UNDER IVESTIGATION (103) - Part 02

Yes we are not children because five minutes after they have a fight, children get back together and continue to play. In my case it was different. They hung this sign around my neck with the inscription “Agent” which remained there for a lifetime because “we are not children”. It turned out to be exactly as he said to me during the interrogations in Panchevo: “And for this, for our Yugoslavia, I would sacrifice ten Rakovski…!”

Patriotism is sure strange. I am not guilty of anything, and of course he knows that. There is no guilt without proof yet he is ready to sacrifice ten of me… for patriotism…! I was taught to use caution in front of a man with authority so I said nothing back to him... I could see that my suffering and sacrifices meant nothing to him. And how is it of interest to “our Yugoslavia” to sacrifice an innocent person for it? Doing that would, obviously, work against Yugoslavia and would be a crime against humanity...

About a month to a month and a half after we arrived, people came to visit us every day without interruption. They were people who knew us, friends, comrades, people from the security services who probably wanted to find out who was coming to see us, and so on. But after they found out that I was not an official… and that I may end up in jail because I was under investigation, the river of people, understandably, dried up. There were also “characteristic moments”. One of these moments was when Lambro Cholakov, one of my wife’s relatives, found out that we were in Skopje and living in the Bristol hotel. He made the following comment to someone: “What…? They are free…? They are not in jail…?” This happened immediately after we arrived.

Much later, about 5 or 6 years ago we were at a comrade’s funeral. On the way back one of my comrades driving his car through the settlement Chair, where I lived, suggested to his passengers that they stop off here at my place. Urania Iurukova, a passenger in the car,

objected and said: “I am not going to that traitor’s place…! The people will stone me if I do…!”

In other words, I was almost totally isolated from everyone. Only two or three people came to see me, among whom was a man from the Security Services. Of course, I had nothing to hide and was even happy to see him. I thought that it was good of him to come and see me and sooner or later he would discover that he… they all, were mistaken about me.

For my part, I decided to help. There are people among our people as there are people among the Soviet people who are prepared and would gladly help a person in trouble. Some of them helped me. They offered me their hospitality and friendship but I never did write them to thank them because I didn’t want to cause them trouble or give them headaches. If I sent them a letter it would get them in trouble with the security services… The police would probably think there were hidden messages in the letter and they would torment the recipients to find out what it was... For the same reason I don’t go, and I will not go, visiting anyone. I don’t want the security people to think that I am an “agent trying to create a network…” To this day no one has invited me to participate in any socio-political organization or activities. Neither have I, consciously, tried to be invited or to intervene in becoming an “active socialist!” I don’t want them to think that “the agent is trying to penetrate the system...”

The only thing that I have asked in writing (and not just once) was for them to recognize my CPM/CPY membership and length of service in both the CPM/CPY and CPG Organizations. But I was denied... One time the Central Committee suggested that I submit a request to the basic social collective organization where I once worked (O.U “13 November”, Skopje) and ask them to admit me as a new member in the Party. In fact, this meant that my previous and lengthy service would be deleted. I peacefully protested... but it was in vain. I eventually accepted thinking that this was better than nothing...

But nothing came of it. Krsto Velkovski, the person in charge of registering people, apologized to me and told me he could not register me because my entry was blocked from above.

From the time I was politically aware I have been a Communist. In fact it felt to me like I was born a Communist. During my interrogations in Moscow the interrogator asked me:

“When did you register and who invited you to join the Party?!”

I was not able to answer his question! I was surprised myself. Then I discussed this with Mitrevski in Alma-Ata. It was he who passed this information on to Skopje. Then, when I arrived in Skopje, the Central Committee asked my to tell them the full name of the person who registered me in the Party…

There too I did not have an answer... Perhaps this is why I am a non-party person today. Perhaps... It is true that I was never invited, neither by the CPG nor by the CPM/CPY, to join by plea or by petition. I entered the CPG and the CPM/CPY in concert, along with many others, as a leader of an organized group. Therefore my party membership should have been recognized just like it was recognized for so many others...

