III THE COURCE AND PROBLEMS OF A SAGA - Part 02

- As is well-known, the CPG did not overcome its “fundamental weakness” until the end, because this weakness stemmed from the very calm and permissive nature of its own basic political line - the “Greek axis”. The consequences of this are well-known:

- The revolution’s basic driving force, the proletariat in the cities, remained outside of the armed struggle in anticipation and never did become a weapon in the hands of the CPG.

- The question of DAG’s strategic reserves, which was the main issue in the armed struggle, remained unresolved. (In addition to the proletariat in the cities, about 700,000 villagers, not engaged in DAG as reserves during 1947, were forcibly collected by the enemy and moved into the cities. There they were encircled by minefields and barbed wire fences so that they could not escape and were used by the enemy as reserves.) And everything ended in disaster.

During the CPG Central Committee Sixth Plenum, held in March 1956, Zahariadis was held accountable for his policies and was removed from all party functions.

So, like Siantos, Zahariadis:

- Built CPG policies based on the thesis that the Greek state position and northern borders were threatened. In fact Zahariadis jeopardized the real interests of the Greek working people, who were threatened by the foreign interventionists and by the domestic reactionaries, in favour of the Greek bourgeoisie imperialist position and the 1913 borders that partitioned Macedonia and mutilated the Macedonian people.

- The CPG proclaimed the “preservation of the territorial integrity of Greece” as its primary task. Exactly: Not the national integrity of

Greece, but the territorial one. This meant that the CPG was fighting for the preservation of Greece. In other words, the CPG intentionally lied to the Macedonian people and as a result committed injustices against them just like the injustices committed against the Macedonian people by the imperialists. The CPG did this to protect the imperialist interests of the Greek bourgeoisie.

- England’s “friendly presence” in Greece was a decisive factor for the successful accomplishment of the aforementioned “primary task”. But, in order to secure England’s “friendly presence” the CPG had to struggle at all costs to reach an “equitable deal” with England. (At the same time the CPG was well-aware that England’s presence meant strengthening the reactionaries at the expense of the working people’s rights and freedom.)

- The Macedonian national liberation movement (NOF) was seen as a potential danger to the Greek position and its northern borders, a fact which determined Zahariadis’s true motives towards the Macedonian national minority; to adopt a policy to weaken and destroy the Macedonian liberation movement by all means possible.

- In the end, both Siantos and Zahariadis consciously neglected the interests of the people and betrayed the revolution, especially during the most crucial moments when the revolution had the most favourable chances of winning (during the summer of 1947).

The Ancient Greeks used to say: Ουδεν κρηπτον υπο τοµ ηλιον (nothing remains secret under the sun). I believe that the day will come when everything will be revealed about Siantos and Zahariadis and some of the people next to them. Both Siantos and Zahariadis and those people who served under both of them danced to the tunes of the same piper...

The CPG and Macedonian people

Referring to the CPG’s policy towards the Macedonian people in the period between the two world wars, Peiov wrote: “The CPG leadership did not always find consistent strength in its political action and organizational practice to mobilize the forces of the Macedonian people. This was apparently because it feared the ruling

bourgeois ideology: the nationalist and chauvinist ideas of a “Greater Greece” which was fanatically proclaimed by the bourgeoisie...” (Ibid. p. 105.)

This assessment is obviously superficial, and therefore not accurate. The question of national minorities is a matter of applying democracy consistently. It is absolutely frivolous to claim that the CPG leaders were afraid of the fate of the workers ‘movement and, therefore, in the interests of the workers’ movement renounced democracy because of the Macedonian people. It cannot give up on consistent democracy, its essence, in the interests of the workers’ movement. Something else is in question here. Let’s take a closer look at the facts:

In 1918, the Socialist Workers’ Party was founded. In 1920, it became a Communist Party (the word communist was added). And in 1929 the title “Communist Party of Greece” was adopted, and in brackets: the Greek Communist International.

By 1924, the CPG leaders seemed to know nothing of the genocide against the Macedonian people. Not a word was said throughout this time in defense of the completely disadvantaged Macedonian people. And there was no Macedonian national question in the CPG program, that is, a question about the democratic rights and freedom of the Macedonian national minority. On the other hand, however, at the founding congress, the CPG demanded that the Greek national minority in Albania (northern Epirus) be recognized with the right to self-determination.

