Part IV - Part 01

Part IV

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DOSSIER - For the hero of the novel “Wanderers”

Dobrin Suvogorski Gotse (Pavle Rakovski – Gotse), son of Mara and Miaile Rakovski, was born on May 23, 1913 in the village Dolno Kleshchina, Lerin Region.

N: Act. AO-238 (Taished camp O-41) N: Act. Br. K19-126/2 (Skopje “Resenska” 6/1-4) SRM

Pavle Rakovski died on February 10, 1990, in Skopje

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Legacy under no.1881/81 sl.IV.905 p.52, INI. What Rakovski said about all his comrades, and how they responded to him, is captured in the novel “wanderers”, an irony of life that the reader, we hope, will understand.

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DOCUMENT NO. A-176

Socialist Republic of Macedonia EXECUTIVE COUNCIL Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT

TO PAVLE RAKOVSKI

Ul. “Resenka” No. 6/1-4, Skopje

In response to your complaint, sent to MA Gligorie Gogovski president of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia Executive Council, please find attached a response from the Republic’s Committee for Labour, Health and Social Policy number 5935 from 5.10, 1989.

Chief of Cabinet Dusan Stoianov

SUVOGORSKI’S LAST LECTURE

The last lecture Suvogorski gave about the Greek Civil War years (1945-1949), for us Macedonians, particularly the last years of the war, was about ideology turning to terror after which a new champion, the CPG, rose to the task of ruling over us.

Suvogorski put the manuscript down on the battered table, adjusted himself and began to browse through the yellowed notes while explaining the historical events in which he had participated while he was a member of NOF, when it was a newly formed Macedonian organization. As he spoke, now that he had so much more experience, he quickly realized that the CPG had always had secret intentions to exterminate the Macedonian people from Greek occupied Macedonia. He said: “The collective and individual trauma is still an open wound in the Macedonian people. The Macedonian people were not only removed from their homes, from their lands and from their old country, but they were also made to feel guilty of wrongdoing. Every Macedonian person should be asking: ‘How can a people who themselves sacrificed 20,000 souls and suffered genocide, be guilty of wrongdoing!?’…”

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Suvogorski stood there in silence as if waiting for a response from us, his frightened looking audience, sitting on the creaky iron beds. I noticed he opened another book. This one was by Hannah Arendt. She was born in 1906 in Germany. The title of the book was “Sources of totalitarianism”. Suvogorski continued:

“By abandoning the Bolshevik ideology, the CPG turned into a model of terror as a new form of governance in Greek occupied Macedonia.

The Macedonian organizations NOF and AFZH, now under CPG dictates, as marked by their ideological content and propaganda slogans, became the agitators and enforcers working for the CPG. Now the CPG, as a master with its propaganda and lies, did the same

thing that, until yesterday, the CPY was doing to these same Macedonian organizations.

Or more precisely, after the Second World War, the CPY and the CPG pushed Macedonia farther and farther away from its real essence. Perhaps initially those two had other motives later began to spread fear and terror on our people, and out of this violence some of our people became evil, cruel and vicious, and some remained good.

For us Macedonians in Greek occupied Macedonia, thick strings were being pulled from the outside and we endured four years of lies and twisted pictures of our Macedonian desire to have a united Macedonia.

This is how the de-Macedonia-nization of Greek occupied Macedonia began and was carried out, as a continuous process, by the communist parties. The Macedonian people found themselves divided and supporters of the CPG or the CPM/CPY which, until yesterday, offered us a ‘United Macedonia’. Now the entire action is carried out by the CPG and run by none other than CPG Secretary General Nikos Zahariadis.

The change took place in the same way that Stalin changed the Russian one-party dictatorship to a totalitarian regime. The revolutionary communist parties worldwide became totalitarian movements by abandoning their inner-party democracies and transforming their national communist parties into branches of the Comintern led by Moscow. Now Zahariadis is following the same model.

During the CPG Central Committee 5th Plenum, Zahariadis personally tossed the ideological hook in the water and officially said: ‘There is much to be admired in the heroism and self-sacrifices of the Slavo-Macedonians…’

But in reality life for the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia was quite different. The promises made to us by the CPG and CPY and their actions taken towards the Macedonian organization NOF and AFZH, including toward me (Rakovski) has

made us lose touch with the real world and with the reality of our situation. We literally became Zahariadis’s lackeys and we continued to sing the same song. Zahariadis, on the other hand, continued to lie to us and make plans for our future while expelling our children and exiling them all over the world, as part of our planned genocide.”