Back in the Moscow prisons and then in the Siberian camps, I was determined to survive so that when I got out and got my freedom, I could expose the political deception, that is, the CPG leadership’s hypocritical policies towards our people. I started that job in Alma-Ata, and I continued it here in Skopje. I was confident that this was the only social sector where, as an “active socialist”, I could contribute to the defense of the rights of our people, revealing the CPG leadership’s criminal policies to the membership and to the wider public.

But I found it even more difficult than I anticipated! My articles were taken by the editorial staff and then rejected. The Aianovski-Kiriazovski tandem acted with much success. So much so that the I.S. commission, in which Aianovski was a member, blocked my pension allowance because, according to him, I was not involved in any social activities “after the war”. And on top of that, in an article

in the journal “Istoria” (2/1981), as I mentioned earlier, he even tried to present me as an “informer” and an anti-Party and anti-Yugoslav element who attempted to defame the CPM/CPY.

But what seemed impossible did happen. With a lot of struggling and support from my comrades, one of my articles was accepted and published in the last issue of the journal Glasnik No. 2-3/1982 (published in March 1984). I was finally able to publish information that dealt with the CPG anti-Macedonian policies and circumstances under which these policies were applied when the ELAS Voden Macedonian Battalion withdrew from Greek occupied Macedonia and landed in the Republic of Macedonia.

Of course, this was a good sign for now. In the meantime I was still isolated, ignored, and written off. In any case, I will take a chance and I will submit my biography and my conclusions on which I have worked for over a quarter century doing research and documenting events. But I will talk about this later. Now I would like to finish my biography...

Both my wife Urania and I had great difficulties finding employment. We even experienced difficulties while we were employed. But I will only talk about what happened to me. First, I was employed as a journalist working for the “Trudbenik” Trade Union newspaper. But immediately I felt uncomfortable and uncertain. As a “Trudbenik” journalist I was obliged to visit various work places and write about them. But nobody guaranteed me that, by the questions I asked, I would not be accused of doing the work of an “agent”. I was in real danger from which I needed to distance myself as soon as possible... As it turned out, Dr. Tanas Malinov, also from Lerin Region like myself, who managed a medical institution, was in need of an assistant manager. He basically offered me the job if I wanted it. I accepted it, of course, with much gratitude. I gave up my job as a reporter and accepted the assistant manager job working for Dr. Milanov on a two month trial basis. I don’t know who intervened, Dr. Malinov would not tell me, but two months later I was out of work again...

After that I applied at the Secretariat of Education for a job to teach grade eight at a middle school. I knew how to teach and had some

experience from back home... and it was harmless work. They asked me for a diploma which I did not have. Where was I going to get the diploma? I left all my personal documents back home before I was sent to the front in Gramos. Then from Gramos I was forced to flee to Albania… and from there I ended up in Siberia. They knew I had no documents, of course, and no diploma. I was accepted as a Yugoslav citizen, for which they gave me a Yugoslav citizenship and an identity card, based on information I gave them and on statements made by witnesses on my behalf, so I should have been accepted as a teacher based on the same principles... But my enemies managed to find some people who informed the Secretariat that I was not a qualified teacher, but an ordinary Greek teacher who taught in the lower grades. These were fabrications made by the same people who did not want me to come to the Republic of Macedonia. And now that I was here, they tried to make my life miserable and force me to leave. I refused to stay in the USSR because I wanted to be here… Now that I am here I am not going anywhere. I prefer to remain here and fight. I personally went to the Secretariat of Education and in front of the officials I said: “I am a graduate from the Classical Gymnasium in Lerin and from the Pedagogical Academy in Solun. Why has my application not been taken under consideration?” At the same time I was well aware that they had received statements that contradicted what I had said... Their explanation was that they could not let me work with children without checking if I had proper training. They told me they would formally request information from the Solun Pedagogical Academy to confirm my graduation. I did not mind that but at the same time I did not believe that they would want to do that. And indeed, a month or two later, their answer was that “Pavle Rakovski” did not graduate from that institution! Formally that was true because in Greece I was called “Pavlos Rakovalis” and not Pavle Rakovski.