Every person who is familiar with Greece’s recent history understands the parallelism in the CPG’s politics with those of the Greek bourgeoisie. It is obvious that they both serve “Greek national interests”. They both dance to the same tune.

However, the Balkan Communist Federation in 1923 (at the Sixth Conference), and a year later, the Communist International (at the Third Congress in Moscow) decided to ask the CPG to include the Macedonian national question in the CPG program. Namely, the CPG Third Extraordinary Congress, held at the end of 1924, recognized the Macedonian people and “their right to self-

determination to secession from Greece and the establishment of a single and independent Macedonian state, which was to include all parts of Macedonia occupied by the three Balkan bourgeoisies”. (“Forty years of CPG struggle, CPG 1918-1958”, CPG Central Committee edition, p. 157.)

The bourgeoisie sharply reacted to the CPG’s recognition of the Macedonian national question and immediately declared the Party treasonous and began, with its famous terror courts, to prosecute the fifteen Party members in Solun as well as many other members and CPG supporters throughout Greece. There were also sharp and unpleasant reactions from inside the Party. “...Comrades and members of the Solun branch... protested against the Party’s policy…” (Regarding the Macedonian national question.) See: “Rizospastis”, February 23, 1925.

But all this slowly and surely subsided and disappeared and the Macedonian national question remained on paper only. In other words, none of it was implemented. In fact during the 1926 pre-election campaign in Greece, the CPG remained silent regarding its policy on the Macedonian national question, indefinitely postponing the struggle for the democratic rights of the Macedonian minority.

Then, during the Third CPG Congress, held in March 1927, the CPG leadership admitted that it was wrong to keep silent on the issue of Macedonia’s independence and condemned the views of those comrades who proposed to cancel the Macedonian right to a single and independent Macedonia during the last parliamentary elections. At the same time the CPG underlined the need to intensify the propaganda campaign for internationalism and strengthen the struggle against the bourgeoisie nationalist and chauvinist propaganda... (CPG from 1931 to 1952, Volume 2, pp. 40-41.) But these solutions too were hushed up. The party did not continue to fight, that is to do practical work among the masses for the recognition of the democratic rights of the Macedonian national minority. The CPG leaders in fact looked the other way ignoring the daily drama and genocide that was perpetrated in (Greek occupied) Macedonia against the Macedonian people.

In its appeal to the CPG membership in November 1931, regarding all this, the Comintern Executive Council pointed out the following: “The CPG has lagged far behind in developing the oppressed Greek people’s national revolutionary liberation struggle. The CPG did not take into its own hands to stabilize, with organizing measures, the hefty sympathy it enjoyed from the communist movement among the repressed nationalities (Macedonians, Turks, Albanians, Jews) -a fact that has helped the bourgeoisie isolate and alienate the communists and terrorize the revolutionary masses of the oppressed nations. The party must, without delay, lead the fight for the right to free self-determination of nations to secession, and against national suppression and persecution of the Macedonian people...” (Forty years of CPG struggle”, p. 307.)

Unfortunately the appeal did not help. The policy of silence and postponements continued and the Macedonian people’s struggle for their democratic national and social rights and freedoms kept being ignored. In that respect, the CPG Central Committee, during its Fifth Plenum, held in 1932, concluded the following: “The struggle for the national minority question has practically marked no progress despite the unseen economic impoverishment of the masses and the national minorities... The conditions were right to raise those masses in a revolutionary struggle and to create favourable conditions for us - for our successful work among them...” (“Five Years of Struggling”, CPG Central Committee edition, p. 139.)

Two years later, in January 1934, the CPG Central Committee, during its Sixth Plenum, concluded that: “The national districts were the most elusive sectors in the work of the Party despite the favourable conditions for its work among the Macedonians... The Party did not task itself to step up the party organizations in the national districts in order to help organize mass national revolutionary organizations and popularize the Party’s line on the national question of the repressed nationalities among the Greek working masses...” (CPG from 1931-1952, p. 40.) At the Fifth Congress, held in March 1934, K. Vermitis, a delegate from Western Macedonia, in his speech, published in the “Marxist Libraries” in June 1934, unequivocally stated that “the Party until today did not do any work for the national minorities, except for the famous call from above for a single and independent Macedonia...”

Vermitis also said that members of the Party from Western Macedonia felt that there should not have been a Macedonian national question because, in their opinion, the Macedonians had already been Hellenized.

