REPORT - Part 02

“Continuing with his disinformation and fabrications, Rakovski claims that soon after the meeting, in June 1947, Paskal Mitrevski, then member of the Macedonian CPG Bureau, arrived with a directive from the Bureau calling for Aianovski’s immediate suspension from the NOF secretariat, and for Pavle Rakovski to be punished by a Party reprimand. According to Rakovski, the reason for Aianovski’s suspension was because of “something else”… While he gave no reason for his own punishment… None of this, however, corresponded to the truth! After months of absence from the movement Mitrevski arrived in June 1947, but not from the Macedonian Bureau, from Yugoslavia. Mitrevski submitted his proposal to the Macedonian Bureau for Aianovski’s removal as well as for other NOF leaders, in August 1947, but it was not accepted by the Bureau. Also, no meeting or any forum was held until the NOF I Congress, held in January, 1948, during which NOF personnel changes were made. Moreover, the organizational report for the NOF I Congress was prepared by Aianovski, which proves that he was an organizational secretary at the Congress…!” (52)

It would appear that from what was written in “Istoria”, the authors are in support of Aianovski’s arguments that with the implementation of the “unity” agreement, when the NOF leadership was reorganized, he was accepted by the Greek side as a member of the narrow NOF leadership. I quote: “The following people were appointed in the new NOF central leadership: The then leader Paskal Mitrevski, after the agreement, was co-opted as a member of the CPG Provincial Committee for Macedonia, Mihail Keramidzhiev was appointed NOF political secretary and Vangel Aianovski-Oche... etc., were appointed members...” (53) But, understandably,

Aianovski was silent and said nothing about being appointed member of the narrow leadership. But, according to “Istoria” and according to his own claims, Aianovski was NOF organizing secretary since November 21, 1946, the day “unity” was established, and remained so until the NOF I Congress held on January 13, 1948. And because of this, Pavle Rakovski was publicly declared a person without dignity, who does not know how to respect himself let alone the historical truth and “continues with his fabrications and disinformation and nothing that he says corresponds to the truth…!”

However, on page 239 of his book “Aegean Storms” Aianovski himself denies all this. He himself has acknowledged that until May 20, 1947, that is until NOF’s meeting, he was employed as an instructor in Voden Region. In addition to that because he was guilty of some crimes, the Greek side of CPG and ELAS had him arrested and sent to prison in the months of September and October 1944. Some people in Voden Region accused him of accepting corn from the Bulgarians, but only the Greek side knew the real reason why he was arrested. Then, after he was released from prison he took shelter in the ranks of the Voden Macedonian battalion just hours before the battalion departed and crossed over the border. The people of Voden did not get the chance to let us know about him until much later. And then, after he was appointed organizational secretary of NOF, the Greek side intervened and suspended him.

In connection to this, on page 15 of my text entitled “Problems with our recent history”, the text that the editorial board of “Istoria” declined to publish, I wrote:

“Soon after the June 1947 meeting, Paskal Mitrevski, then member of the CPG Provincial Bureau, arrived with a directive from the Bureau to immediately suspend Aianovski from the secretariat. And I, Rakovski, received a party reprimand for my part in recommending him. For my part I suppose I, Rakovski, was reprimanded for recommending someone I did not know.” Naturally how was I expected to know all of Aianovski’s other dealings? Especially since no one said anything to me and nothing was published in the press mentioning Aianovski. After that Aianovski continued to function as an instructor in Voden Region.

Later, during the NOF I Congress, held on January 13, 1948, Aianovski was not even considered and did not enter the list of candidates for the top NOF leadership constituted by the CPG Central Committee Politburo.

Later, in September 1948, Aianovski fled to the People’s Republic of Macedonia and left the struggle and the movement.

This means that even though Aianovski was appointed member of the narrow NOF leadership he never succeeded in doing any work. He never took part in any of the NOF secretariat working meetings.

But, in spite of what was said and done, after the NOF meeting, Aianovski acted like a NOF “organizing secretary”, especially in the field! Therefore it is not beyond reason to assume that Aianovski was still seen as “NOF organizing secretary” after he was suspended, especially by those who were not aware of his suspension, and for him to have received correspondence from them, addressing him as “NOF organizing secretary”. And it is not beyond reason that Aianovski carefully collected and guarded all those documents, as well as any other documents he obtained during the Macedonian national liberation movement from the time of ELAS and DAG, and then delivered them to writers like Dr. Risto Kiriazovski who then published them in the edition “Aegean Macedonia at the National Liberation War” and in his own works, which elevated him to “the second man in command of NOF…”

The establishment of “unity” in November 12, 1946, gave the Greek leaders the opportunity to lead a devastating blow against the Macedonian national liberation movement from inside, from within the ranks of NOF.

