Noose – Chapter 17

Noose – Chapter 17

Unbeknownst to ordinary mortals, for mysterious and unexplained reasons, many things have happened to us Macedonians, some good but mostly bad. These things are historic events that have also happened to us before and the reason they happened to us again is because we have been too lazy to have learned about them. Then, when we discover that these things have happened to us before, we tend to brush them aside and call them coincidences. Instead of relying on the experiences and wisdom of our ancestors, we have allowed ideological activists and strangers to burden us and warmongers to bring us long lasting tears. Now, after half a century of smouldering under the ideological web, we are finally looking for our story but in the secret files of other people’s politics who made a tomb for heroes out of Aegean Macedonia during the Greek Civil War (1945-1949). 1. Overview (historical chronicle of war and politics): Yugoslavia had continued to pursue strategic interest in Aegean Macedonia as an option. Macedonian politics, responsible for endorsing Yugoslavia’s existence during the Second World War, were aimed at gaining control over the territory of Vardar Macedonia and remaining within the new communist Yugoslavia. The recognition of the Macedonian people by the CPY (Communist Party of Yugoslavia) as a separate nationality was ideally suited for domestic purposes since the Macedonians were neither Bulgarians nor Serbians. This of course went against the wishes of the Bulgarians who denied the existence of Macedonians and renewed the Macedonian hatred for the Serbs. As a unique nation, the Macedonians earned the right to join their fraternal Slavic peoples (Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and Montenegrins) in the Yugoslav federation. The other CPY goal, regarding its politics towards Macedonia, was to expand Yugoslav communist hegemony. Tito’s post-war aims were not modest. He wanted Juliska Krajina including Trieste from Italy, almost half of the Austrian province of Carinthia, the inclusion of Albania in the Yugoslav federation and the Greek and Bulgarian part of Macedonia, and sought to occupy them by military means if necessary. Macedonia’s new politics towards the CPY gave the Yugoslav communists an ideal weapon for attaining their goals. By recognizing the Macedonian identity and Macedonian culture as unique, gained them the attention of the Macedonians in Aegean Macedonia who for years were under pressure by Greece to be Hellenized. The campaign for the reunification of all of Macedonia was started by the Yugoslav partisan leaders sometime during the Second World War, even before they gained control in Vardar Macedonia. The fluid and chaotic conditions prevailing in the Balkans after the Axis power withdrawal incited the movement. In the final months of consolidating his power in Yugoslavia and Vardar Macedonia, Tito sought to use his advantages, but was wary of intervening in the Greek situation because his relations with the Greek communists had become strained. In May 1944 all fighters belonging to the Macedonian units (which ELAS threatened to liquidate) joined Goche’s SNOF units. While Goche was having a quarrel with ELAS headquarters about what to do with the weapons seized from the fighters, Yugoslavia sent its agents and small units throughout Northern Greece (Macedonia) to call on the Macedonians to join Tito’s army. This started a mass exodus of Macedonians leaving the ranks of ELAS and transferring to Tito’s army. The Greek Partisans reacted with reprisals against the Macedonian people. Worse than that, the Greek Partisans captured all Macedonian fighters left in their ranks and interned them in southern Greece. They then declared the entire promotional material from Yugoslavia illegal. So, what was the diplomatic game in early 1945, just after the Second World War, for the future of Macedonia? Where did the top leadership of Federal Yugoslavia stand regarding the Macedonians? First evidence of this came to light when Marshal Tito gave an interview for the “New York Times” in Moscow on April 26, 1945 and said: “If the Macedonians in Greece express a desire to unite with other Macedonians, Yugoslavia will respect their wishes.”

