THE LAST BIG LIE

THE LAST BIG LIE

(The peak of the Macedonian state without a sense of national consciousness about the fate of the Macedonians living in Greece)

Right after the CPY and CPG agreed on what to do regarding the continuation of the war in Greek Occupied Macedonia, Lazar Kolishevski, Secretary of the CPM Central Committee, invited the NOF Board, headed by Paskal Mitrevski, for a briefing during which Kolishevski said the following: “Now you go down there (in Greek occupied Macedonia). The CPG is now responsible for you. You must have faith in the CPG. Its policy on the Macedonian question is clear. Any questions that may surface will now be decided by the leadership of the CPG Party. Be careful not to splinter or stray from the Party. You are to work under its directives. You are to struggle and fight to strengthen your unity with the Greek people and fight hard with all your strength against chauvinism, separatism and localized tendencies.”

Our research has shown exactly who hung the communist ideological chain around our neck as well as who tightened it. It is precisely this chain (created by the CPY and placed around our necks by Kolishevski) that made the Greek Civil War cruel, bloody and Godless. This “chain of slavery” has not, to this day, been explained. As a result we Macedonians from Greek occupied Macedonia have been reduced to numbers, even among ourselves. Our common denominator became: “To whom do you belong and who are you?” [Translator’s note: When Macedonian fighters from the Greek Civil War were returning to the People’s Republic of Macedonia, the Yugoslav authorities, most of them Macedonians

themselves, sent these fighters directly to jail to be debriefed instead of welcoming them back with open arms as they had expected. There they were asked political and impersonal questions because, according to those who experienced this, the Yugoslav authorities cared more about the fighters’ allegiance; whether it was to Tito or to Stalin, than they cared for the well-being of the individuals themselves.] So those who fought with Kolishevki’s chain around their necks had to now fight for a new life and for a new place to live. On top of that, “servitude” was demanded of them.

But in order to understand Tito’s reasons and motives for his involvement in Greek affairs, after World War II when all conflicts were over, we are required to do some thorough research.

The explanation given to us by the Yugoslav leaders that “they did what they had to do because of internationalist impulses” is not very convincing. Why? Because these problems started to crop up around the fall of 1948 when Yugoslavia was starting to warm up to the Western powers.

After being sold out by Tito, NOF and AFZH were now burdened with the task of having to struggle together with their enemy. Up to now they were directed by the CPY to fight to “liberate themselves” from the Greek yoke by creating a “United Macedonia” separate from Greece. Now they were condemned to fight for “Unity and Brotherhood” with the Greeks, the same Greeks they were preparing to overthrow! This so-called “Unity and Brotherhood” was now the new foundation on which their future would be built. And as such, the time for de-Macedonia-nizing Macedonia was coming closer. After attempting to “break away” from the Greeks, this new “Macedonian allegiance” to the Greeks not only created confusion, particularly with those Macedonians who had already fled to Yugoslavia, such as the Aegean Brigade, but it also created confrontation and mistrust between the Macedonians themselves. In the eyes of some Macedonians, yesterday’s NOF and AFZ “liberators” of Macedonia, overnight became “Greek-o-phil traitors”.

There is an old saying that goes something like this: “A nation that does not draw experience from its past, can hardly plan its future…”

This leads one to ask: “What have we not learned from our history?” Well, it would appear that we still have not learned about how we managed to survive for centuries and still maintained our ancestral hearths. Yes, it is true, especially we Macedonians living in Greece, we still haven’t learned our authentic history, mainly because Greece would not allow us. So, it is time to do that! One way to do that, for us who can and who live in free countries, is to revisit our past and draw out the truth; if not for ourselves then for our future generations. Some people are already doing that; but not enough. Let’s not forget the most elementary thing: that above all our people living in Greece have roots there and have lived there with their dignity for centuries! But should we continue to feel like we are strangers in our own country or have to justify our existence to our occupiers then we cannot escape our destiny until we are all exterminated.

The fact is that those who want to destroy us knew (know) much more than us, we know almost nothing about them!! To this day we fear and hide from them and hide what they’ve done to us, which explains the PHENOMENON OF OUR SUBJECT CONSCIOUSNESS?

Isn’t that vassalage? Isn’t it true that now the Macedonian organizations got a new master to whom they should be servants?

Is that, as Evdokia Foteva – Vera puts it “getting RECOGNITION FROM the CPG?”