Suvogorski continued: “Let us now move forward and look at all the CPG and CPY ideological ‘praises’ and lies:

1) There was a statement in the Resolution made by the CPG Central Committee during its 5th Plenum, at the end of January 1949, which said: ‘The Slavo-Macedonian people in northern Greece have given everything to the struggle and are fighting with admirable heroism and self-sacrifice. There should be no doubt that, as a result of the people’s revolution and DAG’s victory, the Slavo-Macedonian nation will realize its full national goals as it sees fit because of the blood it is spilling today…’ (ΤΟ ΚΚΕ ΑΠ ΤΟ 1931-1942, σ .155. Or: ∆ΕΜΟΚΡΑΤΗΚΟΣ SΤΡΑΤΟS, no. 2/1949.)

2) Something similar in terminology was expressed in a speech given at the CPG 3rd Extraordinary Congress in December 1924! (ΤΟ ΚΚΕ, official documents, item 1. 1924, PLE 1964, p. 515.) Three days after the January 30, 31, 1949 CPG Central Committee 5th Plenum, during the NOF Central Council 2nd Plenum, held on February 3, 4, 1949, Zahariadis, who then personally led NOF’s operations, proposed to adopt an ‘already made’ resolution by having the delegates raise their hands. Among the other things mentioned in this Resolution was the call for a NOF Congress. During the NOF 2nd Plenum Zahariadis decided to convene the NOF 2nd Congress in March 1949... It was during this (NOF 2nd) Congress that the new NOF programming principles were proclaimed. It was during this Congress that Zahariadis instigated the idea, an innate aspiration of our people, for the unification of all the Macedonian people in one independent state within a people’s democratic Balkan federation! (See: ‘Nepokoren’, February 15, 1949.)

This was the ideological trap!? That was the reality in which the Macedonian people found themselves in Greek occupied Macedonia. While our people were being persecuted, abused and

terrorized to no end, and being driven out of their homes, Zahariadis and the CPG leaders were proposing “self-determination” for us.

This should make it clear to everyone who the biggest manipulators and scam artists of the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia were, who started to scam us as early as the start of the Second World War and continued to scam us throughout the Greek Civil War.

Unfortunately it was not until the end of the Greek Civil War that we Macedonians, guided through this violence by NOF, AFZH, the CPG and the CPY/CPM, finally realized that we were experiencing a national human catastrophe and that we found ourselves drifting all over the world because we were not ‘Greeks by genus’...”

Suvogorski paused, looked around, and in a raised voice said: “I repeat. This is what the CPG did to us!

It is a fact that during the Greek Civil War the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia experienced genocide!

What do you call an act of giving 28,000 children a one way ticket out of our homeland with no chance of ever returning? You call it tragedy, genocide! Well, this is exactly what we experienced during the Greek Civil War! And as the great Russian writer Dostoevsky wrote: ‘All the ideals in the world are not worth the tears of a single child!’ But it was more than that for us! As it happened these children were forever driven out of their ancestral homes and fatherland... With the so-called ‘Παιδοµαζωµα’, a violent act of collecting children, ages 2 to 14, both the Greek queen and the Communists, under the motive ‘save the children’, took our children away. This was an attack on human dignity which gravely wounded the Macedonian nation.

See – “Η αληθεια για τα παιδια της Ελλαδας, ΕΒΠ, 1952”

The CPG was well aware that genocide was taking place!

1.) The erasure of children’s names and their replacement with numbers etched on bronze plates was one indication. The

Macedonian children were given bronze pendants to wear around their necks with a number on them that was to replace their names. The pendant, the size of a large coin, had a number etched on one side and General Markos’s face on the other.

A child said: ‘I am number 521 and when the Romanians call me I have to say the words ‘Cinch sute douzech shi uno’.

Imagine that!? Macedonian children, in the heart of Europe, represented by numbers instead of names?

Is there nothing left of Macedonian-ism!?

2.) In whose spirit were the Macedonian children educated?

This is what one child remembers according to Mihalis Raptis, author of the book ‘The joyful in sorrow’:

‘We the children in all the children’s homes (Tulgesh, Sinaia, Oradea, Roman, and Kluz) in Romania listened carefully to Apostoli Spiliu’s broadcasts of stories told by all my comrades in a crystal clear voice. At the end of each broadcast we all erupt in a strange ritual yelling:

‘Long live DAG!’ ‘Long live Markos!’ ‘The enemy will never set foot on Gramos and Vicho!’ Someone would then call out: ‘To whom does Markos belong?!’ Then in unison we would all yell: ‘Markos is ours!’ Someone would then call out again: ‘To whom do we belong?!’ Then in unison we would again all yell even louder: ‘TO MARKOS!!!’