Look at this: In Macedonia itself, most characteristically in western Macedonia, where the Macedonian population was well-preserved in compact masses, the CPG opinion was, of course, that there were no longer Macedonian people, not even in the party ranks among the Communists. This may not be difficult for a person to say outside of the party ranks in Macedonia and outside of Macedonia, in other areas of the Greek state, where people may not have known that Macedonians existed in Macedonia, or that non-Greek people existed in “northern Greece”... But to say that in the face of the Macedonian people was very regrettable…!

The problem, of course, was readdressed during the Fifth Congress where it was decided that: “The CPG should be resolutely fighting to eradicate the great Greek state nationalism and its manifestations in the CPG ranks, as well as the international education of Greek workers and farmers...” (CPG from 1931 to 1952, p. 57.) Other tasks were also set out during The Fifth Congress to allow the CPG “to win the trust of the national minorities…” (Ibid. p. 57.) Unfortunately nothing of what was said was actually done. The CPG remained “silent” in regard to the Macedonian people’s struggle for democratic rights and freedoms.

When the Macedonian fighters from the Democratic Army of Greece (DAG) appeared in Thessaly and Rumeli (1947-1948), the local people listening to them speaking and singing in the Macedonian language began to panic, thinking that Greece was being invaded by Bulgarian soldiers, or by members of some foreign legion?! In other words, the CPG did nothing to inform the Greek people of the Macedonian existence in Greece.

Due to the same situation, i.e. local people in Epirus panicking because they heard the Macedonian soldiers speaking Macedonian, in 1948 DAG Eighth Division command ordered the Macedonian fighters in Epirus to speak Greek only and represent themselves as Greeks and refrain from singing songs in the Macedonian language.

Even more characteristic was the fact that the commanders (Statis -Alekos) of DAG Supreme Headquarters, in 1947, addressed the Macedonian fighters in Kaimakchalan (in Macedonia itself), who were also members of the CPG, by calling them: “Brothers, Greeks…!” like they were “Slavophone Greeks” or Greeks with a reduced national consciousness...

These are only a few examples of how the Macedonian people were treated by the CPG, which tells us that both in the Party ranks and among the masses the CPG practiced silence and endlessly postponed the Macedonian struggle for democratic rights and freedoms in this part of (Greek occupied) Macedonia, a practice that was continued by the CPG leaders for many years…

Even though the CPG policy regarding minority rights was not implemented on the ground, it did not mean that such a policy, or at least the CPG’s theoretical position on the national question, did not exist. One year after the Fifth Congress took place, the CPG Central Committee, during its Third Plenum, abandoned its position on the “right to self-determination to secession...”, and adopted a new position: “Full equality rights for the national minorities”. Regarding this, the CPG during its Sixth Congress, held in December 1935, declared that:

“Such a change did not mean abandoning the Marxist-Leninist principle of self-determination for the national minorities... The population in the Greek part of Macedonia today is Greek in its majority, and the Marxist-Leninist principle of self-determination required that the old slogan be replaced with a slogan that reflects today’s conditions…” (CPG from 1931 to 1952,” p. 74.) So, all this was done to look like it was done in the interests of the workers movement, that is, the people’s revolution. However, here again we are dealing with something else. Objectively, this change was a hundred and eighty degree turn, done for public acceptance of the CPG line, which directly negated what was agreed to in the past. Namely, so far the CPG acknowledged that Macedonia is not only a geographical but also an ethnic whole occupied by the three Balkan bourgeoisies. The CPG in effect promised the Macedonian people that they had the right to self-determination to secession from

Greece and the right to “unify their country as a single and free Macedonia”. With this, the CPG openly and unambiguously condemned the imperialist Greek bourgeoisie policy, and proclaimed that this part of Macedonia was occupied by Greece and that the Macedonian people were endlessly persecuted and, in general, the Greek state was carrying out a policy of genocide against the Macedonian people. At the same time the Greek state was colonizing Macedonian lands with a non-Macedonian population thus artificially alterating the national composition of the population in favour of the Greek state.

With its new line and its one hundred and eighty degree turn, the CPG was now saying that: “Today the population in this part of Macedonia, in its majority, is Greek” which requires that the “Marxist-Leninist principle of self-determination” to be applied in favour of the Greek majority. As for the Macedonian people, all that was needed was that they only be recognized as a minority with minority rights (even though this Greek majority, in general, was not a majority in Macedonia compared to the entire Macedonian population). By proclaiming the Macedonian people a minority in their own homeland, the CPG in fact recognized the rights of the artificially created Greeks as a majority. This in fact meant that the CPG treated this part of Macedonia as part of the Greek homeland. Accordingly, the CPG now denies or ignores the fact that the Macedonian people and Macedonia are an ethnic whole occupied by the three Balkan bourgeoisies. With this, the CPG unambiguously confirmed and accepted the imperialist policy of the Greek bourgeoisie, which it had previously rejected.

And so, in the name of the workers movement and the revolution, the CPG (headed by Zahariadis), this time too, openly supported “Greek national interests” at the expense of the Macedonian people.

By pursuing Greek national interests as a priority over the Macedonian question, the CPG adopted a don’t care policy toward the Macedonian national minority and Macedonian issues ceased to occupy a place in the CPG Central Committee’s plenum agendas, as was the case before. As a result work done in the national districts was interrupted. For the top CPG leadership, the question of the Macedonian people’s democratic rights in the Greek state ceased to

be an actual issue for consideration, In other words, it was removed from the agenda and the words “Macedonia” and “Macedonians”, etc., disappeared from the CPG’s political vocabulary. The commitment for “full equality of minorities”, in relation to the Macedonian people, was no longer supported by any concrete activity, not only on the ground among the people, but also at the CPG leadership level and beyond.

As is well-known, this was the time when international reactionaries and fascists were attacking the workers movement all across Europe. As was every attack against the rights and freedom of oppressed people, this attack in Greece against the rights of the Macedonian people, was a bad harbinger for all people of all oppressed nations and, in this case, for the Greek working people as well. In 1936, the Greek bourgeoisie established the Fourth of August dictatorship by which they abolished the democratic rights and freedoms of the Greek people. At the same time a silent war of extermination was waged against the Macedonian people, which quickly became systemic and was reinforced at the highest degree. The period of the Fourth of August dictatorship (1936-1941) became the period of the fiercest attacks of great chauvinism against the Macedonian people.

The Greek bourgeoisie, during this period, removed Zahariadis and a number of his associates from the political scene. The CPG had to use agents to do its work and for the first time experienced many breakdowns. In other words the CPG broke up into several smaller and independent groups. This clearly indicates that the CPG’s presence and activities were not completely eliminated. Those who study the party documents from this period will inevitably conclude that no party leadership – no central, provincial, or district party leadership, came to the fore to condemn the criminal orgy perpetrated against the Macedonian people by the Greek reactionaries... The Macedonian people themselves rose to this task…

Naum Peiov, however, did not analyze or try to explain this great event; the Macedonian people proclaiming themselves as a Macedonian nation in their own homeland. This, certainly, was a serious omission on Peiov’s part. But, for some reason, Peiov mistakenly, by some far reaching comments, attributed this to the

CPG. He tries to attract the reader’s attention to some insignificant things, underlining in vain the verbal promises the CPG made, like its empty promises that it would fight for a final and definite decision on the Macedonian question... but only after a Soviet victory in the Balkans…” (“Macedonians and the Civil War in Greece”, Institute of National History edition, Skopje, 1968, p. 102.) Peiov also pointed out that the CPG, in this same resolution, confirmed its increased responsibilities to help the minorities with their struggle before the Soviets took power in the Balkans. (Ibid. p. 102.)

Of course, immediately below, Peiov, without a doubt, concluded that: “The CPG leadership, during the struggle in the Balkans, forgot about its revolutionary obligations and made gross ‘mistakes’ in its political activities and organizational measures, both during the national liberation war and during the Greek Civil War.” (Ibid. p. 107.)

Peiov briefly, but accurately and convincingly, pointed out that the objective conditions during the Fascist occupation of the Balkans not only allowed but also demanded, both for political and organizational reasons, a revision of the Macedonian national question and its new setting in the newly emerging reality; objectively favourable conditions for its final settlement. Peiov correctly pointed out that this only happened because some leaders from the interested Communist parties were prepared for it. In this respect, Peiov also listed the Siantos CPG leadership’s “mistakes”:

“...The CPG took an extremely opportunist attitude... It did not show modernity to properly set and resolve the Macedonian national question as an inevitable objective request in the new conditions... The CPG leaders obviously broke with their natural place and their natural development path, with regard to the Macedonian people’s struggle, right from the beginning to the end of the national liberation war, and even then when the war was lost and power in Greece fell into the hands of counterrevolutionaries... The CPG systematically worked to block the Macedonian factor from growing and from allowing the Macedonian people to independently take their fate into their own hands... The CPG persistently opposed the formation of a Macedonian national liberation organization, the

formation of separate Macedonian partisan units, and the development of Macedonian national cadres…” (Ibid. p. 108-109.) And for my part I will add that the CPG also used weapons against the Macedonian fighters in certain cases...

