Front Matter

WONDERERS A novel

By Stoian Kochov

(Translated from Macedonian to English and edited by Risto Stefov)

Wonderers

A Novel

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January 24, 2017

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For the desolation that now rules Greek occupied Macedonia, our birthplace, and for the lost illusions of the wanderers now drifting in the whirlwind of fate, casualties of the Greek Civil War (1945-1949)

SKOPJE, 2016

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My motive was born immediately after the war

I started in 1951 in Tashkent. But I did not finish the novel

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I stayed stupefied in my own thoughts You can say until my old age Always wondering! What led me to this transformation in life!? (As it did the majority of Macedonians) To join the Greek Civil War (1945-1949) From then to this day I remain without a clear answer To this day I am still looking.... My memories of my comrades and of the Curse of Macedonia are still intact My memories and the blood loss burn in me Lost through the deadly actions Through which the ideological activists led us Through the red scaffold all the way to hell... To this day they keep my suspicions awake…

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PAVLE RAKOVSKI’S STORY

Pavle Rakovski went from a prominent national champion to a victim of the communist regime.

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I dedicate this book to Pavle Rakovski - Gotse son of Mara and Miaile, who after his death, did not received a grave in his homeland Macedonia because he refused to accept the lies told by his comrades. He received his rehabilitation after he died. His personal story is quite unusual, but interesting. He was a village boy, a cow herder who politically matured in captivity in Stalin’s camps in Siberia...

The consequences become clear and understandable only after you gain good knowledge of the events that took place which, until now, was not possible without clarifying the politics that led this “Macedonian nationalist” to captivity in Siberia.

I still remember the meaning of ideological democracy

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I (Stoian Kochov) met Rakovski only one time during the Greek Civil War.

The second time we met was in September 1949, following DAG’s liquidation. We met in the camp of Bureli in Albania.

The third time we met was in 1956 in Tashkent after Rakovski left Alma-Ata. He stayed with me in Tashkent and asked me to take him to see Comrade Tsifroni, CPG Party Secretary. He wanted to return and stay with us veterans.

Our fourth meeting was in the shelters in Skopje...

I went to his funeral. While I cried for him his comrades from NOF and AFZH, who until yesterday slandered him and called him a “Russian spy”, had positive things to say about him… now that he was dead. His comrades had a picture with all of them in it. It was taken in Alma-Ata. They brought the picture to Skopje and cut Rakovski’s head off because they did not want to be seen with him. They did not want the “Russian spy” they created with their false accusations to be in the same picture with them.

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