DIRTY DEEDS AMONG MACEDONIAN POLITICIANS

DIRTY DEEDS AMONG MACEDONIAN POLITICIANS

It is hard to believe but the Macedonians hated each other and were often divided into two camps. The problems were deep, but only according to ideological convictions. This was confirmed by most of us who fought in this war. The so called Revolution was not in our souls, it was driven by outsiders and leaning towards the powerful.

Not all confrontations were instigated by outsiders, no: they were also instigated by Macedonians. The problem with the Macedonians was that they believed the accusations hurled against them by other Macedonians like they were all true, even if they were lies propagated by the top non-Macedonian leadership. Zahariadis ranked among the top for spreading lies and creating problems for the Macedonians. He would say to a Macedonian when he or she came to his office that so and so said this about you - usually something insulting and demeaning. The disappointed Macedonian would then say something negative against their accuser which then Zahariadis would use against them and so on.

Another thing about Macedonians, especially the NOF and AFZH leaders, who persistently expressed their pride in the presence of Macedonians but would never admit being wrong. It is a fact that not a single NOF or AFZH politician ever admitted being wrong, including Vera who wrote the book “To hell and back”.

On top of that some of these politicians who were also authors, like Vera, tended to support the Party line even if they had to bend the truth. The Party was always right, even when it was wrong! Or the Party could do no wrong even when it harmed people for its own interests!

But which Party did these Macedonians support? The CPY or the CPG? They couldn’t support both because the Parties sometimes or at different times supported contradictory policies. And, as we well know they could not call themselves communists if they did not belong to a Party.

So the NOF and AFZH politician or activist was sent on a one way street. Those affiliated with the CPY tended to influence the Macedonian refugees in Yugoslavia and at the same time vilified those Macedonian who supported DAG. Those affiliated with the CPG tended to influence those who fought for DAG and vilified those who fled to Yugoslavia. This blind loyalty to their Parties unfortunately split the Macedonian organizations into opposing camps.

It is obvious that both sides were preoccupied fighting with one another over Party politics instead of fighting for Macedonian interests. Unfortunately this has been happening to us for more than half a century since Aegean Macedonia was “turned into a grave in which everything was buried”.

This “infighting” however did not stop the Macedonian “influencers” from influencing their followers to see things their way, even after the war was over. No wonder the Greek Civil War became a catastrophe for the Macedonian nation not only from the beating we received from the Greeks and international factor but also from the wide divide the communist legacy left us with.

No one will disagree that the Greek Civil War was a disaster for the Macedonian people that lived and are still living in Greece but will any of the leaders that participated in that war tell us what happened?

The NOF leadership to this day has yet to tell us whether the armed struggle that the democratic forces started, after the Varkiza Agreement was signed, i.e. after the Second World War ended, was inevitable and whether it had the most elementary conditions for success, or whether it was caused and imposed on us by the great powers, in the interest of global strategic goals for reorganizing the Balkans. And, was it possible to solve the Greek internal issue by political means, so that the Macedonians did not have suffered the genocidal attacks and in Greece today we would have a completely different situation.

The documents we have been looking at have provided us with enough information to determine what kind of relationship the CPY

had with the CPG and vice versa. From what we learned they had a passive and cooperative relationship and were primarily concerned with how to stay in power. Theoretically, they had a pale relationship and played by some of the rules in the so-called “the political team”. But how did they act towards the Macedonians is another question. Were they honest and truly concerned for the Macedonians or did they just use them to achieve their own goals. After what was done to us and the disaster, destruction and genocide we experienced, can we trust the communists to be honest?

And again, being an AFZH leader why doesn’t Vera say something?!

It is a fact that as leader of AFZH, Evdokia Foteva-Vera has made the Macedonian woman march in politics and die on the battlefield in the Greek Civil War. But even though more than 55 years have passed, Vera still has not given us any historical facts. Why exactly was the Macedonian woman put under the military regime and with such unprecedented numbers in relation to the Greek woman? This is a serious question which has remained open in our historical science.

Being authoritative and deeply persuasive, as a communist of course, in her convictions, on page 33, Vera said: “... then and now I think and say the same thing, that honest communists never shift their guilt to others as did Zahariadis who shifted his responsibility for the loss of the movement to others, to us Macedonians. Is that fair?” On the same page we read her accusations against her comrade Rakovski:

“ Earlier, before the developments, Pavle Rakovski had written a letter addressed to the CPG Central Committee and to Zahariadis, criticizing himself for not being honest with the CPG leadership. In Prespa he had supposedly proposed to some NOF leaders that they flee to Yugoslavia so that they would not be arrested, but Mincho Fotev opposed him. Thus, on the basis of this letter Zahariadis found grounds to lay charges in Bureli, Albania.”

How could Pavle Rakovski first be a Yugoslav and then, after he returned from the USSR to Yugoslavia, be accused of being a

Russian spy? In his book “Autobiography” - my suffering, on page 181, he wrote: “... In Alma-Ata, after his release from the Siberian prisons, Mitrevski immediately requested visas to leave for Yugoslavia. I argued with conviction: our place is among the thousands of our Macedonian fighters and people in Tashkent, USSR and other places...”

On page 197, Rakovski wrote: “Be that as it may, but the fact remains: Mitrevski and Vera in Moscow accused me of being a Yugoslav agent working against the CPG and DAG, and in Skopje they accused me of being a Soviet agent working against Yugoslavia while, most characteristically, knowingly lying in both cases…”

On page 298 Rakovski wrote:

“…I WAS SYSTEMATICALLY DESTROYED BY MY FELLOW CO-FIGHTERS… As a Macedonian communist - I PROTEST AGAIST THESE ACCUSATIONS…”

One time during a buffet held at the Institute of National History, comrade Todor Simovski passionately defended our community against some of my attacks! He said: “How dare you publish state secrets and attack the state…!?” As far as I know, I was talking about the creation of NOF and that it was managed by the CPM/CPY for a year and a half…

It is a fact that Rakovski was slandered after his return to Macedonia, his family was not taken care of and he was not given his own grave after his death on February 10, 1990. He was buried in someone else’s grave.

It should also be said that after Rakovski died Evdokia Foteva – Vera wrote a decent and honest article about his death in the magazine “Macedonia”, Skopje, no. 444, 1990, which showed immense respect for Rakovski’s image and work depicted under the title: “A life devoted to the Fatherland” with subtitles: “Fighter and cultural actor”, and “In the very confines of a Soviet prison.”

NOF and AFZH in political chaos - an eruption in the Macedonian consciousness.

Confidence in politics and in the Macedonian politicians was lost in the chaos when control of the most important goal was lost: PRESERVING OUR MACEDONIAN NATION.

...After its formation on April 23, 1945, the CPM/CPY appointed the NOF leadership and then after October 14, 1946, NOF was handed over to the CPG and to the Greek communists along with the fate of the Macedonian people from the Aegean part of Macedonia. At this point the Macedonian people in Greece faced a great danger of completely losing their independence and becoming disoriented and turning into an instrument working for foreign interests. And that is exactly what happened to Macedonian NOF and AFZH leaders who found themselves split into two opposing currents. In one current were NOF Secretary Pascal Mitrevski and Mincho Fotev, and on the other were Mihajlo Keramitchiev, Evdokia Nikolova - Vera, Pavle Rakovski, Vangel Aianovski - Oche, Ilia Dimovski – Gotse and Lazo Poplazarov among others.

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...In his numerous reports, letters, statements, etc., to the CPG leadership Mitrevski consistently attacked the Macedonian leaders from the other current accusing them of being separatists, of carrying out anti-party activities, of making contact with illegal circles in the Republic of Macedonia, for living opulently, etc. On February 19, 1948, Paskal Mitrevski sent a letter to the CPG Central Committee Politburo demanding the removal of the old NOF leaders and replacing them with new people (“fresh blood”). Among other things Mitrevski said: “…these people are entangled in factionalism, nepotism and barren Macedonia-nism. They are glory-seekers, anti-party actors, follow petty interests and have desires for leadership. Because of this they have led the organization into sectarianism and chauvinism…” The guiltiest of them all, according to what Mitrevski said to Petris (Georgios Eritreadis - Petris member of the CPG Central Committee and DAG deputy commissioner for Central and Western Macedonia), were Pavle Rakovski, Mihajlo Keramitchiev and Evdokia Nikolova - Vera.

...For me the question of agreement and unity with Keramitchiev -Vera - Rakovski is not only a Party obligation, but a task. However, those comrades had a need to transform and Party reconstruct. In that way, Keramitchiev’s adventurism, Rakovski’s self-centered intellectualism, and Vera’s fickleness and leadership spirit would be broken. Maybe these comrades confirm everything, accepting the Party line and orders, recommendations, etc., but in practice they were far from the party’s eye, and things were different.

* * *

The Macedonian members of NOF and AFZH often impeded one another and Zahariadis used their minor disputes to inflame the principle of “divide and conquer”. He allowed certain “pluralistic opinions” in his closest circle and used those opinions to create disputes and hostility among the Macedonians. This benefited him immensely because he was able to better define his control over them and his power with suggestions and ideas.

Zahariadis decided to also test the Macedonian intellectual and political capacity in Greek occupied Macedonia and to determine the leadership’s trustworthiness after spending a long time under CPY/CPM (April 23, 1945 to October 14, 1946) influence when the Macedonian consciousness was under Yugoslav political influence.

Extract B: “...March 27, 1948 - Zahariadis took the next very significant step to change NOF from the inside. For secretary of the party’s faction in NOF, he imposed the well-known anti NOF and exponent of CPG politics in the Macedonian national liberation movement, Stavros Kochopulos whom Evdokia Foteva - Vera in her book “To Hell and Back” calls “scum”. NOF leadership was handed over to Kochopulos; a man who hated NOF!