However, to say that the CPG made “mistakes”, in itself, is a superficial approach. If that were the case then the entire CPG general line might as well be called a “mistake”. On the contrary, what the CPG did was a consistent application of the CPG general line. Peiov made a mistake by failing to consider what was inside that line and to show its connection to the actual line that the CPG practiced at that time...

As I have already pointed out in the previous statement, after the Macedonian people made their own proclamation as a Macedonian nation in their homeland, the CPG accepted a practical policy of ignoring the very existence of the Macedonian people. What was then called “Greater Greek nationalism” - a requirement that no Macedonian national question existed, turned into a factual policy, that is, a permanent CPG practice. No one down on the ground or up at the top spoke about Macedonia and the Macedonian people or their democratic rights and freedoms within the Greek state. The CPG leadership tried to extend this practice during the Fascist occupation. As is well-known, the CPG, during its CPG Central Committee Sixth Plenum, held in July 1941, decided the following: “The Communist Party of Greece calls upon the Greek people, all its parties and organizations, in one national liberation front, etc…” (“The CPG from 1931 to 1952”, CPG Central Committee edition, p. 105.) No Macedonians there!

In other words the CPG Central Committee made no mention of any Macedonians or their liberation struggle as Macedonians side by side with the Greek people. The CPG leadership literally ignored its own interests of this liberation struggle against a common enemy. In fact, the CPG completely ignored the existence of a Macedonian people and the Macedonian national question in Greece which it was expected to resolve.

The same thing was repeated during the CPG’s Seventh Plenum held in September 1941.

EAM, ELAS and PEEA program documents, which defined the CPG’s general line of practical applications, never mentioned or foresaw the Macedonian people and their democratic rights in the “new” Greece. The Macedonian people were simply ignored, and worse than that, they were treated like they were Greeks. According to S. Sarafis, ELAS’s popular chief commander, in his famous book “ELAS”, wrote: “...Then I went to the village Perivoli and there I inspected the Second Battalion of the 28th Brigade, which was composed entirely of ‘Slavophone Greeks’...” (Ibid. p. 331.)

So, according to Sarafis, no Macedonians existed as a separate people in Macedonia.

As for “full equality” for the Macedonian people, that was recognized in exchange for the abolishment of the “right to self-determination to secession”. Life however proved that this was only required for external needs and not to be internally implemented, that is why it remained in the CPG program.

Minority rights in Greece were of a theoretical nature and that is how they were reflected in the CPG’s general line during the fascist occupation. The CPG’s actual line, as practiced, however, as we stated earlier, was: National struggle in national unity with the national bourgeoisie and with English friendship and support, carry out a national liberation, to fully establish the integrity of Greece and strategically secure Greece’s northern borders against external attacks, which meant expanding the Greek state at the expense of its neighbours (Macedonians). This was exactly the same line that exclusively served English and “Greek nationalist interests”. In other words the CPG was in actual fact struggling to preserve “nationalist interests” during this fateful historical moment.

Only when we take all this into account can we begin to reasonably and accurately understand:

- Why did the CPG, during the occupation, recruit only a small number of Macedonian activists, a number that could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and why were the more active Macedonians killed very early in the struggle, like Tashko Karadzha, member of

the CPG Central Committee for Macedonia, killed in May 1942, and later legendary Lazo Trpovski, also member of CPG Central Committee for Macedonia?

- Why were those few Macedonian cadres in the CPG not allowed to lead the Macedonian national liberation struggle, and why was the armed Macedonian national liberation struggle, led by new, and until yesterday, unknown people, allowed to be extinguished almost silently?

- Why was there an unavoidable conflict between the Macedonians and CPG, EAM and ELAS, after the Macedonian national liberation struggle broke out?

It would appear that the Macedonian people’s struggle, with its national features and aspirations, represented a potential danger to the Greek position and to Greece’s northern borders which the CPG, EAM and ELAS leaders could not ignore. That is why the CPG never helped the Macedonians before the Macedonian liberation movement broke out and that is why the CPG, EAM and ELAS were upset with the Macedonians after the Macedonian liberation movement broke out. The collision of interests between the Macedonian national liberation struggle and Greek national interests was the basic cause that defined the CPG’s attitude and the actions it took against the Macedonian people, which according to Peiov, were “mistakes”.