Yes, right now the Macedonian organizations have become vassals: subordinates, dependents and servants of the new master with unprecedented concessions:

If one of the basic national attributes is language, then how could NOF and AFZ, after the so-called “Brotherhood and Unity” (1946) “give up” the Macedonian people’s national identity?

Were the Macedonians units recruited in DAG sent deep south into Greece allowed to speak Macedonian? NO! They were ordered to use their “Greek names” and “speak Greek at all times”.

Shouldn’t someone be blamed for the CPM/CPY and CPG throwing us into the ideological waste?! How are we going to stop that pain, that constant and permanent pain of ours: for the loss of our homes, for our loved ones who left their bones on the battlefields during the Greek Civil War? How are we going to heal from that?

On April 2, 1946, on his way home from Moscow, CPG General Secretary Zahariadis stopped off in Belgrade where he met with Marshal Tito and discussed his decision to launch an armed struggle against the political right in Greece. Zahariadis received Tito’s full support, that is, a promise to supply him with moral and material help. The following was also agreed during this meeting:

1. The Macedonian national liberation movement in the Aegean part of Macedonia, led by NOF, which since April 1945 was under the leadership of the CPM/CPY would be passed on to the CPG leadership.

2. Part of the CPG Central Committee Politburo composition, headed by Ianis Ioannidis, would be transferred to Belgrade to lead the armed struggle from abroad, taking care to supply the partisans with weapons, clothing, food and other materials.

3. The CPG would be allowed to freely recruit fighters from the ranks of the Macedonian and Greek political immigrants in Yugoslavia. It would be allowed to organize hospitals for the sick and wounded DAG fighters. Yugoslavia would assume the role of organizing and coordinating aid for DAG from other countries.

Based on the Tito – Zahariadis April 2, 1946 Agreement, part of the CPG Central Committee Politburo composition, headed by Ioannidis Ioannis and the necessary apparatus, was illegally transferred from Athens to Belgrade on August 24, 1946. General Markos Vafiadis, who in June 1946 Zahariadis appointed organizer and head of the partisan groups, illegally left Greece and moved to Belgrade, where the CPG Central Committee Politburo gave him specific directives. In September 1946, Markos moved to Aegean Macedonia, where on October 28 1946, he established the Main DAG partisan unit Headquarters.

Then, on November 10, 1946, Zahariadis received orders from Stalin to not create a massive armed movement during the winter of 1946-1947 because the international situation supposedly did not allow it and that the CPG should look into finding a political solution to the struggle, etc.

Again, based on the Tito – Zahariadis April 2, 1946 Agreement, the CPY and CPG, represented by Karaivanov and Ioannidis, on November 21, 1946, reached the following agreement: “The leaderships of NOF, AFZH and NOMS were to be placed under CPG command and the Macedonian armed units were to be added to the DAG composition under Markos Vafiadis’s leadership. This was all organized by the CPY and CPG, Tito and Zahariadis, without Macedonian consent.

A cold sweat poured over NOF, AFZH and NOMS, like ice, and shivers ran down their backs.

Terribly confused (now like sold slaves), their inflamed faces darkened, they submissively promised the CPG that, with their authority, will do everything to bring the Macedonian fighters and people into DAG’s (Democratic Army of Greece) ranks. One of them even said: “We will wake the dead if we need to, let them too join this holy revolution, let us all fight together, living and dead!"

Let us also remember what Rakovski had said:

“... During our meeting with Kolishevski when we were preparing to return to Aegean Macedonia in order to lay the foundations of the revolution, Kolishevski, in his first class cynical speech, said to us: ... ‘That we Macedonians were a talented people, with appallingly visible international and revolutionary orientation, with a sense of tact and strategy’ and that Tito told him: ‘Now is your moment!’…”

Maybe one day everything will be clear… What kind of forces hid behind our people who served foreign gods?

On November 10, 1946 Zahariadis received a directive from Stalin to stop the expansion of the armed movement during the winter of 1946-1947 because of an alleged “international situation”. The CPG

was also told that, in the interim, it should give precedence to the political struggle over the military one. This was done when the ranks of DAG were being filled with Macedonians, both young and old. But in this case it was not the “foreigners” (CPY/CPG) who were calling for “mass recruitment” of fighters, it was our own leadership! It was the NOF and AFZH leaders and activists who were pushing the Macedonian people, by use of politicized propaganda, to join DAG en masse to fight in the Greek Civil War. But to fight for what?

