VI. ACTUALITIES FROM A NEWER HISTORY

VI. ACTUALITIES FROM A NEWER HISTORY

1.

In one of my previous entries I wrote:

There was never and of course there never will be a government in Belgrade, Athens, or Sofia in the future which would agree and would sign an agreement to divide its own national territory with its neighbours.

However, it is a historic fact that governments in Belgrade, Athens, and Sofia have agreed and have signed agreements to divide Macedonia among themselves. Macedonia’s history is full of contenders and self-proclaimed “compatriots”. Many documents have been written, signed and stamped with state seals that, on the one hand show hypocrisy, and on the other, emphasizes historical truth:

- Macedonia is not Serbia, Greece or Bulgaria. And the Macedonian people, as the primary population living in Macedonia, are a unique and separate people.

Neither Serbia, Greece nor Bulgaria have treated Macedonia and the Macedonian people as their own which explains why they decided to divide Macedonia between themselves, behaving more like conquerors than kinsmen.

- They mercilessly torn Macedonia and its people apart, cutting them off from each other and from their traditional routes and Aegean ports, destroying their political, economic and cultural development, robbing them of their wealth and dignity and condemning them to stumble and decay.

They fought over Macedonia for many years with their propaganda campaigns, their armed gangs, and with “scientific theories” to

fabricate Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks out of the Macedonians with one goal in mind: to annex all of Macedonia for themselves.

And, as we well know, it came to this:

The government in Athens made claims that “Macedonia is Greek” and the “Macedonian people are Greeks.”

The government in Belgrade made claims that “Macedonia is Serbian” and the “Macedonian people are Serbians.”

The government in Sofia made claims that “Macedonia is Bulgarian” and the “Macedonian people are Bulgarians.”

And then decided and agreed to partition Macedonia and its people and annex them for themselves.

And here we have Stoian Danev, then president of the Bulgarian National Assembly, who with a bitter tone of voice, said: “We all know why Bulgaria entered the (First Balkan) war… because for Bulgaria the ‘Macedonian Bulgarians’ were lost… and ‘went their own way’...” (Dr. P. Stoianov, Triple division of Macedonia, p. 8.)

In other words the Bulgarians knew they were defeated in Macedonia.

The Bulgarian army, Greek and Serbian priests, teachers, “bought” agitators, armed gangs, “scientific theories”… all failed to stop the national awakening of the Macedonian people. They all failed to stifle the Macedonian national liberation movement. On the contrary:

In the newly created “favourable” conditions, shaped by the Young Turk Uprising, the Macedonian national liberation movement took on a momentum of its own and would have thrown the Greeks, Serbians and Bulgarians out of Macedonia, had the Macedonians allied themselves with the Ottomans like they were planning to.

The Young Turks proposed autonomy for Macedonia but the Macedonian people wanted “liberation”. Had the Macedonians

accepted autonomy then Macedonia would have become not only an Ottoman protectorate but also an Ottoman ally. This meant that it would have been harder for the three, Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria, to acquire Macedonia. Fear of an Ottoman-Macedonian alliance forced the three to ally themselves militarily and to accelerate their invasion of Macedonia under the pretence of “liberation”.

But, as we all know, Macedonia was only “liberated” so that it could be reoccupied. With the Macedonian people’s help the three invaded Macedonia, drove the Ottomans out and then occupied it. Then the three “allies” started a second war where they fought against one another for a bigger piece of Macedonia...

2.

Tsarist Russia fought against the Ottoman Empire for its own aspirations to gain access to the Mediterranean Sea. In 1878, in San Stefano (at the gates of Istanbul), the defeated Sultan was forced to accept the creation of then - Ottoman provinces in the Balkans -“Great Bulgaria”, a satellite state of the Russian emperor and “liberator”.

Contained in this “Greater Bulgarian” composition were many non-Bulgarian countries including Macedonia with its Aegean ports. The “Great Russian dream”, it seemed, finally came true… but lasted only briefly.

Soon afterwards however, the Western Powers convened a Conference in Berlin and pressured Russia to give up its dream. The San Stefano Treaty was annulled and “Great Bulgaria” ceased to exist, except as a fictional place on paper.

The only thing that the Russian emperor and “liberator” accomplished, it seems, was to plant his dream of accessing the Mediterranean Sea (through the Aegean) into the minds of Bulgarian leaders which has remained there to this day.

This Bulgarian ambition for dominating the Balkans and for hegemony over the neighbouring countries and peoples, has become a “cancer in the Bulgarian living body” (Dimitrov’s famous

expression) which cost the Bulgarian people a lot of blood and Bulgaria endured true national catastrophes when generations of Bulgarian people were massacred in the Balkan Wars and in World War I.

Unfortunately Dimitrov, the great revolutionary, died before he could save the Bulgarian people from this chauvinistic illusion. And so this Bulgarian ambition still lives in Bulgaria in forces and carriers that pursue this illusion. This is why today there can be no honest understanding between the Bulgarian people and the people of the neighbouring states.

Just recently, last March in fact (1978), Sofia celebrated the 100th anniversary of the signing of the San Stefano Treaty and the birth of “San Stefano Bulgaria”. During the celebration a number of non-Bulgarian countries, including Macedonia, were openly declared Bulgarian national territories. The national uniqueness and autonomy of the Macedonian people has been completely rejected and Bulgaria has officially waged open war against Macedonian national ideals. The “San Stefano Bulgaria” dream of gaining access to the Aegean Sea is still being accepted by today’s Bulgarian ruling circles. This “national” ideology has been carried and is still being carried forward with open hostilities against Bulgaria’s neighbours and especially against the Macedonian people...

3.

Not long ago the Greek Parliament opened a debate over the issue of allowing people who had fled Greece illegally as war refugees to return home. Included among those people were Macedonians or “Slavo-Macedonians”, as the Greek communists often liked to call them.

As is well-known, Minister Konstantinos Stephanopoulos, the most responsible body for this issue in the Greek Parliament, decided to exclude the “Slavo-Macedonians” from returning to their homes in Greece. Among other things he said: “Simply put, we do not want them and we will not let them return…”

I would like to point out that I (Pavle Rakovski) too am one of those people who fled Greece illegally as a war refugee. I too am a member of the Greek political refugees. I was born in Lerin Region or Florina Region as the Greeks call it, and am a Macedonian or “Slavo-Macedonian” according to the Greek communists. I grew up in Greece and received a Greek education exactly as if I was a real Greek. I adopted the Greek language like it was my own. Even more than that, I began to express myself in the Greek language more that I did in my own native Macedonian language. I even began to think and dream in Greek. I have always believed the Greek people living among us were good people and loved and respected them. I served in the Greek military and was promoted to the rank of sub-lieutenant. I was sent to the Albanian front the first day the Italian fascists showed aggression towards Greece and fought until April 24, 1941, when this defensive war ended. There were many thousands of Macedonians who defended Greece, not only at the Albanian front but also in the ranks of ELAS. Macedonians fought alongside their Greek comrades to protect Greece from the foreign invaders and to bring democracy to the country...

So, why should I be excluded from the right to return home?

The “Nea Demokratia” party, the ruling party in the Greek government of which Mr. Stephanopoulos is a member, appears to be more democratic than all previous Greek governments, because it tackled the issue of allowing the refugees to return home. Unfortunately it is not democratic enough to allow the Macedonians from Greece to return home. This government has permanently shut the door on a significant number of Greek political refugees simply because they are Macedonians.

No wonder the newspaper “Avgi” correctly wrote: “The Slavo-Macedonians are good when they are called upon to serve in the Greek army, to pay taxes and in general to fulfill their obligations as Greek citizens but they are undesirable when they want to be repatriated…” (“Nova Makedonija”, February 9, 1978.)

Why should Macedonians who fulfilled all their obligations as Greek citizens be treated like they are guilty of something, just because they were born Macedonian?

Why are Greek citizens considered guilty and undesirable, just because they were not born as Greeks and their language, the language of their parents and ancestors, is not Greek…?

They should be allowed to go back to their villages and cities, to their properties and homes where their ancestors have lived and died for centuries, where their roots are…

Why should they be torn away from their ancestral homes?

4.

There was never a “Greek Empire” with Constantinople as its capital… it never existed. Yet here were books intended for children in which the Mother of God is incredulously crying for fourteen decades because… the Greeks lost Constantinople and the temple of St. Sophia to the Turks. And the young Greek bourgeois comfort the infamous Mother of God with the words:

“Μην κλαις, Κυρα ∆εσποινα, παλυ µε χρονια, µε καιρους, παλυ δικα µας θα ειναι” . (“Min Kles, Kira Despina…! Pali me xronia, me kerous, pali thika mas tha ine!” (Don’t cry Mrs Despina…! After years, in time, they will be ours again!)

This, of course, is treated like it was a folk song.

The “Megali Idea” (Great Idea) is a modern Greek ambition to create a Greek Empire in place of the old Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire. This has been Greece’s distant and final goal, both internally and as a foreign policy of the Bourgeois, since the time Greece became a state for the first time in 1830.

Intoxicated by the easy success they had in the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) when Greece expanded to the north, occupying and annexing the larger and richest part of Macedonia, immediately after the First World War, the Greek bourgeoisie decisively turned their attention to the near east. The Greek army began its Asia Minor campaign (1919-1922) with high hopes that it would finally realize the “Megali Idea”. But this very ambitious Greek dream quickly turned

into a catastrophe. The campaign failed miserably and revealed that the “Megali Idea” was nothing more than an illusion. But did the bourgeoisie learn anything from this? No! The Mother of God is still crying… to this day...

Let us now have a quick glance at one of the many Greek propaganda books written in the spirit of the “Megali Idea”. This particular book, entitled “I blame the Greek Communist Party as its own witness”, was written by Georgios Kanelakis and published in Athens in 1953.

Kanelakis did everything possible to prove that in principle the CPG recognized the democratic rights of the Macedonian people and by doing so it committed national treason against the Greek nation. And according to Ahilas Kirou, head of the Athens newspaper “Estia”, in a letter he sent to Kanelakis which Kanelakis included in his book, this was “the biggest betrayal that Greek history can reveal…”

Among other things, the book claims that the Slavs created their states in the Balkans on top of “Greek territories” (see: Volume 1, p. 33), and at the end of the book, “instead of an epilogue”, he has included two maps of the European part of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire. One depicted the middle of the 6th century AD and the other depicted the second half of the 7th century AD, with the map titles “The Greek state in 527-565” and “The Greek state in 668-685”. In the first map it also says “Our borders then extended to the Danube River and the Black Sea!” On the second map it says “the white plains between the Danube River and Mount Emos (Stara Planina) represent the first Bulgarian state that was founded on our soil and then expanded through annexing Greek territories.” (See: Volume 1, p. 155.)

Kanelakis very clearly identified the borders of Greater Greece. The northern borders started at the Black Sea in the east, followed the Danube River across, right through Belgrade, and ended at the Adriatic Sea in the west.

This book was officially approved for publication by the Ministry of Public Order under Act number E. 1021 F.D. on April 14, 1950 (signed by A. Vahliotis, Minister) and by the Greek army general

staff Act number 60316/848793 OAM (3rd Bureau) dated November 23, 1949 (signed by G. Bairaktaris, OAM General Staff Director General). These acts were also included in Kanelakis’s book.

According to Zahariadis: “Cultivated for decades, the ‘Megali Idea’ became so strong that it prevailed everywhere and, with its tortuous and monopolistic hegemony over all the minds, forced every other movement to be placed under its wing...” (Nikos Zahariadis: “Thesis on the history of the CPG”, CPG Central Committee edition, 1944, p. 22.)

Of course, Zahariadis also said that this was only until the CPG was established in November 1918, and not later. History however says otherwise. The CPG with its many dramas and abnormal crisis situations, with its breaks in its ranks, with its open treacheries such as those of Stavridis, Puliopoulos, Maximos, Sargologos, etc., as well as with all the first CPG Central Committee secretaries, the catastrophic defeat of the People’s Revolution in 1936 (Zahariadis), in 1944 (Siantos), in 1949 (Zahariadis), undoubtedly show that the CPG leadership topped the domestic bourgeoisie exponents who worked in favour of the bourgeois “Greek national interests” in the shadow of the “Megali idea”. And that, of course, explains their policy towards the Macedonians, a policy that was extremely anti-Macedonian and anti-national, which often took the form of serious political crimes...

5.

“In November 21, 1926, the Greek government, official gazette “Efimeris tis Kivernesios”, number 332, published a law on compulsory name changes in all settlements in the Greek (occupied) part of Macedonia. All Macedonian and, to a lesser extent, most Turkish toponyms were changed to Greek. Then, in number 346 of “Efimeris tis Kivernesios”, the Greek government published a long list of settlements with non-Greek names (about nine hundred villages and cities) and their new Greek names.

The Greek government, of course, made it look like the people that created these settlements and gave them non-Greek names were “naturally” Greek. However the truth is these non-Greek settlements

were created naturally and over long periods of time by non-Greek people who then named their places with non-Greek names. These non-Greek settlements were not created or named by administrative orders, or under the control of national propaganda like the modern Greek place names. They were named by the people who created them.

With its administrative orders the Greek government not only changed the names of these places but also forged history.

It eliminated the fact that Macedonians had lived on those lands for centuries and made it look like these had always been Greek villages and towns...

Since the Balkan Wars started the Greek rulers who occupied and annexed Macedonian lands have intensely and systematically continued to apply the Greek Church’s (Patriarchate) patriotism from Ottoman times to resolutely and ruthlessly Hellenize the Macedonian terrain by persecuting, evicting and exterminating the Macedonian and Muslim populations in order to change the national composition of the population in this part of Macedonia.

On top of all this, the Greek rulers have not only managed to hide their motives and application of this harsh Hellenization, but have also convinced their own people that only Greeks live in Greece and anyone who claims to be not-Greek is an enemy agent looking to do harm to Greece.

“This became very evident to us when we (Macedonian partisans), serving in DAG, were sent to Epirus, Thessaly, and even further south into Greece and caused panic among the local population by simply talking in the Macedonian language and singing Macedonian songs. No one in Greece, not even the CPG had informed these people that Macedonians lived in Greece and that we were those Macedonians. These people were told to fear all strangers. The Greek rulers, including the CPG leadership, had filled their heads with all kinds of fear so naturally they were suspicious of non-Greeks. They were afraid of us because they thought we were there to cause them harm and hated us because they were told that the CPG leadership, with help from NOF, was going to carve out

Aegean (Greek occupied) Macedonia and hand it over to Tito to join it with Yugoslavia… (Το ΚΚΕ απο το 1931-1952, pp. 271 and 205.) This was the situation in Greece at that time.

But, despite what the Greek rulers said and did, despite their devastating policies against the Macedonians, we managed to preserve our culture and identity...” (Pavle Rakovski, About the Roots of Evil, “History” 1/1977, p. 95.)

6.

Subjugated people who succeeded in preserving their language succeed in retaining the key to their liberation in their own hands. Spread of the printed word in their native language, simultaneously dispersing everywhere is the most efficient way to motivate people to mobilize in a struggle for their liberation.

This has been the experience of nations, fixed by history.

By taking the Macedonian language away from the Macedonian people, its own citizens, the ruling circles in Greece attempted to strip the Macedonians of the key to their liberation, that is, to overcoming the terribly humiliating position of being a completely oppressed and subjugated nation.

Today ruling circles in Greece are unscrupulously claiming that Macedonians do not exist in this part of (Greek occupied) Macedonia, not even as a national minority, forgetting what official Greece was saying yesterday.

They are forgetting that only yesterday they changed all the Macedonian names. They are forgetting that everything Greek in Macedonia has been artificially created. On top of that, let us not forget the “Abecedar”, the Macedonian primer published by official Greece to teach Macedonian children their Macedonian language. Allow me to say again: “It was prepared by the Greek government! It was printed in 1925 in Athens by the P. D. Sakellariou printing house.” The text was neither Serbian nor Bulgarian. The text was written in the Macedonian language using the Lerin-Bitola dialect but not with Cyrillic letters. The text was written using the Latin

alphabet. The primer was called “Abecedar”. Here is a sample from its text: