THE SENSE THAT SOMEHOW THE MACEDONIANS WERE A POLITICAL FACTOR IS LOST

THE SENSE THAT SOMEHOW THE MACEDONIANS WERE A POLITICAL FACTOR IS LOST

WAS THERE AN EXIT FROM THE CHAOS?

There was mention among the Macedonians: objectivity and obligation towards one’s own nation.

All this, once again, confirms the fact that we lost our chance. It escaped us. We ran away from it. Instead of gaining our freedom, we gained sorrow, distress, pain and anguish which caused us to divide and turn on each other. We divided and ruined our people.

We disoriented ourselves and took on new burdens that would haunt our future.

On top of all that, we left our homeland behind; we abandoned it as our return to it became uncertain. Our future too became uncertain, undefined, because it depended on our past. And what exactly was our past? Well that entirely depends on who you talk to! More precisely, that depends on whose history books you read! Since there were no victors amongst us Macedonians from Greek occupied Macedonia, and we hardly had support from anyone, we left that part of our history to be written by others, most likely by those who perpetrated this scheme against us. So, what kind of history do we expect to be reading? Well, there are some things that are certain. We know, or should know, that what happened to us and the crimes committed against us, including the crime of our permanent exile from our ancestral homes, were a fact, a horrible event that actually took place. But what we don’t know for sure is if these crimes were intentional or accidental and who perpetrated them against us? For this we will have to blame those who wrote our integral history and who purposely hid the truth from us, included among them are the CPM, CPY and the CPG. We know the CPG lost the war and tried to blame the Macedonians for it. We also know about the Greek attitude towards the Macedonians. What we don’t know for certain is the CPY’s attitude towards the Macedonian people from Greek occupied Macedonia and its involvement in the Macedonian organizations? Why did the CPY create NOF and AFZH on April 23, 1945? Why did they send these organizations to Greece to start a war and what was their role from April 23, 1945 to mid- October 1946 when they were led by the CPM/CPY?

So at this point, allow me to pose a fundamental question: “How long are we expected to sit here with our eyes shut as evidence about this is piling before us?!

We can clearly see from the Macedonian absence in high level military and political positions that we, the Macedonians, were either incapable or not allowed to lead anything larger that a military unit. Given this fact, then why does our integral history say that the “Macedonians were a military and political factor in the Greek Civil War?” If it is true that the Macedonians were NOT a political and

military factor, which is a more plausible scenario than the other way around, then what was the purpose of involving the Macedonian people in the war en masse?! Did we simply put our entire trust in Zahariadis and do what we were told without thinking? How does that then make us a political and military factor in the war?

One thing is clear: From my long and extensive research I have discovered that the NOF and AFZH leadership, even with its split loyalties, some loyal to the CPY and others loyal to the CPG, was honoured and well looked after by the Party. The ordinary Macedonian fighters, those who bled and died for this war, on the other hand, were left out to dry! They were not only abandoned, they were also persecuted for “ideological principles” which most did not even understand. In the end it was they who lost everything, including their ancestral homes, and became permanent refugees roaming the world. They were the ones who experienced genocide!

Is there another truth? Is there even a single person, a NOF or AFZH leader perhaps, who can attest to the truth as to why these things happened to us? And if there is can we believe and trust such a person? Unfortunately, to this day, no one from NOF or AFZH has admitted that they did anything wrong themselves or have apologized to the Macedonian people for what happened to them. And that for me has been a great sore point.

After DAG’s 50th anniversary, a group of researchers from “Rizospastis”, organ of the CPG Central Committee, decided to publish an article entitled “50 years after DAG”. The article was a sequel published in 90 parts during 1996 and 1997.

The article was a revision of what took place and the approaches taken during the 6th Plenum (1956), the 7th Plenum (1957) and during the 8th CPG Congress (1961). The overview covered the CPG’s politics when the party was led by Nikos Zahariadis, particularly during the period from 1945 to 1949 and evaluated the mistakes made and the harm some of those “mistakes” had on the development of events and the decisive role in the war.

Here are some facts: … Regarding the December battle which lasted 33 days resulting in ELAS’s defeat and the February 12, 1945 Varkiza agreement being signed, the authors of the article “50 years after DAG” accepted Stalin’s position with regards to the conflict between the English and ELAS in Athens. As a result of this, KPSS, CPG and APT delegations met in January 1950 in Moscow, during which Stalin said that the Varkiza agreement should not have taken place and that ELAS should continue the fighting outside of Athens. According to Zahariadis’s notes, Georgi Dimitrov sent him a telegram on January 15, 1945 recommending that the CPG leadership endeavour to deal with the English to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict. To this, the note said, Stalin reacted sharply by saying, “Dimitrov is not the Central Committee of KPSS.”

Why was Stalin recommending this? Was it because he wanted an agreement with Tito? No, it was because he wanted to safeguard the socialist system in Yugoslavia and in the other Eastern European countries by drawing the fire away from them. His idea was not to over-power but to interfere in Greek affairs and used the Macedonians to do it… Who better than the Macedonians who, for many years, longed for their independence and for a united Macedonia.

But one thing still remains unclear, even over 60 years later: “Whose sacrifices are we?” “Who pushed us into sacrificing ourselves to a point of extinction?”

Tito’s opinion and attitude expressed at the meeting with Maclean is interesting. (See: Analysis of the Greek Civil War (1945-1949) p.336/337, article by Jože Pirjevich: FO371/78716/Р 4691.