The aim of strangers or foreigners is to turn the villains who work for them into heroes with whom the entire population can identify, and at the same time reduce the real heroes to villains. 18

CONFUSE THE PEOPLE, OR…?!

The political messages coming out of NOF and AFZH were not very clear. Even though these organizations were very effective in “recruiting” fighters and workers for the war, which was basically what they were told to do, they were not sure of the overall plan and how it was going to unfold. So they did what they were told and put the entire Macedonian population at risk. And in retrospect, as we all know, the Greek Civil War turned into a massive struggle of life and death which resulted in disaster for the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia.

This tangle of misunderstanding, confusion and comforting illusions shows us that darkness ruled the Macedonian leadership. After 1946 this kind of “successful awakening of the Macedonian

18 At the June 4, 1956 meeting of the Presidency of the “Ilinden” organization belonging to the Macedonians from Greek occupied Macedonia, created on Zahariadis’s initiative, Colonel Pando Vaina, head of the organization, in delivering his paper about the persecution of Macedonians by the CPG, among other things, said: “… During the period when DAG was fighting and after its defeat, Zahariadis implemented a policy of vilifying and persecuting a good part of the Slavo-Macedonian cadres and popular fighters. Although the charges were completely unfounded, it was very easy for Zahariadis to label the Slavo-Macedonian cadres and popular fighters “enemy agent” etc. Based on these false accusations in 1948-1949 and later, more Slavo-Macedonians were arrested and some were liquidated...” (Am F-21/1600).

consciousness”, in fact, was not needed at all, not for the CPY and not for the CPG. It had no significant value when all the Macedonians, along with the NOF and AFZH leadership found themselves trapped in the CPG vice.

One of the great manipulations perpetrated by the CPY and CPG against the Macedonian people was done on April 2, 1946 when Tito met with Zahariadis in Belgrade to discuss the “struggle” that led to the Greek Civil War i.e. to discuss the Macedonian people’s fate without the presence of a single Macedonian. Here, yet again, was a shining example of “foreigners” deciding the fate of the Macedonian people!

Tito and Zahariadis, without a single Macedonian present, decided that: The Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia, now led by NOF under the direction of the CPY/CPM, will be placed under the leadership of the CPG!

Again, without a single Macedonian present, they further decided that: NOF and AFZH will now strive to create an alliance with the Greek people in order to save the Macedonian people from physical extermination.

The ideological offensive with its cosmopolitanism working against the Macedonian national consciousness shook the Macedonian people down to their native roots.

What made the situation even worse, was the fact that this “ideological offensive” came down from high up in the NOF, AFZH and CPG leadership. Politicians among the leadership, even before the start of the Greek Civil War, nursed dangerous anachronisms about our national existence and life, attacking political opponents, Partisans and every single Macedonian who did not see any benefit to the Greek Civil War. NOF and AFZH, it would appear, were either unaware of this or decided to ignore it, thinking that “communists can be trusted” and “communists can do no wrong” and so dedicated themselves to follow the CPG’s lead. If not this, then how else can one explain NOF and AFZH’s actions in recruiting young and old Macedonians, men and women, en masse to fight for DAG and give their lives to “a cause” that was neither

“defined” nor “understood”? If the cause was “defined or understood” then “what was it that the Macedonians were fighting for?” To “liberate” their country? To gain human and national rights? Were NOF and AFZH even aware that by engaging Macedonians in this war they would be endangering the entire Macedonian population?

If Macedonians were fighting to “liberate” Macedonia, then why were the Macedonian fighters, when entering the ranks of DAG, asked to make the following pledge: “I, son of the Greek people and fighter of DAG (Democratic Army of Greece) pledge to fight to defend the integrity and security of the state borders of our motherland Greece ... etc.” How were the Macedonians going to liberate Macedonia when they, as sons of Greece, pledged to fight to defend the integrity of Greece, their “supposed” motherland? Since when was Greece their motherland? Where was Macedonia, the homeland of the Macedonians in this pledge if they were truly fighting to “liberate” Macedonia?

