B) IN THE COURSE OF THE GREEK CIVIL WAR AND BEYOND

B) IN THE COURSE OF THE GREEK CIVIL WAR AND BEYOND

1. After being released from the fascist concentration camp Dachau, Zahariadis was taken to London where he spent a few days before he was flown in a special British military aircraft to Athens on May 29, 1945. The second part of Zahariadis’s career began as head of the CPG.

What kind of policy did Zahariadis implement in relation to the Macedonian people?

Let us have a look at some specific events:

Zahariadis continued with the unfriendly campaign against the Macedonian anti-fascist liberation movement that was started by the Siantos CPG leadership during the national liberation war against the fascist occupiers. This unfriendly campaign, over time, continued to grow with unprecedented intensity...

2. Nothing was said, not even a single word about the Macedonian people at the CPG Central Committee Twelfth Plenum, held in June 1945. The CPG leaders did not draw any public attention to the existence of the struggling Macedonians or to their democratic rights and freedoms as Macedonians. There was nothing about them in the adopted texts or about the Macedonian struggle they were leading. All of these things were completely ignored (posing such questions would have only strengthened the Macedonian revolutionary spirit). The CPG leadership behaved like there were no Macedonians there at all…

On top of that and in the presence of the Macedonians, who at the time were organized and struggling en masse to free themselves from the humiliating position of being a completely disadvantaged people, the CPG leadership, during the same plenum, proclaimed that: The Greek border to the north was endangered.

And then the CPG leadership turned to England and the domestic bourgeoisie asking them for their “co-operation” to secure the northern border. On top of that the CPG willingly accepted England’s presence in Greece calling it “friendly” and part of the internal plan to fight against the “non-existent” Macedonian democratic liberation movement...

3. During its CPG Seventh Congress, held in October 1945, when NOF and its military formations were well-developed as an armed force which could not be ignored, the CPG said:

“The CPG condemns, as a crime against national interests, the persecution committed against the Slavo-Macedonian minority by official Greece during the December events…”

That is all. Not another word about the Macedonians. The CPG in fact condemned post-December Greece (the government in Athens) for committing violence against the Macedonian people and blamed Athens for the Macedonians organizing their struggle against Greece, implying that this was in no way good for Greece’s “national interests” in Macedonia...

4. During the CPG Provincial Bureau for Macedonia-Thrace meeting, held in Solun on December 26 and 27, 1945, about two months after the Seventh Congress took place, Zahariadis, CPG Central Committee Secretary General, said:

“NOF is a democratic political organization of the Slavo-Macedonians, and every Greek who is a true democrat should cooperate with it…” (See “Laiki foni”, December 28, 1945, “Chronology”, p. 63.)

But, despite what Zahariadis had said, the CPG Party press in Macedonia continued with its hostile campaign against the NOF leaders and organizers...

During its CPG Central Committee Second Plenum, held in February 1946, the CPG said:

“The CPG condemns the persecution and violence carried out by official Greece against the Slavo-Macedonian population... and is committed to fight to recognize the rights and equality of the

Slavophones who live in Greek Macedonia in the lands of the Greek state...”

I mentioned the above to point out certain characteristic CPG practices of how the CPG treats the Macedonian people - not as part of a certain nation, but rather as a disfigured people, a Slavophone speaking crowd which lives in a Greek landscape.

By doing this, the CPG was in fact ignoring the existence of the Macedonian people as a nation and was erasing the existence of the Macedonian national question, inside and outside of Greece.

At the same time the CPG was refusing to recognize and ignored the fact that the Macedonian people, with weapons in their hands, had already won their freedom in some parts of their homeland.

The CPG went as far as not recognizing and ignoring the existence of the Republic of Macedonia, a free Macedonian federal national state belonging to the Macedonian people within Democratic Federal Yugoslavia. It was also well-known that NOF was constituted on the same ideological basis.

And this is why the CPG leadership not only refused to recognize NOF but did everything in its power to vilify it. Namely, the Party press in Macedonia (mainly the district newspapers that addressed the Macedonian people) did not stop the hostilities against the NOF leadership, despite Zahariadis’s statement and despite the Second Plenum decisions.