Peiov wrote: “SNOF (Slavo-Macedonian National Liberation Front) and the SNOV (Slavo-Macedonian National Liberation Army) partisan units were created in the fall of 1943, from pressures exerted by the situation on the ground…”

That is correct. It was well-known that some Party officials in those days were complaining that “armed opportunists” were sowing discord among the peaceful Macedonian villages, and if they were not there, there would supposedly be peace and order in those villages. In other words, SNOF and some of the smaller Macedonian partisan groups were formally created to disarm those so-called “armed opportunists” and prevent them from creating an unpleasant situation for the CPG.

However, instead of a formal and imaginary organization, SNOF quickly grew into a national organization that turned the fledgling Macedonian national liberation movement into a strongly organized and armed revolutionary movement.

Not wanting the Macedonian revolutionary movement to gain any ground, the CPG quickly, in a manner of several months, dissolved SNOF because, according to the CPG, it was an “autonomist”, “crypto-fascist” and “reactionary” organization.

Unfortunately, Peiov’s explanation of the process the CPG leadership followed was superficial and inaccurate. According to Peiov, the CPG leaders acted this way “because EAM and PEEA in their program principles and in the agreements they signed with the Greek government in exile, did not foresee and did not defend the rights of the Macedonians, nor did they help the Macedonians create their own forces to defend those rights…” (Ibid. p. 109.)

Clearly, Peiov’s “clarification” explained nothing. Peiov should have answered the questions: “Why did the CPG leaders not foresee and defend the Macedonian people’s democratic rights? Why instead of helping them did they place obstacles in their path, developing their own Macedonian national liberation struggle?

Of course, there were fundamental differences and contradictions between what Siantos and his associates were trying to do as compared to what the Macedonian people were trying to do. The Macedonian people wanted to win their rights and struggled in support of Macedonian national interests which conflicted with the “Greek national interests” supported by Siantos’s CPG leadership. In other words there was no place for the Macedonian national liberation movement within the general line that the CPG practiced. In fact the CPG did not even want to acknowledge the existence of the Macedonian people and the Macedonian national question, never mind support them. In fact the CPG sacrificed “Macedonian rights” and the Macedonian people themselves, to safeguard Greece’s existing border. Accordingly and by that logic, the CPG was opposed to everything that would threaten Greece’s integrity including the Macedonian national liberation movement…

Naturally, Sinatos and the top CPG leadership had no problem betraying the Macedonian people. This was one of Siantos’s many sins committed against the people in Greece and against the Greek people’s revolution. As we now know, the culmination of these “perpetrations” were part of the Varkiza Agreement, with which Siantos managed to quickly and efficiently liquidate the entire ELAS military force and rob the people of their revolution.

NOF and the “Greek Axis” (1945-1949)

After Siantos died, Zahariadis took his place. Zahariadis, it appears, was a survivor who in a strange way managed to survive for many years as a communist, first in the hands of the Greek fascist Asfalia (security services) and then in the hands of Hitler’s Gestapo in Dachau… As a communist he managed to live through all that and come out alive and well to take over the CPG leadership in Greece.

In the meantime, the Macedonian national liberation movement (NOF), despite CPG opposition, formed a strong national revolutionary organization which managed to touch every Macedonian.

The CPG, headed by Zahariadis, continued with its open hostilities against NOF, always attacking its leaders and organizers and accusing them of “adventurisms” and calling them “autonomists”, “traitors” and other such words in order to isolate them, the movement and the fighters from the people.

However, slowly, as the unilateral civil war was turning into a two-sided civil war, the CPG finally came to the realization that, according to Peiov: “NOF was a real factor without which the Macedonian people could not imagine fighting in a common struggle against a common enemy - the Greek counterrevolution and the foreign interventionists…” (Ibid. p. 146.) On November 21, 1946, after some preparatory work, a meeting was held between the NOF Central Council Secretariat (of which I, Pavle Rakovski, was a member) and representatives of the CPG. After a lot of discussion, an agreement was reached to unify our military forces and transfer NOF directly under the CPG leadership.