If the Macedonians were led to believe that they were fighting for “human and national rights” then why were they called “Slavo-Macedonians (and what does that even mean?)? Why were the Macedonian fighters, in missions south of Olympus, prohibited from using their Macedonian names and from speaking their Macedonian language? If the Macedonians had no “national rights” when they were fighting “side by side” with the Greeks, what made anyone think that they would be freely granted these rights after the fact? Was it because NOF and AFZH truly believed that because this “particular bunch Greeks were communists, they would keep their promises?”

This is the truth. These actions were part of the foreign strategy to get rid of the Macedonians from Greek occupied Macedonia. By manipulating NOF, the foreign strategists and architects of the Greek Civil War accomplished their goal. And because NOF was involved the Greek state had no choice but to take legal measures to protect itself. The measures included unprecedented terror and persecution, military operations, jailing, torture, exile in the Greek islands, etc. The Macedonian people were forced to flee their homes

and seek shelter in Yugoslavia in order to save themselves from the terror the Greek government security forces had unleashed on them.

Was this a miscalculation, a misunderstanding or pure manipulation? Today we know that it was pure manipulation which caused the Macedonian people to bring disaster on themselves. They blindly followed a maze created for them by the CPY and CPG which cost the Macedonian people dearly. And now, today, there are people who still blindly defend NOF’s actions. It is understandable that it was difficult to get out of the maze because the manipulations and strategies were so well crafted by the CPG and the CPY that even those who were labeled “hard nationalists” could not see them. They too had succumbed to the daily aggressive propaganda.

But based on the outcome of events for NOF this was a struggle in chaos! And in chaos whoever is powerful is righteous. So justice is not in righteousness but in power. This has been the case with NOF!

In other words what really happened is that the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia gave up their freedom because they were seduced by NOF’s offer to liberate them and for that we had to put our trust in foreigners to lead us, but only for a certain period of time. (See: “DOCUMENTS - On the Struggle of the Macedonian People for Independence and the formation of a Nation-State” Volume II.)

This however was viewed as NOF and AFZH threatening Greece’s territorial integrity which prompted the Greeks living in Macedonia and in all of Greece to fight against NOF, to save their Greek Macedonia.

So when NOF appeared in Greece hell broke loose in that region which created a gray zone, a dangerous place to live and a field for military-strategic competition between ideologies for other people’s goals.

If we analyze this unfavorable situation a bit more, especially from the point of view of national interest, no one in their right mind would have taken up arms at that time, especially not the non-violent Macedonian people. But, led by the CPM/CPY, NOF did

take up arms. The Greek Civil War was an illogical war for the Macedonian peoples so why did NOF get involved and why did it mobilize the entire Macedonian population in Greece? WHY?!! How did NOF think it could achieve success?

Everyone who has suffered in that war has asked the question WHY?!

The shame of it all is that what was done to the Macedonian people was done “in the name of the people”. Sadly the words “in the name of the people” were a compulsory part of the political vocabulary, a motive and an alibi for numerous ideological shifts, military goals, territorial conquests, and ethnic cleansing.

Today, more than half a century later, each of the wanderers (those who left their ancestral home and now live all over the world) who lived through the tragic Greek Civil War, especially the Macedonians from Greece, will say that it was brutal and unnecessary. It was fatal for our people. Unfortunately none of the leaders that led that war would admit that. However “EVIL IN AEGEAN MACEDONIA DID NOT FALL FROM THE SKY!? SOMEONE ORGANIZED IT AND INTENTIONALLY BROUGHT IT THERE!”

Maybe not by will...

For the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia memories of the Greek Civil War are murky at best and historical records are scant. Almost everything that has been written about us was written by the victors, our enemies, and is cloaked in lies, deception and politically correct propaganda. Some sources, especially western sources, go as far as saying that we do not exist so how could we possible have been involved in this conflict? The facts however speak differently, we do exist and our understanding of our own history is very much different than that written by the victors. Many crimes were committed against our people before, during and after the Greek Civil War, which are now cloaked in lies and deceit. Our lands in the fourth decade of the 20th century became a wasteland and we were given a one-way ticket out of our ancestral homeland. Those are the facts! So, who are we to blame for that? Again I must

emphasize our primary and only contacts during this fiasco were our NOF and AFZH activists who got us involved in the war in the first place. Then we have the CPY/CPM principally led by Tito and the CPG led by Zahariadis, behind which stood Stalin. On the other side of the conflict we have the Greek government, behind which stood Britain and the United States of America, who made no secret of their hatred of us because we were involved in the insane ideological war.