Here is what Ivan Shubashich, Tito’s opposition and then Prime Minister in Federal Yugoslavia, was thinking in early 1945 regarding the Macedonians. He was thinking of forcibly evicting the entire Macedonian population out of Aegean Macedonia, which he estimated consisted of around 100,000 people, which in his opinion would resolve the “Macedonian question”; a big problem for the development of good neighbourly relations between Greece and Yugoslavia. During a diplomatic reception, when Shubashich was Prime Minister of Yugoslavia, he explained his revised plan for Yugoslav Macedonia to Alexander C. Kirk, an American political adviser, who at the time was stationed at the joint military command in Europe. Kirk, on February 26, 1945, then sent a telegram to the U.S. Secretary of State describing Shubashich’s plan for Macedonia as follows: “He said he is of the opinion that there will be an inevitable problem in Macedonia… He said that nobody questioned the desire to free Macedonia within Federal Yugoslavia. He also explained that Bulgaria will not oppose this plan, and argued that the issue with Greek Macedonia will be a bigger problem. He said that about 100,000 Macedonians lived in Greek Macedonia who would be moved to Yugoslav Macedonia so that the problem with Greece will be resolved.” (Source: American diplomatic history, documents kept at the University of Wisconsin.) The Communist Party of Greece (CPG) was quite upset with the Yugoslav flirting because the reunification of Macedonia was a delicate subject for the Greek communists. In June 1944 the Headquarters of the Macedonian Partisans in Yugoslavia issued new instructions to its activists and military units inside Greek Macedonia, warning them not to let “Macedonian issues” spoil their fraternal relations with ELAS. But at the same time they were reminded that the resulting National freedom and equality (now experienced by Yugoslav Macedonians) was a desire for all Macedonian people. The dispute between the Greek Communists and Goche came to a climax in October when he found himself face to face being pursued by ELAS units. Instead of fighting and risking bringing the war home, Goche, along with 800 of his people, crossed the border and went to Yugoslavia. Unfortunately Tito treated Goche and his people with the same suspicions as he would treat any other pro-autonomist group of Macedonians. After its arrival, over the next several months, the group was placed in semi-internment and the year after the CPY began to rely on it for its own operations in Greek Macedonia. It was exactly from these people that the organizations NOF (National Liberation Front) and AFZH (Women’s Anti-Fascist Front) were formed in Skopje on April 23, 1945. Over time the CPY seemed to have slowly lost interest in Greek Macedonia. The only exception was the press attack against Papandreou's government in November 1944 in response to the unleashing of terror against the Macedonian people. It was a bitter editorial attack against Papandreou's politics but beyond that it did not care about what was boiling in the Greek pot. There were several factors that influenced this change of attitude in Yugoslavia. At the beginning of 1945, Tito, who at that time was in close contact with Moscow, may have concluded that it was more important for Greek Communists to come to power than the desires of the Macedonians in Aegean Macedonia. Also, all Macedonian combat units in Greece were strongly inclined towards autonomy and Tito was somewhat limited by the existence of Shubashich’s rival government which still enjoyed some support from the Western Powers. At the time caution was a necessary factor. Only after all these circumstances changed did the CPY reactivate its concerns for Greek Macedonia.

2.

The author ΠΕΤΡΟΣ ΑΝΤΑΙΟΣ in his book “ΝΙΚΟΣ ΖΑΗΑΡΙΑ∆ΗΣ - ΘΥΤΗΣ ΚΑΙ ΘΥΜΑ” on page 414 describes events about the general secretary of the CPG Nikos Zahariadis as follows: “In 1924, when Zahariadis and a group of party cadres who had completed their studies in the (KOUTV) Party high school in Moscow, returned from the USSR to Greece, the Third Extraordinary Congress of the Socialist Party of Greece was held and during that Congress they renamed their Communist Party to the Communist Party of Greece (CPG). That Congress also cleared up some issues of internal opposition, accepted the decisions of the Third Communist International Congress and those of the Balkan Communist Conferences. It specifically accepted the decisions of the Seventh Conference of the Balkan Communist Federation during which the ‘Macedonian identity’ was recognized. And this was the first NOOSE placed around the neck of the CPG in the name of the ‘International Proletariat’.” Zahariadis at the time made mention that we Macedonians, may the lord keep us safe, did not believe in such treachery. At that time, Zahariadis, for a person in political power, was very popular with the Macedonians. Many Macedonians were happy and felt lucky to have such a leader to guide them on the road to victory. Macedonians sang songs about him, both when they were happy and when they were angry. And I can’t emphasize enough how much that “CIVILIZED HYPOCRACY” of ours hurts me today! And as Zahariadis explained to the author Anteos: “Outside of the Bulgarian delegation, Yugoslav and Greek delegates voted for granting Macedonia and Thrace autonomy, believing that it was their International duty to do so and to complicate the Bulgarian views of these regions.” (The great revolutionary Georgi Dimitrov was head of the Comintern and Bulgaria. Georgi Dimitrov, whose name can be found in all encyclopedias around the world, comes from a Macedonian family. He was head of the Communist International in Moscow and became head of the Bulgarian state in post-war Bulgaria.) Unfortunately, it did not take too long for the CPG to withdraw from its previous position on the Macedonian national question. The only reason, it would appear, that the CPG got involved in the Macedonian question in the first place, was to serve its own interests in the development of the Greek liberation movement and to place it under its control. The CPG worked hard, even through SNOF, to attract the Macedonian population into EAM and the CPG and to convince it to fight for its strategic goals. The depth of the Macedonian tragedy in the Greek Civil War (1945-1949) was a result of Zahariadis’s many manipulations which were actually in favour of the Greek government. His actions certainly proved to the Greeks that the NOOSE he was preparing was not for the Greek people but for the Macedonian people.