I asked Hristo Andonovski, a publicist in Skopje, and Kosta Markovski, a trade unionist in Kavadartsi, two of my old colleagues who also graduated from the Solun Pedagogical Academy a year after I did, to confirm my graduation...

After that the Academy asked me if I would agree to take an exam in the subject that I would choose to teach.

I immediately accepted. I was not afraid to take the exam. I deliberately opted for mathematics, a subject that was usually considered the most difficult. But I also decided to master other teaching material, such as history and geography, so that they couldn’t say that I was just an ordinary teacher. Realizing that math was a very wide subject, when I arrived for my test I asked: “On which math topics will you be examining me…?” Those in the Secretariat had no answer so they sent me to see the president of the examination committee, a professor at the Skopje Pedagogical Academy.

When I found him I introduced myself and told him why I was there. He looked at me with a frosty look and said: “I have nothing to tell you…!” and then shut the door in my face. It would appear my enemies had got to him and succeeded in filling his head with lies about me...

I went back to the Secretariat and they gave me the address of a teacher in the Pedagogical Academy who was a member of the examination committee. I visited her at her home. She received me kindly and told me that they would be examining me on the theoretical details on the material taught from grade 5 to grade 8...

Soon after that I paid a visit to the inquiry committee consisting of the two above mentioned teachers in the Pedagogical Academy and one university professor (Platon Dimich). However, the topic I was given to be tested on was not material for grades 5 to 8, so I calmly said:

“I was told that I would be examined on the material taught from 5 to grade 8 and only in theoretical detail. Why am I being examined on this...?”

Their explanation was that I needed to be examined on all the material that was taught in the Pedagogical Academy…!

I said: “Okay then, I will see you after I am done with the exam!” and sat down to review the material.

I was soon done and, with great difficulty, I succeeded in getting my teacher’s certificate in mathematics.

After that I was given a post as assistant director in a school that was under construction and told that when the school was ready and if I organized it well, I would be its director. And, as usual, they took a lot of shots at me. But when the building was ready and classrooms were outfitted with desks and teaching material, someone else sat in the executive armchair. I remained an assistant director. And it did not take long before I came into conflict with him. It appeared that the director did not follow the law the way it was intended to be applied and kept violating it. More specifically he did not apply the proper rules when hiring teachers. He did not hire teachers based on their qualifications but rather based on the recommendation of his friends and following the advice of the head of the municipality’s Department for Social Affairs. The majority of the teachers were selected based on favouritism. In other words he did not hire the best teachers available to us. This put the school’s success and reputation in jeopardy and worked against the interests of the students and their parents.

Later I noticed the school custodian working more and more in private homes during working hours doing electrical work while being paid by the school. The bills for electrical materials were also getting abnormally large.

I also noticed the director lending out the one hundred or so chairs used during celebrations in the gym, to a wedding, like they were his own property, and some of the chairs came back damaged or did not come back at all...

I also did not have good relations with the head of the Kisela Voda municipality department of social affairs. I did not want to, and could not stand the man. Most teachers and school staff were appointed through him without going through the proper selection process. He was the person who also handled the funding of the school construction and equipment used in the school. According to our documents he did not deliver all the school equipment identified in the invoices. Included among the equipment he did not deliver was a thick door on wheels that was to be installed between the

inventory room and the gym, as well as a decorative telephone table that was to be placed in the director’s office. These items were charged in the invoices but I could not find them in the school... As an assistant director or representative of the school, I went to the contractor’s warehouse to inquire. And... I did. I found out that the head of the Kisela Voda municipality, the contractor and several of their close associates used the money to “celebrate” the success of their cooperation… at the expense of the school. The big heavy door and the decorative table never made it to the school...

