2.0 TRUTHS AND CONTROVERSIES ABOUT THE GREEK CIVIL WAR (1945-1949) - Part 04

“According to S. Kochov, the current Macedonian historiography is servile, biased and submissive to Belgrade’s line of daily politics... Who motivated Kochov to want to answer the question of who is to blame for the Greek Civil War and who is guilty of the severe consequences that befell the Macedonian people?

...Mr. S. Kochov argues that the Greek Civil War was neither a revolution nor a continuation of the famous Ilinden Uprising, and that the Organization NOF enslaved the Macedonian people from Aegean Macedonia and surrendered them to the CPG and the CPY, where they served the CPG and CPY’s alien anti-Macedonian interests.

…If the organization NOF played a role as described by Mr. Kochov, then the leadership of NOF is a direct accomplice and responsible for the tragic consequences of the Macedonian people, therefore, according to him, it can not be amnestied or forgiven…

…Kochov accuses Macedonian historiography of not being an integrated study of the history of the Macedonian people and that it is an example unique to us (Macedonian phenomenon), which is not quite true.”

This is what historian Kiriazovski has accused me of having said in my book, which now he himself has recognized to be true and about which he has written in his last book. But I, even today, have a wide range of issues. One of the most dominant questions that dogs my mind is: “Do we have an integral Macedonian history?”

Why do I ask this question? Because, whether we like it on not, we the Macedonian people from Greek occupied Macedonia had only one homeland and we lost it. So, how unfair would it be to admit to the truth and reveal the secret as to why we lost it? How is it in “our national interest” not to know the truth of what happened to the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia, especially when our Macedonian organizations were led by the CPY/CPM all throughout the Greek Civil War?

Who and what gave Kiriazovski the right to “politicize” and deprive “us” of our rights and privileges? By “us” I mean all those fighters who did not desert DAG and did not return to Yugoslavia until later.

I and many others stayed and fought until the war was over. After that, almost the entire military formation left Greece and was sent to the USSR. While we were in the USSR I went to school and had a great time learning. It was a happy period of my life which helped me to understand, to learn and to appreciate the people and things around me a lot more than I had before. The peace and tranquility gave me a chance to review what had happened to us and sort out all the evils that befell the Macedonian people and the Macedonian family. I was able to sort out all those “historic problems” that we Macedonians lived through. By then I was very happy to be returning to my homeland, the Republic of Macedonia. But, having to go to prison upon my return was incomprehensible?!... Now, I believe that it should be clear to everyone that we Macedonians suffered immensely because “Stalin and Tito were annoyed with each other!” If you can believe that!

And as the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky once said: “He who lies to himself can easily be offended.”

Any intelligent person could have figured out what Kiriazovski’s motives were and what he was trying to do. As a historian with an academic title he asked that my book “Sacrifice of the Macedonians under Greece” be evaluated under academic standards and declared academically “unfit” because it was written by a layman. To do that he organized a group of so-called “scientists”, people who, for half a century after our national defeat, still pretended to be Marxists and “revolutionaries”. But I knew that these people, along with Kiriazovski, were nothing more than “deserters” from DAG who had fled to Yugoslavia to save their own necks. Kiriazovski wanted to discredit my book in order to defend his own books, particularly his books about the Macedonians under Greece.

But in the end how did all this help him? This reminded me of what the philosopher Socrates (469 p. n. e. 399 p. n. e.) said when he was asked: “What animal bites worst?” He replied: “From the wild kind the one that is annoyed the most and from the domestic kind the one which is a bootlicker.” At every occasion, be it a “class hassle” or a pointless “ideological act”, these people as guardians of the “open mass grave”, threw every self-conscious Macedonian into it. Everything was reduced to a dangerous division of the Macedonian national body.

It is a fact that “foreign ideologies” created and have always created parallel worlds and parallel historical events inside Macedonia and among us Macedonians.

We the participants of DAG, who have a historic memory of a long series of national defeats, now know this very well. But too bad we did not know it before the Greek Civil War and before DAG’s defeat. Had we known it, so many lives that were lost in vain could have been saved. We would have known the “tricks” used on NOF and AFZH who in turn, wittingly or unwittingly, tricked the “Macedonian people” to (self) sacrifice themselves for nothing and on top of that, to lose their homes, their lands and have their identity questioned by being called “Aegeans”.

I am thankful to the then political activists who opened my eyes; because of their activities it became clear to me that they were systematically working to destroy our national pride.