Zahariadis spoke of NOF not as the Macedonian people’s national revolutionary organization, but as a different NOF, as a political organization of the “Slavophones living in the lands of the Greek state”. This was clearly expressed at the Second Plenum and included in its program principles - supporting “the rights and equality of the Slavophones”, a likely people imagined by the CPG leadership.

This kind of NOF did not yet exist but would be created in the future. Zahariadis’s statement made in Solun and the decision taken by the CPG Central Committee Second Plenum were the

determining factors, that is, the ideological basis for creating this kind of NOF. So, the wheels were set in motion to create it.

This did not mean that the CPG was going to create a new NOF as a rival political organization, to compete with the existing NOF. This kind of NOF would have had no prospect for success. The idea here was to use the existing NOF and make it operate in such a way that slowly it would turn into its own negation and destroy itself.

Let us now have a look at some of the more characteristic events:

Zahariadis used the Macedonian people’s natural aspiration to struggle for unity with the Party and the Greek people, as well as NOF’s acceptance by the people, to create a kind of Trojan horse to infiltrate the NOF fortress and take it over from within. In the end he succeeded in doing exactly that. He managed to lay his hands on both the Macedonian military forces and NOF. (A representative of the CPG met with the immediate NOF leadership in the village Turie, Lerin Region, on November 21, 1946 to work out a “unity” merger.)

Anti-Macedonian-ism in DAG’s ranks

5. Soon after establishing “unity” between the Macedonian and Greek forces, the Macedonian battalions were withdrawn from Macedonia and sent south, deep into Greece. As soon as they reached their destination, where only Greeks lived, the battalions were “reorganized” and their Macedonian commanders were removed and replaced with Greek commanders who were supposedly “more experienced”. There was resistance but it was quickly choked by executing those who resisted. On top of that, a NOF directive was issued to place DAG command under Greek control. After that the Macedonian battalions, in the Greek south, were ordered to fight against a much stronger foe in uneven battles fighting overwhelmingly strong enemy units. This literally destroyed the Macedonian battalions as well as the Macedonian revolutionary elite fighters composed exclusively of Macedonian patriots and bearers of the Macedonian national ideal. Simply put, Zahariadis managed to kill most of the Macedonian fighters who were not afraid to publicly proclaim that they were proud of being

Macedonian. With their removal from Macedonia, the CPG watered down the Macedonian revolutionary movement and began to rebuild it with a “Greek character” making Macedonia look more like Attica. Fulfilling the claim that: “Macedonia, after the exchange of populations, was as Greek as Attica.” (Rizospastis (July 20, 1943). In other words, the Macedonian military forces were withdrawn from Macedonia in order to be destroyed. This left NOF terribly impoverished and weakened...

6. Simultaneously with the liquidation of the Macedonian battalions in the south of Greece, many individuals, especially those who were prominent activists in the Macedonian Liberation Movement (NOF), were murdered.

Here are some examples of how Macedonian activists were murdered:

Georgi Urdov-Dzhodzho was NOF’s representative for Central and Western Macedonia at DAG headquarters. While performing his duties as ordered he found himself surrounded by a hostile unit. He fought fiercely and to avoid capture he used his last bullet on himself. But, as it turned out, the “hostile unit” was not an enemy unit but a number of “executioners” sent to ambush and kill him...

7. One day Vangel Shamardanov, then commissar of a DAG battalion and former president of the NOF board for Voden and Voden Region, approached me and confidently told me that he was afraid of his Greek “comrades” around him. Then one day soon after that he was shot in the back... Vangel truly died from what he feared… being shot in the back...

8. During a meeting with myself and Mihailo Keramitchiev, Georgi Kalkov, a prominent activist from Kostur Region, told us that he was convinced that he was going to be killed if he returned to his DAG unit. Kalkov, like Shamardanov, was not wrong in his assessment. He too was killed...

9. Lazo Koroveshovski was killed on his way to the cauldron to pick up his food. A “stray” bullet left him dead on the spot. His killer, of course, was never found...