It is well-known that Zahariadis and the people around him (those who were collaborating with Siantos) turned out to be insincere and inconsistent with the Macedonian people and NOF. And as Naum Peiov rightly pointed out: “Since the first moment of the unification, the CPG leaders wanted to completely behead the Macedonian national liberation movement... From the very first moment to the withdrawal of DAG from the battlefields, and to the end of the armed struggle in Greece, the CPG leadership worked systematically to undermine NOF... The Macedonian people were not treated as “allies” in a common struggle but rather as unpaid mercenaries... The Macedonian partisans in DAG’s ranks were oppressed and discriminated against. All Macedonians and members of NOF, who disagreed with the CPG, were singled out and removed from their positions in NOF…” (Ibid. p.150.)

Even though this matter is in fact the main subject of Peiov’s work, he did not go far enough or beyond some superficial accounts. In other words he did not expose Zahariadis’s actions against the Macedonian people or even register all the ins and outs of his measures. As I have already stated, the registration of events alone is not enough to properly explain and evaluate the situation for the reader. Peiov should have analyzed and explained each action to see what it meant and to understand why, when the CPG proclaimed “equality”, it actually applied a policy of “inequality and discrimination”, and even committed crimes against the Macedonian people.

When all this is expanded on and properly explained in detail one can see the true sacrifices the Macedonian people made during this struggle and their contribution to the civil war in Greece. Peiov did not do this which is a serious omission on his part. On the other hand, Peiov took a different approach here and tried to explain this as “some alleged contradiction between the CPG and NOF”. According to Peiov: “It was the attitude taken: to have an ‘armed struggle’ or a ‘political-parliamentary struggle’ that formed the basis for the dispute between NOF and the CPG. This attitude led to a series of consequences and contributed to NOF’s hesitation, of whether to step up the armed struggle or not, etc.” (Ibid. p. 141.)

The question of liberating Greece from the foreign interventionists and from the domestic reactionaries was an issue only for the Greek people and for their avant-garde the CPG. It was their right and duty to decide when and how they would act to resolve the issue. It is not true that the Macedonian people, about twenty-five times less in number than the Greek people, were in a position to question or oppose the CPG on when to start the armed struggle. Peiov said that: “NOF took a standstill on a number of issues to see how the CPG leadership would act…” (Ibid. p. 141.) This was correct, however inevitable. It is absurd to think that the Macedonian people could do something in Greece, even about their own position, in disregard of the CPG, the Greek people and the workers movement. It is even more absurd to believe that the Macedonian people could, on their own, exercise or act on something that contradicted the CPG line. If at any given moment or situation the Macedonian armed resistance took intense action, it was exclusively because of specific circumstances like the intense terror perpetrated against them, and not because of some supposed special plans or attitudes towards the armed struggle. The disagreements between the CPG and NOF were not caused by this, but by something completely different. It is true as Peiov correctly stated that: “There was a gap between NOF and the CPG leadership on the Macedonian national question which was created during the people’s liberation movement…” (Ibid. p. 133.) But, as usual, Peiov only stated a fact without an explanation. If you were to explore that gap, which Peiov missed out on, you would be intimidated by its wild nature and our people have the right to know the nature of that gap.

All in all, this part of Naum Peiov’s work is the least well-processed and looks poor...

Let us recall: The CPG Central Committee Twelfth Plenum, held in June 1945, was the first plenum directly managed by Zahariadis who had just returned from Dachau to London and from London to Athens. The CPG’s adopted line in full was Zahariadis’s doing.

As I stated earlier, Zahariadis (and the Twelfth Plenum) decided that “as a realistic foreign policy... Greece should be positioned on an axis between two basic poles: the European-Balkan pole with Russia as the centre and the Mediterranean pole with England as the

centre... and this ‘Greek axis’ would bind these two poles in a way that would best serve Greek interests…”

We have already seen how this “Greek axis” began to function and serve “Greek interests”. Fearing Tito and NOF and not having much confidence in Russia, Zahariadis and the CPG resolutely turned to the Middle East with England as the centre, declaring England’s “friendly presence and support” as a primary necessity to secure the “peaceful development” of the country, while “preserving Greece’s territorial integrity”. This was proclaimed as the CPG’s primary task.

And as we know, Zahariadis’s leadership voted in favour of the “Greek Axis” during the CPG’s Seventh Congress, held in October 1945.

So the question is, in view of the “Greek Axis” what kind of policy did Zahariadis apply towards NOF and the Macedonian people?

