CHAPTER FOUR – THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF GREECE AND THE MACEDONIAN NATIONAL QUEST

CHAPTER FOUR – THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF GREECE AND THE MACEDONIAN NATIONAL QUESTION (1918-1940)

1. COMINTERN POLICY AND THE MACEDONIAN NATIONAL QUESTION IN EUROPE

The existence of unresolved national and territorial issues attracted the attention of the Comintern but its position and treatment of the Macedonian National Question corresponds to one “continuous discontinuity” or a “discontinued continuity”.

But what was the reason for the Comintern’s policy of “continued discontinuity” or “discontinued continuity” towards solving the Macedonian National Question? The next revolution always has universal character and adds new values and new qualities to the values and benefits of the previous revolution, representing a real step forward in the historical evolution of human kind. Such a role was played in human history by the French Revolution of 1789 and tried to be played by the Russian Socialist Revolution. Before 1789 people enjoyed hardly any political or economic freedom, but after the French Revolution people gained political freedom but, unfortunately, did not gain much economic freedom. The French Revolution replaced one form of economic exploitation (feudal) with another form (capitalist) and retained the principle of economic exploitation of people by other people, i.e. of a class by another class. But, putting things in perspective, in time many economic problems were solved but through a socio-democratic orientation.

By gaining political freedom, the people took one real step forward in an astronomical evolution. Every other revolution took its universal character from the French Revolution. Everywhere where there was no respect for political freedom the peoples strived to gain it through a revolution. During the massive student demonstrations in the Heavenly Peace square in Beijing, the students sang French Revolution songs.

The Russian Socialist Revolution was expected to only add economic freedoms, i.e. to remove the principle of economic exploitation of a person by another person or a class by another class, and take a real step forward in human evolution. But the attempt made by the Russian Socialist Revolution to create symbiosis between political and economic freedom was interrupted by the Stalinist discontinuity. Instead of justifying the political and economic freedom of equality on the basis of the new state order, the Stalinist discontinuity abolished almost all political freedoms gained through the French Revolution and only formally proclaimed economic freedom. Here the harsh capitalist economic exploitation was replaced by another difficult exploitation, State economic exploitation. The socialist crisis was precisely due to the absence of political and economic freedom in the foundation of the socialist state order. With the abolition of political and economic freedom, the Russian Socialist Revolution increasingly lost its universal character and became a hallmark of a typical Russian historical phenomenon. This historical discontinuity could not, and did not influence the way in which the Macedonian National Question was posed and resolved and, as a result, there exists a “discontinuous continuity” or a “continuous discontinuity”.

Contrary to the bourgeois concept of solving National Questions, Lenin recognized the right to self-determination for every nation and its “secession from foreign national collectives”. But the right to self-determination and secession, like any other national secession, was seen and treated solely as a “class struggle”. (V.I. Lenin, On the Right of Nations to Self-Determination, Zagreb, 1979, p. 21.)

By recognizing the right to self-determination of “enslaved peoples”, Lenin took one step forward (as an expression of continuity), but when he made this step conditionally part of “the class struggle for the interest of the working class”, he essentially denied people the right to self-determination (as an expression of discontinuity). Consequently Communist Parties were expected to recognize class struggle as a primarily (principled) issue, and the national struggle as a secondary (tactical) issue. But, at the same time, “class-nation” relationships and the national interests of large “enslaved nations” were preserved and protected. The national interests of the “dominant nation” always had to correspond to the class interests; whereas the national interests of the “enslaved nation” were either in opposition or partially in the same direction as the working class interests. The national interests of the “enslaved

nation” were supported only when they coincided with the interests of the dominant nation which was in support of working class interests. In other words, Stalin did not create his policy of discontinuity with regard to unresolved national questions based on the national interests of “enslaved nations”, but on the basis of “working class interests”. Basing his policy on the national interests of dominant nations and working class interests seriously hampered the Macedonian National Question. On the basis of this, the Comintern dealt with National Questions in Europe by replacing “national” policies with “working class interest” policies which largely depended on USSR state interests. That is why the Comintern, in relation to “unsettled national questions” took the road to supporting the benefits of revisionist states (1919-1935), once in favour of the Versailles political status quo (1935-1939) and again in favour of the revisionist states (1939-1941). The third stage of the Comintern’s policy began with the 1939 Ribenthrop-Molotov Agreement. But after Nazi Germany attacked the USSR, the same Comintern policy became antifascist again.

The Communist Party of Greece (CPG) was obliged to review the Macedonian National Question under the framework of these principles. The Communist Party of Greece was created in 1918 and was initially named “Socialist Workers’ Party of Greece”.