10. On August 27, 1948, the democratic government of Greece adopted a decree somewhere in the liberated territory, to form eight divisions from the overall DAG forces.

Three divisions of volunteer fighters were formed in western Macedonia, where the Macedonian population was preserved in compact masses. They were the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh divisions. In other areas of Greece only one division was formed per province as follows: Epirus Eighth, Thessaly First, Rumeli Second, Peloponnesus Third and Eastern Macedonia-Thrace Sixth.

It is true that the Western Macedonia divisions had some Greeks in their ranks, but the divisions in the neighbouring provinces, Eastern Macedonia-Thrace, Thessaly, and Epirus had a greater percentage of Macedonians than Greeks.

Anti-Macedonian-ism in NOF’s ranks

11. In July 1947, a directive, signed by Zahariadis, arrived at NOF Central Council Headquarters requesting that the NOF constituency and all members of the central NOF agitation and propaganda department report to DAG Headquarters, located somewhere in Epirus, for a meeting with Zahariadis. Zahariadis also specified what route to take, i.e. to follow a path through the villages Prekopana, Kostarazi, Pesiak, the church on the hill, over Gramos and through the village Likovrahi in Epirus where information would be given to us on how to get to DAG headquarters.

As it happened we ran into a number of people who had just finished a meeting and took to the road along with them. Shortly after midnight, the group of fifteen people crossed the Bistritsa River and landed in the village Pesiak where we decided to take a break... This saved our lives...

While sitting there we were talking to each other in the Macedonian language. An old Macedonian man standing at the window of his house overheard us and came out to warn us. He said: “There is an enemy army unit present in the village. This is the third day since it arrived here and in the evening went out on those hills waiting and

looking for something, perhaps to ambush someone. The soldiers are there right now…” (The old man then pointed in the direction where the unit was located and told us to go back). If we had continued on our way on the road as planned, we would have fallen into its hands, but thanks to the old man’s warning we were saved...

In parallel with destroying the Macedonian battalions in the Greek south, our enemies in the CPG made attempts to also destroy NOF’s ideological and political cadres. In other words, to behead the Macedonian People’s Liberation Movement...

12. Fearing to again try the same thing, the Zahariadis CPG leadership resorted to using tactics they learned from the Bulgarians. Namely, the Bulgarians achieved significant successes against the Macedonian National Liberation Movement by infiltrating it with their own agents of Macedonian descent. The Zahariadis CPG leadership had several such agents in its service who were not only loyal to the Greek cause but willing to do the job. The Macedonian people called them “Grkomani” (Macedonians loyal to the Greek cause). Zahariadis and his like-minded people from the Politburo and the CPG Central Committee, through the First NOF Congress held in January 1948, and through the NOF Central Council First Plenum, held on August 1948, made sure that NOF was infiltrated by these Grkomani who would rise to take over NOF and replace and neutralize the true NOF Macedonian leaders and bearers of the Macedonian national ideal.

Leading the new “fake NOF leadership” were Kotsopoulos and Koitsis (until this moment public enemies of NOF). Under the old and true NOF leadership the Macedonian people were expected to look to Skopje as their national centre, the new and false NOF leadership however had a mandate to turn the Macedonian people’s view towards Athens, in the spirit of the Greek-supremacist motto: “We are part of Greece - part of the Greek people...”

13. While the NOF central agitation and propaganda department was busy to quickly develop a Macedonian cultural and educational national centre, the CPG was working feverishly to break it down. By order of the Provisional Democratic Government of Greece, in April 1948, the NOF agitation and propaganda department, together

with several other NOF activists (a total of 38 people. See: Timeline of the National Liberation War in Aegean Macedonia, page 213), were sent to join various DAG units. In other words the NOF central agitation and propaganda department was shut down...

14. The NOF cultural and art group played a huge role in mobilizing Macedonian fighters. It not only mobilized a large number of people, but it also provided moral support for those Macedonians who were already mobilized and fighting. So, it was only logical to have more such groups, perhaps one group district. But no, the CPG did not want them to exist and the only one in existence was disolved.

15. There was also the people’s Macedonian wind instrument orchestra which was first integrated into the 18th DAG Taxiarchy under the watchful eye of commander Vainas and commander Gousiopoulos. It was later placed in the service of DAG Headquarters. It too was eventually dissolved.

16. The Macedonian teacher’s school and seminar were also abolished and replaced with a Greek teacher’s school for “Slavophones”.

17. One or two days before the first AFZH Congress took place at the end of April 1948, the invited delegation of Macedonian women (AFZH) from the Republic of Macedonia was prevented from attending the Congress by the CPG...

18. The CPG persistently and systematically gave the impression that it was trying to show that it was in favour of a joint Macedonian-Greek armed struggle. However, when we look at what the CPG was actually doing, we cannot fail but see that their actions were in essence anti-Macedonian. In other words, in practice, the CPG was waging a war against the Macedonian national ideal...

However, the CPG found out that the Macedonian ideal could not easily be destroyed, more or less, by “neutralizing” its carriers. By replacing the true top NOF leadership with a “new NOF subservient leadership to the Greek cause”, Zahariadis was unable to provide the “national ideals” demanded by the Macedonian people. As a result

NOF’s foundation began to dry. Namely, NOF became an isolated and superficial organization. The Macedonian people were refusing to accept its foreign body.

Based on the expression made by the Siantos CPG leadership during the CPG Eighth Plenum held in 1942, and on the expression made by the Zahariadis CPG leadership during the CPG Central Committee Second Plenum held in February 1946, regarding the “Slavophone Macedonian population”, DAG Headquarters on Mount Kaimakchalan began to publish a paper section in Macedonian called “Osloboditeli” i its already existing newspaper “Λεφτεροτης”. The Macedonian section was printed with Macedonian letters. The already existing Macedonian newspapers “Nepokoren”, “Nova Makedonka” and “Bilten” also enlarged their printing space by three and circulation by four. More specifically each newspaper printed about two thousand copies... The network of correspondents was expanded so that they could cover DAG units and Macedonian villages. The network of those responsible for receiving the Macedonian newspapers for group reading in the field units, in DAG’s hospitals and the Macedonian villages was also expanded.

Publishing news in the Macedonian language helped Zahariadis, more or less, slow down the wave of mass desertion of Macedonian fighter from DAG and encouraged the Macedonian people to struggle and not feel that their participation was pointless and meaningless. In other words, Zahariadis was desperately trying to maintain the Macedonian people’s participation in the struggle, especially after he beheaded NOF and replaced its leadership with “Grkomani” (Macedonians loyal to the Greek cause).

It became obvious to the CPG leadership that the strength of the Macedonian liberation movement was not “artificial” and the work of “paid adventurers”. The CPG top leadership sold the idea to its own membership that NOF was an artificial creation and by removing its leaders and replacing them with Zahariadis’s own people, they could change the course of the Macedonian struggle to their advantage. Remove them, neutralize them and everything will be fine! An absurd notion! The main bearers of Macedonian-ism were the Macedonian people themselves...

This is why Zahariadis had to take the next step (allow newspapers to be printed in the Macedonian language), a very characteristic move by Zahariadis and those around him...

19. After removing General Markos Vafiadis, his deputy, and his other associates from DAG Supreme Command, Zahariadis decided to change DAG’s fighting tactics and turn DAG from a partisan hit and run army to a standing army. DAG was ordered to start taking “defensive positions” which, in fact, proved to be a maneuver that destroyed DAG and the uprising. In fact DAG was ordered to take defensive positions in and around the very Macedonian villages in the liberated territory that supported DAG. This, in effect, guaranteed the destruction of both the Macedonian people and their villages and homes. This maneuver, implemented by the top CPG leadership, no doubt was aimed at destroying the Macedonian villages around the liberated border zone by means of a total mobilization of the remaining women and girls, and by having the enemy bomb their homes out of existence. This was a maneuver aimed against the very bearers of the Macedonian ideal and at the Macedonian people themselves...

With the help from previously unseen demagogy, the Zahariadis CPG leadership through:

- The CPG Central Committee’s Fifth Plenum,

- The NOF Central Council’s Second Plenum,

- The NOF Second Congress,

- Acts of the Provisional Democratic Government of Greece,

- Creation of a separate Macedonian battalion, led by Garefi (which was disbanded about one month later because of intensive propaganda),

- The formation of KOEM, a separate communist organization for the Macedonians,

- Appointment of NOF representatives to serve in the interim government and in DAG supreme command, etc., managed to keep the Macedonian people engaged in the struggle en masse…

Then, when Zahariadis desperately needed the Macedonian people to be fully engaged in his war, to the last person, so that he could destroy them all, he promised to recognize their right to self-determination and separation from the Greek state. He literally said: “In northern Greece, the Macedonians, the Slavo-Macedonian people, have given their all to this war and are struggling with heroism and self-sacrifice. There should be no doubt that, as a result of DAG’s victory and the victory of the people’s revolution, the Macedonian people will achieve their complete national establishment, as they themselves want, which they earned today with the shedding their blood...” (CPG Central Committee Fifth Plenum, January 30-31, 1949, see: CPG from 1931 to 1952.) He later said: “The Macedonian people will have the right to unify the three parts of Macedonia in an independent Macedonian state in the framework of the People’s democratic federation of Balkan nations…” (NOF Central Council Second Plenum February 3-4, 1949. The statement was written personally by Zahariadis as a “proposal” and was adopted by public vote. In addition to other articles, this resolution was also published by the DAG newspaper “Προς τη νικη” number 12, February 27, 1949, and even more spectacularly, it was broadcast on the radio station “Free Greece”.)

Zahariadis’s maneuvers worked. In the end he succeeded in emptying the Macedonian villages around the border zone and placed the entire Macedonian population in a “defensive position”. While the children were sent across the border, of course, under CPG jurisdiction, that is, in the hands of the Zahariadis CPG leadership, their parents were sent to fight in the frontlines in a war where they had no chance of winning. And if they wanted to see their children again, they had no choice but to fight… until they were all killed to the last one…

Then, when the situation became more desperate, even old Macedonian men and women, the only people left in the villages, were collected and sent to fight.

This, no doubt, was Athens’s plan all along: To get rid of the Macedonian people by any means possible, burn down and destroy their villages and repopulate them with Greek families from Epirus and the south of Greece... And this is exactly what happened… And, of course, with help from the CPG top leadership.

Anti-Macedonian-ism in the immigrant ranks

20. Even the immigrants who had left Greek occupied Macedonia began to openly and fiercely attack NOF, bearer of the Macedonian ideal. They shamelessly criticized everything about NOF, its involvement in the struggle and its great contribution to DAG both materially and militarily, calling NOF a “crypto-fascist” and “reactionary” organization, which allegedly tried to “turn the Macedonian liberation movement from a reserve revolution into a reserve counterrevolution.” (See: CPG from 1931 to 1952, p. 272.)

NOF was dissolved and all its members were persecuted, judged and tormented to death. In a word – NOF was destroyed...

The CPG created another organization for the Macedonian people to replace NOF. The opportunity the CPG was looking for had finally arrived. As usual, in an attempt to fool the multitude of Macedonian DAG fighters and the Macedonian people who had fled (about 70 thousand) Greek occupied Macedonia, the CPG named the new organization “Ilinden” following in the Macedonian people’s national revolutionary traditions. Zahariadis himself selected the name and sketched the details which then were reviewed by Vainas and submitted to the founding congress. Zahariadis spoke well of the Macedonian people living in Greece and their current and future national prospects in terms of civil and national rights as equals with Greek people.

These, of course, were only elements of the already traditional declarative CPG policy. By abusing the name and authority of the party, i.e. its Marxist principles, with intensified systematic demagogy (revolutionary phraseology), Zahariadis again tried to deceive the Macedonian people in order to deflect and paralyze their resistance, thus facilitating the implementation of his real anti-Macedonian policy:

Zahariadis made sure “Ilinden” was staffed with carefully selected Macedonian janissaries, “Slavophone Greeks” or as the Macedonian people called them “Grkomani” loyal to him and the Greek cause. The organization “Ilinden” was created to function as an anti-Macedonian entity and to struggle against the Macedonian ideal. Zahariadis used the name “Ilinden” to not only fool the Macedonian people into believing that it was a Macedonian organization but with it to vilify everything that was Macedonian. Namely, to kill the spirit of Ilinden… Following are some actions Zahariadis took in that regard:

- The CPG rejected the use of the Macedonian alphabet after declaring it “foreign” and decided to replace it with another alphabet, a hastily put together alphabet based on the Russian and Bulgarian alphabets.

- The Macedonian literary language and grammar were also rejected because they were considered to be allegedly imposed by “paid adventurers” and were replaced by a mutilated form of language, the kind Kotsopoulos spoke. A new Macedonian grammar and a new Macedonian literary language were compiled and much effort was expended to popularize them, i.e. to give them literary value.

The infamous anti-Macedonian policy of non-recognition, of denying that a single Macedonian nation existed with its own culture and language, practiced by the bourgeois, was now practiced by the top CPG leadership feverishly working against all Macedonians including those living outside of the Greek state, and especially against those exiled Macedonians living in the socialist countries.

In addition to having the Macedonian territory divided and the Macedonian people separated physically, politically and economically, (an agreement reached by the neighbouring monarchies - the Balkan Wars), Zahariadis and the CPG leadership were now attempting to break up the Macedonian people’s culture and language, with an obvious goal to make sure the Macedonian people disappear.

In the name of Greek “national interests”, the CPG top leadership, which tirelessly portrayed itself as the champion of protecting the working movement’s interests and the revolution in Greece, was also making sure that every single Macedonian who survived the Greek bourgeois genocide, i.e. the denationalization and assimilation policies, must not survive as a Macedonian. Macedonians must not exist except as a “Slavophone” Greek, a complimentary addition to the Greek people, until they are all assimilated or otherwise disappear to the last one.

In other words, the CPG top leadership did its best to “erase” not only the Macedonian ideal from the Macedonian people, but everything that was Macedonian in Greek occupied Macedonia and it did this under the following conditions:

- The rise of the People’s Republic of Macedonia as a federal state within the Yugoslav composition, and

- The emergence of the Macedonian people’s liberation struggle, here, in the Aegean (Greek occupied) part of Macedonia (an event which still torments the CPG).

Eventually, the CPG top leadership was forced to take off its pretentious communist mask of being “friend no. 1” to the oppressed Macedonian people and openly emerge as the self-appointed architect of the Macedonian people’s fate.

This is exactly how the CPG top leadership behaved towards the Macedonian people no matter how hard it tried to make things look positive.

It is understandable that it was not an easy job to destroy a people like the Macedonians. Hidden in them was a healthy and strong nation with primordial forces that maintained it, filling it with what it had lost and healing its wounds. Therefore, like others before them, Zahariadis and his comrades also failed at their task. The so-called “Slavophone” Greeks, or “Grkomani”, not only failed to uproot the healthy Macedonian roots, but on the contrary. Remembering how they were treated by the Greeks, they began to wake up and lead the Macedonian struggle. As a result the

organization “Ilinden” began to increasingly take on the colour of a national organization for the Macedonians.

It did not take too long before “Ilinden” too was dissolved...

Without a Party or any other organizations, the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia, once again were left without any rights, except for the declarative right to equality as was stated in the Party program. In other words the Macedonian people lost all rights to organize and develop their own struggle to fight for elementary civil and national democratic rights. They lost their right to struggle against the disadvantaged and humiliating position they were put in by the Greek state and sentenced to disappear in the name of “other people’s interests”...

It is worth mentioning at this point that, even today the leaders of the Greek Communist movement think that. “Dogmatism prevailed when Zahariadis led the CPG in the period from 1945 to 1955. This was a time when the Party experienced gross errors, contradictions and a lot of infighting…” (See: Forty years of CPG, p. 717.)

Of course, this is a matter for historians to figure out whether or not we should, or should not see Zahariadis as an international anti-communist. I am only trying to contribute to that by looking at events from a different angle, different from the other writers...