The most amusing part about the people in one of those groups was the way they spoke and referred to Macedonians like themselves calling them “Greeks” and “Yugoslavs”. Remember, these people were officials, part of the elite mainstream society. So, the question is, “Were they completely incompetent and totally uninformed? Or were they implanted with computer chips and programmed to support ‘Greek’ and ‘Yugoslav’ interests inside Macedonia?” A large number of these people were on Gogol’s list of “Dead Souls” and this reminded me of what Bielinski wrote after reading the “Dead Souls” by Gogol: “Lord, why is our truth so depressing, miserable and sad”?! It is understandable that all these articles were promoted as “a well-known model” of our past, with predetermined and premeditated thinking and with a narrow intellectual horizon. “What did they actually protect?” When asked, one said: “Our well-written history; the history of the Aegeans…”

After all the “ideological barking” I had received from them, I felt completely degraded, ruined and full of rage because I still could not find an answer, even in my own homeland; “Why was I and thousands of Macedonians like me sacrificed? Regardless of whether the Greek Civil War was “a revolution” or “fraud” – instigated by the CPY/CPM for some

sort of plot, “did we the Macedonians from Greek occupied Macedonia have to be sacrificed? Did we have to experience genocide?” Why?

I was convinced that history, as a social science, must be a function of society and of free thought. And someday when that happens we will know what we are seeking to know, - the truth. There has always been fear of history... History is true only when it is full of authentic facts and only authentic facts can remove the veil of darkness. We will know the truth when all those historical events that we experienced, pave the way into the future – with giant steps backwards.

But the question is: “Are we Macedonians simply incapable of self-criticism?”

This is not the first “horrible oblivion” that has engulfed Macedonia and swept the Macedonian people away. But please God, let it be the last! No more illusions and lies. But to achieve that, we need a radical Macedonian mentality change. Those who think they have a need to mislead and deceive – have a problem with themselves. Kiriazovski was one such person, who by his own actions proved it, when he issued his latest book outside of the INI national institution. What he said “before” and what he said “after” were two different and contradictory things! By changing his mind, he proved that he was a deceiver!

The kind of historiography, written about us, the Macedonians from Greek occupied Macedonia, in the last 60 years, has shown itself to be most susceptible to politicization. And when it is “politically manipulated”, even with the most minute of deviations from reality, it produces unforeseeable consequences for the Macedonian people.

Our research has uncovered many of the “hidden” facts that other authors who have written history about the Macedonians in Greek occupied Macedonia, have intentionally or unintentionally omitted. The “roots of evil” and “dark secrets” hidden for the last sixty years by the actors and perpetrators who set the “deadly trap” through ideological activism that led to the greatest deception of the century, are now slowly coming out. We will finally know why we experienced “genocide” and the largest migrations of Macedonians out of Greek occupied Macedonia in Macedonia’s history!

Those who do not recognize or feel the acts of genocide perpetrated against the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia, between 1945 and 1949, were a Macedonian tragedy will never be able to

understand Greece’s fascist genocidal policy against the Macedonian people.

For that reason it is illusory to run away from fate, no matter how tragic or unfortunate it may be for us Macedonians.

History remembers both words and silence. The truth is in history. And with the truth on our side it is possible to build something real and lasting.

And why haven’t we built something “real and lasting” this far? Well, for that we have ourselves to blame. The time when we could blame “someone else” has passed. But now, since the Republic of Macedonia became an independent state we have no one to blame but ourselves for all of our mistakes. Being “masters of our own destiny” unfortunately has not taught us much; it has not stopped us from making mistakes, big mistakes that will have great consequences for years. The reasons that we still make mistakes lies in our history, about which we have learned very little. Why? Because we allowed others, outsiders, to manipulate us, to tell us what to do, who we are and how we should feel!

We, the Macedonians from Greek occupied Macedonia, have to admit that, for a long time, we have been under not only the physical but also the psychological “Greek thumb”. They have been filling our heads with lies and nonsense and we believed them; many still believe them; even some of those who now no longer live in Greece, still believe them. By doing this we are creating, we are writing our own tragic history!

What is our truth like?

Research has shown that we, the surviving Macedonians from the Greek Civil War and the survivors from all turbulent times in our history, have not been able to “shake off” our expectations and dependency on others, on outsiders, on strangers, on the CPY, on the CPG, etc., who don’t see us the way we see them. While they have proven to us that they want no part of and have attempted to “destroy us” at every opportunity, without self respect we continue to play their games by their rules, sacrificing ourselves and dying for them. Why such false hopes? Why do we choose to live illusions? And for these reasons we allow our history to also be an illusion!

