DEVELOPMENT OF EVENTS IN 1947

DEVELOPMENT OF EVENTS IN 1947

Now we have entrusted General Markos with our destiny, trusting him with his empty promises.

With the Ioanidis – Karaivanov Agreement and with Kolishevski’s directives, NOF was completely and almost unconditionally surrendered to the CPG.

Markos also issues his first order:

Order No. EP 13 of 27. 12. 1946, read: “As of today all NOF partisan units are to be added to the DAG composition.”

In other words, from that day forward NOF was neither a political nor a military factor in the so called “Brotherhood and unity” partnership with the CPG. In fact from that day forward the delicate balance that had been created between CPG and NOF began to deteriorate as the CPG, encouraged by the top CPM leadership began to stranglehold NOF. It was not long after that that NOF became a victim of political games. And, soon after, it found itself in the hands of the unscrupulous absolutist CPG government.

Did anyone ever stop to think that these people now running NOF were the same people, the former ELAS fighters who fled to Yugoslavia and for whom Greek hatred was never forgotten? And were NOF and AFZH ever recognized by any International Institutions as legitimate entities?

Here is a document, translated from Greek that may shed some light: “… A year had not passed, when in the evening of October 24, 1947

several Politburo members including Ioannidis, Stringos, Markos and Evripidis Georgios - Petros invited Mitrevski, Keramitchiev and Vera for a ‘special conversation.’

Markos coughed in his hand and looked at Mitrevski but nobody could guess what thoughts were passing through his head. Markos felt that he needed to reprimand the NOF and AFZH leaders once and for all. He made a stern face and loudly and sarcastically laughed and began to speak:

‘You need to be reminded that you are members of the CPG and this I want to emphasize, not once, but three times. There is only the CPG and no one else. I do not understand why you think that one day the Macedonians will noisily rise and leave the Democratic Army of Greece. NOF and AFZH are not just yours; I say that to you as your superior. You are well aware that you have been placed under the CPG umbrella with the blessing of Marshal Tito and our leader Zahariadis. First you need to be communists and then patriots. That’s how you should be looking at the Slavo-Macedonian Question and not thinking about some sort of “United Macedonia”. If you desire a “United Macedonia” then what will happen to us, the Prosfigi, as you call us, where will we go? Return back to Asia Minor?!

Oh, my Slavo-Macedonians. You should, ONCE AND FOR ALL, UNDERSTAND THAT THIS COUNTRY - MACEDONIA NOW BELONGS TO THE MAJORITY OF THE PEOPLE LIVING HERE AND THAT IS US THE PROSFIGI! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH MACEDONIA IN GREECE ANY MORE.

This has been said many times; even Lenin said it many times: Minorities must obey the majority. You are fighting for other people’s interests and against mother Greece. But in the end you will lose. Nobody is going to help you; neither Tito nor Stalin. Whatever happens to you will be your own fault because you alone are responsible for bringing suspicion to yourselves in the eyes of the Party...

We know every detail about each one of you,’ said Markos, while showing them a piece of paper with the words ‘strictly confidential’ written on it: ‘We have been informed by Periklis Kolodakis, head of the Security Service in the Democratic Army of Greece. So stop your trickery, you are wasting your time and losing opportunities to advance in political life.

What do you want? Do you want the Party to make generals out of you?! You have read the “manifesto addressed to the Liberation Army of the Chinese people”. It says: “All officers and soldiers need to be educated as bravely as they fight to bring military victory.”

You have failed to free yourselves from the grips of chauvinism and have isolated yourselves from the Slavo-Macedonian people, especially from those 6,000 fighters in the Democratic Army of Greece who bravely fight and sacrifice themselves for the high ideals of the socialist revolution in Greece.

We very well know everything about you; we know every one of you, your political activities and the responsibilities that you have undertaken for the Yugoslav information services.

Information from our intelligence services has revealed that: ‘The leadership of the Yugoslav Communist Party, in order to have insight and influence on events in Greece and on the Macedonian Liberation Movement, secretly committed a large number of fighters and NOF activists (who returned from Yugoslavia) through organized channels to inform them about everything that was happening in the Aegean part of Macedonia and in Greece. The NOF leadership was forced to receive and execute directives from both the CPY and the CPG leaderships.’

Are you aware that by doing this for the CPY you are actually doing a lot of damage to yourselves which will have severe consequences for you and for your people? Your attitudes are not in line with the views of the Party. But I believe by the time you wake up and realize that, it will be too late. The Party does not tolerate fraction-ism. By now our intelligence services have identified dozens of Macedonians who will be prosecuted as Yugoslav agents’. And so will the numerous deserters.”

There was another long pause. – “Probably so”, - said Ioanidis and continued: - “Don’t think that the revolution is a game. But when you read a lot and when you also think a lot, you will convince yourself that it is worth sacrificing for the Party’s goals.

You Slavo-Macedonians, you have to understand these two worlds, your world that you are now looking for a lot and the world of the Greeks so that we can be carefree. We are ready to send you back to Skopje and don’t think that you are less Titoists than Ilia Dimovski -Gotse and many others, who we recently sent back or deserted. They are unfit for DAG’s ranks for the CPG for Greek society in general. There is no return to Greece for them! I am telling you that in the name of the Party!”

After this reprimand, in the name of the revolution, the NOF and AFZH leaders became seriously involved in a wider range of political activities that served Greek interests more and more.

In other words NOF and AFZH accepted their naïveté and carelessness about their own destiny and made decisions that helped the Greeks organize and carry out ‘soft’ ethnic cleansing. They unwittingly de-populated the Macedonian people from the Greek occupied part of Macedonia. They were not aware of the limits as to what was possible, especially after WW II ended, and what the Macedonian people actually could gain from the Greek Civil War. NOF and AFZH, through the instructions of the CPG, violently thrust the ‘red stake’ into the hearts of the Macedonian villagers in Greek occupied Macedonia. With their violent mobilization they pushed Macedonians, especially Macedonian women, into DAG units which were then deployed in the depths of Greece where most of them were destroyed.

There is no case like ours registered in the annals of history.

If NOF was truly a Macedonian led organization it would have strived to, as much as possible, serve Macedonian interests. It would have made some concessions to the CPG, of course, but without sacrificing the entire Macedonian population. It would not have caused permanent and inviolable damage to its own people - at a

national level. But we know that NOF was not a Macedonian led organization because it was created by the CPM/CPY and then handed over to the CPG. But we still don’t know for sure for what political goals?! The only ones that know for sure were the CPY and the CPG strangers!

And so our hopes were pinned on the CPG. We Macedonians young and old, men and women, found ourselves in DAG uniforms and our children ages 3 to 14 found themselves all around the world. In other words we cooperated in our own “soft ethnic cleansing”.

NOF’s misery however doesn’t end there.

In order to have insight and influence on events in Greece and on the Macedonian Liberation Movement, the Yugoslav Communist Party leadership secretly committed a large number of fighters and NOF activists (who returned from Yugoslavia) through organized channels to inform them about everything that was happening in the Aegean part of Macedonia and in Greece. The NOF leadership was forced to receive and execute directives from both the CPY and the CPG leaderships. This CPY move proved to be harmful with severe consequences for the Macedonians. Their activities for the CPY did not go undetected and were used by the CPG to accuse NOF of being a CPY agent. Dozens of Macedonians were convicted and hundreds prosecuted as Yugoslav intelligence services agents. This dual role the Macedonian NOF leadership played resulted in its split and in the creation of two extremely opposite wings (supporters of the pro-Yugoslav policy created by the CPY and pro-Greek communist policy led by the CPG), which waged an irreconcilable struggle against one another: Macedonian against Macedonian.