I complained of course... I sent letters, reports... I even wrote to the Central Committee... I never did find out if my letters even reached the addressees or whether my complaints had any effect... I might as well have dropped them in a well...

All this was very difficult for me… I was in constant arguments with the school’s director. The school superintendent came to see the school often... We were visited by the assembly president of the municipality and by the municipal committee secretary. They all demanded that I “reconcile” my differences with the director. They did not understand or did not want to hear what I had to say. They saw nothing wrong with the abuse of the school funds and assets about which I was complaining, which was the real reason for our “bad interpersonal relationship”. In their estimation my “griping” was about the fact that he, not I, was appointed director of the school. And, of course, the director could not be at fault for that. They appointed him. If it was not him, then it would have been someone else. That’s how they saw things. There was also the fact that they had promised me the director’s position after I completed all the work… on which they did not deliver. Who should I be blaming for that? One or more of these people did whatever they could to make my life miserable. The director was a friend of the chief (head of the Kisela Voda municipality). They graduated together from the school of management... So why would I think he would support me?

Something else also happened to me. I was summoned to the municipality by the head of the Department of Education. This was the first time I met him. He pulled a document out of a drawer and handed it to me. It was a record of school board meetings duly

signed by the board president (a security services member) and by the director. They both had concluded that assistant director Pavle Rakovski should be removed from the school because he did not respond well to the ideological field of expertise!

I looked at him directly in his eyes and firmly said: “Both the meetings and their conclusion are inventions. This document is also a forgery…”

The other members of the school board convinced me to sue those responsible for the forgery and I did but the court cleared them because of lack of evidence! When I went to appeal the verdict they asked me to produce the minutes, that is, the document in which those allegations were made. They assured me that they could not find such a document because it did not exist. I went back to look for it myself but it was not there… the entire book of records had disappeared. The school was left without its records...

On the day when I was going to trial, I was attacked by two people. They pushed me off my bicycle and, during my fall, I was slightly injured on my leg below my knee. At first I defended myself by trying to tell them that I did not know them and that they surely must have made a mistake because I had nothing to do with them. But they kept quiet while attempting to beat me. One of them punched me in the left eye. I got upset and hit him back. He staggered like a drunk and sat down on the back seat of a motorcycle parked next to the pavement. I turned to the other, but he was already running towards the first. He sat down on the motorcycle front seat, turned it on, and they quickly disappeared around the corner.

When I was inside the courtroom I pulled my pant leg up. My leg near my foot was bloodstained but no one in the courtroom said anything… they were silent and unfriendly. I saw no compassion for me or condemnation for those who had done this to me. I was very upset and ready to leave the trial but I had to restrain myself because if I walked out they would be sending me to jail for contempt… for insulting the court. The trial unfortunately was in vain…

Understandably “organized socialist forces” were at work here. They acted not on the basis of evidence presented to them, but on the basis of what they were told from above. They did not express themselves as a socialist union, as an affiliate union or as a kind of union that looked after its members. They simply obeyed the directives given to them from above. In separate meetings, the teaching council and the school board reached the same conclusion and that was to let the directors themselves sort out their problems in the interest of education and the general functioning of the school. Soon afterwards, the municipal factors called a general assembly of the entire collective, from guards, cleaners… up to directors, and demanded that the directors be removed from their duty and be demoted to teachers. I was demoted from assistant director to teacher. After that they tried to remove me from my job as a teacher, that is, they wanted to get me fired. This time, they tried to do this through the new director. There were three mathematics teachers in the school, myself and two women. Under the pretext of wanting to improve our teaching methods, the director organized mutual classroom visits where the other two teachers would observe the teaching of the third teacher. Of course all this started with me first.

At this point it became quite clear to me… what this was all about. From what I gathered, they told the two women teachers that I had “questionable skills” and their task as professionals was to prove that…

I loved the children and they always like me. I had no problems with any of them here or at home in Voden Region. I worked with them well. I displayed a cheerful mood, which was easily passed on to my students. I cheerfully taught the material with many funny but happy examples. None of my students were bored. Everyone was engaged. And, at the end of class, when I asked them to give me examples of what they had learned, they were all eager to do it…

After they observed me at work my colleagues refused to testify against me. As a result the “mutual visits for the improvement of teaching” were soon abandoned and forgotten…

Of course, I knew exactly who was behind everything that was happening to me. I had no reason to be angry at the municipal

authorities. If I were in their place I would have done the same thing. Someone else wanted me to be unemployed, written off, ignored, and cast out. Someone else wanted me to be destroyed politically and socially unsuccessful, because of the things they said and certified with their signatures, against me… that I was a “foreign agent”. And, above all, each small success on my part in our community, in fact, would constitute denial and condemnation of their statements against me. In other words they defended themselves by trying to destroy me...

Most of the time I managed to be peaceful and accept life as it was. But they acted in a way that made it difficult to appreciate and respect them, even as my enemies. Simply put their hostility caused me rage. They had no trace of human dignity in them! By misusing their positions they even attacked my wife Urania and my daughter Mira.

For many years Mira was paid lower wages, less then her colleagues who did the same work, simply because she was the daughter of an alleged “foreign agent”. When she went with her company to Belgrade to do a presentation for one of Tito’s birthdays, the security people grabbed her at the door and held her. Their reason…? She was the daughter of a “foreign agent”!

With the boldness and perseverance of a righteous woman, accompanied by tears and loud protests, Mira made the work of the Chief of Security very difficult. He looked at her very carefully and said “this is nonsense!” He then let her in to participate in the performance for Tito.

Urania also received lower wages than her co-workers for years, even though she had proven to the Faculty of Economics (which made her write an exam which she passed) that she had completed her secondary education and that, according to the labour law, she should have received an “average” income. But in spite of being paid less she did not quit her job. When she retired they denied her a pension because she was the wife of an alleged “foreign agent”. And hers was the only case in the history of the “Idadia” Health Centre in Skopje where she worked...

The new school director was an interesting man with years of senior management experience. He was a reserve officer in the Royal Yugoslav Army. After that he was mobilized by Tsar Boris’s Bulgarian fascist army and served in Eastern (Greek occupied) Macedonia where, three days later, his raging fascist army killed about three thousand anti-fascists, Greeks and Macedonians.

This was unbelievable! A former officer of a fascist army is now a director in our school… and this after we won our socialist revolution? And my boss too…?!

Of course I am exaggerating… But am I wrong? Perhaps the man had special merits... But I confess I was not aware of any of them... Fortunately for me, I soon qualified for retirement and was about to join the ranks of the retired and, as a friend of mine used to joke, the ranks of the destitute. But he was wrong. It is not true. On the contrary…Retirement seemed much more reasonable to me than working… under those conditions. First, the veteran’s pension I was receiving was much higher than the teacher’s income I was paid. Second, I stopped being a thorn in the people’s backsides at the school and things did become calmer...

Today is June 15, 1984. I received the following letter by mail:

Socialist Republic of Macedonia ARCHIVE OF MACEDONIA No. 05-313 / 2-84 June 11, 1984 Skopje.

TO PAVLE RAKOVSKI Ul. “Resen” no. 6 / 1-4 91000 SKOPJE

In connection to your last letter to the Archives of Macedonia, allow me to inform you of the following:

1) The Archives of Macedonia has published the speech you gave at the 1st World Peace Congress in Prague as per the newspaper “Ptos ti niki”.

2) It is not up to us to determine if this newspaper falsified or shortened your speech. If it was falsified or illegally shortened you should have been protesting then and not today.

3) It is important for the Archives of Macedonia to authentically translate and fully publish the mentioned speech.

Accordingly, any further correspondence around this issue I consider superfluous.