By knowing their intentions, which in fact were obvious to all of us, Paskal Mitrevski, then instructor of the CPG Bureau for Macedonia in NOF, self-initiated and secretly from all of us in the NOF narrow leadership, sent a letter to Zahariadis in which he said:

“We need to clean NOF from the “nationalists” and bring new blood to it!” Dr. Risto Kiriazovski has a photocopy of this letter in his archives.

Mitrevski himself was actively involved in implementing NOF’s “purge” and “revitalization”. This was confirmed in an article published in “Glasnik” No. 2-3 / 1977, an organ of INI, where Mitrevski said, when he was secretary of the Macedonian NOF leadership (he did not say he was a CPG instructor), immediately after “unity” was established, he met with General Markos and his deputy Kikitsas and decided:

To send the Macedonian fighters to act in the “interior of Greece” and the Greek DAG units to act in Macedonia...

In his biography written by Kliakich, General Markos said: “By agreement between DAG Commander Markos and Macedonian NOF leader Paskal Mitrevski... one part of the DAG combat units remained in Aegean Macedonia to continue the fighting, while the other part, Macedonians and Greeks, left for the interior of Greece…” (p. 122)

One way or another, this may have been justified and of course with benevolence… which was done. But there were consequences:

I. The Macedonian units with their military presence and political activities flared up the revolutionary desire in the Macedonian people, from whom DAG’s ranks swelled up. But because of that, the “Greek character” of Greek occupied Macedonia suffered greatly. But, with their withdrawal away from Macedonia and “into the interior of Greece”, the Macedonian units stopped influencing the “dangerous” situation in Macedonia. This unfortunately was not only a blow against the Macedonian national liberation movement, but also a blow against DAG and the uprising in general.

II. The Greek units that remained behind and replaced the Macedonian units were basically left behind to control the situation and, more or less, save the “Greek character” of Macedonia. They were sent there to suppress the Macedonian revolutionary spirit and prevent the revolution from escalating. This was a preventive measure taken in order to control and squelch the Macedonian national liberation movement.

III. Hundreds of thousands of Greek people in the interior of Greece were shaken up by the appearance of Macedonian units. They feared that these soldiers belonged to international Slavic brigades which, according to the rival propaganda, allegedly entered Greece through the territory of their northern neighbours and escaped in the centres and from DAG reserves and turned the uprising into a reserve for counter revolutionaries. But that was not all. In its measures to avoid misunderstandings, instead of informing the Greek people of Epirus that these soldiers were Macedonians from inside Greece, 8th Division DAG command ordered the Macedonian fighters not to speak, sing, dance or in any way express their Macedonian identity and represent themselves to the people only as Greeks!

IV. Pinned in uneven battles against a more organized, better armed and trained superior opponent, the Macedonian units in the interior of Greece were gradually liquidated. To make it easier, as there was no other purpose for this, the Macedonian unit commanders were removed and replaced with Greek commanders. There were, of course, protests and resistance but those who protested and resisted were charged with heavy penalties that included executions. Among those executed was a friend of mine named Kradzhova, a woman from the village Tsakni, Meglen Region. There was also, of course, the NOF directive: “To discipline DAG command.”

Having in mind that these Macedonian units were elite Macedonian revolutionary units composed of people who had been persecuted for a long time and who fought as fearless bearers of the Macedonian national ideal, one cannot avoid but conclude that their liquidation was a mass “cleansing” of Macedonian “patriots”.

This was indeed a heavy blow against the Macedonian national liberation movement, against NOF, against the Macedonian people, against DAG and, no doubt, against the uprising itself...

Unfortunately none of the Greek authors who wrote about this saw or mentioned these consequences. They were silent about it and blatantly wanted to blur and obscure the truth by persistently claiming that all this was done in favour of “achieving equality for the Macedonian people”.