It was clear that the CPM/CPY with its propaganda campaigns had politicized and handicapped the Macedonian people, especially the Macedonian villagers in Greek occupied Macedonia, and later when they were left to the CPG’s disposal they were simply neglected, and poverty ravaged, but almost all engaged in big politics. The CPM/CPY creating NOF was by no accidental but, at the same time the CPM/CPY did not destroy the Macedonians. It was a time when big policies were decided by small leaders. We all know when NOF was sent to the Macedonian villages in Greece and through its

influence managed to create “waves of hope for a triumphant revolution”: to first organize the men, and later the women in the AFZH, and the youth in NOMS during which time the Macedonian family found itself in chaos, disintegrated, and the Macedonian home turned into a village office. Rural women became the laughing stock and bitterness in the politics of these organizations, and hatred bound them more firmly than love.

How can we forget that? It was a time when all kinds of narrow-minded, immature, and unscrupulous types emerged on the surface, leading liberation movements, individuals and entire nations to ruin. Our participation in that struggle was a historical delay, but also unnecessary.

For a long time during the war we Macedonians lived in a world of lies, after the war for more than half a century we remained living in a world of sadness - WANDERERS. Our justification today is the same: I am not an enemy! I was lied to! I believed them! Since then our entire lives have roll downwards and we were tuned upside down. We became a people of lost hope and betrayed expectations. We experienced a national defeat by losing the historical territory of our homeland; a sacred place recognized in civilization. We deserted our sacred place and left it to the prosfigi (Asia Minor settlers and colonists) who were brought to our Macedonia by Venizelos from 1924 to 1930, precisely for this purpose, to inherit everything that was primordially ours.

The history for us Macedonians in Greece should be written to reveal the truth: For starters, who lit the fire and why? How and why did we loose the right to return to our native hearths? Why do some of us, more than 55 years later, still defend the idea that our sacrifice in the Greek Civil War was inevitable? When the truth is that we were trampled under CPG boots! Why do people still wonder if we fought for a united Macedonia, against Anglo-American imperialism, or against some third party that we still vaguely carry in our consciousness from the genocide we experienced and cannot define?!

Our aim was to “unite Macedonia”. We fought to “unite Macedonia”! How could we do that if we had no representatives in

the political top, in the CPG Central Committee or in the military in DAG’s Main Headquarters? We had no Macedonian representation in the top organizations which were the bearers of that war? But what bothers me the most is that during the Greek Civil War, we Macedonians contributed more than half of DAG’s forces. If we take into account that the official number of DAG soldiers had climbed to 25,000 - 30,000 fighters at the peak of the war, and we Macedonians filled more than half of that composition, it means that we Macedonians contributed 6 - 7% of the total Macedonian population (280,000 – 300,000) while that percentage for Greeks was 0.35 - 0.40% of the total Greek population (9,000,000 – 10,000,000).

How and why did we allow strangers to lie to us and to get us to (self) sacrifice ourselves for them? By allowing this to happen in Greek occupied Macedonia almost all the Macedonian villages were abandoned, people were separated from their native places and a legal migration process was created. It was enough for some fake authority outside of Macedonia to say something to us and we went out of our way to implement it.

We know that what the Macedonian people were proposing as a national program (unite Macedonia), was unacceptable to all political forces in the Balkans, from the left to the right, and the borders of the Balkan states were declared unchallengeable.

We Macedonians had been biased towards Big Brother for years, that is, until J. C. Stalin decided to dissolve the Communist International (Comintern) on May 15, 1943, and to take an oath before Churchill and Truman promising them that the borders in the Balkans will remain unchanged (with a divided Macedonia).

One thing is true, the political forces in the Balkans supported a “minimum program” and nothing more, but with a particular suggestion “to act under the leadership of the relevant communist party” and only within the framework of the Yugoslav, Greek and Bulgarian revolutionary movements. With that kind of suggestion, made by the left forces in the Balkans, it was very clear that we Macedonians had to respect the Bucharest and Versailles Agreements. This was also the wish of the Western powers.