“WHO ACTIVATED THE “MACEDONIAN SYNDROME” OF (SELF) SACRIFICES IN THE YEARS 194

“WHO ACTIVATED THE “MACEDONIAN SYNDROME” OF (SELF) SACRIFICES IN THE YEARS 1945 TO 1949 DURING THE GREEK CIVIL WAR!?”

Why is that important? Because the Greek Civil War was the most tragic event that the Macedonian people from Greek occupied Macedonia have experienced, which not only killed many but uprooted even more from their centuries old hearths and left them with a deep sense of alienation.

It would have been authoritative, as a living witness, if Evdokia Foteva – Vera, one of the AFZH leaders responsible for the agitation and mobilization of Macedonian women into the struggle, had spoken about this matter and answered the questions put forth in this write-up. Unfortunately she too passed on and by-passed these relevant historical issues, leaving us engulfed in fog. Why did NOF and AFZH choose war over all other options? More importantly why did NOF and AFZH allow exclusive foreign (Greek) leadership over the Macedonians? Up to now nothing has been said about this from the leadership. What were the aims behind forming a “National Liberation Front” platform, part of which were NOF and AFZH?

Now let us see how NOF, AFZH and NOMS were created according to Pavle Rakovski, one of its founders. In his autobiography “My Suffering”, published by AEA, 2000 on page 341 Rakovski wrote:

“In the middle of April 1945, I received a message from Dzhodzho Urdov asking me to immediately leave for Skopje. I did. The political committee by then had already been dismissed. In its place, at the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Macedonia in Skopje on April 23, the National Liberation Front-NOF belonging to the Macedonians from Aegean Macedonia (its members were selected without a conference and without elections, but by cooption) was constituted or formed. Pascal Mitretvski 14 was given

14 Pascal Mitrevski, as acting Secretary of the Political Commission of the Macedonians under Greece, after a CPM Central Committee decision in the beginning of February 1945, was sent to Belgrade to attend the quarterly party political school organized by the CPY Central Committee. (See: “The time of Pascal Mitrevski - 1912 to 1978”, by T. Mamurovski, 1992.)

a free hand to choose four more people and reassemble the central governing body – a five-member Bureau. He called me and told me this then he asked me for my opinion about which other four people, besides him, did I think should lead this bureau? I suggested the following: Georgi Urdov-Dzhodzho, Ilo Dimakov-Goche, Naum Peiov, and Mahail Keramidzhiev.

He thanked me and left. He then constituted the Bureau as follows: Paskal Mitrevski, Georgi Urdov-Dzhodzho, Mihail Keramidzhiev, Tanas Koroveshov and Pavle Rakovski.

I have already mentioned that I respected Mitrevski because he was trusted by the Socialist Republic of Macedonia Party state leadership. I appreciated and respected the man simply and openly. And it seems to me that is why he decided to choose me and include me in the NOF highest governing body.

After the first sitting, the five of us went to the field to lay NOF’s foundations. This was at Kostur, Lerin, Voden, Enidzhe-Vardar and Seres Regions…”

DID OUR BLOODY STORY, THE STORY OF THE MACEDONIANS IN GREEK OCCUPIED MACEDONIA BEGIN WITH THE ILLEGAL DECISIONS OF NOF AND AFZH?

(Prisoners of submission and subjection - half a century, one truth trapped in an eternal secret)

What exactly was the plan for NOF and AFZH when they were formed in Skopje under the leadership of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) and the Communist Party of Macedonia (CPM)? Did the leadership of NOF and AFZH, perhaps unconsciously, by order of strangers, import the “revolution” to Greek occupied Macedonia!? And through NOF and AFZH the good old principle ‘if you are not with us you are against us’ was applied? Was ideological activism an alibi for further destruction of the Macedonians in Greek occupied Macedonia? What exactly happened to us? Why and for what reason was this need for ‘massive retaliation’? Tell me, are we Macedonians responsible for this disastrous venture!?”

DID NOF HAVE A VISION OF WHERE IT WAS GOING?!

Will we ever have the virtue to say that that decision was a wrong and a tragic policy for the Macedonians living in Greece?

The foreign philosophy actually imposed a very sensitive and harsh test on the ordinary Macedonian peasant with an ideologically violent resolve, but also stigmatized those who were not resolute or were against such absurdities as national fronts. All this turned out to be: A MEANINGFUL CHECK OF THE ENTIRE MACEDONIAN POPULATION’S MACEDONIAN CONSCIOUSNESS AND IT WAS OBTAINED IN THE FIRST PERIOD FROM APRIL 23, 1945 TO OCTOBER 1946.