Like the Greek authors, our Greek Party leaders and comrades responsible for the revolution and for what happened in it, also do not perceive these consequences. They too speak of “full equality for the Macedonians”... According to Markos: “Soon after ‘unity’ was achieved the revolutionary struggle expanded... Thanks to the NOF leadership’s decisive attitude, the Macedonian people’s expectations of becoming equal were expressed in all areas of the socio-political and public life in the liberated territories. Since then, until the end of the Greek Civil War, there was not a single authority in the people’s government on the territory of Aegean Macedonia, from municipal to district to the highest governmental forum, in which the Macedonian people were not represented!” (Taken from Markos Vafiadis’s biography.) (54)

Mitrevski too wanted to say something regarding the direction our Greek friends took with regards to the crimes they committed against the Macedonian people at that time. In an issue of “Glasnik” he said: “Wrongdoing and mistakes... they truly had their place in the activities and actions of DAG command and the CPG central and regional leaderships in relation to the Macedonians.” (Page 204.) But no one is without mistakes. Life cannot be without them. According to Mitrevski “the Macedonian people achieved equality” and he found “tangible material” in the fact that:

“Many Macedonian cadres rose and took up senior management positions in the movement…!” (Page 203.)

In defending the principles, i.e. the consistency of our Greek comrades, Mitrevski through “Glasnik”, organ of Macedonian historians and our historiography, quite seriously claims that, apart from himself, SOME MONTHS BEFORE DAG’S DEFEAT, Macedonians “were raised to senior management positions in the movement”, people such as Kotsopoulos and Koitsis, in other words Kochev and Koichev, names they were given when they were appointed representatives of the Macedonians. They were the only ones plus Mitrevski. Mitrevski was appointed “Minister of the Provisional Democratic Government of Greece”, Kotsopoulos “Chief Director of the General Directorate of National Minorities in Greece”, and Koitsis “member of DAG Military Squads…”

Similarly, Markos also said: “Macedonians were in the leadership of DAG in similar positions. In many counts, battalions, brigades and other larger military formations, the commander or political commissar was a Macedonian!” (55)

Mitrevski (like an echo) made similar claims:

“Macedonians were placed in the leadership structures of DAG in similar positions. In a significant part of the units, battalions, brigades and other larger military formations, their commanders or political officers were Macedonians!” (56)

Mitrevski tried to illustrate and prove this by citing specific names of DAG commanders and political officers:

“Pando Vaena (he was talking about the famous Pantelis Vaina) was commander of the DAG 18th Brigade, then of DAG 11th division.

Liako Papadimitriou was commander of the 10th DAG division.

Ahilea Papaioanou was Commander of the 103rd brigade.

Paskal Mitrevski was political commissar of the 14th brigade.

Anastas Gushevski (he was talking about the famous Tasios Gusiepoulos) was political commissar of the 18th brigade.

Dimitrios Prikos was commander of the 18th brigade…” (57)

As we can see, from all the names mentioned only Mitrevski was from the Macedonian anti-fascist liberation movement, i.e. from NOF, the rest were naturalized “Greek patriots”, that is, they were supporters of the Greek supremacy model. In other words, they were of a Macedonian background but literally worked for the Greek cause.

Of course, as we know today and as was well-known in the ranks of NOF then, all these people never belonged in the ranks of the Macedonian anti-fascist liberation movement. But, there is more than that. Some did not even feel Macedonian. But Mitrevski,

defiantly and publicly, through “Glasnik” insists that: “The prominent cadres of the Macedonian National Liberation Movement” were the bearers of the Macedonian people’s true interests in the Greek state…! (58)

That’s what our leading Greek comrades were doing then and that’s what they are still doing today...

In no time at all the Macedonian units ceased to exist as an organized military force, and with that the Macedonian liberation movement became terribly impoverished and weakened. But there is more. The most prominent Macedonian activists struggling in the Macedonian liberation movement, as well as other important Macedonian individuals, for one reason or another, were liquidated.

This is what “Istoria” has publicly charged me with in connection with what I said above: “Pavle Rakovski on the one hand argues that the CPG could not be an adversary to the Macedonians, and on the other hand claims that the CPG liquidated more prominent Macedonian activists... The examples he gives are arbitrary, since the said comrades died heroically in battle fighting the enemy…!” (59)