So why is this happening to the Macedonians? Why do we put our feet in their traps and our heads in their noose? Time and events have shown that the programs put in place by the CPY/CPM through NOF and AFZH to encourage a Macedonian mass participation in an “ideological and alien war” have destroyed the Macedonian nation and culture in Greek occupied Macedonia and have left the survivors stranded in alien lands with a half century old “blank stare”.

I hope you now appreciate why we need to understand what happened to us and why we need to know the “historic truth”, which has been hidden from us for more than a half century.

The following was the Left’s position after the Greek Civil War:

In September 1988, almost one year after the May 1987 Congress, CPG Secretary General Harilaos Florakis, held a press conference in Solun with Greek and foreign journalists to openly explain the position he took at the Congress. In his answer to a journalist working for “Mesimvrini”, among other things, Florakis said: “On this occasion I would like to say that for us, for our Party, the Macedonian minority does not exist!” (Vecher, November 5, 1988, page 9)

I remember this like it was said yesterday. During the 1950’s when I was in Tashkent, one of my fellow fighters, a brave fellow, nephew of an Ilinden fighter and son of a fighter from Kostur who was ruthlessly liquidated, said something. He said: “It is true that the Kostur fighters (21) before us failed to create a Paradise in our Aegean Macedonia and because of that did NOF and AFZH have to create a hell there?”

Many secrets of the genocide committed against the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia are hidden in the CPY/CPM archives and will remain there undiscovered along with the motives for creating NOF and AFZH in Skopje on April 23, 1945, by the CPY/CPM leadership (Tito, Kolishevski and Mitrevski), the people responsible for putting the noose around our necks.

We all know that Macedonia was partitioned in 1913 into three pieces. We all know that two of the three pieces failed to liberate themselves. We also all know that one part survived and did liberate itself, first as a Republic within a federal state, and then as an Independent State. Therefore, we should also be aware that all Greek attempts and efforts to “entirely destroy” Macedonia have failed - the Republic of Macedonia is alive and well.

This however, is also a good place to mention that even though Greece has failed to destroy Macedonia, it does not mean that it has given up; hence the so-called fabricated “name dispute”! Greece has not stopped and will not stop doing what it started in 1913. Greece, over the last 60 years, has tried very hard, by any means possible, to suppress the Macedonian name, identity and language not only inside Greece but also outside, even in the Republic of Macedonia. The Interim Agreement Greece signed with Macedonia for alleged Macedonian security threats is only a front for hiding what it has done and is still doing to the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia. All these “constitutional changes”, “flag changes”, “temporary name”, etc. are just stumbling blocks and curtains to veil the Macedonian “problem” inside Greece; the land confiscations, the terror, the murders, the depravation of rights, the exiling of hundreds of thousands of Macedonian people and the “genocide” perpetrated against the Macedonian culture and nation!

I could stop here and leave the reader to ask their own questions and seek their own answers as to what happened to us Macedonians in Greek occupied Macedonia. But instead of doing that I prefer to present you with more evidence: facts and arguments that will lead you to understand why the Macedonian people experienced persecution, loss of their homes and lands, permanent exile and genocide during and after the Greek Civil War. Why did this happen to a peace-loving population?

Conclusion: Instead of a scream, there is silence about the genocide.

It is an undeniable fact that: It was after Greece fell under the Western Power sphere of influence, i.e. Great Britain, the United States of America and NATO, that the CPY/CPM undertook action to establish the Macedonian organizations NOF, AFZH and NOMS in Skopje on April 23, 1945. It was during this time that the CPY/CPM decided to call on the unarmed Macedonian peasant to arm himself and start a rebellion against the Greek Government. This was not only “stupidity” but as it turned out, a major “tragedy”.

It is an undeniable fact that: The CPY/CPM promised the Macedonian people that: “Yugoslavia was then the Centre of the Revolution in the Balkans and that the Macedonian question became a Yugoslav question.” This was not only a lie but a definitive death sentence for us, the Macedonian people from Greek occupied Macedonia. There is no doubt that this was the formula for the “Final Solution of the Macedonian question.”

In other words the plan was: “To kill and expel the entire Macedonian population from Greece because the British did not want to see any more Macedonians living in Greek occupied Macedonia.”