The fact is this was a time when we wanted less and less of our past and thinking less of returning back to Greece. The Macedonian consciousness of itself, of its reality, was completely turned towards the ideological activism we were facing. IT WAS ALSO AN ALIBI FOR DESTROYING THE MACEDONIANS IN GREECE. The foreigners wanted to push us back into the arms of the Asia Minor settlers and colonists who led the CPG, EAM, the CPG Central Committee, the CPG Politburo, the main DAG Headquarters, etc. Everything was harnessed and painfully and venomously aimed right at us Macedonians.

DEVELOPMENT OF EVENTS IN 1945 AND THE CREATION OF NOF, AFZH AND NOMS, THROUGH CPM/CPY POLICY FOR THE OPTIMAL MASSAGE FOR THE ENTIRE MACEDONIAN POPULATION IN SOUTH MACEDONIA

(There was chaotic uncertainty in the Macedonian outlook with much fury and shock. We entered a dramatic situation an event to remember. We took a big step into the (un) known on April 23, 1945. It was a day (time) full of asymmetric and painful destiny hoops. No one asked what the Macedonian people wanted but were deceived with many empty promises by people who could not deliver them)

WHAT HAPPENED TO US? WHY AND FOR WHAT REASON WAS A “MASS REVENGE” STRATEGY DEVELOPED?

So we created: NOF – A National Liberation Front for our men, NOMS – A National Liberation Front for our youth, and AFZH – An Anti-Fascist National People’s Front for Women. After this was done no one talked about anything in Aegean Macedonia except for politics. A kind of climate was created that it was as if no one had time to look at other problems, other than politics and excessive agitation - to such an extent that people became politically jaded.

Why didn’t the Greeks form a similar front for Greek women before the start of the Greek Civil War? They only formed such an organization on October 23, 1948, in the village Rudari – Prespa. The organization was called PDEG (All-Greek Democratic Union of Women). It was not an Anti-Fascist Front!?

A long ago Vera should have explained the ideological platform for the mass mobilization of Macedonian woman to the front, which led to childlessness and the de-Macedonian-ization of the Macedonian home.

An Anti-Fascist National People’s Front for Women?! To fight against whom?! Who were these women opposing?! What was the purpose of their struggle?! Were their political messages to the people clear?! Did they understand that they had joined to struggle that called for the “Sovietization of the Balkans?”… the creation of a “Balkan Federation?”… or the creation of a United Macedonia?” Did they understand that neither Stalin nor Tito in that period of time wanted the realization of such undertakings? Unfortunately during the past half century or so, these questions were exploited mostly by people with a pro-Yugoslav attitude, to obscure the real political and military engagements and problems. But after the outbreak of the Greek Civil War, it turned out that their priority was to “resolve minority issues between Greece and Yugoslavia?” In other words, to “get rid of the Macedonians from Greece!”

Didn’t the NOF and AFZH leaders ever ask themselves: Why weren’t the other large minorities living in Greece, such as the Turks, Vlachs, Albanians, etc., offered the same concessions as the

Macedonians? Was it because no one wanted them to push them into the chaos?

This is especially unclear: An Anti-fascist women’s front!? Fascism was declared defeated on May 9, 1945. Why exactly were the Macedonian women (only in the Aegean part of Macedonia) asked to open and Anti-fascist front when fascism was declared defeated? Did the Greek women form such a front? The answer is: NO! Shouldn’t the NOF and AFZH leaders, especially Vera, have explained why this was asked only the Macedonian women who were pushed into the hell of the war?

Why did such an unprecedented family revolution take place so spontaneously, like thunder, like a drop from the sky, so massive, so frontal?! Why did such an unprecedented absurdity take place in a civilized world?!

The model for mass participation in politics was applied in all the Great Revolutions since the 19th century. It was used as a means to mobilize the masses into action. However, by the end of WW II the people of Europe were exhausted by these cycles of mobilization. People suffered greatly in both life and material losses. Over fifty million died for these totalitarian ideologies. On top of that tens of millions were left homeless and had to find homes elsewhere. So, for them and for human civilization, this historical model was already exhausted.

So, the conditions for a mass armed struggle in Greece were not right. The people did not want another armed struggle. Greek historiography also confirmed that the conditions for a mass armed struggle in Greece did not really exist. The democratic forces, after the four-year war with the occupiers (Germany and Italy), were not ready for an even more difficult struggle. The majority of the people preferred to go to prison and to the concentration camps, rather than fight in the mountains again. The people from the city, even from the suburbs, were absent from DAG, and so were the participants of ELAS and the resistance movement. DAG managed to register only about 24 - 25,000 fighters in its ranks, not on a voluntary basis, but through forced mobilization, and that from the villages. The burden

of this fight fell mainly on the Macedonians, where old and young, man and women, were involved precisely because they were convinced (pushed) by NOF and the AFZH.

It seems that we have no explanation as to how and why NOF and AFZH were so successful in implementing the “model for mass participation in politics” exactly in Aegean Macedonia where only 3% of the total population in Greece lived? NOF and AFZH broke down all barriers and feverishly infiltrated the daily lives of individuals, making each of them a subject - or a pawn in the collective game. If we know that after the end of the Second World War, especially during the period of the so-called cold war and the fierce ideological confrontation between East and West, the term communism would acquired an emphasized ideological meaning... Namely, in journalism and even in political science in Western countries, especially in the USA, the term “communism” would be used as a synonym for Stalinism; as a system of political dictatorship and terror, but also full of subversive and conspiratorial actions. Within that context the expression “world communism” would be used to denote virtually any movement that sought to disrupt the existing economic and political interests of the major Western countries. Thus, the term communism turned into a propaganda cliché. Much was invested for the protection of the new regime in Greece; our stigmatization started there and then and still exists to this day, i.e. the problem with the name for example… and still we Macedonians don’t understand why this is happening to us.

How much and what king of price do we Macedonians have to pay for our mass involvement in this political game?

First, we paid a high price with the number of casualties we received in the Greek Civil War. There was not a single family that did not loose a family member.

Second, we lost a large segment of our identity during and after that war: the Macedonian family was torn apart and disorganized. With all that death and destruction people left their Macedonian homes and villages. An incredible number of them left, leaving their native hearths empty forever because they were not allowed to return. Then

it became a great challenge for them to create a new life outside their homeland.

And, finally, the Macedonian people need to know that the idea of a united Macedonia has been surrendered.

Questions that have often been asked:

1. By creating NOF, AFZ and NOMS, after the Second World War ended, did we, ourselves, not cause the fatal fate of the Macedonian people living in Greece?

2. With the well-known conflicting policies and ideological practices carried out by the CPY, CPG and CPB towards the Macedonian national question during the Greek Civil War, did they intentionally engage us with the “Macedonian syndrome” and led us to fight each other (Macedonian versus Macedonian) ruining the Macedonian cohesion and fatally disorganizing the Macedonian position?

3. So, if we had so far recognized that:

a) There was a Macedonian movement with a Bulgarian ethnic historical tendency;

b) There was a Macedonian national movement with a Macedonian ethnic-historical tendency also emerging now, after the Second World War; and

c) There was a Macedonian movement with a pro-Yugoslav historical tendency,

If we make sure to remember our history we would not continue to make the same mistakes!

We would have known that a great political oversight was taking place before our eyes in 1945-1949 (during the Greek Civil War).

After many years of investigating NOF’s creation and all the troubles that it caused us, two key questions come to mind:

1. How did we inform the world about our actions, specifically the Great Powers, and what was the Macedonian role and vision in the Greek Civil War?

2. How did we Macedonians look at this issue ourselves and were we confident throughout the entire Greek Civil War period that we would realize our vision?

Or, maybe we went along with Lenin’s thesis that the communist movement would see the Macedonian national question as a tactical class issue serving the state interests of the dominant nation, in our case Greece. If that was the case then the question is: Why didn’t NOF’s and AFZH take another path and lead us in a completely different direction, and maybe we wouldn’t have experienced a drastic national defeat.

3. The Macedonian people living in Greece made many sacrifices during this war such as loosing lives, loosing their hearths, etc. These are vital issues of national importance so why they are not covered by out integral Macedonian history, but are set on the sidelines as sectoral history, i.e. the history of the “Aegeans”, like they are not at all Macedonian issues?

In the past, up until 1945, the Macedonian people living in Greece had strong spiritual and national unity. The older Macedonians, their children, their grandchildren… all lived similar lives and followed the same survival strategy in the same spirit. They cherished the Macedonian national identity and unique strategy, meaning they accepted it as a strategy for survival: “Cultural closure and the closure of the individual in the identity and in the Macedonian community”. And when NOF and AFZH, being Macedonian organizations, fund themselves among them, they had no reason not to trust them so they allowed them to become the dominant masters in propagating the policy they dictated:

Chronologically speaking NOF was subordinated by the CPM/CPY from the day it was created on April 23, 1945, to November 21, 1946, the day it was subordinated to the CPG under the “Brotherhood and unity” program when the CPM/CPY elegantly

washed their hands of the Macedonians in Greece. NOF remained subordinated to the CPG from November 21, 1946 until DAG was liquidated in 1949 and beyond for some years while the Macedonian people were in exile.

Testimonials: See: “DOCUMENTS - about the Macedonian people’s struggle for independence and for a national state” Volume two.