According to “Istoria”, I have indeed painted an ugly picture…

But let us leave that issue and let us have a look at how things stood in those days. It was believed that the Greek Communist Movement, that is, the CPG in principle was not and could not have been an enemy of the Macedonian people. Members and cadres of the CPG were persecuted, arrested, sent to jail, and generally mistreated by the Greek authorities because they publicly defended the democratic rights and freedom of the Macedonian people in the Greek state… Now let us have a look at who was leading the CPG at that time. The CPG was led by people the likes of Stavridis, Sargologos, Maximos, etc., and later by Siantos and then by Zahariadis... It was later revealed that these people were exponents of the domestic bourgeoisie and the international anti-communist movement. And after they were exposed they were expelled from the Party for exactly those reasons. There is no doubt that their role was to damage the general Communist movement and the people’s

revolution in Greece and because of them the people’s rights, freedom and interests suffered, not only those of the Macedonian people but also those of the Greek people. This was no secret. The CPG suffered several such crises, divisions, treachery, etc., within its ranks and especially in its central leadership, causing devastation to the people’s revolution in Solun and Macedonia in general in 1936, in Athens and in all of Greece in general in 1944, in Vicho and Gramos and in the rest of Greece in 1949, which we will discuss later. The Macedonian political organizations MAO in Voden and SNOF in Lerin and Kostur Regions were dissolved and so was NOF later. All these Macedonian organizations suffered a similar fate because of our Greek “patriots” in the CPG. The CPG leadership was responsible for the destruction of all NOF institutions including those initiated by the central agitation and propaganda department, which included the Macedonian theater, choir, folk song and dance ensemble, brass bands, school for teachers, seminars for Macedonian teachers, etc. The CPG leadership was also responsible for the liquidation of the elite NOF military formations and an unknown number of prominent Macedonian activists. But, we cannot entirely blame all of it on the communist movement, i.e. on the CPG... Here are the names of some of the individuals who were directly or indirectly liquidated, about whom I found out later. These were the first and most prominent Macedonians to join the struggle and die EARLY and in an UNUSUAL manner. Among them was Tashko Karadzhata who was sent to work in Katerini, north of Olympus, but could not stand the job. One day he decided to come to Solun to speak directly with the people from the CPG Bureau for Macedonia and Thrace. He arrived in the Bureau’s central telegraph offices on April 8, 1942. But instead of being greeted by the people from the Bureau, he was captured by Asfalia (security service) agents who were waiting for him. He was then handed over to the Gestapo and executed on May 25, 1942.

Lazo Trpovski was another such individual. One day Trpovski received a directive to report to the CPG Bureau in Solun. The Asfalia knew exactly which day he was going to arrive and exactly where he was going to go so they waited for him and killed him in an ambush...

With their death, the most promising Macedonian activists were removed from the scene.

Later Georgi Urdov-Dzhodzho, NOF representative at DAG Headquarters for Central and Western Macedonia, was executed in a similar way. He was on the road following the orders he was given when he found himself surrounded by enemies. Dzhodzho used his last bullet on himself to avoid capture. This is what Dzhodzho’s personal courier had said, who was left alive, obviously because Dzhodzho’s enemies had nothing against him. As it turned out, those so-called “enemies” were a number of “executioners” sent to intercept Dzhodzho and liquidate him. Because, according to Georgi Kachakot, former commander of “Ohrana” (Bulgarian organization) in Voden, Dzhodzho was responsible for the Voden battalion leaving Greek occupied Macedonia. Georgi Kachakot fled to the Republic of Macedonia with the ELAS Voden Macedonian battalion. Before that he had spent many years in prison in Solun from where he knew some of Dzhodzho’s executioners. In a conversation they later told him that Dzhodzho was responsible for the fate of the battalion and that he had to pay for it with his head. According to them, the battalion should not have fled to Yugoslavia!

In a confidential conversation I had with Vangel Shamardanov, then commissar of the DAG battalion and former president of the NOF regional board for Voden Region, he said to me that he was afraid of his Greek “comrades” and was worried that one day they would make him “disappear!” Unfortunately Shamardanov did not escape that which he feared the most... They shot him in the back!

Lazo Koroveshovski was a weapons specialist in Lerin. He was a cheerful and well-built man, a good fighter with authority and well-liked and influential among Macedonians fighters in DAG. He was not killed in combat. He was killed somewhere behind the scenes when he went to the cauldron to get his food. They said a “stray” bullet left him dead. But the sniper who killed him was never identified...

Petre Tanurov was a former commander of the ELAS 1st unit in the Voden battalion, which was sent to fight on Paiak Mountain under the direct command of Captain Statis. The unit was under Statis’s

direct command and guidance when it “evaporated”, disappeared into thin air, shortly after the battalion left for the People’s Republic of Macedonia. After losing half of their fighters on the hill they were defending, Tanurov and his Greek commissar decided to retreat and abandon their position. Grasping at the opportunity to correct this wrong, Dimitrios Vlantas, then member of Zahariadis’s Politburo and a DAG General, saw to it that these two be severely punished. He had them court marshaled and requested from the court’s president, Macedonian activist Hristo Kolenchev-Kokinos, that they be sentenced to death and executed by firing squad. Of course, only Tanurov was shot to death but not the Greek person...