Let us have a closer look at the CPG documents from that time:

- Not a word was said about the Macedonian people. At the Twelfth Plenum Zahariadis refused to speak about the Macedonians and about NOF. He even refused to admit that Macedonians were fighting in a national rebellion. The resolution adopted during the plenum simply ignored not only the Macedonian people’s democratic rights in the Greek state, but also there actual existence.

- About four months later, the CPG, at its Seventh Congress, said: “The CPG condemns, as a crime against national interests, the persecution committed by post-December Greece against the Slavo-Macedonian minority…” (“CPG from 1931 to 1952”, p. 126.) That’s all it said. And it was just a verbal condemnation, with no consequences. The CPG did not organize any protests against this. It did not involve any writers, scientists, artists or other prominent figures to protest against the Macedonians being persecuted. The CPG did not organize work interruption in factories, not even for an hour, the closing of shops, not even in Macedonia, in protest of this. In other words the CPG took no practical measures to protest the persecution committed by post-December Greece against the

Macedonian people. On the contrary: The CPG itself initiated open hostilities against the Macedonian movement, even during the fascist occupation, and continued them with unabated intensity.

- About two months following the Seventh Congress, during a meeting of the CPG Central Committee on Macedonia and Thrace, held in Solun in December 1945, Zahariadis said: “NOF is a democratic political organization of the Slavo-Macedonians” and that “every Greek, and true democrat, should cooperate with it...” (See: “Λαϊκη φωνη”, December 18, 1945.) So, this was the first time that Zahariadis publicly took a stand in support of the Macedonian movement. However, the CPG press in Macedonia continued to fight against NOF and against its activists and leaders. At first glance this seemed contradictory and incomprehensible. But in time, as we shall see, it became clear and comprehensible why it was done this way.

- During the CPG Central Committee Second Plenum, held in February 1946, the CPG said: “The CPG condemns the persecutions and acts of official Greece against the Slavophone Macedonian population... and declares that it will fight to recognize the rights and equality of the Slavophones living in Greek Macedonia in the lands of the Greek state…” (“CPG from 1931 to 1952”, p. 149-150.)

So, according to the CPG, the Macedonian people are no longer part of the Macedonian nation, no longer part of a Macedonian national minority, but a nationally unformed, amorphous mass of “Slavophone speakers living in the lands of the Greek state”.

It would appear that the Plenum did not recognize the national existence of the Macedonian people in general. It did not recognize the existence of the Macedonian national question inside or outside of Greece. Therefore, the CPG did not recognize and would not accept the fact that Yugoslavia recognized the Macedonian state and nation or the fact that now there was a Macedonian state, the People’s Republic of Macedonia. In other words Zahariadis reacted indirectly to both the latest turn of events in Yugoslavia as well as to events in the Greek (occupied) part of Macedonia. By not recognizing the existence of the Macedonian nation outside of Greece in effect the CPG did not recognize NOF. This is clearly

indicated by the reaction of the party press. Hostilities by the party press against NOF and its leaders continued uninterrupted even after Zahariadis spoke in favour of the Macedonians and even after the decisions made at the Second Plenum.

Now we know, and it should be clear, why Zahariadis said what he said. Namely, Zahariadis spoke of NOF, not as a political revolutionary organization of the Macedonian people, that is, of the Macedonian national minority in the Greek state, but of a different NOF, which would appear as a “political organization” of the “Slavic speakers living in the Greek state”, as was expressed in the Second Plenum. This “imagined” NOF, of which Zahariadis spoke, would obviously include the “rights and equality of the Slavic speakers” in the CPG program requirements but they would be without national characteristics and aspirations, something like the rights and equality of some, so to speak, Slavic Gypsies living in Greece.

This “imagined” NOF did not yet exist. But when it is created its ideological content and characteristics would be based on Zahariadis’s statement and on the decision made during the Second Plenum.

And so, the Macedonian people went from being an “enslaved nation” with corresponding “rights to self-determination to secession from Greece”, as recognized by the CPG in 1924, to a “national minority” in their own homeland as recognized by Zahariadis and the CPG in 1935. Now, again under Zahariadis’s leadership, the Macedonian people became an amorphous mass of Slavic speakers, with unclear national characteristics and aspirations. All this was done at a time when the Macedonian people in the Yugoslav part of Macedonia were gaining their rights by fighting for them. But, even though the Macedonian people in the Greek (occupied) part of Macedonia were organized by NOF from the youngest to the oldest and tirelessly struggled to gain their democratic rights in the Greek state, the CPG persistently stood in their way fighting against them.