After Markos Vafiadis was removed from his position as top commander of DAG General Headquarters by CPG General Secretary Nikos Zahariadis and replaced with Zahariadis himself, we again excitedly and with the same fanaticism did our ritual

yelling of Zahariadis’s name… it was our daily prayer. The Party and Party members for us children became our obsession to which we attributed magical and supernatural powers. I remember we did not differentiate the Party from the Party leadership. It was an unseen power, very strong and invisible. The leadership was wise with its own mechanisms... for us, the Party and, in many ways, the Politburo were gods… with Nikos Zahariadis as the chief god...

After DAG was liquidated… it became all about our people! (He was thinking of the Greek people.)

Things changed… the name of our fatherland changed... From then on we still listened carefully but it was not the ‘Voice of free Greece’ that we listened to. It was now ‘the Voice of freedom’.

3.) Recruitment of Macedonian children without military training from the people’s republics for the Vicho and Gramos war fronts.

In its futile effort to find a solution to DAG’s reserve problem, the CPG leadership decided to widen its recruitment scope and look at the evacuated children, the same children it sent away to be saved, as a pool of candidates for recruitment. Namely, in April - May 1949, DAG General Headquarters and the Interim Democratic Government of Greece decided to recruit new fighters from among the evacuated children who had been sent to the Eastern European countries. For this purpose, appropriate orders and directives were issued to special emissaries who were then sent to these countries. A wide recruitment program was conducted with propaganda and heavy pressure on the children who were selected not by age but by height, resulting in the recruitment of children ages 12 to 14 years old and even younger.

This proves that NOF and AFZH were so servile to the CPG that they not only kept silent on the matter, but some of their members participated in committing this evil crime.

Similarly, with NOF and AFZH leading us, and without knowing the harsh realities of international politics, all Macedonians were also led down the blind alley of oblivion. The strong do what they want and the weak do what they must…

This means, and as our research has shown, that we Macedonians were pushed into a trap en masse while we seemingly believed that we were being taken on the ‘Road to Freedom’. Neither our Macedonian leaders nor we knew where we were going, so we all put our trust in our enemies to lead us to the ‘road of freedom’ but instead they led us to the ‘road of persecution and great migration!’ As a result, we forever lost our ancestral homes and lands.

This means that we blindly and obediently followed the CPG, assisted by the CPY, to our own genocide believing that we were being led to freedom. Without question, we believed their ideological lies and the fraud perpetrated against us, against the entire Macedonian nation in Greek occupied Macedonia.

Why did this happen to us Macedonians in Greek occupied Macedonia?!

For that I will have to turn to Kiriazovski’s new book, to the one published by the office of the refugee children entitled ‘Five vital years in Aegean Macedonia (1945-1949)’ and not to his books published by the ‘Institute of National History’.”

Suvogorski paused for a moment while looking for the book, found it, flipped through the pages and then said: “Everything that Kiriazovski tried to conceal in the past is revealed in this book. Here it says, ‘on April 23, 1945, the organizations NOF, AFZH and NOMS were founded in Skopje under the initiative of the CPY/CPM leaderships.’

In fact, this means that work had been done to expand NOF, AFZH and NOMS’s activities from Vardar Macedonia to Aegean Macedonia. The NOF, AFZH and NOMS top leadership, in almost its entirety, consisted of the demobilized soldiers from the First Aegean Macedonian Brigade.

NOF’s assignments were prepared by instructors appointed by the CPM Central Committee. The first instructor was the Slovenian Miha Marinko. After that Nikola Minchev and Dimitar

Dimitrievski-Pekar from Vardar Macedonia were appointed. I (Pavle Rakovski) was appointed from Greek occupied Macedonia.

NOF’s program goals and objectives were communicated to us by Tsvetko Uzunvski – Abas, CPM Central Committee Organizational Secretary and Interior Minister of the People’s Republic of Macedonia. Abas, among other things, said to us:

‘Yugoslavia has become the hub of the revolution in the Balkans. The ‘Macedonian Question’ has become a Yugoslav question. That is why the CPY is forming Party organizations and massive NOF, NOMS and AFZH organizations in Aegean Macedonia. The task of these organizations is to provide the Macedonian people and the Macedonian movement a Yugoslav orientation and to put the Macedonian people under the CPY leadership. The Macedonian people from Aegean Macedonia will accomplish all their goals within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.’ See: AM Archive of Macedonia, F-20/276, F-20/196.