Georgi Kalkov, a prominent activist working for the Macedonian national liberation movement in Kostur Region, told me during a meeting we had with Keramidzhiev that he was convinced that he was going to be killed if he returned back to the unit he had left. He begged us to do something… to at least temporarily detain him for some other work in NOF. But because he was a DAG officer and commander of the unit, we told him he had to go back, while we tried to do something for him... Kalkov, like Shamdanov, did not make a mistake in his assessment of things. He was killed upon his return... When there is a war fighters will die! That is what we were told...

There was also the case of the brave sergeant whose name I believe was Tanas Markovski, a beautiful illustration of how far the Greek chauvinists were prepared to go. Similar to Lazo Koroveshovski, Markovski was always at the forefront leading his fighters into battle. He was first to lead a firefight and the last to dance in the line dance. His authority was well-recognized and because of that he had to be liquidated. He had to be liquidated because he was a brave fighter, because he was well-liked and an influential leader and most importantly because he was a Macedonian “a lot more that the CPG could allow” (Todor Simovski). He was liquidated behind the scenes, shot in the head while leading a Macedonian dance. This time too the sniper remained unidentified...

Tanas Koroveshov, member of the NOF founding bureau, was killed by betrayal!

We will never know how many more Macedonians were killed this way...

This was disheartening and weighed heavily on us but we were not surprised. It was something that was done on a daily basis in front of our eyes. It was very difficult for me as well, being seen as a “Macedonian nationalist” and a constant target… But all this was not about me or about us, it was about our heroic struggle as Macedonian fighters moving “FORWARD TO THE LAST ONE”. The expression was often heard being yelled by the Greek DAG unit commanders. The enemy too was familiar with the Macedonians and how they fought… to their last breath… For this and perhaps for other reasons, the enemy treated the Macedonian fighters differently from the Greeks. When a wounded DAG fighter fell into enemy hands if he or she was Macedonian they were shot dead, whereas if they were Greek they would be captured. Naturally, regardless of how they were treated, the Macedonians had their own reasons for fighting with their heart, to their last breath. Here is what Markos Vafiadis said about that: “They participated in the Greek people’s great liberation struggle against the occupiers... They fought with inherent courage and skill... They lost countless heroes!” (60)

The Macedonians were robbed of everything, their contributions, their existence, their heroism, even their sacrifices as they fought to their “last breath”. All Macedonian deeds were concealed on purpose and the Macedonian heroes were represented as Greek heroes. Here is a classic example that undoubtedly shows how the struggle of the Macedonian people was appropriated and presented as a Greek struggle. In the capital works “Istoria tou emfiliou polemou 1945-1949, to devtero Andartiko” (History of the Civil War 1945-1949, the second guerrilla war), Volume III, there is a photograph on page 714 of the Macedonian heroine Mirka Ginova. In the text that follows they DO NOT say that “Mirka was a prominent leader in the Macedonian national liberation movement. Instead, they say that “Irini Gini was a young teacher who was convicted by a military court and executed in Ianitsa, before the plebiscite, along with six other convicts. She was the first woman executed in recent Greek history…!”

And this is what the Party press and other publications were doing on a daily basis…

An extremely discriminatory policy against the Macedonians fighters was applied in order to avoid everything Macedonian, including the Macedonian names of those who died heroically for the struggle.

The number of Macedonians, ordinary fighters, officers, leaders, etc., involved in the struggle was huge.

Yet very few were commanders of units.

It was even rarer to see a Macedonian leading a battalion.

There was only one Macedonian with such a high rank. His name was Vaina. He was a division commander and, unfortunately, a Grkoman (a Macedonian loyal to the Greek cause and a supremacist). I say only one because Vaina was the only one who presented himself as a Macedonian.

But that was not all. Things came to a boil when Vasilis Bardzhotas, then member of the CPG Central Committee Politburo and political commissar of DAG General Staff, refused to recognize that: “The political commissars assigned to DAG units did not understand the significance of the special political work the Macedonians were doing. Some of these commissars also appeared to possess chauvinistic tendencies towards the Macedonians... There were also vast differences and inequalities in the promotion of Macedonians and these commissars had a bad attitude towards the Macedonian fighters!” (61)

As is well-known, this scandalously open anti-Macedonian “personnel policy” had long sparked the spirit in us, in the NOF ranks and in the leadership structures. There were protests and demands but without much success. We had no choice but to subordinate ourselves to the Greek leaders in the name of combat unity.

