Bureau were and remained to be closest to the central leadership... It is also well-known that out of those five, two fell in the field, and another two died recently here in Skopje. Fortunately or unfortunately, out of the five, I happened to be still alive and well but was not invited to participate in the Radio Skopje broadcast mentioned above… In other words I was ignored…!

This is a moral and political blow, a terrible insult not only to me but to thousands of comrades… This is reminiscent of the time I was in Voden Region when important public gatherings were held with the fighters… to which I was not invited. It was well-known to everyone that I brought the Voden Macedonian battalion to ELAS and that I was its commander. Yet I was ignored. You may not believe me if I told you that I was not affected by this... I thought to myself, the person who called these gatherings, a famous activist from Voden, wanted to show off with someone else’s feathers (I have his own written evidence of it). I also thought of how humiliating this was for me and surprisingly he did not see it that way. Well, I let him have it his way! However, this… the case with Radio Skopje, I can not ignore…

With this letter I protest and ask for protection. I know there are people who have made statements against me, that I supposedly was some kind of agent of the USSR. But that’s just filthy slander which I have always rejected. Besides, these statements by themselves prove nothing. In my case they are only desires to put me in jeopardy. These people, however, are afraid that I might endanger their careers and for that reason they want to get rid of me. Why am

I being attacked for so long? It seems that I made a bad mistake of waiting and lost the time that would have helped me and would have worked for the benefit of the truth! (I also told this to Kiro Sotirovski-Strogov when I was still in Panchevo)...

Radio Mileva announced that the show host of the 40th anniversary special show on Radio Skopje, mentioned earlier, had intended to call me and ask me to attend the show as one of NOF’s main leadership activists but someone in your service stopped him. I can’t help myself but ask: ‘What specifically have I done to be treated this way…?’

I was advised to go through the legal system but I did not accept that advice. Instead I decided to write you this letter of protest and seek your protection. I am looking to you to clear me of this and to obtain my rehabilitation. I don’t want this for me personally as I have already lived my life. I need the rehabilitation to protect my wife and children from various abuses, I owe them this. I want to believe that you will show the necessary understanding and goodwill, and you will help an old fighter and his family to get rid of further troubles...”

That was the content of the letter... But I also used the opportunity to further inform them of my ordeals. Here is what I wrote:

“After having spent five and a half years being a prisoner sentenced to hard labour in the Siberian camps and four and a half years interned in Kazakhstan, for being a supporter of ‘Macedonian nationalism’, i.e. an agent of the CPY and Yugoslavia, I finally received a Soviet visa to come to Skopje.

When I arrived at Subotitsa I was unexpectedly taken off the train with my wife, two children and our luggage. My wife had come from Poland to join me in Kazakhstan and now we were all headed for Skopje… so I thought. Accompanied by a man from the ‘interior’ we were put on a night train and sent to Belgrade. We were then transferred from Belgrade to Panchevo by a prisoner car. We were then locked up in a room at a police station.

We were locked up for three days before Kiro Sotirovski-Strogov, a representative from the Interior Ministry, arrived. He brought with him a typist and a typewriter. He ‘interrogated’ me for ten days. My wife was interrogated for three or four days. After the interrogation was over he said: ‘Pavle, we do not make claims, because we do not have any evidence, but we think you came here as an agent…!’ I denied the allegations but all my effort was in vain. I told him I came here because I wanted my children to learn their mother tongue and to grow up among their own native people... I am not an agent…!

It was a bitter surprise to me when, at one point, he said: ‘I would sacrifice ten Rakovski’s for this Yugoslavia…!’

This was strange patriotism indeed! Egoistically, and above all without cause, he denied my patriotism. Clearly, this was a serious offense. He certainly knew that there can be NO GUILT without evidence, yet he was ready to ‘sacrifice’ ten people like me! I thought to myself this comrade was not right at all. This was not and could not be in Yugoslavia’s interests to sacrifice an innocent person like myself who was a prisoner in Siberia because I was supposedly loyal to Yugoslavia. This was working against Yugoslav interests and was a crime against humanity…!

I did not try to defend myself or Yugoslavia before this man of authority, mainly as a precautionary measure because I could clearly see the danger I could be in because, obviously, my ‘sacrifice’ meant nothing to him. I refrained. Instead of arguing with him, I calmly said to him that ‘if you don’t believe me when I tell you I am an agent I have no choice but to wait. I must wait for the right occasion when time begins to work for the benefit of the truth… and that will help me…!’

I waited too long and that was a fatal error on my part. Over twenty-six years have passed since then. It has been quite a long time yet the truth has not yet surfaced. I was mistaken to believe that someone of authority would have a conscience and speak up. My removal from everything was continued while I was ignored, written off… sacrificed. Clearly, because of this, my entire family has gone

through hell. We have survived many inconveniences… including my wife and children...

It was well-known that my wife and daughter were almost murdered before they fled. There were orders to have her physically liquidated because she was accused of being a ‘Macedonian nationalist’ and for not giving up her husband Pavle Rakovski. Everything in their power was done to get her to say that Pavle Rakovski was a ‘Yugoslav agent’ and that she should turn against him and against Yugoslavia… But she didn’t. After she escaped to Poland she was mistreated by members of the Greek leadership’s secret services who, over time, went to Yugoslavia where they were well-accepted, settled and ironically given cushy positions. So my wife would like to know: ‘Why are we being punished and exposed to ridicule by the very people who until yesterday were agents working for foreign interests…?’

And another, but no less bitter thing: Our people who served as couriers in the struggle, by law received their envisaged ‘special allowance’ with their pensions. I did not get mine… I was denied. My wife was also denied. Apparently we did not deserve it… not as much as our couriers... They found formal reasons to refuse us. This was a difficult moral and political blow… and given the high inflation, also a heavy blow to our economic survival. My “friend” sitting in the relevant IC commission, fitting into the created situation, managed to abuse his function and, for his own special reasons, did this to us...

Believe me Comrades, I have had enough! I waited long enough for the truth to come out… I can no longer accept to remain a ‘sacrifice’. No one has the right to do this to me. While I was fighting in the battlefield during the long struggle, I was sentenced to death three times by a Greek military court. These three death sentences imposed on me by my enemy are the highest decorations I could have received on the battlefield… No one can say that these death sentences were given to me for ‘nothing’. And here, you see, some people who lack a conscience, have concocted a situation to make my life a living hell, continuously denigrating and humiliating me in front of thousands of my comrades...

Comrades, it can’t be this way anymore. The degrading treatment that I have been subjected to must stop. The accusations that I have been disloyal to my fatherland must end. Just because someone in the SVR thought I was an agent, without providing a shred of evidence, does not make me an agent. One can love their fatherland and work for it from far away, even from over the ocean. I have a sister overseas who loves her fatherland… But, setting all that aside, today I chose to ask you for your help to secure my family. I am addressing you and asking you to protect my family. I am asking you to find a way to end this torment and treat me and my family fairly.

I must confess that at this moment, with some bitterness, I am reminded of what happened when I addressed Chemerski, SKM Central Committee President, when my address had the fate of a scream in the wilderness. This was because, according to Radio Mileva, Urania Iurukova gave damning testimony against me. I have faith that this letter will not be ignored and you will do everything necessary to help end these tribulations for me and for my family...

Skopje, March 25, 1985 With respect Pavle Rakovski”