With NOF’s establishment, in the five war years from 1945 to 1949, the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia found themselves caught between promises of a ‘United Macedonia’, what they longed for, to endless persecution resulting in the loss of their ancestral homes.

Today each one of us should be asking: ‘Did NOF and AFZH know what they were doing and in which direction were they taking us!?’

What were the Macedonian people thinking? Were they so drunk on hype that they could not see where they were going? And because of that they are now individually and collectively traumatized and carrying an open wound that refuses to heal!

Unfortunately our mainstream history, regarding the ‘Aegean’ Macedonians, has yet to explain the ‘political messages’ in the mass mobilization of Macedonian women to fight at the front, the evacuation of the 28,000 Macedonian children ages 2 to 14 and so on. None of these things, which are actually part of ‘the Macedonian genocide in Greece’, are made clear.

There is no mention or explanation of why there was an ‘AFZH’, a Macedonian women’s organization and no similar organization for the Greek women. One thing is clear about this, the architects of this war were only interested in the Macedonian women. It is clear that one of the objectives of the policymakers of this war was to turn the traditional, old Macedonian family into a ‘political family’. This way it would be easier to manipulate the Macedonian people and remove them from their Macedonian homes, with the ultimate goal of destroying the Macedonian family.

The question is:

1. These Macedonian organizations and their fronts were established to fight against whom? 2. Who was on the other side of the front lines? 3. What was the purpose of this struggle?

Was all this done under Tsvetko Uzunovski – Abas’s directive, in other words under Tito and Kolishevski’s directive?

Meaning, the guilt is on us for the conflict we experienced after the establishment of NOF and the other Macedonian organizations. It was NOF which allegedly led the Macedonians along the ‘Road to Freedom’. It was NOF who agitated us and spread the foreign propaganda among us… cashing in on our naked patriotism.

Our weak points, as our research has shown, was our patriotism, which was well exploited by the CPY and CPG to get us blindly involved in a complex situation that was beyond our awareness, in which we ended up being the victims of our own making.

This development began back in 1944 and 1945 when a small group of elite intellectuals, who later comprised NOF, in place of properly planning our future, allowed themselves to be manipulated by Yugoslavia and surrendered our destiny to the Greeks, resulting in our genocide and being exiled from our ancestral homes and lands. An unforgiving mistake has been made showing how unprepared and unaware we were during this historic moment in time. Knowing how ignorant, misinformed and unprepared we were certain type of Greeks and Yugoslavs took advantage of us by dangling in front of

us the one thing we all cared most about; ‘our Macedonia to be freed and reunited!’ They used our patriotism to make us do their bidding… And after we fell into their grip, we did not have the strength or the common sense to escape…

The Macedonian story from April 1945 to October 1946 and how and why we were left in the shade.

After white terror was introduced and escalated in Greek occupied Macedonia, the Macedonian organizations NOF and AFZH were there to pick up the pieces as early as 1945. While the Greeks were murdering and persecuting Macedonians, NOF was there to help them survive. Macedonian villagers were persecuted and murdered by the Greek government because they had Macedonian national feelings. And because NOF and AFZH were there to help them, these people flocked to them in an attempt to save themselves. And that is how the Macedonian peasant got hooked. These organizations, as it turned out, unbeknownst to them, were nothing more than fishermen of human souls. They were all ideological activists who forced the Macedonian people, looking for salvation, into a net of doom and then left them to wander the world. They all lost their place of birth and ancestral homes only because they wanted to save themselves by putting their trust on NOF, unbeknownst to them that NOF was the road that would lead them to oblivion… unbeknownst to them that NOF was a puppet of the CPG and the CPY whose aims were to strip Greek occupied Macedonia of its Macedonians… unbeknownst to them that the Great Powers had already sealed their fate.

Did we Macedonians, at this point in time, being unknowingly led by the CPY/CPM, incite the Greek government to take legal action against us which eventually led to genocidal intervention, just because we wanted to protect ourselves? Just because we picked up guns in our hands?! Think about that!

While being sent to Greek occupied Macedonia by the CPY/CPM and told they were sent there to “organize” the Macedonian people for a conflict, NOF and AFZH operatives in 1945 and 1946, still led by the CPY/CPM, unbeknownst to them, were actually there, forced by their actions, to slowly open the door to persecution and

genocidal activities. As expected the Macedonian people flocked to NOF and AFZH, led by a foreign government (CPY/CPM), and picked up guns to protect themselves. As expected the Greek government, to protect its own integrity, fought back. This is how this whole mess was started and this is how we ended up being driven out from our ancestral homes and lands. Of course the entire act was perpetrated and we did exactly what they expected us to do and fell into their trap.

The architects and strategists of this genocidal act did not want us to know what really happened and preferred to keep the truth hidden, and they managed to hide it for a long time, for over half a century, but now it is slowly coming out. According to our most recent historiography it is becoming evident that: ‘The Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia were organized and pushed to ‘take the mountains’ by the CPY/CPM…’ but we still have no official answers as to why the CPY/CPM, led by Tito, did this. What was the purpose for doing this? Why did the NOF Macedonian leadership push so many Macedonians in Greek occupied Macedonia to take up arms and run to the mountains even before the official start of the Greek Civil War?

At this point we need to point out that, with NOF and AFZH’s establishment in Skopje by the CPY/CPM, we Macedonians in Greek occupied Macedonia received two bitter rivals: the CPG on one hand and the new Greek government on the other, which steadfastly defended Greece’s sovereignty.

So, from what we have gathered, instead of providing us with a historical analysis of events, up until now our mainstream history has given us verbalism. In other words, the hopes that the CPY/CPM, Tito, Kolishevski and Tsvetko Uzunov – Abas awakened in us turned out to be false hopes.

The big question here is ‘why would our top CPM leadership cover up crimes committed against us, especially against their own comrades such as Chento and Vlahov?’ Why were they anathematized as autonomists and separatists? Chento, Vlahov and many others were real fighters who wanted to resolve the ‘Macedonian Question’ in favour of the Macedonian people? And

why has the top CPM leadership now turned its attention to the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia and urged them to struggle for a ‘United Macedonia’? Why create a Macedonian movement in Greece and ask the Macedonian people to fight under CPY leadership? Why tell the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia that all their desires would be fulfilled only within Yugoslavia and if Greek occupied Macedonia joined Yugoslavia? These questions need to be answered…

Is it not a sin to push your own Macedonian people to war, to fight for someone else’s interests? Is it not a crime for the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia to have to experience genocide and to forever lose their homes and ancestral hearth? Yes, it is a sin and yes it is a crime of historical dimension! The CPY (Tito) and the CPM (Kolishevski and Uzunov) are responsible for this because it was they that created NOF, AFZH, NOMS, dispatched them to Greek occupied Macedonia and then pushed the Macedonian population to join these organizations en masse to fight against the Greeks, which ultimately led to the annihilation of the Macedonian family, especially when they engaged the Macedonian women through AFZH and removed all the Macedonian children, thus ending traditional family life in that part of Macedonia. All this was a planned conspiracy to get rid of the Macedonians from Greek occupied Macedonia and the CPY/CPM was a part of it.

What were the NOF and AFZH leaderships thinking when they were asked to ‘convince’ their own people to rise up and fight to unite the Macedonian people? Did they think it was possible under the circumstances? Did they think that Yugoslavia, a supporter of the 1913 Treaty of Bucharest which divided Macedonia, was now in favour of uniting it? Did anyone bother to find out what the Great Powers, who sectioned the 1913 Treaty of Bucharest, thought about this ‘United Macedonia’ they were proposing? And if this was not the responsibility of NOF and AFZH to verify that this was even possible, then whose responsibility was it?

There is also something illogical about all this! Why would Tito and Kolishevski create NOF, AFZH and NOMS out of the same Macedonians who fled the Greek conflict in the first place, and who were part of the Aegean Brigade in Yugoslavia, knowing that the

Greeks would not accept them and would label them ‘autonomist’? And as it turned out the Greeks did label these organizations ‘autonomist’ and their top leaders ‘Tito’s agents’.

So, the question is: ‘Knowing all this, why did we Macedonians in Greek occupied Macedonia, for centuries now, persist in pursuing our freedom and independence as Macedonians at any cost, instead of accepting a comfortable life and future in the reality we were in?’

I believe the answer to that question is: ‘Because we are Macedonians and nothing more! We have our own language, customs, culture and history…’

You see, the strategists and architects of this war knew that very well. The Greeks in the past tried everything to eradicate us. The Greek authorities undertook the harshest measures possible to denationalize and assimilate us, to eradicate our national identity in our own homeland… but it was not working. So they needed to try something different… they needed to drive us out… legally! But how?! Get us to pick up guns… and the Greek government was going to do the rest… nice and legal!