“There were many reasons for dissatisfaction among the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia. They were not allowed to run their own affairs in the people’s government, they were not allowed to run their Macedonian units in DAG, they were not allowed to run their own Macedonian organizations and, their Macedonian national liberation movement was constantly compromised. The Macedonian cadres in Greek occupied Macedonia were discriminated against for having participated in the People’s Liberation Army in the FPRY. DAG refused to recognize the ranks they had achieved in the Yugoslav army, and the CPG refused to recognize their CPY Party memberships. All these negative acts, perpetrated by the Greeks, were certainly reasons for dissatisfaction among the Macedonians. But most of all, the Macedonian people were dissatisfied with the negative approach taken against the Macedonian National Question, especially during the CPG Central Committee’s V Plenum...”

The above paragraph was quoted in “Istoria” (2/1981), p. 295-296, taken from a letter sent from the CPY Central Committee to the CPG Central Committee, in my defense of my alleged attacks… Namely, I wrote that “the Macedonian communists and NOF leaders had fallen on hard times. They felt abandoned. This was not my sentimental view of things; it was an expression of the harsh reality on the ground…”

Did that mean that I did not have the right to complain…? Did it mean that the CPM/CPY really did not abandon us…? However, like this and other similar letters I wrote and interventions I made, my complaints were screams in the desert that fell on deaf ears. They brought us no result and no one knew about them. The Greek side completely ignored them… just as they ignored many of the agreements and documents they had signed! We were practically left on our own and without a spine...

But, instead of us talking about this, let the events themselves speak for us.

Around the middle of 1947, the NOF Central Council received a directive signed by Zahariadis requesting that the NOF secretariat and central agitation and propaganda department, in full force,

immediately attend a meeting with Zahariadis at DAG Headquarters located in Gramos, Epirus. The directive also defined the route we would be taking from our headquarters through the villages Prekopana, Kostarazi, Pesiak, past the little church on the hill, and further to the village Likorahi in Epirus, from where we would be escorted to DAG Headquarters by a special courier.

We immediately realized that the route specified was very dangerous. We needed to take a safer route. After we decided what route to take, Mitrevski changed his mind and thought it was best that we take the route Zahariadis specified so as not to leave a bad impression!

About fifteen people in total were invited and left for the road early in the evening the night before. In the dark of night we crossed the Bistritsa River, and at about 1 am we reached the village Pesiak. It was silent... like a cemetery. We decided to stop and take a break… a happy coincidence, which saved our lives. Keramidzhiev was hungry, so he suggested that we go and get some food. We knocked on a few doors but found the houses had been abandoned... We came across a bench in one of the yards and decided to sit down and have a cigarette... In the dark of night we heard an old man speaking in Macedonian. He told us that three days ago a hostile army had arrived in the village and, every night, set an ambush outside the village. The old man pointed in the direction with his hand. Had we continued to walk we would have fallen directly into the hands of the enemy…!

Was this a coincidence or an attempt to behead NOF and liquidate the leading ideological and political cadres of the Macedonian national liberation movement? …Especially at a time when the Macedonian units were falling victim to political deception...

We escaped that trap… but they did not give up on their plans…

They did not dare make another attempt the same way… they instead resorted to doing what the Bulgarians had done in the past…. The Bulgarians used to infiltrate the leading positions in the Macedonian Liberation Movement with people of Macedonian descent who were loyal to the Bulgarian cause and who inflicted

heavy blows against the Macedonians. Zahariadis had a similar Greek model where he used people of Macedonian descent but loyal to the Greek cause. Zahariadis did this during the 1st NOF Congress held on January 13, 1948 and again during the 1st NOF Central Council Plenum held on August 8, 1948, during which time he carefully prepared and carried out the appointment of Kotzopoulos (Kochev) and Koitsis (Koichev), mentioned earlier, to NOF leadership positions. One was appointed NOF secretary, the other NOF Central Council president. And as mentioned earlier, both of these people were opponents of NOF and loyal to the Greek cause. Several more people just like them, over time, were appointed to the NOF Central Council and to the Executive Council.

In line with his request to “cleanse NOF of the nationalists and to inject new blood into it,” Mitrevski pledged to facilitate this work by himself becoming the bearer and implementer of Zahariadis’s staffing requirements for NOF.

