1. MACEDONIA OCCUPIED BY FOUR STATES WITH DIFFERENT POLITICAL SYSTEMS

1. MACEDONIA OCCUPIED BY FOUR STATES WITH DIFFERENT POLITICAL SYSTEMS

The gravest consequence for the Macedonian people was the Comintern’s thesis that each country had to have one and only one communist party – “One State - One Party”.

There was also the famous agreement on the “east” and “west” division of spheres of influence reached between the great powers after the end of World War II where the Macedonian people found themselves in the following position:

Macedonians living in the Republic of Macedonia: 50% east, 50% west. Macedonians living in Bulgarian occupied Macedonia: 90% east, 10% west. Macedonians living in Greek occupied Macedonia: 100% west. Macedonians living in Albanian occupied Macedonian: 90% east and 10% west.

With the passage of time, especially after the 1919 Treaty of Versailles was signed, the Comintern thesis took hold and shifted into practice working against Macedonian interests and against the Macedonian people’s liberation struggle. Things went from bad to worse when, in May 1943, Stalin dissolved the Communist International (Comintern) allowing each communist party to plot its own course.

2. THE THESIS: ONE STATE, ONE PARTY

While the Comintern existed, with its power and global influence in the Balkans, it was able to:

- Recognize Macedonia’s division. - Recognize the non-alignment in Macedonia, legalize the Macedonian struggle and realize the Macedonian revolutionary movement.

- But at the same time a legal opportunity was created for the annexation of Macedonian territory and the appropriation of the revolutionary struggle in general In other words, the single Macedonian Liberation Organization that once existed was permanently disrupted.

Given that Macedonia was annexed by four different states with different systems which were not willing to allow the Macedonian people to operate outside of their interests, it became very difficult and nearly impossible for Macedonians to organize a common front in their struggle for their rights. In fact those who called for such a struggle were mistreated and condemned as secessionists, treacherous elements, destructive elements and even factional elements. In other words all Macedonian national aspirations in general were opposed. As a result the Macedonian national movement assumed a separatist character as did NOF in 1945. This was true with all communist parties of the states that occupied Macedonian territories. It is under these conditions that we need to examine and summarize the problems and the issues that confronted the Macedonian people so that we can clarify them and avoid misunderstandings.

Here’s how Dr. Stoian Kiselinovski explained the basic Communist movement thesis in his article entitled: “The Nation and the State in the Macedonian Revolutionary Movement (1893-1944)”, published in the weekly review Pulse, March 17, 1995.

“The Communist movement, because of its long historical Leninist discontinuity, does not treat the national question on a principled basis, i.e. always working towards the interests of the enslaved nation, but uses a tactical approach which corresponds to the so-called class interests which always correspond with the state interests of the dominant nation, thus essentially denying people their right to self-determination.”

In our case during the Greek Civil War, the Macedonian people were torn between their national consciousness and the binding political directions offered to them by the communist parties in the states that occupied Macedonian territories.

The program proclaimed by the Comintern was endorsed by the CPG in principle and offered the Macedonian people: “Full minority equality” the same as that of the other citizens within the Greek state which was valid from 1935 to 1949 year. This can be confirmed by the CPG, CPY and CPB instructors who graduated from the Party high school in Moscow in the years before World War II ended. These instructors were from all parts of occupied Macedonia and adhered to and supported the Comintern resolution adopted at the 7th Congress in 1935, only because they were under strong Comintern influence. Even though it originated from the communist movement, the thesis “One State - One Party” was a fundamental obstacle to the realization of any Macedonian unification program at the outset of World War II. Then, after the ethnic changes took place in Greek occupied Macedonia with the settling of the Turkish Christian colonists, the communists tried to convince us that it was all legal as a result of a lawful “exchange of populations”. But their ultimate goal was to eliminate us…

But no matter what the outside desire has been and how hard the Greeks and others have tried to eliminate us, our aspirations have remained a constant, adhering to them with obvious intentions and believing that we could exist in some genuine partnership with someone as we did with the Greek communists during the Greek Civil War. But in the end we lost everything – our country, our people, especially an entire generation of young people. Sadly our problems have not diminished with the passing of time and today we are faced with more problems – we are about to lose our name (unfortunately we lost that too). One thing that has remained constant in all this is that the more these outsiders want to get rid of us and insist that there are no Macedonians, the more we desire to remain Macedonian…

But just to be clear here, were we genuine partners with the Greek communists? Did the Greek communists fight for our rights? Let us extend that question and ask: “Did the Macedonian communists and members of the CPG fight for an independent Macedonia?” And if we say they did then how could they?

If the basic principles on which a nation / state is based, i.e. territory, government, historical past, cultural past, ethnicity, language and

economic principles, then, as members of the CPG, the Macedonian communists had to accept the CPG programs which abandoned the principles territory and state. By CPG directive all its members were ordered to exclusively struggle for Greece’s sovereignty and territorial integrity which automatically rejected everything that was Macedonian – ethnicity, language, culture, history. Which is to say that the Macedonian people sacrificed themselves for close to nothing; for a tiny program the CPG offered them specifically after May 15, 1943 when Stalin dissolved the Communist International, which formally recognized the right of individual communist parties to self-determination? (See: History of the Macedonian People, Skopje, 1988, page 345.)