But that still does not answer the question why our people, Macedonians, such as Kolishevski and Uzunov, got involved in this? Why did Uzunov lie to us? Was this a conspiracy? Perpetrated by whom and for what purpose?

Well, if the truth be told, there were conspiracies perpetrated against the people in all the communist countries, so it should be no surprise that it was perpetrated here too. Initially, all NOF and AFZH plans were prepared in great secrecy and the planners literally sought to involve every Macedonian, man, woman and child, en masse. They were looking for total mobilization. They wanted every single Macedonian to breathe, act and think on the orders of the ideological activists. The plan was to be secret because it involved intentional activities which were illegal.

NOF and AFZH organizing Macedonian networks in Greek occupied Macedonia fit well with Greek authority and Western Power future plans. They were all secretly stirring up problems to

prepare for a future war. NOF and AFZH were created on April 23, 1945 and the Greek Civil War did not officially start until March 31, 1946. This gave all sides plenty of time to stir up trouble.

Before the Greek Civil War started, NOF and AFZH played certain role as dictated by the CPY led by Tito. After the war started NOF and AFZH were passed on to the CPG, led by Zahariadis, and their role changed.

But, as it turned out, it took over 60 years for us to discover these ideological injustices and concealed, ominous alien concepts. So now we can confirm that this was the starting point, the secret strategy, for the mass mobilizations conducted by these Macedonian political organizations created by the CPY/CPM in Yugoslavia with Tito’s blessing…”

Suvogorski paused for a moment and looked around, seeming like he was looking for a reaction. No one spoke so he continued:

“So, they say they created NOF and the other Macedonian organizations on April 23, 1945 and tasked their leaders to organize the Macedonian people to participate in a struggle to unify Aegean Macedonia with Vardar Macedonia, meaning with Yugoslavia.

It would have made a lot of sense if some Macedonians were to ask some critical questions, which had not been opened or responded to in our history. Questions like: ‘How was this even possible without Great Power involvement, especially at a time when the Great Powers were widely divided; especially at a time when Macedonia was polarized and the iron curtain, an international border, ran through it?’ Unfortunately these questions were not asked or answered because our historians were either not interested or were not allowed to ask such questions. Then we have people like Kiriazovski writing our history, I mean the ‘history of us Aegeans’. You know that Kiriazovski deserted from DAG’s ranks and yet, it would appear, he was given a voice and the right to write about us…

Here are some questions of my own:

1. It is still unclear to me how the CPM Central Committee leadership could be convinced that it was even possible to unite Aegean Macedonia with Vardar Macedonia, right after World War II, after the Great Powers had already decided the borders? Were they totally blind and blindly acted on Tito’s orders?!

2. Were the ‘selected’ members and leaders of NOF and AFZH true leaders of the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia, or were they just puppets in the hands of the mysterious men of power under Tito’s personal command?

3. Was it even possible for new arrangements to take place in Greek occupied Macedonia with the seduction of the Macedonian people, a people who had naïve beliefs about a democracy they had never before experienced?!

4. Why has our Macedonian national history not taken up these issues and provided us with appropriate answers. Why has it concealed and allowed these conspiracies to go unchallenged? These are serious issues, especially the crimes perpetrated against our people who suffered immensely!

Now, if I may, I would like to lead you through a number of barriers (external, internal, military, political and state) which not only did not allow us to achieve our objectives, as set out for us by the CPY/CPM/CPG, but encouraged open conflict between us Macedonians and the Greeks, which eventually led to the loss of our native hearth…”

Suvogorski paused for a moment, looked around, tapped his finger on the book he was holding in his hand and said:

“This book here… Kiriazovski’s latest history book… opened a lot of questions… But our history, the history of the Macedonian people from Greek occupied Macedonia, is always a long and tortuous process. Any person who has the skill to analyze our history will quickly realize that the Greek Civil War was not a revolution and a continuation of the Ilinden Uprising, because we Macedonians were not guided by our own two fundamental pillars (political and military) during this war. The facts speak for themselves.

NOF and AFZH were never independent of the CPY/CPM/CPG and were never allowed to operate independently, so how can anyone say that they were military and political decision makers and factors in the Greek Civil War?

It is truly unfair to not have clearly distinguished the differences between what was said and what was done and by that I mean what really happened during NOF and AFZH’s developmental stages when they were managed by the CPY of Yugoslavia and by the CPG of Greece.

The facts show that, after the violent mass mobilizations in Greek occupied Macedonia, about 16 to 20 thousand Macedonians were recruited into DAG’s units, which represented more than 60% of the total number of active fighters in the Democratic Army of Greece (DAG). It should also be known that about 12 to 14 thousand Macedonians served all throughout Greece, beyond the ethnic part of Greek occupied Macedonia. These fighters had no contact with NOF or AFZH. On top of that, all these fighters were not allowed to speak Macedonian, sing Macedonian songs, or join any Macedonian organization. Worse than that was that they were forced to change their Macedonian names and to use Greek names. They were told that this was done because, supposedly, the Greeks south of Olympus did not know that a distinct Macedonian nation, with its own identity and language, existed north of Olympus and if they found out it might frighten and anger them.

This was another way of weakening the Macedonian identity and hoping that in time it would disappear. Another way of weakening us was by forcing Macedonian people to commit to becoming ‘ideological’ citizens, to sacrifice their Macedonian patriotism in favour of internationalism. Some Macedonians were convinced and many others were not. This unfortunately created a rift between us, a typical Macedonian national syndrome which was easily exploited by our enemies.

But all this still does not explain the mysterious ways and the black policy of evil that the strategists used to get us to join this hellish

war en masse, especially the Macedonian women, which brought us closer to our eradication?

Even though they were the recruiters, to this day NOF and AFZH have no record of the names of all the fighters who fought in the war. Was this by chance or by neglect? Or intentionally done… we don’t know!

This is why every person who suffered as a result of this war, and I believe this includes all of us, should be asking this author (Kiriazovski) and others: ‘Was this war a revolution or a fraud perpetrated against the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia?’ What kind of ‘Macedonian Question’ are they talking about after the Second World War, when everything was already settled? Whose ‘high policies’ was NOF and AFZH implementing in Greek occupied Macedonia...?! Were we or were we not fighting for foreign interests in this war? Were we aiding in the preparation and execution of our own genocide or not? Historians need to make this determination in accordance with the facts!

Questions like these are the main reason why I decided to investigate these issues and events. There are many other questions that need to be asked and answered, which up to now have been intentionally shaded and dodged by several authors who were of the same rank in the Greek Civil War and have been made official Macedonian historiographers. These questions are the basis of the most delicate things that took place. They need to be answered in order to explain this phenomenon.

But I don’t want to stop here. I want to ask all the questions, even those which have no hope of being answered. I would like to know why we were made to suffer this defeat, which should be an important and useful lesson to learn.

I don’t defend anyone because I am not a lawyer or a court. I don’t criticize anyone but I do ask real questions. I want to know the truth. I have done extensive research to get to the root of this evil, that is, I want to put authenticity back into our national history, especially in the history about us Macedonians from Greek occupied Macedonia. I want to know who lured us, the Macedonian people in Greek

occupied Macedonia, to this ideological scaffold?! When everything is gone, everything is lost; our voice, our humanity and our ability to hope that some day we will be able to return to our homeland.

The people who led us had no political strategy and no ability to look further than the next day. They convinced the Macedonian people to join them and then took them down a blind alley. We all traveled blind having faith in a strange and foreign ideology to lead us to our salvation. They took our people, especially our innocent Macedonian villagers who trusted them, only because they were Macedonians and placed them under ‘barbed wire’. The innocent Macedonian villager was coaxed to join a regime whose motto was: ‘No Macedonian was allowed to go against the revolution’s principles in the Macedonian villages in Greek occupied Macedonia where NOF and AFZH operated, if they did then they would be dishonest patriots!’ In this kind of climate and super ideological situation the Macedonian people lost their purpose. The consequences for the survival of the Macedonian people were disastrous. The Macedonian family was destroyed; the men became members of NOF, the women of AFZH and the youth of NOMS. With that the family was robbed of both its patriarchic and matriarchic status. Everyone was maximally engaged in agitating for a future that was created through NOF and AFZH by someone else’s directives; first by the CPY and then by the CPG.”

Suvogorski paused for a moment, looked up, looked around and said: “And where is the evidence for all this? I would now like to present you with some evidence of the absence of our awareness which actually led our people to the situation, which turned them into eternal victims. By following the directives issued by Tito, Tempo and Kolishevski we, like cowards, were brought before Zahariadis and Markos and tricked into becoming their servants, completely unaware of what we were doing. We were lied to and, in a hurry, lured towards a promised ‘future’… that allowed us to forget our present and our past. We were going to make history… exciting history!

And what are we doing now… and all those decades since the day we were promised all those things? We are immigrants living in fear… living in fear so that we won’t offend those who inflicted this

evil against us. We believed them then… when they led us to do all those things that had us evicted from our ancestral homes… and we believed them, now they tell us that it was ‘our fault’ for being evicted from our homes! They led us to fight and bleed to death in the Greek Civil War, which become a ‘cancer’ for us, and then they blamed us for not winning against that dreaded Anglo-American fascism… Do you still believe that we knew what we were doing? Do you still believe that we, single-handedly, were going to eradicate Anglo-American fascism…?

How many more years were we prepared to fight for these ‘false’ promises before we realized we were being duped? How many more Macedonians were we prepared to lose before we realized that we could not do the impossible? And still, to this day, we believe we fought in a revolution and our success was tied with winning the Greek Civil War. We still believe that everything would have been milk and honey for us had we just won the Greek Civil War!

Were we doing this because we simply felt heroic? Or was there an underlying cause for all this? Could it be that we were simply ‘afraid’ to say ‘no’ to those who pushed us into it?

Unfortunately, that was our psychology of everyday life. We lived in chaos both as individuals and as a Macedonian collective. We let others lead us and they led us to our self-destruction. This is exactly what happens when you allow others, especially your former enemies now pretending to be your friends, to lead you while you have your eyes shut.

But despite this cruel outcome, we still don’t know if Tito’s ‘crude kindness’ was truly meant to be our Macedonian tragedy?

We took the bait and then suffered alone and in fear… that’s what we remember… But now, 70 years later, the truth is starting to come out… Undoubtedly it is shocking for all of us, making us question the motives of those who we thought were our friends and saviours. Why?! Why would Tito and Kolishevski do this to us? Why would they want to uproot us from our ancestral homes and send us adrift to wander the world forever? The more I think about this the more I

feel I need an answer… We need to re-examine every event in our history and search for the truth…

‘When the truth begins to move, nothing can stop it.’ Emile Zola (1840-1902)

I can’t help myself but ask the question: ‘Why would the Macedonian members of the CPM agree to follow Tito’s plan on the issue of ‘Macedonia’s unification’ when they knew very well that Tito had no intention of unifying Macedonia, even if he could?’

During the Second World War, not only did he advocate but, on several occasions, Tito publicly spoke about retention of the pre-war borders in order to preserve the Versailles Yugoslavia. Tito himself did not want border changes in the Balkans so why would the Macedonians in the CPM think differently? As you can see there is something ‘not right’ with this!

There is also the breakaway of the large group of Macedonian fighters and activists from Kostur and Lerin Regions in May 1944, who seceded from ELAS and who were engaged in Tito’s army. These people were not only allowed to flee but were lured by Tito’s people, which proved to be extremely harmful to the Macedonian struggle at the most critical time of the war. Tito knew very well that these people opened up the conflict in Greek occupied Macedonia and then fled to Yugoslavia while the conflict back home remained unresolved. If they did not know what they were doing, Tito certainly did! Why didn’t he right the wrongs right there and then? Why was he party to their escape and to their abandonment of their families and homes when they were most needed?

There is no doubt that these Macedonian fighters were patriots and had demonstrated their national commitment by being prepared to give their lives for their cause and it is naturally understandable that political mistakes can be made, even at the highest level. But one has to wonder what is going on when these same mistakes are repeated. One has to wonder, is it simple ignorance, stupidity, political miscalculations…? It would seem that no matter what the Macedonians said and did they simply could not succeed… Not only that, things always seemed to go in favour of the Greeks. Why?

Does anyone think that this was done by chance? No! Things were going sideways for the Macedonians because that is what the Western powers demanded… Tito was in on it because he was in charge of this entire operation on the Yugoslav side. Let me put it another way, this could not have been done without Tito’s cooperation.

Let me ask you this: ‘What was Tito’s diplomatic game for the future of the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia, just after the Second World War, at the beginning of 1945?’ He had none! Why then did he aid in creating more than 20,000 victims out of them and initiating the communist myth of uniting Macedonia? What were Tito’s ambitions in aiding the so-called ‘Aegeans’ to self destruct? Was this part of the CPY/CPM and Tito’s ambitions to control the Balkans?! Or was it something else, and more sinister?

During the Second World War Tito did his best to encourage the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia to struggle to realize their aspirations within the Greek state. But after the Varkiza Agreement was signed, on February 12, 1945, he had a radical change of attitude.

The new CPY/CPM position became evident when the slogan ‘Why Srem and not Solun’ was first coined. Let me tell you how it happened.