I resisted and protested for treating us and our people like a flock of sheep. I couldn’t stand to watch what was happening. I couldn’t stand to see our yesterday’s opponents become today’s NOF’s leaders. I had no problem with people joining NOF, but first they had to prove themselves… work in the districts for a while… win our people’s recognition and trust, so that the most capable of them could be chosen to become leaders. But not like this…!

The four of us; Mitrevski, as CPG instructor in NOF, Keramidzhiev, Rakovski and Vera, as NOF Central Council secretariat members, had 2 or 3 meetings prior to the Congress. Mitrevski was persistent which resulted in us having harsh words with him. We blamed Mitrevski of being treasonous and at one point the discussion got so hot we almost drew our pistols out… Keramidzhiev and Vera shared my opinions but when Mitrevski told us that he was following the Party line, the other two relented...

During the 1st NOF Congress, just before the vote for NOF governing bodies took place, Ioanidis took me to the side and said my candidacy for the NOF Central Council was dropped for now. Ioanidis was member of the CPG Central Committee Politburo responsible for producing the list of NOF candidates. I was told that

Mitrevski had made some objection and “until the Party cleared the matter” my place in the new five-member secretariat would remain vacant. Perhaps Mitrevski thought that “at last” he had me removed from NOF and from the Macedonian national liberation movement. However, I was well aware that it was not Mitrevski but our Greek friends who were anxious to get rid of me… an “active Macedonian nationalist”. When I found my moment I quietly whispered in Mitrevski’s ear. I said: “You are fooling yourself if you believe you are strengthening your position by removing me. Soon after they get rid of me they will get rid of you…” But he did not flinch. He smiled at me with confidence… Then, during the NOF Central Council I Plenum, he publicly and, of course, falsely accused Keramidzhiev of planning to physically liquidate Kotsopoulos and Koizis, and asked that he be removed from the NOF leadership!

However, it was already too late. About a month before that, our Greek comrades had decided to do something… According to General Markos: “On July 1, 1948, the CPG Central Committee Politburo decided to suspend Keramidzhiev from office as President, and remove Paskal Mitrevski from his duty as NOF Central Council Secretary, because they had both committed unprincipled factionist acts in the struggle!” (62)

With the “new leaders” at the helm… and, of course, according to our leading Greek comrades, bearers of the true interests of the Macedonian people in the Greek state, NOF and the Macedonian people gradually had to be reoriented: instead of looking towards Skopje as their national centre, they were required to look towards Athens… like the good “Slavophone Greeks” they were, in the spirit of the Grkoman motto “We are part of Greece and part of the Greek people!”

After the Plenum ended, by chance, or perhaps not, just as we were coming out of the door, Mitrevski pressed against me and, in the same way I had done before, whispered in my ear. He said in Greek:

“Ihes dikeo!” (You were right!)

And what was achieved by all that? In the spirit of “unity” there was nothing left of the NOF Macedonian leadership after the

reorganization and nothing was left of the Macedonian units, particularly of those “in the interior of Greece”…

Obviously, this was a well-planned Greek offensive against the Macedonian national ideal… It destroyed its most active bearers. Here are some highlights of the more important characteristic moments in this relationship:

A school for Macedonian teachers was established and operated within the framework of the central agitation and propaganda department (November, 1947). It was soon abolished and turned into a Greek teacher’s school for “Slavophones” that looked like a Macedonian school.

A Macedonian primer was created within the framework of the central agitation and propaganda department which contained pictures with descriptions of the Macedonian people’s anti-fascist struggle together with the Greek people. We were not allowed to compile a second part of the primer. Instead, the second part was compiled by Kostas Siaperas starting with a large image of Zahariadis. The pictures were painted by Bulgarian painters, and the primer was printed in Romania.

Macedonian NOF-AFZH cultural and art groups were founded and initially operated within the framework of the central agitation and propaganda department. We had a Macedonian theater which, unfortunately, performed only one play in the large, great church in the village Zhelevo, Lerin Region. We had an opera, a choir, and a folk group wearing traditional Macedonian folk costumes. We had 20 girls ages 14 to 16 who danced, sang and performed for Macedonian audiences. The CPG Central Committee decided to abolish this group first. Later the Provisional Government of Greece adopted a separate resolution to abolish everything perceived to spread Macedonian nationalism!

In April 1948, our central agitation and propaganda department was liquidated and replaced with a department staffed by Greek chauvinists. Our staff was “mobilized” and each individual was dispatched to a different DAG unit. Personally, I was sent to DAG

Headquarters for Central and Western Macedonia in the composition of the Kamarilata.

Unfortunately the central agitation and propaganda department was not the only one to be liquidated. A large number of NOF activists were also mobilized and scattered all around the terrain. Even still, the Greeks were unable to achieve their full goal because NOF organizations continued to operate…After that several hundred NOF activists were “mobilized” and individually scattered across the various DAG units. This was practically an act aimed at murdering NOF...

There was also the people’s Macedonian brass band composed of folk musicians under the leadership of the popular folk musician Kara-Timio or simply Timio. Wherever this band appeared it played Macedonian songs, irking the Greek chauvinists from all parties. The most popular song and most often played was: “A bre Makedoneche, kade se spremash borba te Cheka…” This orchestra was taken away from NOF and assigned to Vaina and Gusiopoulos’s unit (18th Taksiarhia), then allegedly placed under the authority of DAG Headquarters and dissolved. It appears that this band too was guilty of spreading nationalism…!

We need to say something more here about some of the questions raised in “Istoria”…

According to “Istoria”: “Pavle Rakovski has argued that the central agitation and propaganda department of NOF was liquidated by the CPG, which is not true…!” (Page 294.) “Istoria” claims that only personnel changes were made... The department was not only not liquidated, it was expanded and its publishing activities were increased (they were thinking it was expanded with people who had no Yugoslav influence). “Istoria” claims that: “Furthermore, Rakovski has stated that the Macedonian school for teachers was abolished. This was another of Rakovski’s fabrications. The teacher’s course was abolished because the children were evacuated to neighbouring democracies in March 1948, where similar courses and seminars were organized…!” (Page 294.)

This is a case where the man says “Good day Grandma!” and Grandma answers “I am collecting firewood my boy!” Grandma was clearly deaf. Here I, Rakovski, am talking about the Macedonian teacher’s school being abolished in December 1947 when I personally worked in the village German where the school operated. “Istoria” on the other hand is talking about the “teacher’s course” or the Greek teacher training school abolished in February 1948, which operated in the village Zhelevo, because the children were evacuated in March 1948! This is a kind of verbal acrobatics designed to not only hit Rakovski below the belt but to also blur and conceal the truth.

And this is the truth.

As I said, the Macedonian central agitation and propaganda department was dissolved or liquidated as I stated earlier, in order to be replaced with a new Greek chauvinistic and supremacist agitation and propaganda department that would work and publish material relevant to Greek interests… which would make it anti-Macedonian…

I will say it again! The Macedonian school for teachers was abolished, liquidated, in order to be replaced by a Greek supremacist Macedonian look-alike school…

What “Istoria” said about similar schools being established in the Eastern European countries in which the Macedonian children were evacuated, is true. But the way things were actually done undoubtedly shows that:

Even outside of Greece, the Greek communists, like all other Greeks, made sure that the Macedonian people were not represented for who they were.

The Greek communists insisted that the Macedonian fighters and refugees who left Greece, including the 28,000 children who were evacuated to Eastern European countries in 1948, were Greeks. The authorities of the countries where these Macedonians landed were told that these people were “Greek political refugees” with Greek

names. (63) When it was discovered that these people spoke Macedonian and insisted that they were Macedonians, the Greeks informed the authorities that they were “Slavophone Greeks” and their needs would be taken care of. They took care of their educational needs by creating a special alphabet, different from the Macedonian alphabet, with a special grammar, that is, a literary language based on the mutilated version of Kotsopoulos’s Macedonian language, but very different from the Macedonian literary language spoken in the Republic of Macedonia... Clearly this means that deception was used in order to say that “these Macedonians” or “Slavophone Greeks” as the communists called them, were a “different people” than their counterparts in the Republic of Macedonia.

And in the case of the Macedonian agitation and propaganda teacher’s seminar, mentioned in “Istoria”, there is nothing contributing to the fact that:

The MACEDONIAN side and the GREEK-SUPREMICIST (Grkoman) side are two diametrically opposed concepts and realities, mutually exclusive from one another. One is a negation of the other. The Grkomani cannot be Macedonians and vice versa. Naturally without knowing the “hard reality” about this, it is better for a person to keep quiet and not engage in discussions about these things...

This also happened to me:

The editorial board of “Istoria” looked at a number of pages from my notes, and using that information publicly announced that: